Spy Games
“You have any dinner plans?” he asked.
Suddenly, I was one part pleased and nine parts panic. Flirting with Van under the innocent guise of playing basketball was one thing. But going on a date with him, alone, with Ket out there, was suicide. Or murder, depending on who Ket would kill, Van or me. Or both. I looked around at the group. “I don’t know. Have we made any plans?”
Undaunted by my sudden reserve, Van grabbed my hand and pulled the phone away from my ear. “I was thinking, we could make plans. You and me.” He pointed to me and then him. “Just the two of us. Eating together somewhere nice. I have the feeling you’re a local girl. You could suggest somewhere. I could pay.”
I turned to stare at him, my heart melting to mush. “Are you asking me out? Like for a date?”
“Yeah. Like for a date.”
My phone beeped. I had a text message.
The dude 2 ur right wants u. Tell him ur mine. Im watching u.
–K
For my wonderful family;
I’ve been truly blessed by having all of you in my life
.
Writing a story is a solitary endeavor. Seeing a story become a book is not. I owe a debt of gratitude to so many people:
To my husband, Jeff, who’s always my first reader and my creative sounding board.
To my children, Janelle, John, and Jennica, for the joy you give me and for keeping me young. And particularly to Janelle for helping me with my research and introducing me to IMDb, John for lending me his Bond book and sharing his love of all things spy with me, and Jennica for sharing her love of fastpitch, basketball, and track with me.
To my many writing friends for their advice and encouragement.
To my husband’s parents, Don and Berta, for introducing me to the Puget Sound area, this wonderful part of the country where I now live and write.
To the staff at Kensington for all the work each of you put into my books.
And to my agent, Kim Lionetti, and my editor, Peter Senftleben. You’re both a joy to work with.
My panties were in a bunch.
Literally in a bunch. Piled à la mode on the overturned contents of my suitcase on the red and gold, diamond-patterned carpet of my hotel room.
Not just one or two pair, either. Every luscious new pair I’d brought with me and neatly tucked into my suitcase to bring to Fantasy Spy Camp, Seattle, Urban Ops—three thongs, three boy shorts, three briefs, three bikinis. I’d taken FSC’s packing instructions at their word. They
had
said, “three pair of underwear, any style.” What style of panty does a girl wear with fatigues?
I stood rooted in place in the doorway, key card in one hand, car keys dangling from the other.
I’d signed up for spy camp to increase my odds of survival should my psycho, stalker ex-boyfriend Ket get out of prison. If he made good on his threats, he’d dramatically shorten my lifespan. Three days of target practice, spy techniques, and self-defense training were motivation enough to get me past the distaste of wearing fatigues. Camo on the outside, lace on the inside. I was half hoping I’d meet a hot, adrenaline-addicted thrill seeker who wouldn’t be scared off by a wacko like Ket.
I took stock of the situation, hating that Ket still had the power to scare me. I tried to reassure myself. This was probably nothing more than a camp prank. A setup to test our spy capabilities.
The DO NOT DISTURB sign dangled from the outside doorknob where I’d left it before heading out for a late afternoon meal with my fellow campers. The weepy-tearjerker TV channel for women that I’d left on to give the impression the room was occupied still chattered away inside. That alone should have been enough to scare off any male prowler.
The Goldilocks of room trashing was
obviously
not still on scene. Ket couldn’t have done this, I told myself. Nicki, my victim counselor, would have warned me if he was out of jail. So why was I shaking so badly? At that moment, I hated Ket and his power over me with an intensity that scared me.
The reassuring din of my fellow campers floated down the hotel corridor. Several of the group jostled and joked, and insulted one another as they returned to their rooms for a pit stop before our first official Urban Ops meeting.
I was aware of Van, who had dreamy, intelligent brown eyes and was considerably more restrained in his enthusiasm about playing tough-guy spy for a week than the rest, pausing across the hall in front of his own door. Honestly, although I’d only met him a few hours ago, my pulse raced whenever he was near me.
“Reilly?” he asked.
I looked over my shoulder at him, relieved by his presence.
He stood in the dim light, gazing at me with a quizzical expression. With his height, dark hair, and intensity, he looked as if he could scare away the boogeyman. “You going to lurk in that doorway all day?”
I opened my mouth and shut it without saying a word.
“Hey, you okay?”
