Bulletproof Mascara: A Novel

by Bethany Maines

  She could tell he was mad by the way he clenched his jaw, but as he opened his mouth to say more, a tuk-tuk pulled up to the curb. Z’ev leaned in to bargain with the driver, but Nikki recognized him immediately.

  “Hey!” said the driver, smiling and pointing at Z’ev.

  “Hey,” Nikki replied, and climbed in without negotiating a price. “Mandarin Hotel.”

  The driver made a questioning sound and pointed at Z’ev.

  “Meh,” said Nikki, and she shrugged.

  “Oh,” he said, clicking his tongue in a c’est la vie manner as he started the engine.

  “Hey,” Z’ev said, quickly climbing in before the tuk-tuk could pull away. “I take it you’ve met before?” he asked, looking suspiciously between her and the driver.

  “You could say that,” Nikki said. “Just don’t ask to drive.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  The driver’s presence forestalled any further conversation. They reached the hotel safely, and the doorman ushered them into the lobby. Nikki shivered as they walked into the wall of air-conditioning.

  “I’ll walk you to your door,” Z’ev said as they got on the elevator. Nikki didn’t reply.

  “You shouldn’t have been there tonight,” Z’ev said, turning to her as soon as the doors closed, his voice harsh. Nikki didn’t reply. “I told you I had to leave. Why’d you follow me?”

  “I thought you were ditching me,” said Nikki. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have. She wanted time to think. “I don’t like being ditched.”

  “I told you it was work related.”

  “Yeah, just exactly what kind of work do you do?” she demanded. He couldn’t be angry at her; she was already mad at him.

  “You know I’m a lawyer,” he said, but his eyes wouldn’t meet hers.

  “Yeah. Right,” she said. “The kind of lawyer who meets with a woman who’s been missing for two weeks and gets in a fight with someone he’s supposedly working with. And speaking of fighting . . . I’ve met lawyers before, Z’ev. They couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag, much less rip a pipe off the wall, beat someone with it, and then stick that someone’s head through a toilet. And you said that ‘we’ needed Victor. Who’s ‘we’? And if you were working for the same place as Victor, why didn’t Lawan go after you like she did Victor? It doesn’t add up.”

  “Nikki, you don’t get to be pissed,” he said, clearly frustrated. “You barged into someplace you didn’t belong.”

  “Trust me, Z’ev, I can be pissed if I want to. It’s a free country.” She paused to take a mental rundown of the Thai government. Yes, it was a free country, mostly. “And besides, I didn’t barge in. You invited me when you asked me to marry you.”

  “Well, now I’m uninviting you.” He was growling through the sentence, trying to maintain a grip on his temper.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Nikki said bitterly. “We’re divorced.”

  The elevator door opened and Nikki marched briskly out, tugging on the key card in her purse. The more she thought about the evening, the madder she became. The card slipped through her fingers, and Z’ev picked it up.

  “Nikki,” he said, holding out the card. She snatched the card out of his hand and slammed it into the door slot. “I didn’t mean it to sound like that. It’s just . . . it’s just not safe to be around me. Would you just listen?”

  “To what? Your lame explanations? You’re a government agent. Why don’t you just admit it?”

  “Nikki!” he said sharply, and looked in both directions down the hallway. “Nikki,” he said again, lowering his voice, “I have a job to do and you are putting it and a lot of other people in jeopardy. Do you understand?”

  “Oh, I understand,” she said, refusing to be quieted. “I understand just fine. You’re a liar. I said it in Canada and I’m saying it now—liar. I’ll tell you what, Z’ev, next time you need to be hauled out of a bathroom, call someone else. I’ve got better things to do with my time.”

  On that final note, she slammed the door shut in his face and leaned against it, breathing hard. In the following silence, she heard her phone beep sadly, indicating a missed call.

  THAILAND X

  Universal Truth

  Nikki threw her purse at the bed and spun around to look through the peephole. Through the fish-eye perspective, she saw Z’ev raise his hand as if to knock on the door, drop it again, and then shake his head before walking back toward the elevators. She counted to ten and then opened the door. The elevator doors were firmly closed and Z’ev was nowhere in sight.

