“Hey, Martha, I need to talk to Pete. Um, how is he feeling today?”
“Annoyed. But that’s typical.” She sighed. “This morning I told him the other department heads had started a pool based on the timing of his demise. They’re giving two-to-one odds on a heart attack at the office. The man has no idea how to relax!”
Ouch. If he died, I’d have even more guilt to add to the trailer I was already towing. Not a pretty thought. “You should talk him into going on a fishing trip or something.”
“I could. But he’d just end up snagging his line on a body or catching sight of some high-level, vacationing drug lord and that would be the end of that.”
“Well, we’ll think of something. So . . . did he tell you about last night?”
“I heard your car got a little bent out of shape.”
“Yeah. But it wasn’t my fault.”
“It never is, hon. Are you and Vayl okay?”
“Yeah, we’re fine.”
“Well, that’s what really matters.” She sighed. Disappointed we’d survived, or just dreading the task ahead? “I’m starting the paperwork this morning, so it should be ready for you to sign when you come back. Do you need a new vehicle? I might be able to get you one from the same company.”
The same company. Holy crap, Martha knew exactly what kind of car we’d been driving because she’d made the rental arrangements to start with! She could easily have given Graybeard the details. Of course, Pete would’ve had access to that information too. The senators? Yeah, they could’ve found out as well. So much for narrowing down my field of suspects. Only Bergman had an airtight alibi, that being his paranoia. He’d never hire someone else to do his dirty work because he’d be too sure they’d betray him.
Bergman’s bow out of the race gave me no consolation. That still left five other people I liked and/or worked for. No way would finding the answer to this particular riddle make me a happy camper. My stomach churned, spitting acid all over my delectable breakfast, making it want to part company with my digestive system.
“Jasmine?”
“Sorry, I was spacing out.” Out, out, out . . . I dug my fingernails into my thigh. “Naw, don’t worry about the ride. It’s taken care of. Pete, however, is another story. Is he busy?”
“Never too busy for you. Hang on.”
I didn’t have long to wait. Pete’s got a thing about telephone charges. He doesn’t like paying them.
“What’s up, Parks?”
“Last night’s fiasco. We seem to have an information leak in our department. There’s no other way those jokers could’ve found us.”
“I agree. I’m also concerned about the Assan side of things. If we don’t handle this right—” He stopped, because what could he say that didn’t reek of drama? We sat in frozen silence, fully understanding the ramifications of a plan that included the words “Raptor,” “terrorist allies,” and “virus.” Then I guess our dwindling phone minutes snapped him back to reality, because Pete trucked right on, saying, “Last night I suggested to Vayl that you might want backup. He said he would let you make that call.”
Hell yeah, I wanted to say. How about the Florida National Guard, for a start? But in our business, if you pressed the panic button every time you thought the world might be ending, you’d be out of work before you could say, “But we thought—”
However it would be nice to have someone outside the Agency we knew we could trust, because you never knew what these loons were going to throw at you. And I had an ideal candidate in mind.
“I want to bring in Bergman.”
Thoughtful pause while Pete tallied up the potential expense of that request. “You sure you need a tech-head?”
“We’ve already got plenty of muscle. I know it’s gonna cost you, but I shouldn’t have to remind you the guy’s a genius. Plus he’s an outsider.” Way out, actually, but I knew how to deal with that. “He made a big difference in the result of our last mission. You said that yourself.”
“Okay, give him a call.”
“Thanks. And, Pete, I really think we’ve got to go silent until this is over.” I waited for him to protest. If he’d engineered last night’s attack, he’d want to keep track of us so he’d know where to send the next wave. His reply, immediate and definite, left no doubt in my mind where he stood.
“I think that’s for the best.”
Yes! That left one less heartbreak on my horizon. “Okay, talk to you on the other side.”
“Parks . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Take care of yourself. That’s an order.”
“Yes sir.”
After we hung up I did a little happy dance around the rim of the pit, managing not to fall in despite some spectacular high kicks. Gosh, if I hadn’t minded the whole world ogling my butt I could’ve been a showgirl! I took one more victory lap, settled back down at the table, and called Bergman.
After drumming my fingers through five different sets of prerecorded options and punching a combination of buttons that practically committed me to sacrificing my firstborn if I revealed any detail of our pending conversation to anyone, I had to leave a voice mail. While I waited for his return call I keyed the name of Senator/Suspect #1 into our database and started reading.
Two hours later I’d read all the information I could gather on Senators Fellen, Tredd, and Bozcowski. I’d also done a short background check on Cole Bemont out of sheer nosiness. I felt much better about our spontaneous exchange of affection now that I knew he was definitely one of the good guys.
Wondering when Bergman would decide to crawl out of his cave and reenter the real world, I decided I’d wait more patiently if I could do so standing up. So I moved all the furniture out of the pit and lined it up against the walls like freaked out preteens at the Christmas Dance.
