Foreign Éclairs

by Julie Hyzy

  “That’s why he smokes alone. Who would you rather follow? The leader who commands authority and exhibits self-confidence or one who chain-smokes his way through every decision?”

  I looked out the window at the city rushing by. “I wish I hadn’t asked.”

  Gav glanced over. “He’s human. He experiences self-doubt and anxiety just like the rest of us. The difference is that stakes are much higher in his world than they are in most others. The best decisions can still result in horrific consequences. People can die. Joe lives in a constant state of worry that he’s overlooked some key component.”

  “Are you?” I asked. “Worried, I mean? I know you didn’t want me to be part of this.”

  “Yeah.” He flexed his jaw. “If this were any other operation, I wouldn’t second-guess a minute of it. But your presence changes everything. I’ve been trained to see a mission through to the end, regardless of what’s going on around me. Life or death is often decided in a split second and the most successful decisions are made objectively. They have to be.”

  “And you can’t be objective while I’m around.”

  He frowned into the windshield. “Not even a little bit.”

  “Are you saying you wish I hadn’t agreed to take part?”

  “Like that would ever happen.” He reached over to pat my leg. “No, you made the right choice. This is my issue to deal with. I know I’m being overprotective and trying to shelter you, but Joe has every possible contingency covered. I have faith in him and the team. We’re going to be fine.”

  “What about your objectivity? Won’t that be a problem?”

  “There should never be a moment where I’ll need to make a life-or-death decision.” He spoke with confidence, yet grimaced at the road. “Because my judgment could be clouded by concern for your safety, Joe has effectively taken me out of the equation. I’m not running any part of this. I’m not officially on duty. That’s why he brought in so many professionals. So that everyone involved—everyone with the capacity to make those life-and-death decisions—will do so objectively.”

  We traveled for some time in silence, my right leg bouncing a nervous rhythm as I crossed and uncrossed my arms. All I could think about was my role in this scenario and wondering when the time would come to play it. Would it be tonight? Tomorrow? Who knew when the would-be assassins planned to strike?

  Yablonski had admonished me to obey orders. I’d promised I would, but wondered how hard it would be to blindly follow instructions if conflicting impulses kicked in. I’d found myself in dire situations so often that I’d learned to rely on instinct to guide me through. This time, however, though the stakes were as high as they’d ever been, I needed to suppress my base urges to act out, speak out, flee, or fight.

  I reminded myself that, unlike many of my other altercations, professionals were in charge this time. They knew what they were doing. A misstep on my part could have tragic consequences. I hoped for Gav’s sake, and for mine, that I had what it took to relinquish control.

  Once traffic thinned, I turned around to get a look at the car behind us. Other than the fact that there were two people riding in the boxy, dark vehicle, I couldn’t make out much; they were too far back.

  “How will we know if we’re being followed?”

  “Joe has eyes and ears everywhere on this one,” he said. “If he has any suspicion that they’ll make their move before we get to the winery, Joe will signal and we’ll abort.”

  “Do you really believe the Armustanians picked up enough detail from our conversation last night to know where to find us?”

  His face was grim. “Their goal is to eliminate you, for revenge, and to take me down in a blaze of glory to prove they can infiltrate our ranks. If they were listening in, they know where we’re going. They want us dead. I believe they’re going to come.”

  I shuddered.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’ll be glad when this is over.”

  “We both will.” He reached for my hand and squeezed. “As much as I hate to say it, let’s hope they have been listening and that they make their move tonight. If they do, then they’re attacking on our timeline, when we have home court advantage. This may be our only shot at taking them down.”

  “And you don’t think they’ll suspect an ambush?” I asked. “You don’t think that they’ll find it convenient that we planned this getaway, all alone, in a rural setting? If it were me, I’d smell a trap.”

  “Let’s hope they aren’t as smart as you are.”

  I digested that. “And while we’re waiting for them to make their move? What can we—you and I—do?”

  He shot me a resigned look. “You heard what Joe said. Our job is to sit and wait.”

  CHAPTER 20

  By the time we turned onto the gravel driveway for Spencer’s Vineyards, even I was convinced we hadn’t been followed. Whether that meant that the bad guys were waiting for us to settle in before making their move or whether they were utterly unaware of our plan, I had no idea.

  Gav had warned me ahead of time that Joe Yablonski and his driver would abandon us a few miles before our destination, but only if they were sure it was safe. In almost the same breath, he assured me that we would never be out of a team member’s sight—we just wouldn’t know where our guardian angels might be hiding while they watched.

  “This is turning out to be some romantic weekend, isn’t it?” I asked, exaggerating my words for effect. “Eavesdroppers at home, voyeurs out here. What more could we want?”

  “You’re nervous, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “A little.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  The vineyard was set about a mile in from the main road, and I waited a couple of seconds as we bounced and jostled along the uneven drive. “What made you ask?”

  “Besides being chatty, you’re making jokes. Trying to lighten the mood.”

  “Is that so unusual? Am I normally not lighthearted?”

  He slid a glance my way. “It’s going to be okay, I promise. Smooth as silk.”

  I nodded.

