“Then what?”
“Idiocy. You’re just not dumb enough for it. I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said with a laugh. Mike had always insisted that only a fool would want to be an undercover agent. “What about all of the agents who got to play minor roles in missions? Remember Carmen?”
He nodded.
“She got to be a party girl on a yacht during that big drug bust! It sounded like so much fun.”
“She almost blew everyone’s cover,” Mike said, shaking his head.
She leaned in. “Oh?”
“Yeah. It’s not about fun. I hated it when they did that. Some middle manager decided that his office needed ‘someone on the ground,’ so they could claim some of the glory when it was all done. They’d send people in who wanted to be stars, or who thought their acting was so clever. They would overdo things and the targets would get suspicious.”
Lynn let out a sigh. “Not everyone can be as cool as you, Mike.”
“Indeed,” he said. “What’s good here?”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She believed him, though. Carmen always had been a show-off, and management was always getting tangled in silliness.
Lynn wouldn’t have overdone it, though, if she’d ever gotten the chance. But, to be fair, she might not have been able to play it as cool as Mike.
Oh well. She’d never have the chance to find out.
After they put their orders in – a strawberry vinaigrette salad for Lynn and a club sandwich for Mike – he successfully changed the topic.
“Is there any chance that you’ll show me more of your paintings today?”
She smiled. She knew he would be curious. “I can show you what I was working on this morning.”
His eyes brightened. “Please.”
She grabbed her phone and pulled up the picture of her work in progress, a sailboat at sunset. She thought she might be overthinking the sail, a grungy sort of thing.
He took her phone and slipped on a pair of reading glasses to get a better look. He studied it for a full minute in silence before saying, “This is magnificent.”
Lynn smiled, trying to hide her blush. “Thank you. It’s not done yet. I still have a lot to do with the shadows on the boat.”
He kept staring at it. “I like this ship. The tears in the sail here? The barnacles on the underside? And the sun is setting on him. Poor wretch, his days are done.”
“This is better than an inkblot test. Tell me more about this sad, washed-up boat.”
He passed the phone to her, snapping the glasses back into his pocket. “You know, you’re just getting a peek into the existential doom of a middle-aged man.”
“Middle-aged? That’s generous.” She waited until he laughed before continuing. “I have to say that I, for one, am glad that they showed you your corpse.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Why is that?”
“It put some fear into you. Fear can be good, in some instances.”
“Oh, I’ve got fear all the time. It’s how I avoid bullets.”
“Not that kind of fear.” Lynn sat back and took a sip of her tea. Mike waited for her to finish her thought. “The kind of fear that could… tame a lone wolf.”
Mike motioned down to Biggles, who was passed out at his feet. “Don’t let him hear you say that.”
“I won’t.”
