New Thea and Max novella!

Shock of shocks, I'm actually writing a new Thea and Max novella! The working title is "Love and Other Suitably Villainous Schemes," and here's a sneak peek at the first chapter!

(Thea and Max book one) (Thea and Max book two)

000

Chapter 1: Not Exactly an Invitation

Having a super-spy boyfriend was not at all like the movies made it seem.

For the most part, Thea loved it that way. She vastly preferred their monster-movie nights to dinner in uncomfortably expensive restaurants, and she'd almost entirely broken him of trying to be suave around her. He did tend toward ridiculously dramatic gifts, but he preferred tiger lilies and stuffed video game characters over expensive jewelry and sexy dresses she would never wear.

She wasn't thrilled about the fact that she hardly ever saw him, but she could hardly argue against someone being dedicated to their job. His assignments being far away from her did mean she was in far less physical danger than the usual spy girlfriend. (When she was being sensible, which was less often than she should be these days, she could admit it was a good thing.)

Of course, dating a super-spy did mean dealing with a certain bouts of movie-like absurdity. Say, like when they're trying to surprise you with a long-planned vacation.

Thea blinked at her boss. "An absurdly wealthy, conveniently secretive Italian philanthropist called you." She recapped his explanation in her flattest tone, hoping the sheer impossibility would somehow penetrate the man's brain. She may have been short, with dark skin and curls pulled back into a sensible ponytail, but she'd had a lot of sarcasm practice. "In person, instead of having one of their 10,000 assistants do it. Asking for some random Chicago computer security specialist to fly to Rome to work on some unspecified, open-ended project. He will not only pay for all this, including a per-diem fee that will turn next year's taxes into a nightmare, but he's also planning on spiriting this random specialist around in his private jet."

Charles Porter, whose face could be used as a stock photo for middle managers, frowned at her. "He didn't ask for some random specialist. He asked for you."

Thea didn't bother biting back her exasperated noise. She was absolutely going to say yes to this, because she had no doubt Max was behind this. But the idea that the man didn't see anything even slightly suspicious about this was concerning on several levels. "You do remember we've had armed gunmen in the building before, right? One of our apps was used to fund terrorism?"

Porter shook his head before she'd even finished speaking, making a dismissive gesture. "That's a non-issue. We have had several staff training sessions to deal with those incidents, and if Signor Donato wanted access to our tech he could buy it for far less money than he's buying your services. He's also already paid us a very generous consultation fee, and our financial department has already looked it over. It's 100 percent legitimate."

Thea frowned. Dangling money in front of Porter was an excellent way to get him to overlook any potential weirdness about the setup, but it was also excessive. When he'd gotten her out to Ohio for their last sort-of mission, he'd arranged it through a far subtler application of paperwork and backdated emails. This was just so much less... clever. "I didn't know the company received a consultation fee when it lent out my services."

His gaze slid away from hers as he pretended to mess with something on his computer. "Technically, we don't. Before you, no one had ever requested the services of anyone on our staff." His expression firmed as a thought hit him, and he turned back to give her a pointed look. "Though if this continues, rest assured we will work this into official company policy. It seems Mr. Bascom is friends with several other philanthropists, and was satisfied enough with your work earlier this year that he passed your name around."

It took a second to remember that Mr. Bascom was the name Max had given their fictional Ohio philanthropist. She had no doubt that Max's spy agency (which he also referred to as The Company) had given the man a full online profile, and he'd probably arranged for them to do the same thing with Alessandro Donato. The Italian version of the story was considerably more ridiculous than the Ohio version of the story, but there was precedent. She supposed it made sense that no one but her would get suspicious.

Though she should really talk to Max about setting up some kind of workshop for management: "The Benefits of Healthy Paranoia on the Corporate Bottom Line."

Porter glared, clearly having decided she'd been silent too long. "I don't know why you're arguing about this. Your team is wrapping up your most recent project, and while I am unfortunately aware that you like to be the last person to sign off on everything you can do that remotely. This will boost your reputation far more than it will ours, and the money alone would be stupid to turn down." He paused. "And if you don't, I will ban you from the office for two weeks."

Thea bit back several potential arguments to that last bit, knowing it wouldn't help anything. Besides, continuing this conversation would delay the far more important one she needed to have with Max. "I guess I'm saying yes, then." She gave him a dry look. "I had no chance against such a compelling argument."

Porter ignored the sarcasm, rapidly hitting a few keys on his computer. "There. All the information is in your inbox, including the address of his private airstrip and a number you can call if you want a limo to take you there. He'll pick you up personally tomorrow afternoon, because apparently he 'doesn't do mornings.'"

