Page 33 of Play the Game

“Not as good as I am.” I grinned. “Prescott’s a good guy, though.” I’d liked him since we’d had to tranq him and bring him to HEAT HQ with us months earlier, before he and Bond had fallen in love. And now I also owed him for last week. I glanced at her workout gear and sneakers. “Are you meeting Kessler and Li for a workout now, or do you plan to eat first?”

“Actually, we’re going for a thirteen-mile run in a few hours. Now is the time to carbo-load.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Then I know just what to make for breakfast.”

“I’m not a great cook but functional,” she said. “Would you like a helper?”

“Sure.”

When we reached the kitchen, I started pulling eggs out of the fridge, and she asked, “I thought you were making carbs, but I wouldn’t say no to that amazing frittata again.”

Since that was Tam’s favorite, I made it a lot, I realized. But if I made it every day, our other teammates would notice. I pulled a loaf of cinnamon-raisin bread from a drawer. “Today, it’s French toast. Day-old bakery bread is the best for it.”

She clapped her hands together. “Sounds great. What can I do? My skills are limited.” She grinned. “But I am good with a knife.”

“I never had any doubts.” Our tactical agents were good with all kinds of hand-to-hand combat and weaponry. “Two tasks,” I said as I turned on the lower oven to warm and the electric skillet to high. I pointed to a package I’d laid on the counter. “First, you can get those into the upper oven.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Vegetarian sausages? That’s an oxymoron.”

“Sorry. The good doctor requests that I mix it up a little. She worries about our arteries. Heating directions are on the package. When those are in the oven, you can clean off the berries and chop up the melon into a fruit salad.” I poured coffee beans into the grinder and filled the industrial-size coffeemaker with filtered water.

“Do you usually work alone?” Hart asked as she started her tasks. “In the kitchen, I mean.”

I shook my head. “No. I get lots of helpers. Just depends upon who’s awake and around at the time.”

I didn’t mind cooking alone. It was peaceful and balancing. But I didn’t mind company, either. My favorite sous-chef had always been my best friend. Now that I thought about it, I realized that’s how Tam and I had really gotten to know each other. We’d each been the de facto cooks in our homes from our preteen days, which had led us to talk about being raised by single moms, the similarities and differences between our early lives, and how we’d ended up in HEAT. It had been so easy to talk with her, right from the beginning. Long before either of us thought of the other romantically. I’d always thought she was hot, and also hella cute, but I’d been married and faithful, and she’d never had any interest in men who were already taken.

“Oh my God, that smells amazing!” Hart said as I dropped egg-coated bread slices onto the hot skillet. “I never eat this well on other missions. I’m getting team envy.”

“Well, if X is moving you stateside permanently, maybe we’ll get to work together more often.”

“You really do know everything that goes on at the agency, don’t you?” She slid the sausages into the oven, then picked a knife from the cutting block.

“The next knife over will work better on the melon,” I suggested, then returned to her question. “I know what’s knowable.”

She was quiet for a few minutes as she rinsed the berries, then finally spoke again. “How bad do you think it is? With the Senate subcommittee and the funding, I mean.”

I knew it was really bad, but X would kill me if I started a panic. I shrugged. “Not great, but that’s above both our pay grades. The only thing we can do is keep our heads down and do our jobs to the best of our abilities.”

She popped a berry into her mouth. “And what if HEAT folds? What do you suppose happens to us, the covert agents?”

“We get absorbed by other agencies. Or we leave the business, I guess.”

This discussion was depressing. I hadn’t chosen the life of a spy, but now that I was in this organization and on this team and doing important work, I couldn’t imagine any other life. But God help me, if I ended up in the FBI or NSA, or worse, the CIA, I’d probably be out on my ass in under a week. Yeah, I had strong and probably biased opinions about the other intelligence agencies. I didn’t want to discuss those, either.

“So, how do you feel about coming back to the US after—what—three years?” I asked, changing the topic. “I think you were sent to Paris right around the time I came into the agency, right?”

She nodded. “The first time you and I worked together was in Warsaw, and that was only my third mission as a foreign-based operative. I’m still sorting out my feelings about being back.”

There was something more she wanted to say. In our business, we always wanted to know what others were holding back, but when it came to our colleagues, we also knew we had to let them have their secrets. There was a fine line between expressing care and crossing a line into inappropriately nosy. I went out on a limb.

“There’s obviously something on your mind.” I kept my eyes on the skillet, simultaneously flipping the first batch of toast while purposely not staring her down, giving her space to answer or not.

“I was just thinking,” she started slowly, “that it’s interesting that X brought me in as backup on the Alpha Team and started talking about making my stateside assignment permanent at the same time.”

That caught me off-guard. But just because I’d missed the connection didn’t mean she was wrong about it. “You think Penn might not come back to Alpha Team?”

“Penn. No, I was talking about Sparks. I mean, this is a big break for her, right? Not only is she getting a shot at being a logistics lead with this mission, but she’ll be positioned for a promotion if it goes well.” She placed the cut-up melon on top of the berries in a large glass bowl. “Then she’ll probably be given the lead job on another team.”

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