by Gini Koch
Cantu waved at someone. “What great timing,” he said, as another man joined us. “Antony, Ambassador Martini was just complimenting Titan’s protective services. Ambassador Martini, please allow me to introduce you to Mister Antony Marling, the head of Titan Security.”
Sure enough, the Head Dude of Evil had joined our group. Joker Jaws’ smile went to Destroying All of Gotham City proportions. Everyone else seemed thrilled Marling had joined us. Other than Bryce, who looked sullen as he busied himself with the examination of his fingernails.
Marling smiled and offered his hand. “Wonderful to finally meet you. Haven’t had the pleasure of meeting your husband yet, but I’m looking forward to it.”
I forced myself to give him my hand. I also forced myself not to ask him why, if he was so keen to meet us, he’d spent the last few days having people try to kill me. “Pleasure.”
Marling looked me up and down. “What a vision you are. Très belle, mademoiselle,” he said with a wink.
It was fab to discover that the Cabal of Evil had their own little flirty catchphrase, but it really made me want to gag. I wondered if he’d stolen the phrase from Bryce, if Bryce had stolen it from him, or if it was just a group thing. Then I decided not to care.
“How sweet. Merci, monsieur.” Everyone, from Marling to Bryce, looked shocked that I could toss out this simple phrase in French. I knew I had to get away from these people before I stopped channeling the Washington Wife class and went back to good old me. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s been lovely chatting with you, but I need to powder my nose.” Per Lockwood, this one still worked as the universal signal for “I gotta pee.”
Lockwood appeared to be right, since the others had disappointed looks on their faces, but no one tried too hard to keep me around. Nathalie looked up from her phone again, though. “Oh, I do, too. I’ll go with you.” She linked her arm through mine before I could say anything, and we sailed off.
“It was very kind of you to share the name of your designer,” she said as we wended our way through the crowd in search of a bathroom.
“Was it?”
She laughed. “Oh, yes. You’ve nothing to fear from me, I’m still dressed by Dior.”
“That’s nice. You look great,” I added. I hadn’t really paid attention, but she did look good.
“Thank you. You must be very confident, not that I can blame you. I heard there was a huge scramble from the design community to be the ones to get the chance to dress the American Centaurion Embassy.”
I was lost, and this didn’t seem assassination related. “I’m sorry, but what am I supposed to be confident about?”
“Why, that your designer won’t move to Marcia the moment the ball is over. Because, believe me, that’s going to be Marcia’s first call tomorrow.” Considering what I knew was coming, I doubted that, but now wasn’t the time to express those sentiments.
“Excuse me?”
“Not that I believe you have any worries. Your Embassy has many women in it, meaning your designer has more opportunities to show off her skills. If she moved to Marcia, she’d only have the one client of note, and, between you and me, Marcia doesn’t have the same prestige that designing for an entire Embassy does.”
“You’re serious?”
“Oh, yes.” We found the bathroom, which was quite crowded. “I believe there’s another nearby. Do you want to try that one?”
I actually wanted to ditch Nathalie. “No, I’ll wait. The way my luck goes, if I leave the line, the next bathroom’s line will be longer.”
She smiled. “My luck doesn’t run like that. I’m going to give it a try. See you back inside.” Nathalie left the bathroom. As she did, I realized we’d just had the longest and most pleasant conversation of our entire relationship.
I didn’t want to raise suspicions or try to leave only to have Nathalie return because the other line really was longer, so I waited. The line was indeed long, and I didn’t feel like chatting because I didn’t want to waste whatever little diplomatic chitchat I had left on ladies waiting to relieve themselves. But I was prepared. I pulled out the paper and read the article on Titan and Marling in full.
