Page 5

4

“Flynn?” I manage with a gasp, my tongue starting to swell in my mouth. It is him, isn’t it? The foyer might be spinning a little, but he’s perfectly in focus. Unmistakable, even after all these years. I know him like the lyrics of the Johnny Cash songs we used to play on our Sunday road trips. I remember every note, every chord, every—

“It’s okay,” Flynn says, quickly stepping forward. The word suave , it was invented for this new version of him. Even in his plain black T-shirt and well-tailored khaki pants, beard short and freshly trimmed, he has an air of old Hollywood glamour, as if he’s playing a CIA agent in a movie. “Max, it’s okay.”

Like hell it is!

“How—” I stammer. “How are you—?”

He holds up his hands, like he’s about to subdue a bear. “Just take a deep breath.”

“What the fuck , Flynn?” I burst out, definitely not leaning into that advice. The problem is, my head’s swimming with memories. All at once, he’s there. Eighteen years old, sun-kissed, on the beach. Dropping a steady stream of sand on my toes as I belly-laugh, clutching my knees on the beach towel. He’s there in the restaurant where I was a hostess and he was a busboy, and we’d spend our breaks sneaking fried oysters from the kitchen, talking about sailing and school friends and everything in between. Flynn Forester. The first person I told: I want to open my own restaurant . The second guy I ever kissed, his lips brushing mine under midsummer fireworks, fingertips tracing the side of my cheek, and—

“I’m going to tell you this fast,” Flynn says, keeping those hands up as I circle around him and he circles around me. We’re our own miniature whirlpool, and it’s pulling me under. “We have a lounge room in the station house where I was working. This was a couple weeks ago. Prime Minister Christiansen came on TV, and I made this offhand remark—that I knew someone, way back when, who looked like her. Next thing I know, I’m here, and you’re here.”

“No,” I still say, the only thing I can think to say. His eyes are tracking circles around my face; he’s obviously waiting for me to shout or scream or sock him in the abdomen. Each option has its merits, honestly, although I suspect that touching his abs would be like petting a block of wood. He’s so tall now. So toned. “I don’t get it. I don’t understand this. You’re…” I wave a hand at him, up and down, from the tips of his boots to his perfectly chiseled jawline, half-hidden under that tidy, tidy beard.

“I’m…?” he says, raising a thick eyebrow, and there are too many ways to finish that sentence. You’re a fully adult man, Flynn ; You’re working for the CIA? You’re here ?

In all the scenarios I’d imagined, all the ways I thought we might meet again, this wasn’t in the cards. This wasn’t even in the same hemisphere as those cards. We were supposed to just bump into each other, at the Creamery, say, waiting in line for cones. Or buying toothpaste at the supermarket. Or we were never going to see each other again. Half of me believed that Flynn existed only in that strip of summer, eleven years ago, almost like I made him up.

“You’re CIA,” I finish, electricity racing up and down my spine.

“Eight years now,” he says, so smooth, like maybe this outrageous scenario—him, me, Italy—isn’t affecting him at all. Just a normal day at the office! I’m just another asset. An asset that he’s currently trying to contain, because I haven’t stopped moving. Flynn’s hands are still up in the air, palms flat, as if he’s trying to coax me not to slap him. “I get it. The odds of this scenario occurring are astronomically small. A zillion to one. Normally, if the CIA wants to find a decoy, they use facial recognition software. Driver’s license photos.”

I cringe harder than I want to. “Did you see my driver’s license photo?”

“No,” he says. “Okay, yes. And I thought it was damn cute, actually, even with the—” He makes a choppy, swiping motion across his forehead. I’d cut my own bangs, on a whim, with kitchen scissors. The raccoon on my state fair T-shirt would’ve done a better job, and I—

I’m more exasperated than I’ve been in years. My breath’s coming out in puffs.

How can he be so calm in this scenario? Seeing me again, for this?

Unless our time together never meant a thing. Unless I was the only one in love.

