“British?” I asked nonchalantly. The Aussies I know are outgoing and gregarious and revel in their individuality. Without exception, they take offense at being mistaken for reserved Brits.
“Aussie.”
“Wow, and here I always thought Mrs. Peel was British.” I flashed her a smile that told her I’d caught her falling out of character.
She grinned back at me, undaunted. “Yeah? Most people are terrible at placing accents. They assume because I married a Brit and spent some years in England that I am a Brit. But I was born in Australia. Brisbane, to be exact. Once an Aussie, always an Aussie.” Her tone and expression dared me to take issue with her loose interpretation of the character, while her eyes danced with humor.
Evidently there was wiggle room with the charade. If she could play it as she saw it, I could, too. I liked her.
“Domino. Pleased to meet you … Emma.” As I extended my hand, I let my intentional pause tell her it was a nice, but not thoroughly convincing, attempt at recovery. Amateur.
The bus pulled away from the curb and headed out of the airport as we shook hands.
“And you’ve gone blond now, too.” I made a point of staring at her hair. “I like it. Going undercover?”
“Aren’t we all?” She winked and gave her hair, such as it was, a playful shake. “No.” She laughed as she fluffed her hair with her hand, “This here’s my chemo ‘do. I’m quite proud of it. A few months ago, I was a baldie. Now I’ve got this beautiful blond mane growing in. Shocked the hell out of me that it didn’t come back in brown.”
She spoke so matter-of-factly and with such good humor that I was completely taken aback. My surprise must’ve been evident, because she grinned broadly like she’d been expecting my reaction, creasing the wrinkles around her lips and eyes. She looked weathered, like a person who’d spent too much time outdoors. I realized too late that she had the look of someone who’d undergone chemotherapy.
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say. I’m such a verbal klutz in situations like this. “I’m sorry—”
She held up a hand to stop my stammering apology. “No need.” I still had no idea what to say next, but I had to say something, so I just stumbled on. “You’re okay now?”
“Oh, no worries! I had breast cancer. Stage two and a half. Spread to the lymph nodes by the time they caught it. I’m the breastless wonder now, but I’m cancer-free and ready to live. Which is why I’m here. To have some fun and a few thrills!” Her expression became serious. She put a hand on my arm. “Get your yearly exams. Promise?”
I nodded. “Always.”
“Good.” She leaned back against the window and stretched her feet out on the seat. “Ahhhh.” She sighed happily. “No nausea. The stamina to get through the day without a nap. The things we take for granted when we’re healthy.”
I reassessed Emma’s age, taking into account the effects of illness and chemo. She was probably much younger than I’d originally guessed. I felt suddenly protective. “Are you sure you’re up for adventure?”
“Absolutely!” She sat up, indignant at my suggestion. “And I’ve no time to waste. Breast cancer’s notorious for coming back, you know. I’m not letting life pass me by. I’ve booked the whole next year. Gonna do everything I ever wanted to do.
“After spy camp, I’m signed up for comprehensive skydiving lessons, rock climbing, whitewater rafting, flying lessons, dance lessons, voice lessons, bungee jumping, mountain climbing …”
Just listening to her itinerary left me exhausted. “Um, most of that sounds very … dangerous, doesn’t it? Maybe you should take it a little easy?”
Emma gave me a puzzled look. “That is easy. If I had my full strength, I’d have packed more in.”
“But the danger—”
She shrugged, looking a little disappointed in me. She probably expected more bravado from a spy camp attendee. “You can’t spend your life being so cautious you don’t live!” Her deep-blue eyes skewered me with a penetrating, challenging look. “Look at me. I led a responsible, safe life and cancer nearly took me out all the same.
“One thing about facing my own mortality, it’s made me fearless,” Emma continued. “I’d rather die having fun and trying new things than in a sickbed, wouldn’t you?”
I nodded slowly, still unsure, because there was a certain beauty to living as long as possible, regardless. And probably dying in a sickbed was more comfortable than lying shattered and broken on a pile of rocks, should, say, one’s parachute fail to open, or one slips while rappelling. I suppressed a shudder. I have a horrendous fear of heights. The camp brochure mentioned rappelling down a building as part of the experience. I’d already planned to ditch that session.
