I woke several hours later tangled in Torq’s percale sheets. Alone. The clock on the nightstand read five thirty a.m. Daylight was beginning to creep in. I heard the shower running and assumed the Spy Who Shagged Me was getting cleaned up and ready for the big day ahead. My smile reached ear-to-ear as I thought of the night we’d spent together and of him now naked in the shower. Joining him there was such a juicy temptation. But along with the daylight, my reserved, insecure nature reared up and voiced its opposition to my fun. If he’d wanted me to join him, he would’ve asked.
Maybe he just hadn’t wanted to wake me, the confident Domino half of my nature argued back. Which half to believe? I was so confused.
The sight of Torq’s laptop powered up and humming away on the small desk in the corner provided an allure all its own—camp secrets! Like maybe a list of everyone’s real identity? Or better yet, the accident report? What a girl won’t sacrifice to get top-secret inside info, I thought as I slid out of bed, heart racing with adrenaline.
Once dressed, I stood and crossed the room to the desk, catching a glimpse of my wild-haired reflection in the mirror. All visions of Bond girl femme-fatale perfection vanished. I looked more like the Bride of Frankenstein, only her hair was tidier. Hair extensions on end, eyes puffy, and, okay, you couldn’t really tell this in the mirror, but my teeth weren’t brushed—a casualty of not planning for a sleepover. So maybe it was better I didn’t join him in the shower. Maybe.
I ran my fingers through my hair in an unsuccessful bid to tame my wild, unnaturally extended mane and sat down at the laptop. Torq had been totally careless in leaving his laptop out in plain view. I smelled a setup or another test. Not that it stopped me, just slowed me down a sec while I mulled over the ethics of snooping through his computer and the consequences of getting caught. What would Torq do? I grinned. Ethics lost.
I touched a key and the screen lit up. Unfortunately, the dang thing was password protected. Giving it the old college try, I took a few game stabs at his password.
What? Domino wasn’t his first choice of password? I’d have to see about changing that in the future. I grinned to myself. I was just having a bit of fun. Of course, password guessing was an exercise in futility and time-wasting. I had better ways to spend my time.
I was just about to walk away and slip into something more comfortable, say Torq’s shower, when I noticed a stack of magazines and newspapers next to the laptop. An old copy of the Wall Street Journal was open to the same review of the remastered Bond collection I’d been reading in the sick bay. Evidently, fresh reading material was scarce at FSC.
Torq was a fellow Bond fanatic! A man truly after my own heart. I smiled to myself.
I leaned over and glanced at the article again. Odd. He’d circled the word “hit man” three times in black ink. I frowned. Scaramanga wasn’t my favorite villain. He only scored a seven out of ten on the menace rating. We had our first disconnect.
I noticed one of Torq’s desk drawers was ajar. My first instinct, the nice, tidy, good-girl instinct, was to shut it. Then my spy gear kicked in. Hey, it wasn’t locked. It was practically shouting, “Looky, looky, see what I have.”
I slid the drawer open and there sat … a camera just like mine. Curious, I pulled it out and turned it on. Well, look at that. Torq had taken pictures of the blown-up car just like I had. From the same angles. I frowned. Oh, and here were pictures of my birthday party.
“Damn him!” I whispered.
As I sat with the camera trembling in my hands, wondering what to do, the shower shut off and I panicked. I heard the shower door slide open. My heart was pounding wildly as I tried to think what to do. I heard him toweling off.
I grabbed my camera, replaced the drawer to its nearly closed state, and stole a couple of the magazines to read later. Hey, they were more recent than Rockford’s and they might hold a few clues. Worst case, I’d know better how Torq’s reading tastes ran.
Thinking fast, I slipped on my shoes, grabbed a pen and sheet of paper, and wrote a note, hoping to leave the illusion that everything was still just peachy and not arouse his suspicions. I pressed hard with the pen, hoping to hide the fearful tremble of my hands. Who knew but that Torq was a handwriting expert to boot.
