Things were still the same between them. As always, they could rely on each other for support, even though they were thousands of miles apart and she seemed to do most of the heavy lifting. She was just glad he still felt comfortable asking. Her decision to look for work post–Marine Corps had everything to do with her career aspirations, but she’d be lying if she didn’t admit that a part of her excitement about landing in the Beltway after nearly two decades away had to do with Devin.

She navigated to another website dedicated to internships and paid staff positions on Capitol Hill and spent the next fifteen minutes clicking links and taking notes. Marnie got some real work done but was mostly killing time. Devin had said he needed an hour to move a countersurveillance team into place at the coffee shop. He’d text her when they were ready for her to roll.

From here she had been instructed to drive north on Broad Street to the Whole Foods just past Interstate 66 and to fill a handbasket with a logical assortment of items a thirty-seven-year-old single woman might buy—whatever that meant. Pay for the stuff and head home, where she could start looking for the Airbnb.

They didn’t want her working on the Airbnb in the coffee shop for two reasons: One, it was “possible, but not probable” that someone could be watching her from inside the shop, snapping pictures of her laptop screen. Two, her internet connection to the coffee shop’s Wi-Fi was vulnerable to snooping from someone inside or outside the shop. She hadn’t connected to the internet using a VPN server, which is something she’d never thought to install and use before Devin explained its value a few minutes ago.

Supposedly, by the time she drove to Whole Foods, shopped for stuff she didn’t need, and made her way home, the team sent to watch over her would be able to determine if a tracker had been placed on her Jeep or if anyone was shadowing her. If that turned out to be the case, Marnie was off the Airbnb job for obvious reasons. She’d started to suggest conducting a surveillance-detection run or whatever Devin had mentioned in their previous conversations about his work—but cut herself off.

Even though it didn’t sound terribly complicated, particularly if he talked her through it, she figured it would probably feel the same as him suggesting he could land a helicopter with someone giving him directions. A little insulting. Above all, she didn’t want to take the chance that she’d screw it up and put him at risk. If they grounded her from the Airbnb mission, she’d accept the decision and somehow try to go about her normal life, knowing that Devin was in enough trouble that he’d hired a countersurveillance team to do a job in which he specialized.