He loved government austerity measures. So many opportunities for the creative.
Although the bacon was still raw on the griddle, the fatty salted smell made his mouth water. It had been, all things considered, a good day so far. The moment of weakness when he’d shared the truth about himself didn’t signify, because she’d thought him a nutter and he’d been off the hook. How many ways could he prove his immortality before the skeptical Miss Not-Mancini believed his claim? He poured espresso beans into a grinder. Her doubt didn’t matter, he repeated as the machine whirred. He didn’t need her trust. Just her cooperation. Together they’d eluded the hounds, and he’d had the bonus joy of a perfectly picked bag, rare enough since his talents had shifted to the insubstantial world of finance.
The background whoosh of the shower stopped, the signal to add a chunk of butter to the pan. His fried eggs could make a woman purr.
* * *
Part of Christina wanted to linger in the steamy shower until the hot water ran out. The shelf held six different body washes, ranging from one generically described as fresh and clean to a coconut tropical blend. Either he had a lot of companionship or he changed his scent with his identity. She liked the bar soap the best and held it to her nose while she let the water pound on her neck and back. It was outdoorsy, not so much pine that it smelled like furniture polish, but enough that she could be standing on a hilltop in a California forest far from here.
At home she would let the spray hit her muscles longer, or turn herself front to back into the cascading water like a pancake that never finished, but in someone else’s apartment she felt obligated to conserve.
With a towel wrapped around her hair and his thick white robe turning her into a snowman, she stared at the dirty denim jacket on the floor. The phone in the pocket was the only thing worth salvaging. She could call Elaine Johnson. It was less than a day since she’d seen the other woman, and Elaine always sounded happy to hear from her. She could count on Elaine to take her shopping and give her a place to sleep.
The black phone was the simplest she’d seen in ages, nothing but a small screen, number keys and red and green arrows on either side of a selector button. Apparently scoring a fix didn’t require high tech, but even this thing required a password. She tried 1 through 5 together, then 1 through 6, all zeroes, and then the numeric equivalent of the word password. Nothing worked. Frustration overwhelmed her so strongly that she must have squeezed a button on the side, because the screen flashed a series of Es.
She’d passed store signs while biking, so she knew SIM cards were easy to find and cost about five pounds. She nestled the phone in the bag beside the Chateau Perlus and picked up the dirty clothes, boots and purse. Hopefully Stig had sweat pants and a T-shirt she could borrow. These were not touching her body again.
The delicious smells of bacon and coffee greeted her on the other side of the door, but that welcoming scent and double-place setting was at odds with the rest of the scene. Stig stood sideways next to the drawn blinds of the living room window, what looked like a tablet computer in his hand.
“I was right to use the cellar door.” His eyes locked with hers. His lips had almost disappeared, they were pressed inward so tightly. “We have a babysitter.”
The clothes tumbled from her hands. “Wend and Skafe?”
“No.” He beckoned her forward. “See if you recognize him.” The screen showed a wide-angle view of the street outside. “I have a minicam near the roof, and it feeds my computer by a cable. Not even a wireless signal to detect.”
“How do you know he’s watching us?”
“First, the average smoker actually smokes. Our friend outside’s not exhaling. His cigarette’s only burning on the end, no draw from inhaling.”
“Just to play devil’s advocate, maybe he’s trying to quit or it’s one of those smokeless electronic ones.”
“Am I allowed to roll my eyes at you, or does that only go one direction? He’s wearing a tan coat here.” Stig scrolled from left to right on the touchscreen. “This is an hour ago.”
In the image, a man with the same build, same color pants and same shoes walked slowly down the sidewalk, wearing a belted black trench coat. When he paused to fiddle with his phone, she could see that the face was identical.
“I’ve never seen a gentleman who wasn’t casing a mark change his Mackintosh on breaks,” Stig said.
“Shit.” With that whispered word, the air and energy left her like a week-old party balloon.
