Page 10 of Moonlighter

Socks, underwear, toiletries

Technology and Identification:

Personal electronics and chargers

Passport

Weaponry and tech equipment:

K-Tech phone

Await further instructions and hardware.

I’m on the road with my team eighty nights a year. It’s a hard way to live, and probably goes a long way toward explaining why I’m single.

But the upside? Packing a suitcase is as easy as breathing. Within thirty minutes of stepping into my apartment, I’m done. Then I ask the front desk to hold my mail. That takes three more minutes.

Then? I search my brain for anyone else who might need to hear that I’ll be gone for five days, and I come up mostly empty. My calendar has me out to dinner with my teammates on Thursday night. But that happens seventy nights a year. I’m not sure they’ll even miss me.

Max is just lucky that I’m aggressively single.

The black sedan that Max’s travel team sends to pick me up is right on time. “I’m heading to the private air terminal at LaGuardia,” I tell the driver.

“Yessir. It’s been handled.”

Of course it has. This car was probably hired before I even turned up for lunch today.

What a dick my brother is.

Sometimes, my conscience adds. Max is a good man. A loyal man. In a foxhole, there’s nobody I’d rather have at my side. But he doesn’t do emotions like normal people.

He used to, I guess. When we were kids, he was pretty normal. We cried in the same Disney movies. He smiled as often as anyone else.

Something changed, though, after he went to work in Washington, DC. My brother was a spy, even if he never admitted it. “Intelligence analyst” is as much as he would ever say. And that job wears on a guy, I guess. He spent several years in Washington before leaving whichever agency had crushed his spirit.

I don’t know the whole story. And he’ll never tell me, anyway.

When we reach the airport, my sedan pulls up behind an identical black sedan, whose driver pulls a mango-colored suitcase from the trunk.

Alex waits on the curb, looking both impatient and ridiculously attractive. She’s changed into a more casual dress, but her long, shapely legs are still there, taunting me. If she were even a little bit more receptive, I’d already be plotting to have those legs wrapped around my naked body later.

I’m not in the market, she’d snapped. Apparently scrawny assholes are her type, though.

Women confuse me. They really do.

I jump out and get my bag, thanking the driver. I pick up my suitcase, and then I pick up Alex’s, too.

“Eric,” she says sharply by way of a greeting. “You don’t have to carry my things.”

“Don’t I?” I grumble. “Wouldn’t your boyfriend do that? Be kind of a dick move not to, honestly.” With both bags in hand, I turn toward the doors, which slide open for me. I walk into the terminal without checking to see if she’s followed me.

Which, for the record, is also a dick move. But nobody’s perfect.

“Look,” she says, tapping along behind me in a pair of impractical shoes. “Can I just get my apology out of the way?”

“Sure, go for it.” If the lady wants to apologize for wounding my ego at a party, who am I to say no?

“I didn’t recognize you.”