"You must be Rex!" She laughed even harder. "This is good. Too good!"
The three of us relaxed as we watched her collapse under the hilarity of the moment. I guessed it was kind of humorous. Like the kind you'd see in a movie. Only it was happening here. To me. That made it a little less funny.
"I'm just going to…" Riley pointed at the bathroom behind him and started backing up. "I'm going to put some clothes on."
Maria tossed him a tote bag, and without asking what was in it, he disappeared into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. I left Maria and Rex to get acquainted and ran into the bedroom to throw on some clothes. When I emerged, Riley, Maria, and Rex were sitting in the living room. They were smiling.
Maria tossed her curls a little before dazzling Rex with a smile. Hey! Was she flirting with him?
"So," I announced myself. "What have you been talking about?" I shot Maria a look, and she laughed.
"Rex said you brought him up to speed, and Riley told me what happened at the embassy," Maria said. "Did you really shoot those guys? I mean, I'm glad you got out okay, but that's pretty international-incident level stuff."
I sat down in the Captain Kirk chair. "What happened after Ito took me?"
Maria told me I was gone by the time they hit the gift shop. She bought each girl a little something in the shop to distract them while she called her supervisor at Langley. Riley seemed to flinch at that. Fortunately, Maria's boss was golfing at St. Andrews and didn't believe a word of what she said. I knew the guy. He was a total kiss-ass who wouldn't dream of ending his vacation for a mission. Maybe that was a good thing.
So Maria had herded the girls into the van and driven them to the hotel to pack, deciding that they needed her protection more than I needed her help. After leaving Evelyn with strict instructions on locking the door, she drove to the embassy, and we ran outside and into the van.
"No one did anything?" I asked in shock. It wasn't unheard of. The CIA sometimes chose not to act—especially on domestic soil.
"He said either I was pranking him, in which case he'd look bad." Maria scowled. "Or Riley had gone rogue, which wasn't the Agency's problem."
Riley said nothing. He was wearing a white, button-down shirt and khakis.
"Maybe it was a good thing." I sighed. "But your boss is an asshat."
"Agreed." Maria nodded.
"So Maria and I are the cavalry?" Rex asked. I felt a pang of jealousy as he said Maria's name. I really needed to get over that.
"I guess so." I shrugged. "Maybe we should ship the girls home first thing in the morning."
Rex agreed. "You're right. If Ito retaliates…"
I interrupted him. "You mean when Ito retaliates. She doesn't lose. And she thinks Riley and I killed her mother. She'll keep coming after us with everything she's got until we're dead or she is."
Riley finally spoke up. "We need to go after her first. She might decide to fly in some more backup."
I'd forgotten about the third man. I ran to get the photo and showed it to the men.
"The girls should be safe here," Maria said. "No one knows they're here, and I think it's safe to say that no one will expect them to be staying at a place like this."
"Hold on." Rex held his hands up. "This is all over her mother's murder?" He shot me a look that said we are soooo not done talking about this. "If you didn't kill her, who did?"
I stared at him. "If? If I didn't kill her? Rex, I told you—I didn't kill her!"
"Bad choice of words," Rex apologized. "What I'm trying to say is, who did kill her?"
"No one knows," Riley said. "And we destroyed the crime scene and removed the body, so it's impossible to find out."
I remembered the autopsy. "That's not totally true. The autopsy they did in Japan stated she was murdered before she was bludgeoned."
Riley's mouth dropped open, and I realized we hadn't had a chance to bring him up to speed.
"How," I asked him, "did Ito Jr. know you were involved?"
He shook his head. "I don't know. She never said. And unless you or Kelly told her, which I don't think you did, by the way…" Riley had the good graces to hold his hands up defensively.
"Kelly!" I shot to my feet. "She was in labor! That means she had the baby!"
I ran out of the room and grabbed my cell phone. There were no messages or missed calls, but I wasn't going to let that stop me. I dialed Robert, who answered on the first ring.
