“All set,” Maddie said. Refusing to feel flustered, or at least to show it if she did, she took her jacket from McCabe with an assumption of nonchalance and slipped it on. As she moved past McCabe toward where Jon, having switched off his light, now stood in the semidarkness, waiting for her, she buttoned it up over the vest. A little bit still showed at the top, but that couldn’t be helped. She only hoped that Susan Allen would simply think she was into layering.
“Wynne’s secured the elevator,” McCabe said behind her. “Gomez and Hendricks are waiting down in the parking lot. They’ve just finished checking out your car. We’re good to go.”
“SO, WHAT’S up with you and that guy?” Jon asked Maddie as they waited side by side in the small terminal at the St. Louis airport that serviced private planes. The waiting area was relatively plush, all beige walls and blond wood and brown-leather chairs, with a slick stone floor underfoot. It operated under different security rules than the much larger commercial facility next door, and Maddie and Jon were standing in front of the wall of huge windows, black now except for the halogen glow that lit the wet tarmac outside that looked out over the area where the small planes taxied in. Maddie had already eyed those windows askance, but the chance that a shooter could somehow get out there in the runway area seemed pretty small, and anyway, McCabe didn’t seem concerned, so Maddie had made up her mind not to be. The Brehmer’s Pet Food plane was already on the ground, a brown-uniformed attendant had just informed them, and they had just risen to their feet and stepped forward in anticipation of greeting Susan Allen as soon as she walked off the plane. Maddie, having swallowed the last of her Diet Coke, was in the process of setting the can down as Jon spoke. Jon, who’d been chomping on peanut M&M’s, twisted the small yellow bag closed at the top and stuck it in his jacket pocket.
“What guy?” Maddie asked, straightening to glance at Jon in surprise. Of course, she knew who he was talking about as soon as she said it. But he’d caught her off guard.
“The FBI guy. McClain, or whatever his name is.”
“McCabe,” Maddie corrected automatically, “and nothing’s up.”
Even as she spoke, she was having to make a conscious effort not to glance around at the man in question. McCabe and Wynne were both inside the terminal with them. McCabe was seated in a chair on the opposite side of the waiting area, his posture deceptively casual as he gave every appearance of reading the day’s newspaper. Wynne was leaning against the wall near the exit, staring reflectively at the ceiling as he chewed his gum. With perhaps another dozen people spread out over the waiting area, they weren’t particularly conspicuous. Unless you knew who and what they were, that is.
“Yeah, right. If you seriously expect anybody to believe that, you might want to quit looking at him like jumping his bones is the next item on your agenda.”
Maddie stiffened. “I do not—I do not look at him like that.”
“You do,” Jon said, his tone slightly grim. “Look, since it doesn’t look like it’s going to be me anytime soon, who you sleep with is strictly your business. But that guy—not a good choice. You’re letting the gun and the macho FBI agent stuff snow you. You’re just going to end up getting hurt, and I’d hate to see that.”
He was frowning as he met her gaze. It struck her that, besides being perhaps a little jealous of what he saw as her interest in another man, he was also, at some level, genuinely concerned for her well-being. As a friend.
She smiled at him, a warm and affectionate smile that made his frown deepen. “Just for the record, I’m not sleeping with him. But thanks for worrying about me. That’s nice.”
Jon looked impatient, and started to say something more, but just then the door they were standing in front of was opened by an attendant, and the sound of a frantically barking dog reached their ears. Immediately, both their heads swiveled toward the sound. Their eyes fixed on the open doorway.
“Zelda,” Maddie said, and Jon nodded.
The high-pitched yips grew louder. Then Susan appeared in the doorway, looking tired and harassed and ready to call the whole thing off. She was staggering slightly under the weight of a large garment bag and a medium-size duffel bag, both of which she had slung over one shoulder, and a small plastic animal carrier, which she gripped in one hand. That carrier, Maddie saw at a glance, did indeed contain Zelda. A clearly very unhappy Zelda. A Zelda who was not at all shy about expressing her feelings.
Pinning a bright smile on her face, Maddie stepped forward to shake Susan’s one free hand.