It might have been in the business section, but it was really a human interest piece. In addition to the personal info about how he lost his wife and children—“tragic accident” was the sum total of the description—it was revealed that he loved world travel, was fluent in several languages, loved word puzzles and anagrams and considered himself a Scrabble pro, was a huge supporter of gay rights and gay marriage, provided funding to an extraordinary number of orphanages in countries devastated by wars, was an animal activist, and had an African Gray Parrot he adored named, of all things, Rybelleclies. Apparently, the name was an anagram of his wife’s name, but to me, that was taking quirkiness to a new level. A second picture showed him kissing the bird on its beak. Clearly, he was the Bird Man of D.C.
It was weird to read this article and see the good the man had done in some significant areas that mattered to me, while also knowing he’d hired a very professional assassin to kill me and was also involved in a plot to kill who knew who else here tonight. I realized if I’d read the article and met Marling before any of this had started going down, I’d probably have liked him and considered his flirty French line to be fun and flattering. Especially if I hadn’t heard it from Bryce first.
Bathroom visit finally done, I folded up the newspaper and put it back into my clutch. I pulled out the strap while I was at it, and petted Harlie and Poofikins, who were both snoozing. The clutch looked just as good as a shoulder bag. I trotted out of the bathroom, feeling ready to figure out what the hell was going on again.
Sadly, I hadn’t paid much attention to where we’d gone, and while there were a ton of people milling around, they weren’t all heading in one direction anymore. It occurred to me that I actually had a good chance to examine the spaces outside of the ballroom with a legitimate excuse of being sort of lost if someone stopped me.
I rounded a corner close by the bathroom and heard some weird sounds. No time like the present to investigate. I walked over slowly, so my heels wouldn’t make noise. There was a curtain blocking something, and the noises were coming from behind it.
I slipped behind the curtain. It was fairly dark, but not so dark that I needed to use my phone as a flashlight—more murky than anything. There were a lot of boxes piled up. They seemed innocuous. I worked my way through them, toward the sounds.
I rounded a corner and stopped dead. What I was seeing I definitely hadn’t been prepared for.
CHAPTER 78
A MAN AND A WOMAN WERE in the middle of going for it in a very real and very animalistic way.
I tried to back out and knocked into a set of boxes. While they fell, the couple separated and stared at me. It was murky, but not that murky. I pulled out my phone and turned it on them, just to be sure. “Nathalie?”
She gulped. “Kitty. Ah…”
I looked at the man. “Eugene?”
He looked only slightly embarrassed but a lot worried. “Kitty, I can explain.”
“Um, I’m clear on what you two are doing. It’s called having an affair. I just…wow, let me just say that I honestly would never have guessed.” In a million years.
Nathalie shrugged. “Edmund used to have time for me. You’d think running a thriving winery and being married to an international fashion model would have been enough for him. But no. And now that he’s here, he spends all his time with those people and almost none with me. I have needs he’s no longer meeting.”
“And Eugene is?”
She ruffled Eugene’s hair. “Yes. He’s more man than Edmund in so many ways.”
My jaw was hanging open. I expected this when it came to the Dazzlers and their whole brains over looks mindset. I was shocked to see it playing out with humans, though. “Um, what about Lydia?”
Eugene looked defiant. “What Nathalie said, in spades. I’m tired of feeling like an embarrassment.
”
“But you cut him dead every week!”
Nathalie nodded. “No one knows, not even Marcia. She knows I’m having an affair, but not with whom. She helps me cover, though. I’m only in the class to get to see Eugene.”
“We meet up after class, each week,” Eugene admitted.
“How and where?”
“Wherever we can. Lydia thinks I spend time with you at the Embassy after classes.”
“So I’m your cover?” I didn’t know whether to be enraged or impressed with his ingenuity. I settled for a little of both.
“Yes. Kitty, I’m so sorry,” Eugene said desperately. “I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t think you’d understand. Or approve.”
As Caroline had said only the other day, having aliens on Earth wasn’t even close to the oddest thing going on in D.C. And people having affairs was as old as recorded history, if not older. Admittedly, this wasn’t a pairing I’d have ever guessed at. A question nudged. “Is that why you’re always on your phone?”