"Merry! I was just going to call you!" My best friend's husband sounded like he'd just won the lottery—if they gave babies away as lottery prizes.
"Well?" I asked, not intending to waste time talking.
"It's a girl!" I could feel him smiling through the phone. "Seven pounds, nine ounces, and twenty inches long!"
"You act like I know what that means," I said. "How is Kelly? Did everything go okay?"
I'd only witnessed one live birth in my life, and that was in the mountains of Ecuador. The baby was breech—at least that's what they said—and I was told that was bad. I watched as the midwife rotated the baby inside the mother, and then I fainted dead away. When I awoke, there was this screaming infant named Pilar.
"She had a little trouble but nothing big. Kelly and the baby are fine." If he could've reached through the phone line, I believe he would've handed me a cigar.
I felt the tension slipping away. Everything was fine. "What did you name her?"
"We haven't decided yet. But we should have a name picked out by the time you get back." I heard someone talking to him in the background. "Gotta go, Merry! See you when you get home!" He hung up.
"Kelly had a little girl!" I said as I joined the others.
Apparently, the whole troop had joined us while I was in the other room, and the place exploded with squeals of delight.
"What's her name?" One of the Kaitlins asked.
"Why is Rex here?" Inez asked.
"Did he bring the kittens?" Lauren started searching under the furniture.
Evelyn was openly staring at Riley, who, in spite of his injuries, still looked like a Greek god.
I held up my hand, making the quiet sign, and the room went silent.
"Wish I could use that with reporters," I heard Rex say to Maria.
Ignoring the twist of envy, I addressed them. "No name—they haven't decided yet. We should know before we go home tomorrow."
Betty frowned. "But we don't go home tomorrow. We go home Friday." The other girls nodded and looked at me.
"I have some business here I need to take care of," I said. "So we're cutting this trip short." I flinched inwardly, waiting for the cries and pleas.
"She must have spy stuff to do." Hannah nodded.
What?
"Are you going to kill somebody, Mrs. Wrath?" Another of the Kaitlins asked.
I felt my whole body go hot. How did they know? I looked at Maria and Rex, but they looked as startled as I was. I decided to play stupid.
"I don't know what you guys are talking about," I lied.
"You know…" Inez said. "The CIA stuff you do."
"She can't tell us, idiot!" Betty shouted. "It's a secret mission!"
A third Kaitlin said, "We totally understand, Mrs. Wrath."
A sea of tiny faces looked at me expectantly. Evelyn's jaw had dropped open. Apparently, she was the only one who didn't know my background.
"Ladies, please." I held my hands up. "It's nothing like that. I just have some paperwork to do. Boring stuff."
"Right…" Hannah winked at me.
"Okay, guys!" Maria stood up. "Time to go back to the room and order dinner! Who wants Vulcan pizza?"
The girls cheered unanimously and filed out the door. Evelyn grudgingly followed, giving Riley one last glance before the door closed behind her.
"That didn't exactly go as expected," I said, staring at the door.
"How did they figure it out?" Riley ran his fingers through his hair. "You sure you didn't tell them?"
I threw my arms up in the air "No idea! Honestly!
Maria and I never talked in front of them. There's no way they should know!" I slumped onto the tribble sofa. "Now what?"
Riley picked up the hotel phone. "First, I'm going to call a buddy I have at the airlines to switch the girls' flight. Then, we're going to take care of Leiko Ito once and for all."
Something popped up in my mind. "Rex! What did you do with Philby and the kittens?" Somehow in this whole mess, I'd completely forgotten about my cat.
Rex fidgeted nervously with his belt. "Oh. Well, I didn't have a lot of time. I had to call in a favor." He was avoiding eye contact.
"Who?" I asked, not at all sure I wanted to know the answer.
"Just an old friend, Merry. It's no big deal."
I folded my arms across my chest. "Who? They're my cats. I'd like to know who has them."
Rex sighed heavily. "Okay. But like I said, I had very little time to find someone. And I know you don't want to board them. So I called the first person I could think of who liked cats."