“So glad to see you,” she said, only to have her greeting drowned out by Zelda’s frenzied barking. Susan’s answering smile looked more like a grimace, and she replied with something that Maddie couldn’t quite hear. Jon stepped forward in turn, doing an excellent job of not wincing at the noise. As they shook hands, Maddie saw with a single comprehensive glance that Susan’s short brown hair was ruffled, her face was pale and tight, and her lipstick was both freshly applied and crooked, as though she had put it on fast, at the last possible minute before she stepped off the plane. Maddie saw, too, that there was a small rip near the button placket in her neat white blouse. Golden brown dog hairs clung to her navy skirt. An enormous run laddered the left leg of her nude hose.
In other words, Susan looked like she had recently been in an accident. Or a fight.
The profusion of brown hairs on her skirt told its own tale: Zelda.
Maddie’s gaze shifted to the animal carrier. Zelda’s monkey face and shiny black eyes were shoved against the grate at the front, and she was scratching desperately at the unyielding bottom. She was clearly—vocally—displeased, and having a fit to get out of her plastic jail. The carrier shook. The grate rattled.
Jon said something—Maddie thought it was on the order of good dog—and tried patting the top of the carrier. It was a mistake. Tiny white teeth snapped together viciously. Jon jerked his hand back. Thwarted, Zelda gave vent to her emotions in the only way that remained to her. She let loose with an ear-splitting howl. Susan gave the carrier a monitory shake. Zelda then seemed to find her inner wolf: She cranked up the volume, and the howl went from deafening to downright hair-raising.
Shades of The Exorcist, Maddie thought in horror, resisting the urge to clap her hands over her ears. A roll of her eyes told her that every face in the place was now turned toward them. A gate attendant was hurrying their way. Forget that thing about necessity being the mother of invention, she thought. In this case, desperation was. Having looked, listened, and cringed, Maddie had an epiphany: She remembered the cream-filled pastry. Jon was standing right beside her. Thrusting a hand into the pocket of his jacket, she pulled out the bag of M&M’s, untwisted it, fished one out—a nice, big, yellow one—and thrust it through the crisscrossed black bars of the grate.
The howls cut off as abruptly as if the dog had a power source and someone had pulled the plug.
“Oh, thank God,” Susan gasped as silence reigned, looking ready to collapse. Maddie’s own ears were still ringing, so she could just imagine what Susan, who had presumably been enduring the onslaught for a lot longer, was going through. “But—she’s on a special diet and she’s never allowed to have sweets, and you shouldn’t ... shouldn’t ...”
The crunching sound that had replaced the howls ceased. The monkey face pressed against the grate again. Zelda gave several loud sniffs.
“Give her another one,” Susan directed hastily. Maddie did.
Zelda crunched.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jon said in Maddie’s ear. He was clearly getting no more enjoyment out of being the cynosure of all eyes than Maddie was. She gave a barely perceptible nod. The attendant, Maddie was glad to see, was retreating now that peace had been restored. Remembering their manners, a few people were even starting to look away.
Susan had booked a suite at the Hyatt downtown for herself and Zelda. The thing to do was get them into it at all speed.
“So nice of you to come and meet us,” Susan said,
still breathing hard and giving every indication of being more than glad to relinquish the carrier to Jon as he reached in to take it from her. “I’m sorry not to have given you more notice, but Mrs. B. was very insistent on getting started at once.”
“Not a problem.” Jon smiled at her, exuding charm as always, and passed the plastic carrier on to Maddie, who accepted it with some trepidation. The thing was surprisingly heavy, and the contents—she would sooner have been responsible for a werewolf. Jon, meanwhile, took the garment bag and the other bag from Susan. In the spirit of warding off trouble, Maddie, hearing a warning sniff, poked another M&M through the grate.
Crunch.
“I’m just so embarrassed,” Susan said as they all started moving toward the exit. “I can’t believe that Zelda made such a fuss. It’s all because the airport people insisted that she had to be in a carrier before they would let her inside the terminal. Of course, she hates being in a carrier and she fought me when I tried to put her in it, and when I finally got her in there she just had a fit . . .”
“Totally understandable,” Jon said.