Nathalie nodded. “We text all the time. I don’t want Eugene to think I agree with what the others say or do. But…” she shrugged. “A cover’s a cover, n’est pas?”
“True enough.” I contemplated my options. “Why were you and Marcia on Embassy Row the other day?”
They both looked embarrassed. “I hadn’t gotten to see her because we were delayed the other day,” Eugene said. “So we’d planned to meet up…”
“And a friend of Marcia’s lives in one of the houses between Embassies near you,” Nathalie concluded. “We saw you, and I realized Eugene couldn’t risk coming, because you might spot him and ask why he was in the area but not visiting you. Marcia knew your young men had spotted us, so she went for a frontal assault, so to speak, so we could get out of there without raising suspicions.”
Didn’t work, but then, the suspicions raised hadn’t been about adultery. Well, one weird event was explained. “Any thoughts about Jack Ryan’s death?”
Nathalie nodded. “I think he was murdered.”
“He’s dead?” Eugene asked, sounding shocked and horrified. “When did this happen?”
“This morning. No one told you?”
He shook his head and gave Nathalie a betrayed look. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want you to say something incriminating in front of anyone,” she replied calmly.
“Eugene killed Jack?”
Eugene looked like his world had just devolved into a nightmare of Danteesque proportions. “What the hell? I haven’t killed anybody! Ever!”
“Oh, no,” Nathalie said soothingly. “I didn’t mean to accuse you, even inadvertently. But I’m sure Jack was killed by someone he knows, and since we’ve used his place more than once, I didn’t want you to give the police any reason to be suspicious.”
“Wait, Jack Ryan knew you two were doing the deed? And he helped you?”
Nathalie nodded. “He…enjoyed the whole idea of helping with subterfuge.”
“He knew you were sleeping with Eugene?”
“No. Like Marcia, he knew I was having an affair he was helping me to hide, that’s all.”
“Who do you think killed him?”
“Whoever told him about the assassination attempt at the President’s Ball.” She said it so calmly, I half expected them both to pull out guns and shoot me.
“That’s real?” Eugene asked instead, sounding ready to head home and hide under the bed.
“Oh, I doubt it,” Nathalie said dismissively. “But someone was always dropping little hints like that to Jack, one of the group. He loved it, but he would always ‘protect his source.’ ”
“Jack told me he’d found the info by searching through his wife’s stuff.”
Nathalie snorted. It was definitely on the Lockwood Ladylike Snort Scale. “Please. Pia is far too smart for that. I’m sure she was upset with Jack for panicking everyone, though.”
I thought about this while Eugene and Nathalie got their clothes back in order. Pia might have been upset that Ryan had leaked real information. And maybe that’s why he was killed—because not only had his information been real, but the fact that he’d leaked it had gotten back to the C.I.A.
“Shall we go back in?” Nathalie asked once they were fully dressed and Eugene’s hair was brushed.
I pondered the options. It seemed unlikely they were actually involved in the big deal. But I did have a couple of other questions. “Did your husband ask you to plant a surveillance bug on me?”
She shrugged. “No. That was Jack’s idea.”
“What for?”
“He said they were fakes but that it would be fun to do.”
“So the others, they planted on me, too?”
She nodded. “That’s why Abner called you over.” Her eyes narrowed. “They were fakes, weren’t they?”
“No, they were real. Where did Jack get them from?”
“He said his ‘source’ had asked for his assistance.” Her brow furrowed. “I can’t believe that Jack actually gave us real bugs to plant on you.”
“He did. But clearly he was being manipulated. And you think his ‘source’ is someone else from class?”
“I do, but I could be wrong.” Nathalie looked uncertain for a moment. “If the bugs were real…is what Jack told us real, too?”
I had no idea what to say, so I went for the nonanswer. “What do you think?”
They exchanged a glance. “Seems possible,” Eugene allowed. She nodded. “So, does that mean we’re all in danger?” He sounded ready to bolt.
