8. Hide and Seek

by Fern Michaels

  “Because, dear, we can’t call her,” Annie said. “It stands to reason the FBI confiscated her cell phone. I’m certain her home phone is bugged. There is no way to get in touch with her. We have to come up with something that will work for all of us, Maggie included.”

  “She has a tail, that’s for certain,” Nikki said. “Ted will have one, too. Just because Riley is in the hospital doesn’t mean he isn’t on top of all this. His career is hanging in the balance.” As an afterthought, she added, “We’re just as anxious as you are, Kathryn, but our first priority is to keep our friends safe and out of Riley’s clutches. Let’s kick it around and see what we come up with.”

  An hour later the only thing they had accomplished was to finish a pot of coffee.

  Isabelle gathered up the cups and saucers. “We need to do something daring. Something that will put us on the front page of every newspaper in the country.”

  “To what end?” Yoko demanded.

  “To show we’re in charge. That we came out of hiding to bring down that bastard for framing our friends. Then we disappear,” Isabelle responded, the cups and saucers clinking and clattering in her nervous hands.

  “We could accomplish that by sending Riley’s files to any newspaper,” Nikki said.

  “That’s much too simple. Getting those files to Maggie Spritzer is a better method of going public,” Annie said. “She didn’t…uh…rat us out.”

  “Good point,” Myra said.

  “How do we get to Maggie?” Alexis asked.

  “Boldly and brazenly,” Kathryn said coldly.

  Jack Emery looked at Harry Wong and punched him in the arm. “Now, this is where it’s going to get interesting.”

  Harry sat down cross-legged on the floor. He was all ears and eyes as he listened to the women, who rattled off ideas and suggestions at the speed of light. He barely noticed a tray materialize containing a fresh pot of coffee with clean cups. To say he was fascinated, mesmerized as well as horrified, was to put it mildly.

  Two hours later the plan was on the table. All they had to do was wait for Charles’s approval.

  Another two hours passed while they waited for Charles to fax them blueprints of the hospital where Director Riley was receiving treatment.

  More hours passed while Alexis hauled out her red bag of magic tricks and went to work.

  Kathryn raced into the room with a sheaf of papers in her hand. “Okay, Charles came through for us. Riley has two guards outside his room. Three nurses on duty plus one private-duty nurse who was just fired. One of us is going to be her replacement and, no, I don’t know how Charles is going to work this out. There are no other patients on Riley’s floor. They were all moved to other floors to safeguard him the day he was admitted. We go in during supper hour. Supper will be compliments of Alice Riley, although he doesn’t know that. Supper that is loaded with a fast-acting drug that will incapacitate the nurses and the guards. We waltz Riley out of the hospital on the special elevator the FBI commandeered just for his use. Then we dump him on Maggie Spritzer, along with his files. We give Spritzer a good, say, thirty minutes, maybe forty, certainly no more than that, and then we call the Feds, the local police, the Capitol Police, every cop in town. Hell, let’s toss in the CIA for good measure. They’re gonna love seeing that guy go down.

  “The thirty or forty minutes we’re giving Spritzer is our thirty-or forty-minute window. We need to get to the airport and have wheels up before anyone arrives at Maggie’s apartment. I realize this is the rough version and we have to fine-tune it but I love it. All in favor say aye,” Kathryn said, her eyes sparkling with anticipation.

  Hands shooting upward caused the air in the living room to stir.

  Harry blinked, a dazed look on his face.

  “Told you,” Jack chortled, pride ringing in his voice. His ladies, and they were his ladies, could do anything.

  Fresh coffee arrived along with some pecan cookies.

  “All right, ladies, let’s fine-tune this puppy,” Annie said gleefully as she smacked her hands together in anticipation.

  “See, Harry, the ladies have it going on,” Jack said. “Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

  Mitchell Riley sat on the edge of his hospital bed, his mind racing. He hated the stupid hospital gown he was forced to wear but had to admit it was easier for the nurses to apply the medicated lotions they bathed him in hourly. He was tired but refused to give in. He had things to do and places to go. And he was thirsty. He reached for the buzzer attached to his bed but his puffy fingers couldn’t quite grasp the thin wire with the buzzer attached at the end. He heard it thud on the tile floor. He spent all of two seconds wondering if he could pick it up before he bellowed to the guard outside his room.

