Single Lady Spy 01 - The End of Me

frowned; I’d forgotten I had put it in there. I reached in and clutched it in my fingers. It always made me feel stronger.
    "What's that?" Luce asked.
    I opened my palm and ran my thumb across the engraving, "Locket from my dad for graduation."
    "What's it say?" she smiled sweetly, making her face light instead of intense.
    I smiled back, "It's his grad date and mine. We both graduated from Fort Huachuca, twenty-five years apart."
    "Yeah? Cool. Your old man was well known. He ran some crazy ops, back in the day. The cold war had to be awesome." She sat on the folding chair across from me.
    "Yup. He worked a lot during the cold war." My level of pride for the man was immeasurable.
    Coop leaned his head in, "You wanna take a shower with me?"
    I frowned and was about to throw my shoe at him, but he winked and scratched his head.
    I shrugged, "Sure." The house must have been full of bugs. I slipped the locket around my neck.
    He came and picked me up in his arms, "You can't walk to the shower with that bum foot." he grinned.
    Luce laughed, "You wouldn’t rather my help with the shower, Evie?"
    I cocked an eyebrow, "Pretty sure I would rather it, but I have a really disturbing desire to see what he's packing."
    Luce laughed, "You know it’s one of two things, Evie, and neither is a good thing."
    I laughed.
    Coop winced, "You guys say we're dirty."
    "Payback. We owe you for the centuries of oppression and abuse." I laughed.
    He climbed the stairs, "Do not even get me started on the things you owe me."
    He stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. He started the shower and turned on the fan.
    I didn’t know what was happening, but he pulled his shirt off and I smiled like an idiot. He lifted mine off and then dropped his jogging pants but kept his briefs on.
    I slid my pants down and stepped out of the runners and socks gingerly. My ankle was pretty swollen. At least it wasn’t a sprain. I stood in just my panties and bra and shivered slightly.
    He lifted me up and carried me to the shower. Our skin against each other was hot and sweaty. He closed the door and whispered, "I was apart of something about your dad once. That locket reminded me of it."
    My stomach sank, "I don’t understand."
    He swallowed, "I saw files once about a mole op your dad was heading up. The review of the op basically didn’t happen, until after he had died. They were looking for something. They felt that he had kept vital information from his reports, purposely."
    None of it was about James or me. It was about my dad. I was a pawn. Was that possible? I shook my head, "My dad was a hero. He never betrayed his country. He died for this country."
    He shook his head, "I didn’t say he was traitor. I said he kept things from the files purposely. He might have been keeping it safe from eyes and ears for a reason. I was new when it happened and, honestly, the locket is the only reason I remember it."
    I whispered, "You have a photographic memory. I've seen it."
    He nodded, "I do, and I remember it like it was yesterday, they had taken all your dad’s things into custody, nothing was cleared for your mom to have from his office. I was new; we were to go through his things, cataloguing everything and boxing it up. Everything was considered to be suspicious and we were to run all documents through known codes."
    I frowned, "He wasn’t a mole. He was a good spy."
    His eyes trailed down my throat to the locket. He reached up and grabbed it between his fingers, grazing the swell of my chest. "There was a receipt for a locket. The surveillance team had seen him buying it. We never found it though. A team was sent to your parents’. We searched everything, the safe, the cellar. There was nothing ever found. They were pissed about us not finding it. I remember that. I also remember, that James let them conduct a thorough search of your house and nothing was ever turned up there. It was way back in the day. I was brand new. We were interviewed separately afterward, about the things we found, and the ways they were handled." His eyes twinkled, "Weird way to handle a deceased man's effects. Especially when he’s a national hero."
    I hugged myself harder, "He gave the locket to me, the week he died. It was four years late. He had already given me tons of things for graduation, so it seemed strange he was giving me this too. But when I saw the dates, I was pretty excited. He never wanted me to enlist. Then, he never wanted me to go CI, even though my