Tae kwon do was the first martial art I ever learned. Mom started sending me to class when I was eight, somehow managing to find me a new instructor every time we moved, so that by the time I hit eleven I’d earned a first-degree black belt. I’ve trained in plenty of other disciplines since then, but tae kwon do is still my favorite. I started with white belt, worked my way through each form until I reached my present rank, fifth-degree black belt. By the time I’d finished, my ribs were pounding out an SOS on my lungs and my sweats were soaked. So I headed to the shower.
I peeked out the curtain on the way. “Nothing moving out there. The whole damn state must be hungover.” Which was when I realized a new year had crashed on me. Should I make a resolution? Be nicer to old women and cats? Swear less? Learn a new language?
“Got it!” I told my reflection as I went into the bathroom to undress. “My resolution is to learn how to swear in a new language.
If Evie were here she’d be rolling her eyes. “That’s not swearing less, Jaz,” she’d say.
“Ah, but that is where you are wrong, little round grasshopper,” I’d tell her in my Chinese grocer accent. She loves that one because, of course, I do it terribly. “I will be swearing less in English. And I will be learning a new language.”
I lingered over my second shower and afterward took the time to shave and pluck and cosmeticize myself into some semblance of order. Now wearing black jeans and a long-sleeved purple shirt with prehistoric cave paintings printed all over it, I was ready—to wait some more. These were the times I missed Evie the most. She’s one of those people who’s easy to be with, laid-back, undemanding, never in your face—like me. I do sometimes think it’s good we were military brats. All those moves forced us to become friends with each other because we knew our other friendships couldn’t last.
Okay, much more of this mushy crap and I’ll have to trade my PPK for a parasol.
I dropped to the bed, turned on the TV, and picked up my cards. While Oprah helped some poor schmuck finally let go of her dead parrot, I shuffled. It sounds lame, I know. But I like the sound the cards make slapping against each other. It’s much sweeter than the clatter of my thoughts, looping a
round my brain like the cars on a kid’s racetrack, never winning, never ending, just rushing in circles until I want to lay down on a busy stretch of railroad and hope Dudley Do-Right is busy elsewhere.
Bergman called just as I turned the channel and—what do you know!—Dudley Do-Right galloped across the screen, riding Horse backward because that’s how all courageous Mounties ride their steeds in the backwoods of Canada. “Jasmine? Are you secure?”
Hmm, really too many ways to answer that question, and not all of them comforting. “It’s safe to talk,” I said. “What’re you up to?”
“Nothing.”
Which meant he had several high-level, top-secret projects on the burner, none of which he wanted to discuss. “Cool. That means you’ve got some free time, right?”
“Could have. What do you need?”
“Backup. Big-time backup with all the bells and whistles. How soon can you be in Miami with a vehicle?”
Long silence as Bergman did some mental calculating. “How soon do you need me?”
“Dusk would be good.” I chuckled, but he got the message.
“I’ll leave tonight and call you when I hit town.”
“Excellent,” I said, and we hung up. Nice thing about Bergman, he likes to leave the details for face-to-face conversations. “Don’t worry, Vayl,” I said, looking at my wall as if I could see through it, straight into his room, “help is on the way.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Nobody could rent me the kind of power I needed in a vehicle, though I only meant to use it until Bergman showed, so I ended up leasing one. That chore accomplished, I spent the rest of the time until dusk rearranging furniture. I reset the pit, using a completely different configuration than the hotel preferred and thinking I’d showed up their designers big-time. Evie always forces me to watch HGTV when I visit, and I felt sure most of their decorators would approve of the cozy new conversation area I’d created. Now I just had to figure out why I thought I needed one.
I was just getting the urge to shuffle cards in response to this new brain teaser when darkness fell. A strange sound from Vayl’s room made me jump to my feet. It was half gulp, half gasp, what you might expect to hear from a man who’s not accustomed to screaming.
I was through his door before the sound stopped, Grief cocked in my hand.
Vayl stood in front of his tent-covered bed, staring at me as if I had come to spear him with stakes and drown him in holy water. He was naked.
“Whoa!” I covered my eyes and spun around. Redundant, I know, but that two-second view of his magnificent pale bod had activated my conservative Midwestern values, chief among those the belief that you don’t ogle naked men who don’t already belong to you. “I’m sorry! I heard this noise and it sounded like you were in danger, so I came to save you. I’m outta here,” I said, moving toward the door.
“No, stay. There is a, there was a . . .” He stopped, pulled himself together. “I found a snake in my luggage.”
I turned back around, following the direction of his pointer finger. His suitcase lay where he’d upended it, on the floor between the bed and the wall.
“What kind of snake?” I asked.
“Big. But not moving. I think, yes, I am almost sure it was dead.” Wow, he was doing a great job of not freaking considering how he felt about nonlegged reptiles.
I edged toward the suitcase, toed it upright. “All I see is clothes. I need your cane.”
As he went to the dresser for it I said, “You mean to tell me you didn’t open the suitcase until this morning?”