  The door opened. “Yes, Director?”

  “Where’s that goddamn nurse? I thought a private-duty nurse was supposed to be in attendance every minute of the day. Fire her ass and get me someone who knows what they’re doing. That’s an order, Agent Simms.”

  “Sir, you told her to wait at the desk until you needed her. You said you couldn’t stand her hovering around, listening to you on the phone. Then you told me to fire her. Which I did. Do you want me to hire a new nurse?”

  Riley knew he was being unreasonable but he didn’t care. “Yes. Tell them to send me someone who isn’t as ugly as the last one. Get me some Gatorade. Orange.”

  “Yes, sir.” The door closed.

  Riley swung his legs back on the bed. He hated this place. Hated the bed, the smell, the bedding, the pillows. He hated that someone had to bathe him, to help him brush his teeth. More than anything he hated the urinal and the bedpan.

  Riley bellowed again. Simms opened the door with the Gatorade in hand. “Is there any news on my family?”

  “No, sir, I check in on the hour.” The agent opened the bottle of Gatorade and poured it into a glass for the director. At the last second he added a straw. Riley had to hold the glass in both hands.

  “Well, Simms, maybe that’s good enough for you but it isn’t good enough for me. Get my section chiefs in here ASAP. I want to know what happened to my family and what’s being done to find them.”

  When the door closed behind his agent, Riley leaned back against the pillows, his eyes on the repeated clips of Josh Carpenter’s funeral airing on the Fox Network. The event of the year, and he’d missed it. He’d watched it, paying careful attention to every detail. As far as he could tell, the only thing missing at the solemn ceremony was his presence. Well, he’d have to live with that. When he got out of this damn place, he’d make a personal pilgrimage to Carpenter’s gravesite with flowers in hand. In his mind he rehearsed the scene he would play, right down to the tears trickling down his cheeks. NEW DIRECTOR LEAVES HOSPITAL SICK BED TO PAY HIS RESPECTS. It would play out for weeks in the media.

  Suddenly, Riley’s head jerked upright. Something was wrong. It took him a few minutes before he realized he wasn’t itching. He wasn’t itching. Maybe all those shots and pills were finally starting to work. Now, all he needed was a diagnosis to prove once and for all that those goddamn vigilantes hadn’t gotten to him. There was no way on this Earth that those stupid women could outsmart him or his beloved FBI.

  Thank God there was nothing wrong with his mind. He was as sharp as he ever was, but right now that sharpness wasn’t working for him. He needed to find his files, his family, and prove that the warrants he’d issued for Judge Easter, that slut Lizzie, Emery and Wong were being acted on. People don’t just disappear into thin air. Somewhere, somehow, someone saw or witnessed something. All he had to do was find those witnesses. Right now, he had to believe Alice had his files and planned on using them to blackmail him for whatever it was she wanted. That he could live with. But if Alice didn’t have the files, that had to mean the vigilantes had spirited her away after she turned the files over to them, then spirited the judge, the slut and the two jerks to some safe place. If that was the case, he was dead in the water and all his dreams would gu
rgle down the drain.

  Riley grappled with his pillow to find his cell phone underneath. He punched in number after number and barked orders. “Get me the reports ASAP on all calls coming and going for the following cell phones”—he rattled off the numbers for Maggie Spritzer, Ted Robinson, Jack Emery and Harry Wong.

  Riley closed his eyes and let his mind race. If things didn’t work out, what was he going to do? He was well aware of what the Bureau would do to him if they could prove the files he’d collected were bogus. He felt a chill run down his arms.

  He had to get out of here. He wasn’t itching. Once he was out of here, he could slather on the lotion just the way the nurses had. How much talent did that take?

  The knock on the door startled Riley. There was no privacy in a hospital. People just came in and out at will. He hated the lack of privacy more than anything else in this damn place. He looked up at the six men, all highly trained agents. “Talk, and you had better have good things to tell me.”

