He rolled his neck from one side to the other, cracking it. “Which part?”
“Olivia gave it to me. But it isn’t ruined.”
“I don’t understand. Doesn’t it have blush or bronzer or something in there that got wet?”
“The makeup isn’t important.” She found herself reaching to push her glasses up on her nose and caught herself. Liv had once told her it was her tell when she was nervous. So she shoved her hands under her quads to resist the temptation.
“Marielle.”
His voice was a warning. He was losing patience.
“Look, it’s not a compact.”
He stared down at the shiny object balanced on her knee. “I think it is.”
“I mean, it is a compact, but it’s not just a compact.” She eased her hand out from under and picked it up. “It’s also a covert communication device.”
He rubbed his forehead. “What?”
She flipped it open, and the lighted mirror turned on. “See?”
“You’ve had a second covcom this entire time and didn’t tell me?”
She took a split second to consider various tacks to justify keeping it herself, but his thunderous expression convinced her to own it. “Yes. In my defense, I didn’t know myself until we were in the back of the limo on the way to the yacht and I popped it open to check my makeup.”
“You didn’t know Olivia gave you a covcom? I’m not following.”
“She didn’t tell me. She must have slipped in with the toiletries and makeup the operations team pulled together for me.”
“How do you know it was from Olivia and not the team?”
He poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the bureau and drained it in one gulp.
“Is your headache getting worse?”
He waved the question away. “It’ll get better once you spit out the rest of the story.”
Her chest tightened at his irritated tone. Unlike many of her colleagues, she didn’t thrive on conflict. She avoided it. But this was too important to run from.
“I thought it was a regular compact. But when I opened it up, the lights blinked a message.”
He inhaled loudly, more of an impatient snort than a breath.
She held up a hand. “Just listen, please. The message didn’t use the agreed-upon cipher for this mission. It was a different code.”
“What code?”
“It’s one we made up when we were at the Farm for training. We used it for silly things like setting up happy hours or telling each other funny stories that happened on our squad.”
His eyes softened. “Sounds like the CIA equivalent of middle schoolers passing notes in class.”
“Pretty much,” she agreed. “After our training, I forgot all about it—until that day she was having her driving lesson with Trent. I saw the burn notice before it went out, I violated—who knows how many workplace regulations and actual laws—to warn her she’d been burned.”
“How?”
“I hacked into her covcom and used our code.”
He considered this for a moment. “That was a big risk, Elle. You could have been charged with treason.”