“Thanks to the lottery, I’ve got the money to do anything I want.” Emma rearranged herself on the seat.
I wasn’t surprised that Emma admitted to being a lottery winner. She probably assumed I was one, too. Logan had told me when she presented me with the trip that she’d booked me into a special ultra-deluxe custom camp experience with a group of lottery winners. In fact, she’d heard about the trip from one of the women in UMI. When that gal had to drop out at the last minute, Logan booked me in her place.
“Since you’re hell-bent on living dangerously, I hope you took your winnings in a lump sum,” I said, only half-teasingly. You can throw the banker out of the bank on a fantasy vacation, but you can’t take the bank out of the banker.
“Of course. It only makes the most fiscal sense, anyway.” She adjusted an air vent to throw more cool air her way.
I smiled at her, liking her even more. A sensible lottery winner. What was not to love about that?
Emma winked at me and whispered, “What do you think of the rest of our adventure mates? Looks like some of them are wearing their props. Care to guess their code names?” She nodded a few rows back to the man with the bowler hat I’d seen in Martini Junction. “I’d lay odds his code name is that of my old boss, John Steed.”
I did a mental head slap and nodded my agreement. Of course! That’s why he’d seemed familiar and yet I couldn’t place him. He did look a bit Avenger-like. Emma and I scanned the bus, looking to make more identifications.
“Across the aisle. Third row back. A Maxwell Smart clone. Has to be,” I whispered, pleased at my own astuteness in noticing the camper wearing a blue vest, dress shirt, and tie, a signature Max Smart outfit.
Emma leaned forward and whispered to me, “We’ll know for sure if he goes for his shoe phone.”
“Or his cone of silence.”
“Right, chief,” Emma said and we broke out giggling.
The others, a motley crew of men of varying ages, mostly past thirty, stumped us.
Emma grimaced as she did a quick scan of the bus. “Let’s hope none of them are James himself. I couldn’t stand it. Might put me off 007 for good.”
“Heretic! Nothing could put me off Bond.”
“Not even these guys?” And she laughed.
“Not even these guys.” I was loyal to a fault. Ask Logan. She’d tell you that’s why I’ve stuck with my boyfriend, Daniel, for five years through our on-again, off-again, decidedly noncommittal and open relationship.
Logan wasn’t exactly right on that one, though. I had other reasons, too. Daniel isn’t Bond, doesn’t have Bond’s daring or sense of adventure in the slightest. But he’s attractive in his own short, gray-haired, stout way. By far the most attractive man I’ve ever dated, which admittedly doesn’t put him on par with the 100 Most Beautiful People.
And he’s successful, though Logan accuses me of being too impressed by his money and connections. And fun to be with when we aren’t fighting. Which, unfortunately, is practically every time we spend more than a day or two together, leading me to the unfortunate suspicion that Daniel is probably right about insisting we not live together.
Even if he is fifteen years older than I am and a little staid and set in his ways, I could do a lot worse, believe me. After all, he puts up w
ith my Bond fetish, even if he never fulfills my ultimate fantasy by acting Bond-like in any way other than wearing nicely tailored suits. I’ve told him repeatedly that he could humor me and order a suit or two from Brioni’s, Bond’s tailor of choice. He says hell will freeze over before that happens. He doesn’t need me looking at him in a Brioni suit and fantasizing about James Bond. Guess I won’t tell him that sometimes I fantasize about Bond when he’s out of his clothes.
I did a mental run-through of all the Bond spies I could remember, trying to place characters. I finally nodded toward a middle-aged man wearing a Hawaiian shirt. “Jake Wade, CIA. Calls Bond ‘Jimbo.'”
Emma scrutinized him. “Dunno on that one. Could be he’s just a notoriously bad dresser. He could be John Strangways, MI6, and that shirt is just his way of expressing his strange ways.” She grinned again. “I’ll wager a twenty that you’re wrong.”
Classic lottery winner. Once a gambler, always a gambler. I knew the type.
