“I’ll take this bag of stinky, gross food remains out to the dumpster if you do.”
“No. I’m not going to go knock on his door and when he answers, say, ‘Oh, hi, Owen. I just wanted to pop by and tell you about that time when I was three and got kidnapped.’
“Plus, we already agreed that tonight, I was going to clean out the fridge and go grocery shopping with you, and he was going to go through some structural assessments. I don’t know exactly what those are, but they sound like they take focus, so I’m not going to interrupt. Besides, I’ll see him tomorrow.”
“Swear to me that you’ll tell him then. No backing out.”
I take a deep breath. “Okay, I swear I will if you still take out the garbage.”
CHAPTER 28
SPY MOM, FAUX DAD, REAL CRISIS
CHARLIE
As I’m walking from my car in the underground parking garage to the elevator, I see that the Clandestine Service Agency’s director (a.k.a. my mom) is already there, standing at the retinal scanner before she breathes into the DNA scanner. The light turns green, the doors open, and she steps in and holds them for me as I jog the last bit and get in, too. As the doors are closing, I say, “Oh, monkey bolts! I also forgot my water bottle!”
My mom’s finger hovers over the button to take us up. “In your car?”
I sigh. “No. At home. We can go up.”
As the elevator is taking us to the main floor, my mom looks over at me. “You seem a little distressed this morning. Is everything okay?”
I rub my fingers over my forehead. It’s barely eight a.m., and already my day is bad. “Yeah.”
“Is it work or home stuff?”
“Home.”
“Do you need me to be your mom for a minute?”
I look over at the polished director. She’s wearing a navy pantsuit with a white shirt, looking as professional as can be. “Yeah,” I say. “I really don’t want to share this with my boss.”
Her demeanor softens as the elevator comes to a stop. “Let’s grab a conference room.”
When we step into the room, she takes off her lanyard—a sure sign that she’s switched from director mode to mom mode, and then she darkens the floor-to-ceiling glass so that no one from the floor can see inside. We both take a seat.
“I got a ticket on the way to work.”
My mom cocks her head. “You don’t speed.”
“It was for having an expired car registration. And I left my water bottle at home. And I’m not even wearing clean underwear because we were doing other things last night, and I forgot to do laundry. We won’t even mention how I didn’t have enough time to make my lunch, or that I put my phone in the fridge and a yogurt in my purse. Oh, and I stabbed myself in the eye with my mascara wand.
“Sometimes I feel like I can mostly stay on top of things, but that’s when there’s not muchgoing on. The rest of the time, I feel like I’m…chaotic. I’m on fire at work, but I’m flooding at home.” I meet her eyes. “Other people don’t let basic things fall through the cracks. Why can I not get my life together?”
I can’t help but think about Owen’s ex and wonder if that’s the kind of person he really needs in his life. Someone who is more polished and doesn’t mess up this much. Part of me loves feeling like Owen sees the real me that I don’t let others see often. The part of me that hates being in the spotlight, though, is terrified that if he sees enough, he’ll discover how much I’m lacking.
“Sweetheart, everyone has things fall through the cracks sometimes. I do, too. I was supposed to renew my driver’s license by my last birthday, but somehow it never made it on my radar. And I even have an assistant to help keep me on top of things! Do you want to know how I found out that it had expired?”
“You got pulled over?”
“No. That would’ve been preferable, actually. I found out because I had to go to a meeting with the Director of National Intelligence, along with the directors of a lot of other agencies. CIA, NSA, FBI, DIA, NGA—basically the whole alphabet soup of intelligence agency directors. As Director of the CSA, my badge got me past the gate. It was at check-in inside the ODNI lobby that I found out it had expired.
“And let’s just say that the security officer I’dhanded it to wasn’t discreet about it, either. Pierce, the CIA’s director, had checked in right before me and was on his way to the elevators. The director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency was right behind me. A few junior staffers were also in the mix. And the security officer said that I couldn’t proceed until they got the ‘situation’ resolved, and that he’d have to call over a supervisor.”
My face is burning just imagining being in that scenario, with all eyes on me.
“Needless to say, I got to the meeting late, and everyone who hadn’t already known exactly why found out when Pierce updated the whole group. So, don’t beat yourself up over letting something fall through the cracks. We all do at times.”