“We’re just so excited that Zelda’s going to be the new face of Brehmer’s Pet Food,” Maddie put in, not entirely insincerely, as she did her best not to list under the weight of the carrier. The plastic handle dug into her hand. The carrier shook slightly as Zelda moved around inside it.
Then Maddie heard that telltale snuffling sound again, and took preventive action: One more peanut M&M was launched through the holes. Realizing then that keeping Zelda happy was going to be an ongoing activity, sort of like keeping a parking meter in the black, Maddie hastily dumped the rest of the M&M’s into her pocket. Then, when she heard that warning sniff again, it was easy to fish one out and thrust it at Zelda.
“We’re excited, too,” Susan replied. If she sounded somewhat less sincere than Maddie, well, Maddie couldn’t blame her. From the look of her, Susan had already endured much at the hands—or, rather, paws—of advertising’s newest prospective star.
Wynne exited the terminal first. Maddie saw him go. Gomez and Hendricks were in the van, she knew, parked where they could keep an eye on her as she left the building, as well as watch her car while she was inside. McCabe came out last. As she glanced back instinctively to see if he was following—he was—she saw that every head in the terminal had turned to watch them go.
The arrangement was that Jon would drive Susan and Zelda to the hotel, while Maddie, hampered by the trailing FBI agents and the hit man they were hoping would take another crack at killing her, was going to go straight home from the airport.
“Do you want to wait here while I go get the car, or—?” Jon asked Susan as they paused under the overhang. The fluorescent lights set into the concrete ceiling were yellowy and dim. Beyond the overhang the parking lot—this particular terminal had its own—was dark, except for the pools of uncertain light thrown down by tall halogens. The rain had picked up and was now coming down at a steady rate. Little puffs of vapor rose from the pavement. The rain didn’t cool things off, as one might have expected. It just made the night muggier. A damp smell hung in the air. Cars drove past, pulling into and out of the parking lot, their tires swishing, their lights glancing off the terminal as they followed the curve of the drive. One paused not far from where they stood, and a man in a lightweight raincoat got out, slammed the door, and hurried inside. The car moved on.
“Go get the car,” Maddie said, with an eye to taking care of their guest, although she suddenly felt very exposed. The back side of the airport was protected. This side was not. Anyone could use the parking lot, or be positioned on one of the roads leading to the terminal or somewhere nearby.
McCabe apparently thought so, too. He’d been idling back near the door, not letting on by look or word that he was connected to them in any way, but as Jon turned his collar up against the rain and walked away, McCabe moved—subtly, she had to give him that—until he stood between her and the parking lot. To all outward appearances, he was simply a man who was waiting for a ride.
Maddie did him one better. She took a couple steps to the side and hid behind a giant concrete pillar.
Take that, hit man, she thought.
McCabe glanced around at her and gave a twitch of his lips that was the equivalent of a thumbs-up when he saw where she was.
“... expect to be here at least a week,” Susan was saying when Maddie tuned back into her. She had followed Maddie sideways, apparently subconsciously, and was talking away a mile a minute. “Or even longer, if that’s what it takes.”
“Wonderful,” Maddie said, though she had only the vaguest idea of what they were talking about. The carrier handle was killing her fingers. Maddie set the carrier down on the pavement, sighed with relief, and lobbed another M&M into Zelda. Zelda crunched and snuffled.
Maddie fed the beast.
“You know, that idea you and Jon had of using Zelda as the face of Brehmer’s was simply brilliant,” Susan said. “Mrs. B. is just thrilled with it.”
“I’m so glad.” Maddie watched a car coming toward them from the parking lot—was it Jon’s? Yes, she thought it was—and dug in her pocket for another M&M.
Unfortunately, she didn’t find one. Her fingers probed frantically into every corner of her pocket. Empty. All gone.
“I’m out of M&M’s,” she said, breaking in on whatever Susan had been saying, her voice tight with horror.
“Oh, no.”
They looked at each other in mutual consternation. The huffing sounds coming from the carrier grew ominously loud. In desperation, Maddie crouched and looked in at Zelda. Her furry little face was pressed against the grate; her black eyes gleamed.
“All out,” Maddie enunciated the words slowly, as if she were speaking to a hard-of-hearing foreigner with a limited grasp of English, and held out her empty hands, palms up, so that Zelda would get the idea.