“Make it a five and you have a deal,” I said.
“Ever the cautious one.” She shook her head in amusement. “Guess we’ll find out at camp. You know, if we girls stick together, we can kick some serious spy-wannabe boy butt.”
“Absolutely.” I nodded my agreement as the bus pulled away from the city and headed northwest from Phoenix.
The landscape became barren, punctuated by a saguaro here and there. Emma and I fell into companionable silence. Actually, Emma’s eyelids drooped as she fell into a nap. I resolved to let her sleep.
As I was easing myself back into my seat, she said, “Don’t get any ideas that I’m not feeling up to par. We’ve got a long ride to camp ahead. I’m just napping to kill the time.” Then she was out.
Spy camp sat on five hundred secluded acres on the site of a little-known former CIA training facility, known to insiders as The Grove, outside Surprise on the road to Wickenburg. Just under an hour and a half after embarking, the bus pulled off the main road onto an exit advertising The Grove, FRESH ORANGES AND CITRUS SEASONALLY. Nothing about spies and extreme fantasy vacations. I liked it.
The White Tank Mountains sat to the south, picturesque against the barren, brown landscape. The Hassayampa River meandered along the countryside, but I use the term river loosely. If not for my guidebook, I wouldn’t have recognized it as such. In Washington state, when we refer to a river, there’s usually some actual water flowing in it. Dried riverbed was probably a more apt description, so dry, it looked prehistoric, something carved by the Great Flood, never to have seen water again.
Ocotillo grew along the road, leafless from lack of rain. I was going into green withdrawal when suddenly a dusty citrus grove came into view.
I was caught off guard and hurled against the window as the bus turned abruptly into irrigation heaven, an orchard of deep-green trees filled with tiny, unripe fruit. An oasis in the desert. I felt like I’d taken a step back into nature. Calm, peaceful nature. Back to the earth and a grow-your-own-food life. What could possibly go wrong in a place like this?
No sooner had these thoughts of peace and tranquility crossed my mind when a guard shack and a razor-wire-topped chain-link fence sprung into view. The bus driver pulled to a halt while a guard with a bomb-sniffing dog and a worker with a mirror on a long pole worked the bus over before waving us through. Wow, now I felt like we were in The Recruit. Too bad Colin Farrell wasn’t on our bus!
Bomb search complete, the bus continued through orchards, winding past a parking lot, shacks with corrugated metal roofs, around a private road, past a large, Southwest-style home, the prosperous kind of house you’d expect to find on a successful citrus plantation. We came to a stop at a big open space across from another large building of the same architecture. On closer inspection, I realized it was actually two buildings connected by a breezeway, Frank Lloyd Wright style. Natural architecture.
The bus doors opened. We were hit with a blast of heat.
Emma sat up and rubbed her eyes. “What a stinker of a day!”
“We’re here,” I said unnecessarily.
The bus driver stepped out and began opening the cargo bays beneath the bus. Several campers, led by John Steed and his bowler hat, followed his lead and debused. I peered out the window, hoping for a better look as I enjoyed the air-conditioning for as long as possible.
“You’d think they’d send a greeter,” I said to Emma.
“Maybe we’re early,” Emma said.
I glanced at my watch and shook my head.
She shrugged and stood.
“Kind of anticlimactic.” I grabbed my duffel and purse from the overhead storage rack and shuffled down the aisle, following Emma out, shielding my eyes against the harsh sunlight as I stepped off onto the roadside. “If this is just going to be like a regular vacation where we check in at the lobby, well, that’s kind of dull, isn’t it? Shouldn’t some kind of spy trainer or someone greet us? You know, like M, to give us our assignment?”
Emma turned toward me and opened her mouth to reply.
A sudden brilliant flash of light at the end of the road, followed by an explosive roar that reverberated through the air and shook the bus, cut off her response. Debris rained down on the asphalt at the end of the road, tinkling like bells against the bass of the explosion. My ears rang as complete pandemonium broke out among the campers. People were pointing and running while I stood rooted in the heat-softened asphalt as if stuck there by the melting tar.