Torq—
I had a fabulous time last night. I can’t even tell you. But I need to fly back to my room before the rumors do.
XXX and hot OOOs,
Dom
I’d just slipped out the door as I heard him repeat the first syllable of my name. “Dom—”
My high-heeled shoes slowed me down. I pulled them off and ran like a jackalope with a coyote on its tail for the barracks, somehow making it back to my room without being spotted.
I was panting as I reached my room and came to a complete stop, ready to pull out my key and let myself in. Only there was no need. My door was decidedly ajar. I stared at it with a growing horror. So much for the safety and security of home.
“Oh. My. Gosh,” I whispered, simply stunned and totally frightened. I’m anal retentive about locking doors. I had no doubt it had been latched and locked when I’d left.
Against my better judgment and my 100 percent chicken-meat nature, I pushed the door open with one arm and, heart thundering away, surveyed the room.
My closet doors were thrown wide open. And my Louis Vuitton canvas keepall, the pride and joy of my luggage collection, sat on the bed with my Domino wardrobe haphazardly stuffed into it by someone who obviously needed a lesson in how to pack without wrinkling the goods. Sleeves, pant legs, and bits of lingerie all popped out the top in a torrent of pink.
Written across it in big, black block letters were the words SMIERT SPIONAM. I’d seen The Living Daylights enough times to recognize the words as the same as those on the note left on a very dead 004's body. I knew exactly what they meant—"death to spies.”
Chapter Eighteen
Receiving a death threat, no matter how clever or in what language, is not on my top-ten list of things I want out of life and wish someone would bestow on me. To tell the truth, it doesn’t even make my top billion. And this evil, villainous jerk lost major style points for defacing the luggage!
Emma was still sleeping the slumber of the un-threatened and blissfully unaware, which meant the joint bathroom was empty. I rushed in for water and washcloth, intent on performing a little emergency first aid on my luggage, using cleaning as a defense mechanism against confronting the real danger—I’d rattled someone’s cage with enough vigor they’d decided to lash back. But whose? And why? Who knew what I was up to? And what did I know? Damn! Everything was so frustratingly vague.
I quickly dismissed the idea that this incident was yet another camp test. No way was FSC going to intentionally ruin personal property. Not if they wanted to keep their insurance rates under control—not to mention their legal bills.
Head full of the mist of whirly, twirly, swirly ideas and vague notions, I returned to my room and scrubbed at the horrid black letters with all my pent-up frustrations and fears. But even after I scrubbed and cursed and uttered “out, out, damn ink” three times beneath my breath, the words remained, looking as fresh as the minute they were penned. Indelible ink. I tossed the washcloth onto the floor with disgust.
Now what? What did I do? Whom did I trust?
The cops wanted us to hang around for a few days. I could run, but then I’d look guilty. I could call the Surprise police and report the vandalism. But what could they do, really? I could tell Torq and hope he’d track down the marker-wielding fiend using every spy trick up his proverbial sleeve. But, sad to say, I didn’t trust anyone, not even Torq. I could unpack and act as if this little event never happened while mercilessly uncovering and hunting down the perp myself.
No one has ever accused me of being heroic, not even semiheroic or passably uncowardly. I’m the one who covers her eyes during the scary parts of movies and begs others who’ve seen it to tell me that things turn out okay.
But I’d nev
er forgive myself if someone, say Max, turned up desiccated and “floating” facedown in the dry Hassayampa River in the next few days. I opened my bag and began unpacking.
Ten minutes later, I tossed Louis into the back of the closet and shut the doors, dusting my hands together like I was ridding myself of a bad experience. Then I sat down on the bed with my camera and took a good, long look at my pictures, using my newly trained spy’s eye. When I blew up the photo of the charred chassis, sure enough, I found bullet holes, two of them, verifying the vague impression I’d had of seeing bullet holes in the car way back on Sunday before Torq apparently copped the camera.