  Nikki marched out into the hall and across to Val’s door. She gave it a hearty knock and waited, composing her speech to Val. It was going to be a towering tirade of a wronged woman, but after standing in the hallway shifting from foot to foot she realized that not only had Val not answered the door, she hadn’t even heard the telltale rustle of movement from within the room.

  Nikki felt a shiver of oncoming fear, like the first wavelet caressing the beach before a tidal wave. She knocked again—harder this time, but the answer remained the same. Down the hall another door popped open and a man’s head appeared, annoyance scrawled across his face like graffiti. She gave an apologetic smile and retreated to her room.

  Where was Val? They had been attacked at the gun shop. What if after she had left Val at the restaurant there had been an incident? What if by leaving Val to chase the myth of a trustworthy man she’d left her partner vulnerable? What had she been thinking?

  Nikki sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands, breathing deeply. There had to be an explanation. Val was following Nikki and hadn’t gotten back yet. Val had gone to talk to Laura Daniels. Val was tracking some as-yet-undiscovered clue. She could think of a few more, but her phone kept beeping repetitively, putting sonic periods in the mid-sentence of every thought she had. She wanted to sit down to take a breather, call a time-out, have some time to think. Instead, she reached into her purse, fumbling through the layers. The phone beeped again, and she hurried faster. She dropped her purse, scattering items on the floor. She ignored them, concentrating on the one task of making the phone be quiet. Flipping open the phone, she expected to see a message from Val, and instead saw one unread message from Jane.

  Belatedly remembering her brief conversation with Jane earlier in the evening, she opened the message and waited for the image to fully open on her screen. She glanced around the room before looking back at her phone, then wished she hadn’t.

  The image, even on the phone’s little screen, was disturbing. A little girl of about nine or ten stared back at her from the tiny square—hands and feet bound and tied to a chair, her mouth gagged, but clearly screaming. The whole image made Nikki’s guts churn.

  She hit the Call Back button and dialed Jane.

  “What the hell did you send me?” she demanded when Jane picked up.

  “I told you. It’s the picture from Victor’s phone,” Jane said, sounding impatient.

  Nikki was afraid. All her mother’s warnings about what happened to little girls who went outside alone or went somewhere after dark or just plain left the house seemed to have reared up in the darkest part of her mind.

  “That’s it? Just the picture? There’s nothing to explain it?” Nikki barked into the phone, knowing that she was yelling at Jane for something that was not Jane’s fault.

  “There’s the date and the number he sent it to. It was to a cellphone account that’s been closed out. We’re working on figuring out who used to pay the bill.”

  “What about the date?”

  “Two weeks ago. Same time frame as Lawan’s disappearance.”

  Nikki rubbed her head. It was turning out to be a long day.

  “All right, well, you’re cross-referencing all of Lawan’s known numbers or companies against Victor’s phone, right?”

  “I . . . uh . . . yeah . . . I’m working on that,” Jane said.

  Nikki could hear her typing in the backgro
und. “You haven’t done that yet, have you?” she asked tiredly.

  “I’m only one person,” said Jane patiently. “And you’re not my only case. It got bumped to the bottom of the priority list.”

  “Well, bump it back up,” snapped Nikki. “A little girl’s life might be at stake.”

  “I’m on it,” Jane said, sounding hurt.

  “I’m sorry, Jane,” Nikki said. “It’s been a long day, and to top it all off, I’m not sure where Val is.”

  “You’re not the only one,” said Jane. “Dr. Hastings put in like three ‘request to calls,’ and Val’s ignored every single one of them.”

  “Is that normal?” Nikki asked, trying to fight the urge to curl up into a ball.

  “For Val? If it’s insensitive and inconvenient, it’s par for the course.”

  “Jane,” said Nikki, sinking down onto the floor and leaning against the door. “The number of things I’m certain about in this situation is limited. Victor’s a bad guy, but I don’t know what he’s up to. Or rather, has been up to, since I think he just got taken off the playing field. Lawan doesn’t seem to be missing, so much as intentionally absent. Lawan and Z’ev may be working together, but I don’t know why. Z’ev clearly isn’t who he says he is. I’m pretty sure he’s some sort of government agent, but he’s not about to tell me the truth. Sarkassian is a mystery. And now there’s a little girl in trouble, and my partner is in the wind. I need fewer question marks, OK? I can’t do this without help.”