An abandoned car at the far end of the road, now missing a door or two, and all its auto glass, was engulfed in full flame. I wrapped one arm over my head for protection from any errant, falling debris, thinking, “Cell phone, cell phone.” I had to call out for help! Then I was going to call Logan and verbally kill her for sending me to meet my end in the hot Arizona desert. Like she couldn’t send me to Maui instead? Then, irrelevantly, I wondered how long it would take the fire department to arrive from Surprise.
I was digging in my purse for the phone when a volley of what sounded like gunfire erupted. It echoed off the building walls along with a woman’s scream. I looked around for Emma, but she’d disappeared, which is when it dawned on me—I was the screamer. I was going to die! Someone had sabotaged spy camp and killed all the trainers, just waiting to ambush us supposed lottery winners and rob us as we arrived. Well, who better to mug than a host of lottery winners? Tell me that!
My trembling fingers somehow pulled the phone from the deep recesses of my purse and I was wildly stabbing at the buttons, trying to punch 9-1-1 without success. Something had happened to my small motor skills. Damn it! Why had they failed me now?
Thick smoke now obscured the view of the explosion. The volley of gunfire died away. I dropped the phone back in my purse without hitting send and patted myself down. Okay, I was still here and apparently whole. No holes that I could feel.
I’d squinched my eyes closed in hear-no-evil-see-no-evil fashion once I’d given up on the phone. I’d have to open them to take a peek at assessing the damage. I’m squeamish and I really didn’t need the sight of blood and gore to make my day. Only someone might need help.
Oh, God, help me! I went into rapid-fire prayer mode as I pried one eye open, hoping that one eye would see only half the carnage, I guess.
As if from an action-adventure movie trailer, a big, buff man emerged from the haze of the wreckage and smoke, striding in what could only be called a cocky, “I’m a real badass” walk.
Okay, now both my eyes popped wide open.
He was six foot two if an inch. Black hair worn longish in a snowboarder style. Black tank top that showed off a chest sculpted like he had muscles of stone. Jeans, my gosh, jeans in this heat, jeans that showed off buns of regulation steel! Combat boots. No Uzi. I was practically certain he wasn’t packing. Well, not a gun anyway.
The only thing light about him, in manner or otherwise, was the glint off a diamond stud in his left ear. Not even a sheen of sweat. What kind of human being doesn’t break a sweat in hundred-de
gree heat and utter mayhem?
My knees shook and I felt faint at the sight of him. But I wasn’t sure if it was relief, fear, heatstroke, or uncontrollable lust. Truth is, I’m an in-control type person. I’ve never felt uncontrollable lust before. All my loyalty to Daniel flew out into the open desert as I had a vision of urgently doing the dirty deed with Badass Guy.
“Freeze!” he yelled. “No one move.” He surveyed the lot of us from behind his tinted Maui Jim sunglasses.
Complete obedience; that was us. No heroes in this crowd. He could have been Dr. No himself, but no one made a move to jump him. I was afraid to even breathe. And darn it all, but I felt a trickle of sweat running down between my breasts and an itch on my nose as I frantically tried to obey his order.
“Welcome to The Grove.” Badass Guy stopped a few feet in front of me. “That was a simulated car-bomb attack. As our first exercise, on my command, you’re going to take your pulses.” He held his left arm in front of him so he could read his big, clunky, black, guy-type watch. Probably had all the gizmos. He held his right hand up in a starter’s pose, like “runners to your mark.”
“Go!” he yelled.
And I counted. “38 … 39 … 40—”
“Stop!” He looked around the frightened faces of the group again. “Multiply by four to get your heart rate.”
One-sixty for me. And not slowing a whole heck of a lot. Especially not when his penetrating stare fell on me. Well, I assume it was penetrating. On any account, my reflection in his sunglasses scared the hell out of me. How did my hair get so wild? Evidently long hair took a little more brush maintenance than short. And I think my pupils were dilated. And you know, they really should make sunglasses with better reflective optics. My reflection looked round and fat, funhouse style, instead of slimming. If they were going to make reflective sunglass—
Spy Candy Page 2