“Bloody miracle. You didn’t argue the point.” He leaned his forehead against hers.
The single touch sent a current of strength from their spot of contact through her spine, reminding her not to give up, not yet, not until she had the fake wines removed from the auction and her business salvaged. “Must be the smell of bacon. It’s warped my brain.”
The plates of breakfast looked like Papa Bear and Baby Bear, one filled with what must be six pieces of bacon, three eggs and a tower of toast points. The other was a manageable two of each, and she headed for that plate.
“...Bodeby’s...” The word rose from the background noise of the television and simultaneously jolted both of them.
Stig was a step ahead of her into the kitchen, where a television played.
“The Metropolitan Police have concluded that there is a link between the early morning shooting at Paddington and the reported kidnapping last night from Bodeby’s Auction House in St. James’s Square.”
A picture flashed next to the female announcer. It had the slightly grainy look of photos taken from security cameras. Stig’s profile was visible in the sideview of the four of them on Bodeby’s front steps, but her face was partially obscured by Wend’s shoulder.
“We have a reporter on the scene.” The feed cut to a man standing in front of the auction house, microphone in hand.
All she could do was wrap her arms around herself and rock, eyes fixed on the screen as the words swirled in her head.
“Thank you, Rebecca. Sources close to the investigation say that the police have video from two locations showing the kidnappers’ progress between Bodeby’s and Paddington. The two victims have been identified as California wine merchant Geoffrey Morrison and his assistant, Christina Mancini. They were apparently working on the upcoming auction of the late Lord Charles Seymour’s wine collection. There’s no word yet from his daughter or Bodeby’s on whether the auction will proceed as scheduled, but there is a lot of speculation in the wine world right now.”
Sick fear mixed with anger inside her chest, but she held them in. Not one sound from her interrupted the lead story. No words were necessary, nor could they describe the total loss of her life’s work that this publicity would inevitably cause. The wealthy valued privacy.
The news camera flipped to the studio, where the same woman turned to the man seated beside her at the desk. “Have the police identified this morning’s shooting victim?”
The alleged victim was standing next to her. She’d seen his naked, unmarked chest only a few hours before and even found it attractive, a fact that made her stomach twist as she waited for the announcer’s answer.
“The police won’t comment on an ongoing investigation, but eyewitnesses in Paddington at the time of the shooting have identified Morrison as the person taken away by ambulance with a woman. However, both of them disappeared from St. Mary’s Hospital under irregular circumstances, so you can see this is a very intense situation. We’ll keep viewers informed of this rapidly unfolding investigation. Anyone with information is urged to contact the Metropolitan Police immediately at the number displayed on your screen.”
Impossible to imagine a public explanation that conveyed how she too had been duped and carried this far like a twig in a flood. No one would ever believe her, especially not if they discovered Christina Mancini had invented her boss and hadn’t bee
n adopted by Frank Mancini.
“I have to tell my brother I’m okay. I can’t let him think...” She trailed off. Uncle Robert might not be worried, since he seemed to consider her a complication instead of kin, but Manny would be frantic if he heard these reports.
“I’m sorry.” Stig’s regret sounded genuine, but it didn’t matter.
“It’s over, isn’t it?” She felt nothing. She should be angry or in tears, but both reactions were beyond her reach. Staying on her feet, upright and functioning, that was her limit. More wasn’t available. “I’ve lost everything.”
“No, of course not.” This answer was flat, as if he’d exhausted his ability to deceive. Or maybe now she saw through it better. “You still have...”
“My reputation?” She laughed, recognizing that the sound was too loud for the small kitchen but unable to stop it bursting out.
He didn’t join her because it obviously wasn’t funny.
“You were right that I had all the documents to prove your fraud in my suitcase. I left it in the Bodeby’s coat room.” She turned away from the screen because there was nothing more it could tell her.
The news audio clicked off, and then he wrapped his arms around her from behind. “It will get sorted out, I’m confident.”