It took real effort for Thea not to roll her eyes, leaving the office with the minimum amount of required politeness. She checked her email on the way out, which also included check-in information for a penthouse suite in an expensive-looking hotel and, for some reason, photos of the private jet. Taken together, it felt more like a haphazard sales pitch than a well-built cover.

Frowning even harder now, she slipped into her office and shut the door. Putting her regular phone back into her pocket, she pulled out the one she used exclusively for talking to a certain jet-setting individual who could be anywhere in the world right now. Normally she waited for Max to reach out to her, since the last thing she wanted to do was interrupt him when it would be dangerous. But there was something about this...

Hopefully, the Company made sure he had voicemail.

Taking a deep breath, she hit the contact that would connect her directly to him. He picked up after only one ring, voice tired but warm as the best blanket. "Hey, beautiful. Calling to save me from my insomnia?"

Thea paused. This was the Max she'd come to know over the last several months. More theatrical than was at all sensible – she could not get him to stop calling her beautiful – but also wonderfully genuine. She'd asked him not to put on a persona when he was with her, and he'd done everything in his power to hold to that.

The thought that had nudged at her since Carter's office sharpened into a knife – the whole Italian philanthropist cover story wasn't his style at all.

Which meant it was someone else's cover story.

Once again, she'd been silent too long. "Thea?" Max sounded far more awake now, a grim edge to her voice. "Something's wrong. Tell me."

Great – now she was worrying him. "I don't suppose someone from your Company set me up to go to Rome?" She hated how uncertain she sounded. "Someone relatively inexperienced, maybe?"

Max went deathly silent for a moment. "They wouldn't do anything with you D or I didn't know about." A dangerous edge was slipping into his voice, but she knew it wasn't aimed at her. "And if D planned something without telling me, you wouldn't think it was an amateur."

Thea thought about the grandmotherly, leather-clad weapons expert who was Max's usual partner. "It's definitely not D," she murmured, as much to herself as at Max. She ran back through the information she'd been given, trying to look at it the way she would have if she hadn't thought Max had set it up. "Has a man named Alessandro Donato popped up in the Company files anywhere? Even just as a possible connection to something?"

For the first time – she was such an idiot – she went to her computer and looked up Donato. A quick search showed a reclusive multimillionaire just like Carter had described him, camera-shy but with his name attached to several charity projects and non-profits. The few shots of him that had been caught at events matched the professional shot Carter had shown her, a distinguished-looking man a few years older than her who wouldn't look out of place on the cover of a romance novel.

In short, not someone who would have anything to do with her.

"I can't find the name anywhere in our system," Max said finally, the frustration clear in his voice. "But that doesn't mean anything. We're a small agency, and no matter how well-connected we are there are things we miss."

"The big question, though, is what interest he would have with me." The question didn't frighten her nearly as much as it should have, even though the answer couldn't be good. She'd rather deal with some rich guy's nefarious plans any day than be in a world where she didn't know Max as well as she thought she did. "I can think of a handful of people already in Europe who are as good at security as I am, and possibly a few who are better. And even if he somehow knows about my hacking, I'm sure there are better people he can afford. There is no reason for him to fly all that way in his private jet to come get me."

"Private—" Max cut himself off with brutal efficiency, and the quiet that immediately followed was filled with the sound of movement. "I'm coming to you. I'll be there by tomorrow morning, your time, at the absolute latest."

It was completely unnecessary, and more than she would have ever dared ask of him. It was exactly what she'd wanted him to say. "There's no way the assignment you're on conveniently happens to be done right when I need you."

The sound of movement didn't slow down in the slightest. "I'll have M come in and wrap things up for me. She owes me a favor."

Her logic fiercely tried to argue with the increasing pounding of her heart. "You shouldn't come out here. If you're serious about helping me with this, you'd get here just to have to immediately turn around and fly out to Rome."

"Not if you let me get on the plane with you. Pass me off as your assistant."

She made an exasperated noise. "Actual tech people don't have assistants, and I don't want to risk Donato knowing that and leaving you out on the tarmac."

She could practically feel his tension through the phone. "You'll be alone—"

She'd never had anyone worry about her the way Max did. "He won't try anything on the plane," she said gently, cutting him off. "Whatever he needs me for, it'll involve letting me spend time with his servers."

He was silent for a long moment. "Tell them you want to hire your own security," he said finally, voice still tight. "Make up whatever reason you think he'll believe. I can't go with you on the plane because he'll see it as an insult, but I'll meet you the second you get to Rome."