  To the agents he sounded meaner than a junkyard dog.

  There was no shyness, no stammering, no shuffling of feet.

  “It’s zip, sir,” the senior agent said in a voice that rang with anger. “There’s no trail, no clues, nothing. The only thing we have is that your wife drove away from your house under her own power with your daughter in the backseat. A witness can attest to that but that’s it. As for the others, it appears they just walked out of their respective houses and have not been seen or heard from. In essence, they dropped off the face of the Earth.”

  Riley wanted to scream out the rage he was feeling. He was starting to itch again. Stress. He forced himself to calm down, to speak slowly. “People do not disappear without leaving a clue of some kind. I want you all to backtrack, take some fresh eyes with you. Use as many agents as you need but bring me something I can sink my teeth into. This is giving the Bureau a black eye and I will not tolerate black eyes on my watch.

  “I want a report by”—Riley looked at the oversized clock on the wall opposite the television—“by seven this evening. Don’t disappoint me, gentlemen.”

  Riley closed his eyes again. Now he was exhausted. He knew he wouldn’t go to sleep, simply because there was too much to do, too much to think about. The last thing he thought about before falling asleep was that he couldn’t wait to go home to take a shower and sleep in his own bed.

  Chapter 29

  Charles Martin worked feverishly. He had one eye on the clock, his ears tuned to the 24-hour news channels while he scanned e-mails, reached for faxes, scanned photos and worked his encrypted cell phone, making call after call to the District of Columbia where the sisters were waiting for his input. So much to do, so little time. His thoughts were as feverish as his movements.

  The six-hour time difference that he thought would be a problem was proving to be a blessing. So far he’d been able to reach everyone in his network—fellow retired covert spies eager to get back into the game, all excited to work again with Charles Martin, a legend in his own time.

  Charles checked and then double-checked the papers he was about to send off via encrypted fax. Certain that all the bases were covered, he pressed the SEND button. He took time to marvel at the electronic age, wishing that just half the tools available to him today had been there for him when he was a special-operations agent active in the field of espionage under Her Majesty.

  All he could do now was wait. Maybe he needed to go upstairs to the kitchen and cook something. He was always able to relax when he cooked. The only problem was there was no one here to eat the food but him. Still, he could bake a ham and roast a turkey, and have them available when the women returned to the mountaintop.

  Charles was almost at the door when he remembered to pick up the two encrypted e-mails that had come through at dawn. He could decipher them over a cup of coffee in the kitchen. He took a moment to wonder why the deeply buried covert operatives of Interpol and Scotland Yard would be e-mailing him. In his heart of hearts, he knew why: both agencies wanted to hire the Sisterhood and him as well.

  Charles filled the coffeepot and then walked around the spacious modern kitchen with the pink brick walls and stone floor. How lonely this place was without all the sisters! Oh, how he missed his beloved Myra. He missed all the women, who were like daughters to him. His eyes started to burn. He shook his head as he blinked away the tears that were about to flood his eyes.

  The women were safe. He felt it in his heart. He’d done everything humanly possible, synchronized everything right down to the last sync. Still, things could go wrong. It didn’t matter how perfect a plan was, the human element always made itself known in some way. He consoled himself with the knowledge that his girls were the best of the best. If they weren’t, why did he receive the two e-mails this morning from Scotland Yard and Interpol?

  Charles worked rapidly with the encrypted e-mails, the cheery sound of the coffee dripping into the pot the only noise in the kitchen. When he was finished, he leaned back and smiled. Two invitations for the Sisterhood to work undercover for Scotland Yard and Interpol. The RSVP acceptance said details would follow. Well, this was something he had to put before the Sisterhood for it to be voted on. He felt a little giddy at the mere thought.

  Charles poured coffee, sipping it as he worked in the kitchen. No matter how he tried to hide his worry, it was still there. Would Nikki and Yoko return with the others? He simply didn’t know. Myra had tried to prepare him for that possibility by saying affairs of the heart were the human element. Myra was worried, too, even though she had said she wasn’t.