The atmosphere of spy camp may have tuned my mind too far toward sinister, so I took pains to think logically. Anyone could have used that old car for shooting practice. Torq had suggested that someone had been trespassing and shooting for fun. But why only two holes? Could someone have been taking potshots at someone or something during the grand welcome explosion? Is that what made Torq curious enough to examine the burned-up car? But why did he steal my camera?
I took a sec to play “what I know.”
First, there was the opening explosion. Enough said. Second, the car that mowed down Max, and almost clipped Torq and me. Was that just another drunk peeling out?
What about my accident on the driving range? Another accident, or another attempt? Max falling over the cliff? Davie stabbed? Connected? If so, how? Had he gotten in someone’s way? And now my defaced suitcase—deadly warning or sick prank?
Unfortunately, there was a logical explanation for everything, except Davie’s death. And the cops were already looking into that. Which only meant that I’d sound like a complete nutcase when I tried to warn people of another impending danger.
Were the threats real? I’d come to believe they were. There were just too many for mere coincidence and bad luck. And if they were real, I was certain of one thing—whoever had threatened me was getting desperate. Time grew short for our murderous villain. Just an educated guess, but I was willing to wager they’d planned to bump someone off and make it look like an accident. And it looked like that someone was Max, given that he was the common denominator in all the “accidents.” Only the would-be assassin had bungled several prime opportunities and now had less than a day and a half to get it right.
I grabbed my camp schedule and took a look at what I was up against. Firing practice after breakfast, probably too risky and obvious to take someone out here. Even if our perp “accidentally” shot someone, there’d be an inquest and if a motive turned up …
Rappelling later this morning—an excellent opportunity for someone to take a fatal fall.
Classroom activities this afternoon—boring. Hard to imagine death by paper cut.
And then this evening, the big camp finale and kidnapping adventure followed by the rescue exercise—all perfect opportunities for a final, and fatal, accident.
Tomorrow, recap and evaluation of the kidnap rescue, followed by a good-bye assembly and a eulogy if our bad guy had his way.
Okay. Piece of cake—all I had to do was discover the identity of the intended killer, and how and why they planned on committing the crime. No problem. Right.
My head hurt with the responsibility and confusion of it all. Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes I was not. I fell back on my bed, camera still in hand, wishing I had even a few little gray cells. First things first. If I could figure out who’d written the warning on my keepall …
The standard architecture-student block handwriting was no help. Who knew I’d been out? Torq, of course. He seemed to know everything, including my every move. And Emma. Oh, heck, anyone who was watching could have known. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. Or listening …
What if my room was bugged? That would explain a lot. Bugging another CT’s room had been easy enough the first day of camp. I thought I’d been pretty foxy by discovering the “bug,” but what if my room really had a bug problem even now? What if that’s how Torq knew what I was up to every minute?
I heard stirrings in Emma’s room, followed by Emma entering the bathroom and turning the shower on. I didn’t have much time. I lifted my head from the bed and looked around. The room was sparse but still had ample bug-hiding locations.
I slid from the bed, hid the camera, and began searching, muttering about losing an earring in case anyone was listening in on my searching noises, and wishing I had one of those handheld bug-detecting devices. Then I remembered something I’d seen on a British spy documentary. I knew my Bond mania would come in useful someday!
Most bugs operate and transmit on FM wavelengths. The amateur way of finding them is to use a small, portable FM radio. All I had to do was go around the different wavelengths on the radio dial, and if there was a bug in this room, when the dial hit the bug’s operating wavelength, bammo, I’d get feedback. To find the bug’s lair, I’d go where the feedback was noisiest. I could do that. Really.
I grabbed my clock radio, glad that Rockford in his cheapness hadn’t sprung for digital tuning, and began slowly working the dial and the room.
When I hit the desk, the feedback nearly broke my eardrum. I jumped and turned the volume down before someone else heard and got suspicious. I couldn’t believe the FM-radio trick had actually worked!
There was a bug, an actual bug in my room. No way! My heart pulsed in my ears and my hands shook as I moved the only things on the desk—a notepad and an FSC pen—off and scanned the desk. It came up clean.