  Whenever I’d come here before with Gav, it had been during the day. This was my first time visiting the property at sunset. If it weren’t for the apprehension in my heart, I might have taken the time to appreciate the way the waning sunlight stretched over the landscape and shadows patterned the tidy rows.

  We usually parked alongside one of the utility buildings nearest the tasting room, but today Gav drove past the single-story whitewashed structures, pulling up in front of Bill and Erma’s rustic, two-story home.

  When we got out of the car, Gav straightened and stretched in the cool evening air. He flexed his arms, lifting them to the sky before lowering them to his sides. He swiveled his torso right and left. I was close enough to read his expression and knew that he was scoping out the area, seeking evidence of his colleagues’ presence, hoping to find none. The better they were hidden, the safer we were.

  “Everything okay?” I asked, keeping it vague. Members of Yablonski’s team—some of whom I hadn’t met—had been on site from the moment the plan had been hatched. There was zero possibility of anyone having planted surveillance equipment here since we hadn’t “informed” the terrorists we were coming until late last night, but avoiding specifics was a good habit, regardless.

  “All good,” he said, reaching into the back for our duffel bags. “You ready for our romantic getaway?”

  “Can’t imagine anything I’d enjoy more.”

  As we started up the home’s front stairs, the door opened and Maryann Morris stepped outside. “Well, hello, you two,” she said, waving us in. “Bill,” she called to Louis Del Priore. “They’re here.”

  If anyone happened to be watching from the shadows, they would have seen the two of us greet the older couple warmly, shuffle into the house, and emerge a few minutes later with the key to the guest cottage in Gav’s hand.

  Del Priore, wearing clothes identical to those I’d seen
Bill in plenty of times, accompanied us out onto the porch as he provided helpful suggestions on things to do over the weekend, where to go for dinner if we didn’t feel like cooking, and a reminder that the cottage’s bathroom door often stuck and we might have to jiggle the knob a bit. If I hadn’t met the real Bill as many times as I had, I’d never suspect this guy wasn’t genuine.

  “Just follow the path.” He pointed vaguely north and west up the gentle rise. “Erma stocked the fridge and pantry for you. You know how she is,” he said as we headed down the stairs. “And we left you plenty of wine, of course.”

  Before we made it to the corner of the house where we were to take a right, Gav turned and called back, “You and Erma have a good time at the conference. You leaving tonight or tomorrow?”

  “Tonight. Couple hours from now. Will we see you when we get back?”

  “We’re taking off late Sunday night,” Gav said.

  “Ah, too bad. We won’t be home until Monday.” The fake Bill raised his hand as he turned back toward the door. “We’ll have to catch up another time. Soon.”

  “You got it,” Gav said.

  The path “Bill” had referred to turned out to be a narrow string of flagstones set in a jagged walkway like a kinked ribbon. Not that we needed it to lead us to our destination. Even though dusk had begun to settle, there was no chance of getting lost. Our weekend accommodations—or the target for terrorists, however you wanted to look at it—sat a hundred yards ahead up the hill in the center of a wide horseshoe of low shrubbery.

  About the size of a two-car garage, the asymmetrical wood-shingled cottage had a covered porch framed by trellised rosebushes I could smell from twenty paces away. The wide blooms that appeared gray from a distance turned out to be the palest shade of pink close up.

  I liked the fact that there was nowhere for anyone to hide. No chance of a crazed Armustanian bursting from knee-high bushes to attack. The nearest trees sat more than a hundred yards behind the tiny cottage. I wondered where Yablonski’s team members were stationed, and wondered how close they’d let the Armustanians get before taking them down.

  “There’s a lot of empty land surrounding this,” I said. “Why don’t Bill and Erma use more of it for grapevines?”

  “I believe they intend to expand in the coming years,” Gav said, “but I don’t know why they haven’t yet. That’s part of what they want me to learn before we take ownership, I suppose.”

  “It’s a quaint cottage,” I said. “This is where you sleep when you stay here?”

  He nodded. “It’s nice inside. I think you’ll like it.”

  As he fitted the key in the lock, I placed a hand on his arm. “This feels . . . weird,” I said. “I’m jittery.”

  “I feel it, too.” He looked down at me and brushed the hair from my eyes. “And I’m sorry for everything that’s brought us here,” he said, keeping it vague in case anyone was close enough to listen in. “If we’re lucky, this weekend will help us . . .”—he searched for the right words—“find our happiness again.”

  We were placing ourselves in harm’s way, hoping to tempt the bad guys into the open, where they expected to kill us.

  “Yes,” I said. “I hope we’re very lucky.”

  * * *

  Joe Yablonski’s team had wired the location before the eavesdroppers heard the first hint about our plans to visit. Gav told me that two team members from the meeting in the Family Dining Room were on surveillance duty. They could see our every move, hear our every word.

  When we first arrived, Gav walked me through a couple of important procedures. There were four hot-button stations—emergency alarms—that, when activated, would bring reinforcements running. The first was a kick-plate positioned inside the cottage, to the immediate right of the door. The second, in the kitchen, was attached to the side of the fridge like an uninspired magnet. The bedroom alarm sat slightly below the light switch and was labeled “fan,” even though there was no such device in the room. The final button had been secreted in the narrow space behind the toilet tank and the back wall in the bathroom. Except for the kick-plate, which resembled an oversize length of baseboard molding, all the alarms were plastic, white, about the size of a nickel, and set inside a square metal frame.

