“Did you just make a terrible gardening joke?” Vanka inclined her head and tittered. “That is absolutely terrible.”
He flashed a smile. Gardening humor. Who knew he had it in him?
Spiker set the ball on the glass table and, less irritated than he’d been all day, shoved his hands into his board shorts. Stolen art and museums. Was that really where they’d find their inspiration? “What kind of museum are you thinking about visiting? Because I refuse to look at paintings of fruit.”
“They could be very inspirational.”
This was a hill he was willing to die on. “No painted fruit.”
“Your loss.”
He needed to come up with a quick list of his limits. “Another thing, too. I don’t want to—”
“Oh, come on, Spiker. Think of all the fun we could have with portraits and pottery.”
“You’re a sadist, aren’t you?” He had little doubt she could give a little pain, take a little pain, all in the name of adult fun.
“Would that make you a masochist?”
“Like hell.” He cracked up, then eyeballed the dare dancing in her eyes, and her coquettish grin. “There’s a fifty-fifty chance you have souls tied up in the basement, isn’t there?”
“Don’t daydream about leather and whips in my living room.”
“That wasn’t a denial.”
She swiped the tennis ball from the table and lobbed it at his gut.
He caught it, pantomimed as though it were the handle of a whip, and winked. “Leather’s a good look for you, princess.”
“I already know that.”
Her drop-dead confidence made his toes curl, and it was in that instant that he realized he’d gone too far. Imagined too much. It wasn’t leather or role play that had riled him up. Vanka could be poured into leather or swaddled in lace—the packaging had never mattered. His heartbeat thudded like a melodramatic announcement. A light-headed flurry of hyperawareness lodged in his chest. Spiker swallowed hard, absorbing the flush and frenzied high that hit him like a bazooka, and said the only rational thing that came to mind. “Back to work.”
Vanka crossed her arms and returned to work mode without hesitation. Man, he had to get his game face into place.
“What haven’t you been telling me?” she asked. “You have a problem, and I don’t know what it is.”
The question was like an ice-cold shower, and exactly what he needed. For the umpteenth time, Spiker paced her living room and tossed the tennis ball between his hands. How the hell could he go from dirty thoughts to a conversation that Vanka would flat-out refuse to understand? He inhaled and held the breath. There would be no way to explain himself to her; she lived for their job as if it were her life’s calling.
She was different than anyone else that he’d worked with at GSI. Vanka had grown up in a civilian environment and hadn’t needed a military or intelligence background to teach her how right and wrong vastly differed from good and evil. She was cunning, lethal, and more intelligent than anyone he’d ever met, all of which meant Vanka wouldn’t understand his breaking point. “It’s about the sabbatical.”
Her eyes followed him around the room as though he held a secret that might change everything. “Any day now, partner.”
Spiker recalibrated his approach. “Let me back up a second. What’s the one thing that we know?”
Exasperated, she sighed. “Or don’t tell me.”
“Give me a chance to tie it together, all right?” He waited until she acquiesced and repeated the question. “What do we absolutely know?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Wrong.”
Her mouth pinched. “How so?”
“We know—” Spiker stopped in front of her on the couch and squatted to eye level. “That Buck’s doing business with a new breed of clients. Ones we don’t associate with, on principle.”
“That’s your big reveal? Fine, yes,” she agreed. “We know that.”
“Think about it, Vanka. What if this is a test?”
Her face skewed. “Sorry?”
“You heard me. What if this is a test?” Before she could respond, he retreated from the couch and paced again. “Think about what happened last summer.”
“You’re talking about the mix-up with Jason Green?” Vanka pursed her lips and squinted her eyes as though she were replaying the assignment that involved their former colleague. “That was more of a misunderstanding than a test.”
Spiker disagreed. “That’s semantics.”
“Either way.” She shrugged. “I don’t see your point.”
“I wouldn’t put it past Buck to smoke out his weak links.”
Her shoulders stiffened and, incredulous, she pointed between them. “Are you suggesting that one of us is a weak link?”
“In theory . . .” Spiker attempted to balance the disbelief dripping from Vanka’s expression with a nonchalant nod-shrug. “Yeah.”
When she realized that he was serious, a rainbow of considerations colored her face, starting with perplexed wonder and ending with unwavering doubt. “Why would he test us? We’re arguably his most successful partnership. Our contract completion rate is—”
“Forget the stats. That’s not my point.” He ran a hand over the stubble on his cheeks. “Our clients have always fit in a particular box.”
Vanka couldn’t disagree. “There have been a few questionable ones in the past year or two.”
“But none have been as in-your-face as this job.”
“True.” Vanka frowned.
Spiker waited for her wheels to turn and then added, “Before now, there were always compelling reasons for assignments. Even the dubious ones.”
Vanka understood the gray area that they operated in. She understood that, technically, it was not right for government agencies to approve speculative intelligence-gathering and extra-judicial contracts. According to the laws of most countries, their actions, legally, were wrong. But, at least in Spiker’s opinion, those bureaucratic choices were good ones.
GSI’s contracts were not right, they were not lawful, but they were better for the greater good. Without question, the work he and Vanka did was wrong, but only in a strict categorization of morality.
That wasn’t how the world really worked. Assignments weren’t right or wrong, legal or illegal—more like good versus evil. Then, when their jobs were complete, he slept better. “This job? I won’t sleep any better when we’re done.”
“That’s not always the litmus test we should consider,” she tepidly countered.
“See—right there. You’re the team player, and I’m not pulling the company line. You’re the dependable one. The one who doesn’t ask questions unless it’s to make the job run better.”
“I’m the one?” Vanka gaped. “Careful with your compliments, Spiker. They’re landing like bombs.”
“You didn’t question this gig.”
“The hell I didn’t,” she snapped.
“We agreed to do this job because you agreed. You’re the reason we took it. I should be sitting on the beach right now, but here we are.”