“The papers are police evidence now, aren’t they? They’ll be examined.”
His cheek pressed against her temple. They stood like that, wrapped in a silent hug, for a long time. Long enough that she started to notice the small noises like the refrigerator hum and the faint beeps of a truck backing somewhere blocks away, and feel the slight scrape of his stubble.
Finally he said, “Eat while I shower. Then we’ll talk about eluding the gentleman outside and taking the train to France. No one will be looking for you over there, so you can call your brother before you fly back to the U.S. and deny the allegations from your home.”
* * *
At first Christina hadn’t believed the man who’d emerged from the bathroom was the same person. Yesterday’s laugh lines around his eyes must have been makeup, because the clean-scrubbed man sitting across the table from her looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties instead of ten years older. But the moment he’d explained the plan he’d devised in the shower, she’d had no doubts he was the man who’d convinced her to jump down a laundry chute and use rental bikes for a getaway.
Like an expert, Stig wiggled a set of red-tipped fingers in the air to dry. A massive makeup kit had replaced the breakfast dishes.
“Hold still if you want me to glue the other set.” When he’d described his idea to pretend to be two men going to Paris for a burlesque competition, she’d thought he’d been watching too much vintage television. After he’d brushed dark shadow expertly across her cheeks, upper lip and chin, inserted silicone pads between her gums and cheeks to broaden her jaw, narrowed her natural lip line and shadowed her nose to widen it, she’d admitted the impersonation had a chance.
Unfortunately she couldn’t drink coffee with the pads in her mouth, but three cups already had her eyes feeling stretched to her hairline. With her brain running like a hamster, her biggest challenge was keeping her hands steady enough to finish his nails.
“You look delightfully eighties in your pin shirt.”
She was too small for most of his clothes, but he’d slashed horizontal openings in a pair of black running tights that fit her like baggy leggings. After cutting the sleeves off a sweatshirt, he’d reattached them with rows of safety pins and produced a compression wrap to tie across her breasts. The super-strong wrap had remarkably cinched her already small chest enough that the sweatshirt hung straight. With the makeup and cheekpads, she looked like a young man dressed like a retro punk. Sort of. Her new passport, the photo taken against one of Stig’s white apartment walls, proclaimed her to be a Spanish national named José Felipe Suárez. “I wouldn’t know. I was six when the eighties ended.”
He threw the back of his finished hand to his forehead. “Say it isn’t so.” Stig’s voice, as smooth emerging from his carmine-painted lips as a world-class vintage, was her only tether. Without him, she suspected she’d either twitch all over from a coffee overdose or collapse on the floor, sleeping until Armageddon.
“You were a kid too.”
“It was yesterday for me. Remember—” his eyes crinkled at the corners, “—I’m immortal.”
He was trying very hard to distract her from the fact that at noon a new man had relieved the unwanted watcher on the street, or to cheer her—she didn’t know. But he was sweet. Or maybe she was deliriously loopy. Maybe anyone short of Jack the Ripper would seem sweet in her state.
“We’ll make it.” He sounded more confident than he had before he’d put on a dress and stockings. “We’ll drive out of London like thousands of other cars. It’ll be an easy haul to the Folkestone vehicle train terminal and a short ride to France.”
She bent her head to concentrate on gluing the next-to-last nail, which allowed her to avoid both scrutiny and answers.
“We won’t have any problems getting on the vehicle train.” Stig’s voice was a little higher, the words blending faster but still with precise diction that pushed his red lips into exaggerated shapes. “It’s dead easy. Cars barely stop for the security checks.”
“You have to stop talking with your hands.” Shifting her grip to his thumb, the pads of her fingers trailed across his palm. She felt the hard bumps of calluses, as if the man who seemed equally at ease in evening wear or a dress also labored with his hands.