"Rex? Are you going to tell me who?" I was using my angry-spy voice.
"Juliette Dowd. She has the cats."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"That crazy psycho? You let the one person who hates me more than anything on the planet watch my cats?" It felt like my head exploded.
Juliette Dowd was my nemesis. Maybe my worst.
"If she hurts Philby and the babies, I'm going to break out the thumbscrews and work her over like a pit bull on 'roid rage!"
"She likes cats." Rex defended himself. "And she likes me. She wouldn't hurt them. I swear she wouldn't."
I wasn't so sure. True, she still carried a torch—a great big torch—for Rex. But she hated me in a way people usually reserved for political pundits. I pictured her tormenting the cats just to get back at me.
"Look." Rex took out his cell and dialed. "I'm going to call her now to make sure they're okay."
He paused, waiting for the flame-haired Satan to pick up. "Juliette! Just thought I'd check in to let you know I made it okay."
Rex blushed, and it was all I could do not to grab the phone and let out a series of expletives that would destroy a crusty sailor.
"Um, that's very nice of you," Rex said. He seemed uncomfortable. That made me feel a little better. "No, that's really not necessary. No really, you don't need to. Okay, we'll talk about it when I get back." He hung up and looked at me like a television evangelist about to be indicted on prostitution charges.
"What's really nice of her?" I asked.
"She said the cats are doing well. They're eating and fine." He avoided eye contact.
"Rex? Please answer the question, or I will torture you with a pair of pliers."
"It's really nothing…" he stammered. "She's just making my favorite casserole and wants to have me over for dinner."
"That is not happening," I said.
"And she might've done all my laundry and made me a red velvet cake…" His voice drifted off.
"Hey!" Riley said. "Is that the cute redhead?"
"She's not cute," I said through my teeth. "And we will discuss this later!"
Maria came back in and sank onto the sofa. She looked from me to Rex and asked, "What did I miss?"
After glaring at my boyfriend a few more seconds, I shook my head. "It's nothing. How are the girls?"
"Fine. They're eating pizza and watching the old Star Trek series on TV—which appears to be this place's answer to HBO. I think Evelyn is in shock, but oh well."
The girls I was sure I could handle, now that they knew. Evelyn was another thing altogether. I wasn't sure I wanted the parents to know that I used to kill people for a living. Hey…maybe I could use that to my advantage as motivation for next year's cookie sale…
"If we're all done with whatever the hell is going on, I think we should start putting a plan together to stop Leiko Ito in her tracks, because I do not want to go through all that again," Riley said.
He told us how he came to be kidnapped. A few days ago, he'd gone out for coffee at his favorite organic cafe. Spies usually avoided having favorite restaurants or routes to work. Even a favorite color could get you in trouble. But Riley, the health nut, really liked this place and made sure he went different routes every time and at different times of day to throw off anyone following him.
Getting into a routine should've made a secret agent far more aware of their surroundings. In these circumstances, Riley should've kept a careful eye on everything going on around him.
He hadn't.
As he'd walked out the back entrance in a weak attempt to avoid being followed, someone had thrown a bag over his head and injected him with the same cocktail I'd been given. They had kept him in the cell where I'd found him, beating him to get him to confess to Midori's murder and to get him to name me as coconspirator.
"I never gave you up," he said, running his hands through his thick, wavy blond hair.
"Somehow they figured it out. Probably because you called me." I showed him the record of his calls on my cell.
"I didn't know I'd called you," he said sadly. "They must've drugged me. I would never implicate you. Not willingly."
Rex studied him for a moment before looking at me. "I believe him."
Truth was, I did too. I just didn't want to let him off the hook yet.
"Anyway," Riley continued. "They gave me food and water and a thin blanket and left me alone after that. I didn't see Ito again until in that conference room."
Maria said, "They thought Merry had killed Midori. That's why they gave up on you."
I nodded. "And they took me and let me find you in hopes I'd say something admitting I killed her."
"I think so," Riley said.