“What I’m saying is,” he continues, visibly unaffected, “we almost never recruit decoys for foreign nations, but the US and Summerland are close allies. They came to us. Their entire population wouldn’t even fill a city in Texas, so they couldn’t identify anyone in their country who’d be a passable decoy for the prime minister; the CIA started looking.”

“So…” I swallow, throat burning, taking all this in. “ You’re the reason why I’m here.”

Okay, now it does look like I’ve slapped him. Only for a split second, though, before the hint of a grimace disappears. “I need you to know, I didn’t request to be your handler, or ask to be put on this job. The higher-ups just thought that since we share some history together…”

Some history . Some. Is he joking?

A bitter laugh threatens to spill out of me.

Because no, nope, he isn’t joking. He’s giving me a straight look, less than four feet away, his chest barely rising with a measured breath, and he’s dropped his hands, hooking his thumbs in his pockets. The brownish-blond strands of his hair practically twinkle under the chandelier light. I can’t decide if this version of Flynn—this older, CIA Flynn—is more rugged or pretty, and why both of those options piss me off so much.

“Okay,” I say, face prickling. “Thank you so much for that information.”

He squeezes his eyes shut for a blink, and when he opens them again, he says, “I’d get it if you hate me. In your shoes, I’d hate me, too.”

Hate would certainly be easier. And there is, admittedly, a flicker of it—a deep-down anger that fizzes at my fingertips. The last time I heard from Flynn was in an email, over a decade ago, and it shattered me; I couldn’t even bring myself to reply. Now he’s just ambushed me, half a world away—and the way I’m remembering our relationship is definitely different from the way Flynn is. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be this devil-may-care.

“No one else can be my handler?” I ask, finding my voice again.

He doesn’t even have the decency to look wounded. He just folds his arms tight across his chest, and man, I wish he wouldn’t. The dark cotton of his T-shirt hugs every muscular curve. I am intensely physically aware of him, in a way that almost shocks me. “You really want that?”

“Oh, I really, really do.”

He looks pensive for a moment before placing his hands on his hips. “Well, that’s a shame, Starfish, because you’re stuck with me.”

Starfish . He did not just call me Starfish.

I drop my bag and hear it clatter against the floor; I hadn’t entirely realized that I was still holding it. “Is there a bathroom I could use?”

“Sure thing,” Flynn says, infuriatingly nonchalant. “Down the hall.”

I quick-foot it inside, clicking the door shut and throwing my back against it, hands flat, willing myself to calm down. Just calm down. Just think. What are my options here?

Don’t have many, do I?

He’s my handler. He’s going to handle me. God, the more I say it, the dirtier it sounds. Which is how I know, intrinsically, that if this mission is going to work, if I’m going to bank the money, get my life back, and protect Sofia in the process, then I’ll need to shove down every memory of me and Flynn. No thinking about us perched on a picnic table, Flynn leaning over to tuck a stray hair behind my ear. No remembering that delicate sweep of his finger, cicadas buzzing in the background, the salty scent of his beach-drunk skin. Definitely no nicknames. I’ll have to bury everything with a shovel, under the sand, back on the Maine shores. Like my seventh-grade hamster, Sir Nicholas. May he rest in peace.

Splashing cool water on my neck, I jump around a little, shaking out my shoulders and my hands. Pull it together, pull it together . I’ll be…professional. Aloof, slightly distant, but professional. That’s the only way I’ll be able to pull this off.

“We’re going to have to set some ground rules,” I tell Flynn, emerging from the bathroom when my heart rate is no longer in stroke range.

“Absolutely,” Flynn says, nodding. “Absolutely. But first…I might’ve gotten you something, to set us off on a different foot.”

One of my eyebrows quirks at him, wondering what angle he’s playing.