  “I’m sorry, Nikki,” Jane said, sounding distressed. “I know I’m not being the best informational specialist I could be, but Dr. Hastings keeps piling extra work on me. She knows I’m working with you and Val, but it’s like she wants me to work twenty-four hours straight. At this rate, I’m going to miss something crucial, I just know it. But I will do better. I promise.”

  “Get Jenny and Ellen to help,” suggested Nikki. “They might have a few minutes to spare you, and they know the situation. Dr. Hastings doesn’t have to know.”

  “I . . . I might ask.” Jane sounded depressed, and Nikki guessed that if she was willing to ask for help, then the workload must be significant. “Meanwhile, did you and Val get the map I sent? I collated Victor’s most-called numbers and marked them on a map of Bangkok. I e-mailed it this afternoon.”

  “No,” Nikki said. “I’ll look now.”

  Scrambling over to the desk, she turned on the computer. As she waited for it to boot up, she distinctly heard a click on the phone line and a sigh from Jane.

  “That’s Dr. Hastings paging me again,” said Jane. “Can I call you back?”

  “Yeah, sure,” agreed Nikki. “I’ll log in to the website. You can get me through there.”

  “Cool,” Jane said, and hung up.

  Nikki pulled up Jane’s e-mail. Numbers, contact list, calendar appointments, etc.—all had been collated into neat columns that Nikki’s tired eyes blurred over. Jane had also marked a map of Bangkok with Victor’s most frequently called numbers, but as she commented in a dry footnote, all locations were subject to inaccuracy due to Thailand’s high cell phone usage. Addresses were only good for billing; on-site confirmation would be required.

  Nothing about the e-mail seemed particularly urgent. Victor called a warehouse owned by Rival Shipping most frequently. Second most frequent was Sarkassian’s number. An unspecified business in the poorer part of town and a strip club downtown completed the list of most-called numbers.

  The next e-mail from Jane contained the picture, and Nikki reluctantly opened it up to view it on a big screen. Once it was bigger, she could see something that she had missed the first time. Staring at the picture, she was convinced that she’d seen the little girl before—in pictures all over Lawan’s home and office. It was Lawan’s daughter.

  Nikki leaned her forehead onto her hand. She felt hot and sticky, but immediately got goose bumps when the air-conditioning kicked on, and she shivered. She felt ill, then wondered if she should take a trip to Lawan’s clinic. Her head snapped up and she pulled up Jane’s e-mail again. Then she ran to her bag, pushing clothes out of the way in an attempt to find the sheaf of papers Val had given her on Lawan. Moments later she was comparing the business address on Jane’s e-mail to the printed one in Lawan’s dossier. There it was, plain as day. The third most-called number on Victor’s phone was Lawan’s clinic.

  She brought up the phone log and looked at the dates on Victor’s phone calls to the clinic. The calls went back at least six months and continued after Lawan’s disappearance, so it couldn’t have been about the kidnapping. If Victor had been talking to Lawan, it had been for another purpose.

  “But why? She hated him.” Nikki spoke out loud, and the sound of her own voice startled her in the quiet of the room. Thoughtfully, she reached for the phone and dialed Val. Moments later she was listening to Val’s voice mail message. Frowning, she dialed again, this time trying for Laura Daniels.

  “Have you found her?” was Laura’s immediate response—not even a hello.

  “Not exactly,” said Nikki, “but I need to know about the clinic.”

  “What about it?” asked Laura, her voice sinking, and Nikki could picture her shoulders sagging downward.

  “Do they carry a lot of drugs or anything that someone might want?”

  “No,” Laura said firmly. “They carry a very limited supply of drugs. Drugs are such a problem already that it’s really a struggle to keep people clean. Why?”

  “I saw Lawan tonight,” said Nikki, still trying to sort through her own thoughts.