Her chest tightened. "What if this just turns out to be some run-of-the-mill corporate crime? Won't you get—?"

"Thea." It was his turn to cut her off, soft but oh-so-serious. "There is no way I'm letting you do this alone."

Thea swallowed. "Thank you."

"Always." He let out a breath. "Stay safe. I will be there the second you land."

Even after they said their goodbyes, Thea held onto the phone a little more tightly than it would be at all safe to admit to. Making herself put it back in her pocket, she squared her shoulders and went to work.

She had some research to do.

#

"Come on, T." Max paced back and forth across his hotel room, feeling like a caged animal. He'd been packed and ready to go for an hour now, had all the necessary background for his security cover set up and ready to go, and had three different potential modes of transportation for whenever he could get out of here. Until R checked in and officially took over his current assignment, however, none of that was going to do him the slightest bit of good.

R was taking far too long to check in. "You have to have something on the guy! Rich people can't go 24 hours without committing some kind of crime!"

T sighed. "We can't exactly pick him up for tax fraud, Max." The Company's main tech expert was definitely trying to use the dad voice he'd perfected with his own brood of adopted rugrats. "And without a full deep dive into his system, which I'm sure Thea is going to want to do herself, I can't even confirm that much."

He couldn't punch anything. It would only slow him down more if he punched something. "Then why reach out to Thea? You saw that he's been handling his security in-house for the last several years, and she's right when she says there are more glamorous experts that would be further up his list! Finding her would take research!"

"And if he did that research, he'd know she’s one of the best."

"Yes, but once he talks to her for five minutes he'll realize she is incredibly suspicious and not about to fall for whatever scheme he's planning!" There were so many things you could do to someone on a plane midflight. Most of them ended by throwing the person out an open hatch. "Whatever he thinks she's going to do for him, she's actually going to make his life a living hell."

He'd run straight into Thea's refusal to go with the program back when they first met, and it turned out to be the best thing that had ever happened to him. But he ran into plenty of people on this job who preferred to solve their complications by killing them, and the thought of Thea alone with one of those kind of people turned his chest into ice.

And the thought of her alone with another professional charmer, who might end up just as enchanted with her as Max was...

He was knocked out of his thoughts when he realized T had been quiet far too long. "You've thought of something, and you're pretty sure I'm not going to like it." Max took a deep breath. "Tell me."

T still took a few moments to respond. "Donato is a notoriously private man, but he wasn't quite as careful about it in his younger years." There was something careful in his voice, like he knew he was delivering bad news. "And one thing the gossip sites all picked up on is that he only dates women in tech."

Max pulled the phone away from his ear long enough to scowl at it properly. "And this helps me how?"

He hesitated again. "Maybe this guy really is just trying to ask her—"

Max cut him off, not wanting to hear it out loud. "I knew what you were trying to say, T! That's not what I'm worried about!"

But that... might be part of the reason he was so desperate to get out there. It felt like he and Thea had barely gotten started on a real relationship, mostly because he was always out on assignment. He knew Thea cared about him, but if this Donato guy had the good sense to start acting genuine he was a lot more attractive a package than Max was. He'd even managed to take Thea to Rome before Max had, damn it.

A part of him couldn't help but feel like it would be really convenient if Donato was guilty of something. Another part wanted Donato to be just the rich idiot he looked like, because otherwise Thea was flying straight into danger without him. If something happened to her, it would kill him.

"Listen, maybe this is something you should talk to Thea about." The cajoling edge to T's voice would have been deeply annoying if Max hadn't had so much else to worry about. "I'm not saying there's not something suspicious about this guy, but I think it'll be easier to focus if you're not worried about the... emotional aspects of all this."

Max actually considered it for a second, which was proof of just how much of an effect Thea had on him. No matter how he spun it, though, he couldn't see any way it wouldn't make things worse. "Best case scenario, she only gets exasperated about the fact that I'm a jealous idiot instead of full-on hitting me in the face. Worst case scenario, which is the far more likely one, she is incredibly hurt that I took her genuine worry and made it all about my own stupid insecurities."

T sighed again. "Okay, you have a point there. Maybe we could—" He cut off abruptly, and when he spoke again his voice had gone strange. "D's calling me."

Max winced. "I don't suppose there's any chance you could hold her off for, say, 24 hours?"

"Sorry." T sounded genuinely sympathetic, but that wasn't going to be a lot of help to him. "She's a lot scarier than you are."

There was a murmur on the other end of the phone, probably T telling D that he was transferring Max, then the slightest shift in background noise and the cultured British tones of his second favorite person in the world. "Max, really."