“I’m embracing my character. Let’s see, thirty-five minutes on the train puts us in France.” He should be letting his nails dry with his hand passively resting while she worked, but suddenly he too was stroking the pads of his fingers across her palm. “At Calais, we’ll drive right off.” His voice rose at the end, a facsimile of female up-talking. “They unload as quickly as possible, which is in our favor.”
His thumb curled underneath her hand to trace the length of each of her fingers. The connection between them was as brief as the amount of time they’d known each other, yet the comfort his touch offered was enough to ease the tension that tightened her shoulders. He hadn’t failed her yet.
“I know a spot for dinner in the center of Calais. We’ll celebrate our successful escape with the 1947 Perlus.”
“Don’t jinx it.” His confidence had the reverse effect on her, draining her coffee-fueled alertness until she couldn’t tell where the chair ended and her immobilized, exhausted legs began.
He spread his arms wide, giving her a complete look at the padded bra, plunging V-front of the wrap dress and smooth-shaven chest. Every golden hair that had made her stop breathing when he’d stripped in the art-filled tunnel room was gone, and nothing softened the sharp cuts of muscle marking the hollow of his throat. “Come on, how could anything go wrong? We’re partners.”
“Let me count the ways.” The prickles stealing over her skin were only a result of the combination of coffee, bacon and nerves—not excitement, not warmth from his words or from the glow of his smooth skin.
Twenty minutes later they had packed clothes, money and an unidentifiable tangle of electronic devices, which reminded her that the phone she’d slipped in the bag with the wine needed a new SIM card.
At the door, Stig stopped and sketched a casual salute. “Goodbye, flat. Nice knowing you.”
“That’s it?” She glanced at the pink-and-black houndstooth-patterned makeup kit and vivid jumble of women’s clothes he carried. “You’re leaving everything else?”
“People like you and me learn to move on.”
She would never be like him. Last night his assertion would have invigorated her anger, but right now she felt too hollow to object that unlike him, she had roots. She had a lifetime of family and friends in Napa, a brother who’d eventually return from the
military, and she wanted a vineyard with real roots, roots she could dig with a shovel, no matter what she had to do to get it.
Arms full, he pointed his chin at a complex collage of blue and gray shapes interspersed with finely etched rectangles of various metals. “That’s the only thing I’ll truly miss, but I can do another.”
“You painted that?” The colors and shapes sang of the London skyline on a gray day, a day like this one. Every time her eyes had rested on the six-foot-long canvas hung over the white leather couch, she’d wondered if the real owner missed the artwork. Hearing that it wasn’t stolen pressed a weight of guilty assumptions onto her spine, until she felt smaller.
“Would you believe that I also painted the art you saw in the tunnel?”
She turned to the door, the clog in her throat far too large and spiky to be proportional to his teasing, but challenging him took energy she didn’t have to spare. She had to concentrate on setting one foot in front of the other and moving forward, away from London and this mess.
They descended a stairwell marked Emergency that led to a garage so small it might once have been a hallway, but it was big enough to fit one tiny blue car. She didn’t recognize the make, but then she doubted a car this small would be driven anywhere in America outside downtown San Francisco.
Stig tossed his possessions in the gap between the front seats and the rear window, and then dropped a pair of silver-glitter high heels and a wig box on top. His closet contents, including the deep purple wrap dress and green print scarf that he’d chosen to wear, had made it obvious that dressing in women’s clothing was not a new idea.
The longer she looked at the hairless skin revealed by his crossover neckline, the more she believed his chest had become smoother than her own legs. Best not to stare, of course, but she was a single woman and he was...confident. His appearance and mannerisms had altered, but the underlying magnetism that had brought the rich and connected into his orbit at Bodeby’s hadn’t changed, despite the dress and glitter eye shadow.
“Your ride, Señor Suárez.” He held the left-side door open as if he expected her to drive, and then she remembered that was where passengers sat in England.
The Second Lie (Immortal Vikings Book 2) Page 12