Page 6 of Secret Weapon

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EMMY

“Ilove the chunky yarn.”Bradley hugged a ball of it to his chest.“But how do you knit with it?Do you need giant needles?”

“We keep those, or you can knit using your arms,” the blonde behind the counter told him.Her name badge said Darla, her kaftan said crime against fashion.“I’m running a class at four o’clock tomorrow if you’re interested in learning?”

Bradley turned to me, pleading with his eyes.

“No can do, ace.We were meant to leave an hour ago.”

“Okay, okay.Give me five more minutes to pick out colours, and I’ll have to find a tutorial on the internet.”He beamed at Darla.“Do you know how to use Zoom?”

She gave him a horrified look, and her assistant snorted.Paulo, according to his own diamanté-embellished name badge, but I was starting to think of him as Bradley’s brother from another mother.

“Last time Darla used Zoom, she turned on the cat filter and then she couldn’t turn it off again.I’ve been slowly dragging her into the twenty-first century ever since I started working here, but if you have to plug it in, then it’s best that she delegates the task to me.Apart from the glue gun.She’s excellent with the glue gun.”

Darla picked up the glue gun, aimed it at the dude’s head, pulled an imaginary trigger, and giggled.

“He’s so right.Give me a scrapbook and a pair of scissors any day.”

“But wedohave a selection of tutorials on our YouTube channel, filmed bymoi.I’m sure we can find the time to make one for arm-knitting.”

Give me strength.

What was I doing in a craft store, you ask?Apart from trying to leave as fast as possible?

Good question.

Bradley, my darling assistant, had spent the past week in Eugene with Felipe, an old friend of his who’d recently opened a clothing boutique.And when the time came to leave, Bradley had decided to hitch a ride back to Virginia on my jet.Which ordinarily wouldn’t have been a problem because we could have driven straight to the airport and been somewhere over Iowa by now.But then Alex, my personal trainer, decided he wanted to fly back with us too, and since he’d lost a bet and been forced to sign up for a half-marathon in Portland, that meant hanging around in Oregon until he’d finished.And then Bradley had heard about the craft store from the masseuse earlier, and now my house was gonna be filled with giant yarn and feathers and glitter and fuck knew what else.

At least, Bradleyclaimedthat he’d only heard about the craft store this morning.Now that I considered matters, he’d been awfully insistent that we all stay in Baldwin’s Shore for an extra night instead of checking in to one of the many five-star hotels in Portland, and I had a sneaking suspicion that if I asked Mack to check his internet search history, the Craft Cabin would be lurking on the list.

Come to think of it, the Portland half-marathon had been Bradley’s idea too.Originally, Alex had signed up to race in Florida last November, but that event had been called off due to a hurricane, and I might have forgotten about the whole dumb wager if Bradley hadn’t announced last week that he’d secured a last-minute entry for the Portland half.

Had he really made Alex run thirteen miles just to engineer himself an extra shopping trip?

Honestly, I wouldn’t have put it past him.

Dammit all to hell.

I should’ve stayed in the hotel spa like Bradley suggested, but somebody had to do damage control, and Hallie was too busy browsing model ships in the gift section.How had it come to this?I was a world-class assassin, I ran the special operations team at a global security firm, and today, I was losing an argument in the hick version of Aladdin’s cave.

“Do you really need a giant blanket?”

“No, but Iwanta giant blanket.Don’t worry; I’ll knit one for you as well.”

“I definitely don’t need a giant blanket.”

“Of course you do—you married Gulliver.And I’ll make one for Alex too because that’s only fair.”Huh?Alex might only have been an inch shorter than my husband at six feet six, but he wasn’t an arts-and-crafts kind of guy.Fairness didn’t come into it.But Bradley had already turned back to Paulo.“So what I need is enough yarn to make, say, five blankets, plus matching cushions.”

Five?Who were the other two for?

The bell above the door tinkled, and it was an actual bell.A tiny brass thing suspended from the ceiling on a piece of blue string.Low-tech.Darla had probably hung it up there herself.Ana slunk inside, head down as she checked her phone.Judging by the smile on her face, she’d received a message from either her boyfriend or her daughter.Tabby was four now, almost five, and texted faster than I did.Plus she’d mastered emojis and GIFs.The little psycho sent me pictures of pineapple-covered pizza every other morning, and Ana thought it was hilarious.

But today, the smile slipped off her face, and as quickly as she’d walked into the store, she left.What the hell?I turned to see what she’d been looking at, but there was only Darla, and she was showing Bradley a hot-pink ball of yarn the size of a small child.He did realise we were flying in a Learjet and not an Airbus 380, right?

I followed Ana outside.Bradley wouldn’t be finished in five minutes, anyway.No chance.At first, I thought she’d done a disappearing act, but when she saw me, she materialised from the shadows beneath a spreading evergreen.

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