Nathalie looked back at me. “How did you know the bugs were real?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer this. I was having a moral quandary, several of them, actually. I was saved by my phone ringing. “Hello?”
“Where are you?” Jeff asked.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Uh-huh. You need me to find you?”
“Not sure.” Eugene and Nathalie were having a quiet conversation. The gist seemed to be that, if the threat was real, they wanted to get their respective spouses and get out of here. While it was both interesting and a relief that they apparently didn’t want to dump their spouses and hope the bad guys solved a problem for them, I didn’t know what to do. I also had no idea how to explain to Jeff what was going on.
“Can you talk?”
“Not really.”
“Okay, baby. Relax, and concentrate on what’s going on.” I did. “Oh. Interesting. And yeah, so you don’t have to ask, I read your mind. We don’t want them coming in and disrupting the ball. And you don’t feel right lying to them. I can see where you are. Interesting choice. Stay put, don’t tell them anything, and I’ll have this handled.”
“Gotcha.” We hung up. Eugene and Nathalie looked at me. I smiled brightly.
“Well?” Eugene asked. “Do you think we’re actually in danger?”
I took a deep breath. “I think—”
But I didn’t have to share any thoughts. Five A-Cs arrived out of nowhere, looking extremely official. “Please come with us,” one said, taking my arm. The others flanked Eugene and Nathalie.
“Where are we going?” Eugene asked.
“My husband is a member of the House of Representatives,” Nathalie added.
“I’m lost,” I tossed out, in part to not give away that these were my guys and in part because it was true.
The agents led those two off rapidly. Not at hyperspeed, but still, fast enough. The agent with me waited until they were out of sight, then walked me to a set of doors that clearly led into the ballroom. “Ambassador Martini would like you to rejoin him, ma’am.”
“Will do, and thanks for the assist.”
The agent smiled, nodded, and walked off. I heaved a sigh of relief and looked around. No one I knew was nearby, including Jeff. Oh, well.
I walked into the room. I was a few feet from the dance floor when someone’s arm went around my waist. I looked up, expectin
g to see Jeff, Reader, White, or someone else from our group. But it wasn’t them. I was in the embrace of Guy Gadoire.
“Ah, Madame Ambassador, how wonderful you look tonight,” he said grandly, Pepé Le Pew voice on full. He twirled me around and put us onto the dance floor. Train’s “If It’s Love” was playing. Gadoire smiled widely. “Could it be love, Madame? I was so taken with you when we first met. Can I hope you might have felt a few flutters when meeting me?”
“Excuse me?” I managed not to gape, but it took effort. I’d felt flutters, all right. Flutters of nausea. They were threatening to come back at any moment.
“Vance has told me how feisty you are. A true original.”
“Thanks, I think. Um, where is Vance?”
Gadoire winked at me. “Oh, waiting hopefully.”
“Hopefully for what?” I had a weird feeling about this. “Um, maybe I’m getting your signals wrong, but aren’t you and Vance, ah, married?”
“Oh, we are, we are. And very much in love.” He winked again. “Love you might share in, yes?”
“Excuse me?” I wanted to ask him if he’d actually looked at my husband when he’d come by our Embassy, and if he had, how he thought he had a shot of measuring up. Then again, Nathalie was doing the deed with Eugene, so maybe bizarre pairings were the in thing in D.C.
“Vance heard through the grapevine that you take the French view of experimentation outside of the marital vows.” Apparently Marcia and Nathalie had shared their theory about me and White. Lucky me.
Apparently they hadn’t shared that White was, like every other A-C, amazingly hot to look at. Then again, perhaps Gadoire was going for the whole “try something you’ve never had” idea and was hoping I hadn’t ever done dog meat. Which I hadn’t, and I wanted to keep that record intact.
“Um…”
“And, since your little country’s views are so lenient…” His voice trailed off leadingly.
“Um…”
“We were hoping you would join us.”
“Us? You mean you and Vance?” He nodded encouragingly. I stared at him. “You’re suggesting a threesome, the two of you and me?”