Zelda got it, all right. She howled.
“No! No! No!” Susan set up a howl of her own, clapping her hands over her ears and stamping her feet in their sensible blue pumps and basically throwing a tantrum worthy of a two-year-old. Maddie shot upright, so surprised that she was gaping, at a loss as to how to deal with a grown woman—a client—who was totally losing it.
“Susan, please ...” she began, fighting the urge to cover her own ears. A car door slammed. Maddie looked toward the sound to discover that Jon was back at last and striding toward them. Beyond him, McCabe was grinning as he watched bedlam unfold. Beside Maddie, Zelda howled. And Susan, Maddie saw to her horror, now clenched her fists, stomped her feet—and wept.
“I can’t take it, I can’t, I can’t, that dog is a monster ...” Susan’s face was shining with tears. Looking past her, Maddie saw a security guard, who had materialized seemingly from out of nowhere, striding toward them. “She’s an ungrateful, undeserving mutt!”
Zelda, insulted, kicked it up a notch.
“What the ... ?” Jon gave Maddie an accusing look and put an arm around Susan. “Susan ...”
“I hate that dog,” Susan wailed, and buried her face in Jon’s shoulder.
“What you need is a break,” Maddie said desperately, almost shouting to be heard over Zelda’s inner wolf. Jon was looking pretty desperate himself while doing that clumsy patting thing men do to weeping women, to little apparent effect. “Listen, how about if I keep her tonight and let you get a good rest without having to worry about her?”
The effect was almost magical. Susan’s head lifted from Jon’s shoulder. She looked around at Maddie, and gave a shuddering gasp.
“Would you?”
Ten million dollars, Maddie reminded herself.
“I’d be glad to,” Maddie lied, trying not to think about how her neighbors were going to react to having a mad dog in the house, to say nothing about how her own nerves would hold out. Then she had an instant vision of McCabe’s probable reaction, and that almost—almost—made the whole thing worthwhile.
EIGHTEEN
> Fifteen minutes later, Maddie pulled into the McDonald’s on Clayton.
“Fine,” she said to the yodeling dog in the shaking plastic carrier on the front passenger seat. “You want food? Let’s get you food.”
As she drove around to the drive-through window, her cell phone began to ring. Not that she heard it, exactly. Zelda made hearing anything almost impossible. But it was in her jacket pocket and she felt it vibrate.
Fishing it out just as she reached the plastic speaker where they take your order, she snapped “What?” into the phone as she rolled down the window and yelled “large fry” at the intercom. Not that she exactly heard anyone ask for her order over Zelda, but she assumed.
“What are you doing?” McCabe’s voice said in her ear.
“Feeding this damned dog,” Maddie replied, heard a snort of laughter, and snapped the phone closed. She drove on to the first window and paid for the food.
“Doggy’s not very happy,” the clerk observed as he handed back her change.
Duh, Maddie thought, but managed not to say it. Moving to the next window, she practically snatched the bag from the girl who handed it over. Fishing out a fry before she even thought about rolling up the window or driving on, she thrust it through the grate.
Zelda’s histrionics stopped as abruptly as if Maggie had shut off a valve.
“Thank God,” Maddie said devoutly, and drove on, rolling up her window as she went.
Her cell phone rang again.
“What?”
“Stop right there,” McCabe said.
She was still in the parking lot just a few yards beyond the pickup window.
“What? Why?” As she automatically hit the brakes, she was looking fearfully all around. The parking lot was well lit and ...
“We’re getting a couple of Big Macs. Want anything?”
Jeez. For a minute there, she’d remembered to be scared.
“No.” Maddie glanced in her rearview mirror. Sure enough, there was the Blazer, stopped at the intercom. Apparently, being so close to food that wasn’t salad was more temptation than McCabe—and Wynne, who was driving—could stand. Zelda snuffled, and Maddie hastily poked another fry through the grate. The smell of fresh, hot grease wafted to her nostrils. “Okay. Fine. Get me a large fry. And a hamburger. And a chocolate shake. No, wait,” she added with a glance at the carrier, “make that about four large fries.”
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