  “You did?!” Laura’s voice rose to a startling pitch, and Nikki jerked the phone away from her ear. “Is she all right?”

  “Yeah, I think she’s been hiding out with her boyfriend, a Muay Thai fighter.”

  “Saman? I called him,” Laura said, sounding hurt. “He said he hadn’t seen her.”

  “I also saw the guy from the clinic and the night club—Victor—and she definitely is not a fan of Victor’s, so I’m wondering why her clinic is the third most-called number in his phone.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t call the clinic if you wanted to talk to her,” Laura said defensively, and Nikki realized that her question could have been interpreted as accusatory. “You’d call her cell phone. She’s in and out too much to get her at the clinic.”

  “Sorry, of course,” Nikki said, backpedaling. “But he is calling the clinic, so who’s he talking to?”

  There was silence on the other end of the line as Laura considered. “What’s the actual number?” she asked.

  Nikki gave it to her.

  “That’s Patient Records,” Laura said. “The clinic has two numbers—one for the public, one for doctors or pharmacies calling in for prescription confirmation or patient records.”

  “Patient records?” Nikki repeated. “Like the ones Lawan had all over her office?”

  “Yes,” Laura said, slowly as if thinking, “she did.”

  “I don’t get it. What’s the connection?” mused Nikki. “What could Victor possibly want at the clinic, let alone in Patient Records?”

  “I don’t know,” Laura said.

  “Tell me about Lawan’s daughter,” Nikki said, realizing that Laura was going to be horrified if told about the picture on Victor’s phone. She would have to handle this tactfully.

  “Lindawati,” said Laura. “She’s absolutely darling. And so smart. She’s supposed to be coming back for summer vacation soon. I called the school when Lawan disappeared, to make sure they didn’t release her, though. I didn’t want her coming back to all this. They wouldn’t let me talk to her. They said it was against their security protocols.” Laura sounded bitter. “I’ve been working the network trying to find someone with an in at the school. I’m so afraid that the end of term will roll around and Lindawati will be stuck there with no explanation.”

  “The network?” repeated Nikki.

  “The people who can afford to attend boarding schools are a rather limited social g
roup. I just have to find someone who’s got leverage there who owes me a favor.”

  “You make it sound like the mob,” Nikki said, and Laura laughed, but Nikki wasn’t listening. She was thinking about Lindawati, who was clearly no longer at the school. Somehow Victor had gotten past the school’s security. She replayed the scene in the bathroom, ignoring Laura. “That doesn’t help Lindawati,” Lawan had said. Victor had kidnapped Lindawati to use against Lawan, but why? Lawan had been investigating Rival Shipping in her office at home. She’d been poring over patient records at work.

  “Nikki?” said Laura. “Are you still there?”

  “The orderly,” Nikki said, following her thoughts. “I forgot about the orderly.”

  “What?” asked Laura, nonplussed.

  “Victor’s been calling the clinic, and we saw the orderly hand him a disk. So he must have been talking to the orderly. Meanwhile, Lawan was investigating Rival Shipping because of her support for increased security measures at the port. She must have found out about whatever he and the orderly were up to—found the connection between Rival and the clinic—and they kidnapped Lindawati to keep Lawan quiet.”

  “What?!” Laura screeched, and Nikki grimaced. “That’s impossible! Why didn’t you tell me? I called the school. They said she was fine. We have to call the police immediately!”

  “If Lawan thought the police could help, I think she would have called them by now,” said Nikki, and she heard Laura sigh in exasperation.

  “I can’t take this! Rival Shipping, you said? Why, I have a good mind to march down there and demand an explanation.”

  “Laura, that is a very bad idea,” said Nikki, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut. “You have to leave this to the professionals.” She was thinking of Z’ev and his mysterious government agency—it had to be the CIA.

  “You’re right,” said Laura, clearly struggling under this command; her breathing was still labored. “I’m sure you and Val will find them and everything will be all right, but I’m so worried about Lawan. And God, poor Lindawati . . .” There was a stifled sob at the end. Nikki gulped, realizing that Laura was relying on her to be the professional.