Okay. Pen or pad?
The pad produced nothing but radio silence. The pen, on the other hand, unleashed violent feedback. So the pen was my little snug as a bug nest. I would have congratulated myself on my own brainiac behavior, but I was simply too scared.
I turned the radio off and picked the pen up to examine it, holding it under the light. Ingenious! This was a genuine black FSC pen, not the fake navy one we’d had to substitute in the room-bugging game.
Once again, I got that hair-raising scared feeling. I thought of Torq and how he knew my every move down to what magazine I’d been reading … and I shuddered.
I grabbed the pen, ready to dump that puppy. With pen in hand, I opened the door to my room and surveyed the hall. Wade’s door was open. I saw him disappear down the hall toward the lobby. He wouldn’t be gone long, but all I needed were seconds.
Seizing the opportunity, I zipped into his room and exchanged pens. Let our listener pick up Wade’s personal habits for a while.
As I dashed back out I noticed Wade’s room was surprisingly tidy. Bed made. Closet doors open. A few Hawaiian shirts and a lot of conservative golf polos grouped by color hung in his closet. His shoes were neatly lined up in rows. Something about the details of the room niggled at me. It wasn’t what I’d expected out of Wade. Emma had said his room was a mess when she’d searched it.
I hurried back to my room, arriving just as Emma shut the shower off. I’d just plugged my clock back in and was adjusting the time when Emma stuck her toweled head in my room. “You’re up.”
I looked over my shoulder at her in time to catch her frown as she watched me from behind. “What’s up?”
I made a show of looking for something. “Lost an earring. Thought I left it on the nightstand. Maybe I knocked it off.”
She nodded. “Hang on. Let me get dressed and I’ll help you look for it.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not important. It wasn’t expensive.”
That’s when she noticed I was still in my pink bikini from the night before, and smiling knowingly, arched a brow. “Maybe you should ask Torq if he’s seen it. He could try looking in his bed. How was he? I want all the details.”
I felt myself blushing. “Great,” I stammered. “We’ll talk later.”
“All right, then. I’ll hold you to it.” She shook her head. “I take it you haven’t showered yet. Looks like you’d better step on it or you’re going to be late and miss breakfast again.”
“About breakfast …” I
said.
Knowing what was coming, Emma rolled her eyes. “Want me to snag you a muffin?”
“Blueberry if they’ve got it.” I flashed her a grateful smile and pulled her into our joint bathroom, where I turned on the water for white-noise coverage and made a pretense of wetting a washcloth and scrubbing off my makeup. “Keep an eye on Max and Torq for me, will you?”
Emma frowned. “Why? What’s going on?” Then she grinned. “Jealous already? Torn between two lovers?”
I rolled my eyes. “I can’t explain now, Emma. Just trust me. Don’t let Max and Torq out of your sight during breakfast.”
Thinking in the shower has always been a strong suit of mine. So while the hot steam swirled around me along with the subtle scent of soap, I realized I needed a gun. A real gun. No way was I playing Nancy Drew without a weapon. And I knew where to find one. Pussy had one stuffed between her mattress and box spring. If I just happened to steal it, I was killing two problems with one break-in—I’d be armed and Pussy wouldn’t. It went without saying that today I was paying close attention to shooting practice. No mind wandering. No daydreaming. ‘Cause the thought of me armed and on my own was really kind of frightening in itself.
That’s about as productive as my thinking got. Even lingering in the lather, I couldn’t put the pieces of the mystery together. I had the feeling I was a few vital clues short of a full picture.
I slid out of the shower and toweled off. Then I decked myself out as total Domino—fake silicone breasts pushed up and out, showing off in a form-fitting, low-cut V-neck tank top, signature Domino headband, crop pants, and cute little pink tennis shoes. Dressed for spy success, I was off to save the world. But not before I checked three times to make sure my keepall was still kept all to itself in the closet and the door to my room was latched tight.
Spy Candy Page 20