Max pinched the bridge of his nose. He'd absolutely planned on reaching out to D, but he'd wanted to wait until he had at least some idea of what was actually going on. "I was going to loop you in on this, I swear it."

"When, exactly?" He could hear her arched eyebrow. "After you'd upset one of the most delightful women I've ever met by turning this into a particularly absurd romantic comedy, or after you've gotten yourself shot by completely missing the fact that this might be about you?"

He had an argument ready well before she'd finished talking. "Don’t try to tell me that things like this actually happen outside of romance novels and spy gambits, which is why this is especially..." The words trailed off as his brain finished processing the rest of what he'd just said. "Wait. You think this is about me?"

D gave an exaggerated sigh. "Max, darling, I know you're smarter than this." Her voice turned chiding. "As delightful as our Thea is, I agree that this seems like something more from our world than a romance novelist's. And as such, you are a far more likely target than she is."

Max went cold. "Someone found out how attached I am," he breathed. "And is trying to use her to get to me." Horrifying possibilities spun through his thoughts. "I need to—"

"Max." The word was urgent enough to cut through the panic spiral. "That is not what I meant, and I will admit that my frustration meant I did not think through my approach nearly as well as I should have. Thea will be fine, and there is no reason for you to do any of the three or four shades of potentially stupid things we both know you're capable of."

Max made himself inhale. It was the only way to argue properly. "How exactly is she fine? If this is somehow a plan to target me, then I have screwed up enough that random bad guys know that I will do anything for—"

"Or maybe they know she's the head tech person at the app company that cracked open an enormous terrorist funding operation, and they assume she's the one who brought it to the Company's attention? They may not be trying to target you specifically, but that will not make you be any less dead if they succeed."

Max closed his eyes, making himself actually breathe this time. "That just makes it even more important that I'm there, because if that is what's going on then she's still in danger from something we did."

D made a frustrated noise. "Will you at least promise me you'll think about being careful? And for the love of good scotch, will you tell me where I need to be to help keep you both alive through this mess?"

The knot in his chest eased a little. "I'll be as close to Thea as humanely possible, which means I won't be in position to express my displeasure with any randomly placed snipers."

She let out a breath. "I would be thrilled to take over that responsibility for you. You will also keep your earbud in your ear, so I can rush to your assistance on the off chance someone tries to kill you in a server room or someplace else equally inconvenient."

"I can agree to that." Max tried to keep his voice light, but he couldn't quite manage it. His hand tightened on the phone. "But if this really is my fault..."

"Max." D's voice was as gentle as he'd ever heard it. "Thea knows how dangerous your life is, and she keeps walking into it open-eyed. If you want proof of that, you were quite literally the reason she was in danger in Ohio and she still insisted on being there. When you gave her the chance to get out, she didn't take it."

His throat closed up, remembering. "And if I told her I was panicking about this, she would absolutely kick my ass."

"Yes, she would. One of her most charming qualities." D’s voice warmed. "And if you make sure to watch your own back while you're watching hers, I will do you the immense favor of not passing any of this on to Thea. She's normally a wonderfully logical woman, but I suspect that she would decide my theory meant she was putting you in danger."

Max winced at the thought. "She'd try to keep me away." He'd come up with as many alternate cover stories as he needed to, but no one was quite as good at puncturing his cover stories as she was. "Which would make it a lot harder for me to protect her."

"And neither of you would be thinking clearly, which would make things that much more stressful for me." The background noises picked up briefly on D's end, and it hit him suddenly that it sounded like she was at an airport. "And, though it hasn't occurred to you to ask me yet, I will also reach out to my contacts for some of that juicier underground gossip T wouldn't think to look for."

"Thank you." His chest warmed. "You know, you might actually beat me to Rome."

He could hear her smile. "Well, I wasn't about to let you do this alone." There was a pause. "Speaking of you leaving for Rome, R's tracker suggests that she is currently lingering outside your hotel. There's a chance she's run into trouble, but it's far more likely she's trying to express her displeasure at you for cutting her vacation short."

Max growled at the thought. She owed him. "Quick question – how much trouble will I get in if I kill R?"

"While I do sympathize, she won't be able to take over your assignment if you kill her. The frustration of finding another replacement would certainly outweigh any potential satisfaction."

Max swore, realizing she was right, and grabbed his bag. "Then I should still say goodbye. I have to go not-quite kill a coworker and get on a plane."

D laughed. "Have fun with that, darling. I'll see you soon."

Shoving the phone back into his pocket, Max hurried downstairs to solve the most immediate of his long list of problems.