He holds up a finger, disappearing around the corner for a second before returning with an honest-to-god wicker gift basket, the kind you’d pick up for a sick relative at the airport. Oh…kay? Inside, I’m expecting soaps, potpourri, maybe some Italian-made socks, but when he holds it out for me, I notice the compact orange boxes of—

“Macaroni and cheese,” he says, finishing my thought. “Gourmet. All made right here in Rome. One’s four cheese and truffle, another’s with sun-dried tomatoes, and there’s two boxes of the dehydrated langoustine one. It’s good. Made one last night. A little soft if you cook it for the full time on the instructions, so I’d drop a minute.” He cocks his head back and forth. “Maybe a minute and a half.”

He’s still extending the basket toward me, a peace offering, which I take. At least physically.

“Thank you,” I say slowly, trying to figure him out. Is this part of the CIA handler manual? Manipulate your assets with custom gift baskets? Or is this a weak attempt to say I remember your favorite comfort food, even though I broke your heart, then inadvertently threw your name into the pot for a CIA mission ? That’s a lot of miles to cover in a gift basket.

“You didn’t have to do this,” I say, firmly.

“I did,” he says, firmer.

“Well, okay.” Basket cradled in my arms like a newborn, I stand there uncomfortably for a second before tipping my head to see farther into the apartment.

“Be my guest,” Flynn says, stepping aside, and I think I’m untangling the dynamic here. If I’m aiming for neutral professionality (think Switzerland, in the dead of winter), then he’s approaching this with the easygoing friendliness of a golden retriever. “Take a look around. Nice, isn’t it?”

I nod, eyes traveling over the botanical prints: olive branches, oleander, Aleppo pine. Anything to divert my mind away from Flynn, Flynn, that is Flynn. “Does someone live here?”

“You,” he says, joining me by the prints, so we’re almost shoulder to (much taller) shoulder. He smells like a crisp linen shirt, before you even cut off the tags. It is, unfortunately, invigorating. “For the next couple of hours, at least. The CIA uses it as a safe house for higher-profile assets. We wanted you to start feeling like a prime minister, even before you stepped into the role. The last safe house I was in? Rural Iowa . I can tell you, it did not feel like this.”

“So you did get to travel,” I say, already slipping up. No jokes, remember? No memories? At one point, Flynn’s dream was to solo-sail the world.

“There’s that sense of humor,” he says out of the side of his mouth. We lapse into a horrifically uncomfortable silence before he fills it again. “Hey, you hungry?”

I lift my gift basket a little higher. “Think I’m all set.”

“Nah, that isn’t breakfast.”

At the mention of breakfast, I’m the one who finds the kitchen. Breakfast is the most underrated meal. We never had the budget to serve it at Frida’s, but that didn’t stop me from dreaming up new hollandaise recipes and perfecting my salt bagels—extra-crunchy rock salt on the top. I can almost smell them, the yeast, the fresh plume of steam when I pulled out the roasting pan.

Yeast is bread perfume , my grandmother used to say. I’ve always loved that.

The safe house kitchen, unlike the rest of the apartment, isn’t as much to look at. It’s simple, utilitarian, stainless steel pots hanging from a ceiling rack. Already on the stove is a small moka pot, almost bubbling over with coffee. On instinct, I set down the gift basket and switch off the burner.

“Have a cup,” Flynn urges. “Hell, have two. I put it on for you. What do you normally eat for breakfast nowadays? Toast? Eggs? Name it, I’ll cook it.”

I hit back with a plain, “I can manage. You don’t have to—”

“Again, I do.” Sweepingly, he gestures to a chair at the edge of the kitchen island, by a bowl of overripe plums. “You must be used to making food for other people all the time. My mom”—he says, like I do not remember his mom ultraclearly, her crocheted sweaters and dangly cat earrings, reading in the corner booth at Lobster in the Rough—“she was a chef before she retired. Well, a cook, technically. Worked in kitchens for thirty years. She always used to tell me, ‘Flynn, when you work in food, no one ever cooks for you .’ So…eggs? I would offer something else, but that’s all I know how to make.”

I settle stiffly into the chair, thinking, I’m not a chef anymore . Also, How is any of this real? How is Flynn here right now, in Rome, asking to cook me breakfast? “Eggs are fine.”