"So let me get this straight," Rex said slowly. "Besides you guys covering up a murder and tampering with the body, which I'm still pissed about by the way, now you might have created an international incident at an embassy without the knowledge or blessing of the CIA."
"That sounds about right," I said. "But I don't think the embassy will do anything about it. They'd look bad for having yakuza on staff, let alone torturing American citizens in the basement."
"Ito's not dead," Riley said. "She's probably sent for reinforcements from Tokyo, but it will take a day or so for them to get here. I think we've got her right where we want her."
I shook my head. "She's not the only yakuza in this country."
I told them about Elvinia and our trip there. Rex tried to control his anger at my running full tilt into such a dangerous situation.
"But you said Elvinia is part of the Okinawa family and hates the Tokyo branch," Maria said.
Riley shook his head. "In the grand scheme of things, that doesn't matter. If Ito calls for Elvinia's aid, she'll have no choice but to come. They have an elaborate code that relies heavily on a sense of familial duty."
I sighed and reached for the room's landline.
"What are you doing?" Maria asked.
"Ordering room service. This is going to take a while, and I'm starving."
An hour later, as we were munching on Klingon Fries and Mr. Sulu Burgers, we were no further along in planning. The food helped though. And I got a kick out of seeing diet-conscious Riley react to the cheddar and bacon Scotty Sauce drizzled over the fries. When I dipped them in ranch dressing he almost had a heart attack.
"We can't invade the Japanese Embassy," Maria said. "That's the equivalent to invading another country."
"So, we lure her out somehow," I said.
"And just how are we going to do that?" Riley asked. "She's pretty embedded there. She just has to wait for more troops to come."
I thought for a moment. "We'll just have to promise her something she can't refuse."
Rex asked, "And what exactly would that be?"
"The truth about who murdered her mother," I said.
"How can we do that when we don't know?" Maria asked.
I shrugged. "She doesn't know that. She's always assumed Riley and I are guilty. So let's pretend we're g
oing to confess in an attempt to end this feud."
"When?" Rex asked.
"After we're sure the girls are on their flight tomorrow. Then we launch this plan and hope we can pull it off."
"What plan? We don't have a plan, unless I've been asleep during this conversation," Riley asked.
"The one we're going to make right now, duh!" I said. "But first, I need to make a quick phone call."
I excused myself to the other room and dialed. Maybe, just maybe, I could pull this off. If not, we were probably going to our deaths. I figured we had about a sixty/forty chance of survival. Okay, maybe it was more like forty/sixty. I just wasn't going to tell my team that.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Riley had gotten the girls on a six a.m. flight back home. Evelyn didn't look very happy about being the only adult, but I promised her she'd never have to go with us again, and she grudgingly agreed.
"Mrs. Wrath?" Lauren asked as the girls lined up to go through security.
I knelt before the girl and waited.
She pulled a small baggie filled with shortbread cookies out of her pocket and handed it to me.
"What's this for?" The bag was warm. I wasn't sure I wanted to know if she'd had it anywhere else.
"For a snack. In case you get hungry." Lauren hugged me and then ran to catch up with everyone else—who were now going through security.
I tucked the baggie into my back pocket and shook my head. Those kids were so awesome. I'd have to tell them that when I got home.
We waited at the airport until we saw on the monitors that the plane had taken off and then made our way back to the hotel to launch Operation Avoid Dying at All Costs. Sure, we could've come up with a sexier name, but all our creative energy went into making the plan in the first place.
Riley called the Japanese Embassy and asked for Ms. Ito. To his surprise, he was connected. He gave her some instructions and an address, indicating that he would tell her the whole story of Midori's death. She agreed, probably because in her psychopathic mind she believed him. We still had no idea what had happened, but she didn't need to know that.
We didn't tell her to come alone or unarmed because that was just something they did in the movies. It was unrealistic to think that spies or crime bosses wouldn't bring weapons and would show up on their own. Past experience had shown this to be a naïve suggestion and quite a few spooks had lost their lives in the field by truly believing the bad guy would honor the request.
Marshmallow S'More Murder Page 18