  How long would life on this mountaintop appeal to the women? If they were working, possibly a very long time. If they remained idle, frittering away the days in the warm sunshine, not long. As Kathryn would say, sometimes life was a bitch.

  Charles scored the ham before he stuck cloves into the corners. Later he would baste it with his special apricot-lime sauce. Myra loved his baked ham. He eyed the huge turkey that was defrosting. He poked at it, only to have it slide off the counter onto the floor just as his phone rang. He looked at the tile floor to see the large crack in the tile. He hoped there were spare tiles in the toolshed.

  Charles listened to Myra’s voice. He was nodding as she spoke before he realized she couldn’t see him agreeing with her. He looked over at the clock on the range. “Check in with me, Myra, every fifteen minutes if possible. What am I doing? I’m baking a ham and trying to figure out how to replace a tile on the floor. Why? The turkey fell off the counter and cracked the tile. No, dear heart, I am not making this up to make you feel better. Good luck, my darling.”

  The moment the twenty-five-pound turkey in its wrapping was in the sink, Charles raced back to the war room where he settled himself behind the computer.

  The sisters were on the move. With all his high-tech gadgetry he could chart their movements without any trouble. Childishly, he crossed his fingers.

  The small living room was beyond crowded. Bug-eyed at what they were seeing, Judge Easter and Lizzie Fox moved to the side to allow Myra to hold court.

  “Showtime, ladies. And, gentlemen,” Myra said. She tried to hide her smile as Jack and Harry both flinched at her words. “Let’s run through this one more time just to be on the safe side.” She looked at Nikki and Yoko, who were still in the Alice Riley and daughter disguise. “You will show up at the hospital at exactly six o’clock. At four o’clock, I will call the hospital to ask to speak to the agent outside Mr. Riley’s door. I will say that Mrs. Riley asked me to call to say she ordered dinner for the hospital staff as well as themselves. I’ll have the agent tell the director that Mrs. Riley and her daughter will be there to dine with him. One of Harry’s employees will deliver the dinner in a properly marked van. I’m sure one of the agents will check everything before it’s allowed up to the director’s floor. What we’re hoping is that all the director will be thinking about is the return of his wife and daughter.

  “All the action is taking place at si
x o’clock. Kathryn will be the new private-duty nurse. She will say she’s been assigned the six-to-midnight shift. I’m sure the director will approve of her. She will be the one delivering the food trays and will be the one to lace them with…never mind, the less everyone knows, the better off they are.”

  Myra winked at the others as she pointed out Kathryn with the flaming red wig, the elaborate makeup with the facial-altering latex and the short white uniform. Her nylon-clad legs drew everyone’s attention as Kathryn strutted around the room. The perky white cap, which nurses actually no longer wore, bobbed up and down as Kathryn pranced and danced. Everyone clapped. Kathryn bowed.

  Alexis and Isabelle were made up to look like Washington tourists, complete with straw hats, flowered dresses and sandals. Each had a camera slung over her shoulder.

  Myra pointed to the two women and said, “Alexis and Isabelle will meet up with Maggie Spritzer at the hospital parking lot to…uh…deliver the goods. So to speak. Jack and Harry will be busy tailing Ted Robinson so he doesn’t interfere with Maggie reaching the hospital. Your window of time is forty minutes, not one minute more. At six-forty, a police car will arrive at the emergency entrance where you will all be waiting to be whisked to the airport, sirens blasting. Special Agent Bert Navarro will be your driver. Do not talk once you’re inside the car.”

  “Hey, hold on here! Are you saying Special Agent Navarro is…one of you?” Lizzie Fox demanded.

  “That’s what we’re saying,” Annie said. “I hope you’re impressed with our capabilities, dear.”

  Lizzie threw her hands in the air as she tried to grapple with what she’d just heard and what she was seeing with her own eyes. Finally, her eyes sparked as she realized she was now officially one of them but under a new director, Judge Cornelia Easter. She risked a glance at the judge, who brazenly winked at her. Lizzie tried to hide her laughter.