“I can’t guarantee that they’ll be good eggs,” he says, picking up a spatula and waggling it in my direction. He was always great at bussing tables but never could cook. “Poached, I don’t do. Omelets, I’m testing my limits. Scrambled? We’re in the right territory…I think I spotted some sun-dried tomatoes in one of the cabinets. Maybe, if you’re lucky, some salt .”

“Salt?” I deadpan. “Never heard of it.”

This, regrettably, makes him smile. His mouth lifts up a little higher on one side, exposing straight, white teeth and deep-set dimples—a grin that, in any scenario, will always look a tiny bit mischievous. He moves through the kitchen, humming, before reaching for a pan above my head, the soft skin of his arm almost glancing my cheek. I notice that the inch-long scar on the palm of his hand—the one he got from a shard of beach glass—hasn’t faded. It’s the only non-smooth thing about him.

Growing up, my dad always told me to look at a person’s hands—that’s how you can tell if they’ve had a hard life. People hold tension in their hands. History in their hands . My dad’s? He has one finger that’s crooked at the tip (boating accident) and scars that crisscross his palms like hiking trails; they’re tanned brown, even in December, from the winter sun cracking off the water. He’s soaked up every bit of dirt and sea that life has offered him. My hands are starting to look like this—wrists, too. A burn from yanking a tray of popovers out of the oven. Speckled splashes of grease.

Sofia won’t have those. Will I have to cover mine? How does that work?

Gail’s words come back to nip at me. About my handler, how he’ll catalog the rest of my appearance, see if there are any freckles we need to add.

Like Flynn doesn’t already know every freckle on my body.

Jesus Christ, Max. Bury thoughts like that.

“So you’re training me,” I say, not a question, swiftly moving on.

Flynn nods, setting the pan on the stove with a gentle clang . “Mmm-hmm, I am. I know Gail got started with some of the prime minister’s speeches on the plane. We’ll keep going after breakfast, begin with some gestures, some expressions, the way she walks, the way she lifts a wineglass, how she waves. You’ve already got the face, though, and most of her mannerisms. That’s ninety-eight percent of the battle.”

I’m unconvinced. “I’m guessing you’ve trained people to do this before?”

“Impersonate world leaders?” Flynn asks, pouring a short cup of espresso and sliding it toward me. “No.”

“But you’ve helped people thwart assassination attempts before,” I say, again not a question.

Flynn takes a sip from his own tiny cup, leaning back on his heels like That’s good stuff . “You could say that.”

I almost roll my eyes. “Such a CIA answer.”

“As in, it’s not a full answer?”

“It’s an answer in a trench coat,” I say, matching the strength of his sea blue gaze. “It’s hiding something.”

Flynn sniffs out a laugh. “That’s a good way to put it. I like that.” From the refrigerator, he extracts a cardboard carton of speckled eggs—some copper-colored, some seafoam green. “So here’s the thing. You’re not alone in this. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure this is a smooth, laid-back operation. You’ll check into two five-star hotels, go to the beach, eat some nice dinners—five days split between Rome and Positano, in and out.”

“ Wow , that’s delicious,” I say, setting down my cup. I’ve just tasted the strongest, richest espresso of my life: nutty, with a hint of vanilla, the perfect balance of bitter and sweet. “How in the loop do I need to be?”

He palms one of the eggs, rolls it gently between his nimble fingers. “What do you mean?”

“You know, keeping me up to speed with the operation. Like…how do we know it’s this crime family who’re after her?” I pause, grinding my molars for a second. “After me .”

Beneath Flynn’s short beard, I see a muscle tic in his jaw, but it’s gone as soon as he blinks. “The first assassination attempt came less than twenty-four hours after the PM’s gambling ring crackdown. The Halverson family looks like they were the most affected. Add in some dodgy phone calls to a number in the Czech Republic, where the CIA located a known assassin…”

Goose bumps popping all over my arms, I shiver in the warmth of the kitchen. “We know which assassin tried to kill Sofia?”