  “We need to be careful not to set these off accidentally.” Gav led me back into the kitchen, where he opened the upper cabinet to the right of the sink. He moved two drinking glasses aside and pulled out a small black case that sat behind them. With three backlit buttons and a hook on its back, it resembled a garage door opener. “If we need to get out of the cottage quickly, we’ll be alerted here.” He pressed the widest of the three buttons. “We’re in,” he said. “You copy?”

  A moment later, a voice said, “Affirmative. We are live. No company yet.”

  Gav pressed the button again. “We’re ready for the test.”

  “Stand by. Ten seconds.”

  Gav held up a finger and I waited. Ten seconds later, a shrill whistle sounded. By the time I blinked, it was over.

  “Yikes, that’s harsh,” I said.

  “It’s effective. If we hear that, we leave. Immediately.”

  “Understood,” I said.

  Pressing the Talk button again, Gav said, “We are in for the night.”

  “Copy that,” the disembodied voice responded. “Out.”

  He pointed to the button he’d been accessing. “If I slide this latch over the control to hold it down, I can keep an open com link.”

  “What are the other buttons for?” I asked.

  “This one,” he pointed to the small one on the left, “allows us to listen in on the team, to hear what’s going on at the main location. When we do, they’re alerted that we’re listening in. When I press it, I need to immediately provide a code word, ‘Storm,’ otherwise they will assume the device has fallen into enemy hands and react accordingly.”

  “Great.” I didn’t know whether to be happy or terrified that Yablonski had planned for such a contingency. “What about the last one?”

  “The likelihood of our having to run is slim, but if we do, we take this with us. It’s a form of GPS. The third button is one we don’t want to have to need. Remember the jamming technology John and Joan talked about last night?”

  “The method to prevent cell signals from getting through so that remote-controlled bombs can’t be detonated?”

  He nodded. “That’s the one. If we find ourselves facing a bomb situation, we need to hit this button to engage that dampening field. But the moment we do, we no longer transmit our location. This effectively shuts down all signals within about a half mile.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  Reacting, perhaps, to the look on my face, Gav said. “Overwhelming, isn’t it?”

  “Feels like something out of James Bond or Mission: Impossible but this setup, this type of scenario, is all in a day’s work for you. Isn’t it?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “I’m always worried when you’re out on a mission,” I said. “My worry level for you is skyrocketing right about now.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, we sat next to one another on the compact love seat in front of the droning television, two untouched glasses of wine on the coffee table before us. I had no complaints about the cottage. Though small, it was cozy, with a stone fireplace in the corner of this snug living room, a galley kitchen—abundantly stocked exactly as “Bill” had foretold—and a sleeping area so small I needed to scoot sideways around the bed to get around it.

  “Well, this is nice,” Gav said after a prolonged period of silence.

  I shot him a look. “Would you rather have me chatty, making jokes?”

  “I’d rather we both were home and safe.”

  “Yeah.” I couldn’t see anything out either of the windows flanking the television, but I found myself glancing over at the dark panes every few seconds nonetheless.

  After we’d prepared and consumed a light dinner of roast beef sandwich
es and vegetable soup, we’d unpacked our few belongings and toiletries. Now we had nothing left to do but wait. And I couldn’t help but think that every passing moment brought the murderous Armustanians closer.

  Although we’d turned on the television, we kept the sound low lest we miss an important alert from the garage door–opener communication device. Not that it mattered. I couldn’t concentrate on the broadcast anyway.

  “We brought books,” I said. “Would you rather read?”

  He rested his elbows on his knees, one of which bounced exactly the way mine had on our car ride over. He glanced at his watch. “You tired?”

  With tension gnawing at every nerve in my body I didn’t think I’d fall asleep for a month. “Not in the least.”

  He frowned into some middle distance. “It’s probably a good idea for us to make it look as though we’re turning in for the night. If anything happens, they’ll want to believe they have the element of surprise.”

  “Sounds good,” I said without conviction.

  We got up from the tiny sofa and made our way to the bedroom, turning off the cottage lights along the way. When I scooched behind Gav to get past him in a particularly narrow passage between the bedroom and bath, he turned and grabbed me by both shoulders. “We’re going to be okay,” he said. “Really, we will.”

  Though reassured by the words, I was more warmed by the depth of emotion in his eyes. “I know,” I said. And in that moment, I believed it. “But . . . is it supposed to be like this? My nerves feel like they’ve been doused in jalapeño pepper juice. Is this . . . normal?” I asked. “I want to do something. Not sit and wait for strangers to decide my fate for me.”

  “Come on, let’s talk.” Gav went ahead of me into the bedroom. He pulled back the red-and-sage-plaid coverlet and sat down. “I’ll take this side, nearer to the door. You take the wall.” He chanced a look directly above the headboard at the room’s lone window, then got up to lower its shade. “Climb in,” he said as he patted the mattress. “Let’s get comfortable; we may be here a while.”