“Everything I needed for the party was in the garment bag. And, as you see, I do not wear pajamas.”
Actually, I’m trying not to see, thank you very much. I took the cane in my left hand, Grief still ready for action in my right. Flipped over a shirt, a couple of pairs of silk boxers, and there it was. A long brown rattler as thick as a child’s arm.
I poked it. Nothing. It didn’t curl in response, didn’t rattle, didn’t move at all. “You’re right. It’s dead,” I told him.
He nodded. “Do you suppose it was alive when it was placed in my bag?”
“Yeah, I kind of think so. I imagine it died either from the rough handling of the bag or the cold temperatures it was subjected to on the plane.”
He nodded again. “Someone does not want us to complete this mission.”
“Because if we do, they’re going to be in very hot water.”
“Or dead.”
“Let me get rid of the snake for you while you get ready. We can figure this out after you’re dressed.” I leaned over to pick up the snake and Vayl yelled, “No!”
“Shit!” It was the first time I’d ever heard him raise his voice, and he nearly had me jumping out of my skin.
“What if it comes back to life?”
“Vayl, it’s not gonna . . .” I met his eyes. Okay, maybe the idea wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. Since he wanted to play it safe, I unsheathed his sword and cut the sucker’s head off. Then I dumped the parts into the trash can and headed outdoors with the liner.
“We’ll talk when I get back,” I said. Very professionally, I thought, considering the fact that the sight of Vayl’s nakedness was imprinted on the backs of my eyeballs and all I wanted to do was get out of the room so I could savor that picture.
Vayl nodded and headed for the shower. And if I gave that fine muscular behind a glance before leaving his room, I hoped no red-blooded woman on earth could blame me. What I didn’t expect to see were the scars crisscrossing his broad shoulders and back. I winced, wondering if they’d come before or after his change. Either way, damn.
After disposing of the snake I curled up on one of the couches in the conversation area I’d created. Vayl came out of his room shortly afterward. Apparently the new furniture arrangement was less conducive to talk than I’d anticipated, because speech suddenly failed me.
Unless he’d switched to camouflage mode, Vayl rarely entered a room without everyone feeling his presence. His personality could be like mist, drifting gently into your lungs until every breath sent him sliding through your veins. Or, like a violent change in air pressure, it could reach out and slam you against a wall. At the moment, looking at him through eyes I hoped hadn’t glazed over, I wouldn’t have noticed if a ninja had dropped through the ceiling and started breaking chairs.
He moved with the total body awareness of a professional athlete, and now that I knew what that body looked like, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. If a scientist gave a lecture on the alpha male, she’d definitely throw in a few slides of Vayl.
“Vayl, I . . . you . . .” I caught his eyes and stopped speaking. They were the gray-blue of storm-swept waves, snapping dangerously over lips compressed so tightly I could see the outline of fangs beneath them. “Are you okay?” I asked, some instinct making me touch the gun now resting in my shoulder holster.
Vayl descended into the pit and dropped onto the couch I’d positioned on a diagonal with mine. For a minute he just sat there with his elbows on his knees, staring off into space.
“Vayl?”
“Something is wrong with my blood supply.”
“What do you mean?”
Vayl jumped up and started pacing. “The blood I brought to sustain me. It is tainted.” I felt the familiar bewilderment that used to fog my brain when my math teacher handed me a word problem. How was I supposed to know which train would reach Dallas first?
“How could you tell?” I asked.
Vayl grabbed one of the decorative pillows off the couch and began picking at one corner of it. I’d never seen him so shaken, and it was starting to scare me.
“Look, Vayl, just tell me what you know.”
Vayl sat down again, avoiding my gaze, watching his fingers worry at the pillow instead. “When I went to get a drink I realized something was wrong. That is, once the blood had warmed, I could smell something in it that should not have been there. Something my nose tells me will make me ill.”
“Did you check all the bags?”
“Yes. They are all tainted.”
First the God’s Arm goons. Then the snake. Now the blood. Who is doing this?
“Did you keep some? We should get it tested.”
“Yes.”
This is bad, bad, bad. “Vayl, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Of course. But snake venom and polluted blood would not kill me. They would only make me sick.”
“Sick, like out of commission? Sick as in vulnerable?”
“Very possibly.”
“Then maybe these are just preludes to another attack.” I waited for Vayl to agree, but he just shrugged. The pillow in his hands began to come apart. I was beginning to identify with it, big-time. Okay, Jaz, keep it together. You are a trained pro. Eventually you will find the ass that needs kicking and that’s exactly what you’ll do. As long as you keep it together.
“So let’s figure out who’s doing this,” I said, more to myself than Vayl. “I don’t think it could’ve been Pete. He was too ready to agree with our suggestions.”
“That still leaves several highly trusted suspects.” He shook his head. “We have been betrayed.” He sounded like he’d already had some bitter experience in that area.
“You told me yesterday that we had some evidence the Raptor had a government official on his payroll, right?”
Once Bitten, Twice Shy Page 8