“Allegedly. A guy we’re calling ‘the Producer.’ He has about a hundred aliases, used to produce results but now his work’s gotten a little shoddy. We don’t know his real name. Or what his face looks like.” Flynn tips his head to the side. “ And we also lost track of him in a railway station outside of Prague. You’ll keep up appearances while the CIA re-pinpoints his location and brings him in for interrogation. Summerland’s prepared to throw a boatload of money at him for a confession. He’ll give up the family. Then, it’s over.”

“What if he doesn’t confess?” A lump’s growing in my throat again. “What if you can’t even find him?”

“We will.”

“But what if you don’t?” I press, knee starting to bounce up and down. “Gail said there was ‘chatter’ that someone was going to finish the job. What if ‘the Producer’ shows up in Italy?”

“Then we take him down in Italy.” A lock of Flynn’s hair tumbles over his forehead, and with a breezy hand, he swipes it away. “Look, it’s true that vacation spots on foreign soil are more difficult to lock down than, say, the Villa Madama, where dignitaries usually stay in Rome. Almost anyone can enter a hotel, a beach, a gift shop. But we’ve got you.”

“Says the guy who lost track of an assassin,” I mumble.

Flynn catches his bottom lip with his teeth, almost smiling at my snark. “Hey, when I say we lost track of an assassin, I meant agents on the ground in the Czech Republic plus some guys in a bunker in rural Missouri. Let me rephrase. I’ve got you.”

He says the last part in this confident, velvety way, his eyes tracing the lines of my face, and everything in the kitchen suddenly narrows. In my mind, I start assembling that list of ground rules, if I want to make it out alive. “Why not just cancel the trip, then?” I add. “Skip the vacation this year?”

Flynn cracks four eggs into a blue ceramic bowl, and gives me a look like That’s what I asked, too . “Three reasons. One, canceling an annual trip—that the prime minister makes religiously, every year—might tip off the family. Two, since we picked up that chatter—from a cousin of a cousin of the Halverson brothers, that something might be going down in Italy—it sets the stage to draw out the Producer; we need to give him a reason to come out of the woodwork. And three, the PM’s drawn a hard line. She’s scheduled several can’t-miss events during her trip. A museum gala, a luncheon, a brief appearance on Italian TV…Don’t worry, the real PM will be tackling the more secured events, the ones where she’ll need to liaise with diplomats. You take the vacation stuff; she tackles the state affairs.” He forks the eggs, whipping air into them, giving me that almost-mischievous half smile again. Warmth runs through his blue eyes. “You’re just the same, you know. You haven’t changed a bit.”

So I’ve always looked this sad? “Let’s not go there.”

“What about me?” he asks, coy. “Am I the same?”

I bring the espresso cup to my lips, prepared for the kick this time. “You’re taller. More CIA-y.”

“CIA-y?” he repeats with a smirk.

“You know exactly what I mean.”

Flynn nods, slow and then quick. Pouring the eggs into the heated pan, he runs a thumb slowly along the crease of his lips, not looking at me when he asks, “You sure you want to do this?”

“Eat your eggs? Fifty-fifty.”

“Be a body double,” he clarifies, still not meeting my eye, stirring the eggs with a casual flick of his wrist. “All this is moving fast, fast, fast, but if you want to back out at any point in this operation, just give me the word. No matter what Gail’s told you, no one’s trapping you here.”

My forehead creases into a frown. “You’re my handler. Aren’t you supposed to be convincing me to stick with it?” When he doesn’t answer that, just keeps cooking, I tuck a stray piece of blonde hair behind my ear. “Even if I did want to back out, I can’t. I don’t really have a choice.”

Flynn tips the scrambled eggs out onto a plain, white plate, sliding the meal in front of me, and starts wiping up the kitchen, soapy water on the countertop. His back’s to me, but after a moment, he turns and says, “You always have a choice with me, Max. Always.”

There’s something about his expression that’s so painfully earnest, I have to look away.

First rule, I tell myself. Never, ever fall for him again.