I pointed into my room. “Take a look.”
He crossed the hall in a single stride. As he brushed past me into the room, he knocked my keys out of my hand and onto the floor. The brief brush of his touch sent a shiver of attraction through me. I was too busy watching his reaction, not to mention his very nice, sculpted backside, to bother stooping to pick up the keys.
“Whoa!” He stopped short just inside the doorway, then turned to glance back to see how I was taking things.
I don’t know what he was looking for. Hysteria, maybe? Whatever he expected of me, he was clearly excited by the turn of events.
“Anything missing?”
“I don’t know.” I paused, mulling over the possibilities. “Why would anyone bother with my room?” Anyone other than Ket, I added to myself. “Everything worth stealing is in my purse.” I rattled the handbag slung over my shoulder. With Van in the room, I relaxed.
“Want me to take a look?” He pointed into the room, clearly eager to search it.
“Knock yourself out,” I said with just a touch of flirtation and relief in my voice.
The bathroom was to our immediate right. He gently pushed the bathroom door full open with the toe of his boot.
I put a hand on his arm to stop him.
He turned to me with his eyes sparkling. “You think Freddie’s hiding in the shower?” His grin was infectious. He wasn’t scared at all.
I was actually wondering if I’d left any embarrassing feminine products lying around that I didn’t want him to see. But I couldn’t admit to that. “Maybe you should take a weapon with you,” I said to cover. “I have a baseball bat in the closet.”
I didn’t mention the gun in my purse. Or the pepper spray. I liked the bat better. The gun and the spray were actually a bit scary. For dire emergencies only.
“No, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” I pawed through my purse, looking for my self-defense whistle. I held it up for him to see. “I’ll just whistle for help if you run into trouble.” Humor may have been my coping mechanism of choice, but I was only half joking.
“Yeah. Do that.” He stepped into the bathroom and looked around with me peering over his shoulder like a bumbling stooge.
“I don’t see ‘redrum’ written on the mirror in blood,” he said, stepping back into the entry in front of the mirrored closet.
And I hadn’t seen anything he shouldn’t have seen.
“I think we’re good.” He slid the closet doors open with a sudden movement.
I jumped, hand to heart. “Don’t do that.”
He laughed. “Don’t do what?”
“Make sudden moves.”
“Jumpy?”
“Maybe.”
He poked his head into the closet. “No skeletons. Your bat’s still here, slugger.” He handed it to me and headed for the main part of the room.
Bat cocked, I followed him, wondering if he was one of those guys with a photographic memory. Photographic memories come in real handy, I’d heard. For spies. Not for victims of violent crimes. Not when you can’t stop reliving the event in minute detail.
His quiet perusal of the room, with its “dainties on parade” decor, made me uncomfortable. This wasn’t exactly how I’d imagined showing them off.
I spoke just as his gaze lit on my hot pink thong panties. “Okay, so I know what you’re thinking.”
“I don’t think so.” His grin was full of innuendo.
Yeah, from his tone, I think I did. And it made my pulse speed along like a happy racehorse. “I was going to say I ignored the packing directive. I brought just a few more things than they recommended.”
He stared at my large pile of clothes and accessories. “Yeah, the bat tipped me off.”
I laughed and made a move to step around him, ostensibly to clean up, but mostly because I hated not being in control. He deftly blocked me with a well-muscled arm. “I haven’t finished with the room yet.”
I smiled at him and his protective instinct. I liked the heroic type. I stepped back out of his way. “Don’t forget to check beneath the bed.”
He looked under the bed and behind the curtains. When no one popped out from either place, he shot me a triumphant look. “All clear.”
A female character on the tearjerker channel screamed. We both jumped. Van flicked an annoyed glance at the TV.
“Shut it off,” I said. “I only had it on for security purposes.”
“Next time try Spike TV.” As he flipped the TV off, he gave me a look that couldn’t have been more clear if he’d rolled his eyes. “Give people the idea there’s a man in the room.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
He tried the adjoining room door. “Locked tight. No signs of jimmying.” He turned back to the room. “Nothing’s broken. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
I nodded. “You mean do I think FSC did this?”
He smiled. “You got it.”
I set my bat down on the bed. “You’d better check your room.”
Before Van could move, a string of curses broke out in the hall.
“Holy shit!” I recognized Jim Martin’s voice with its loud growl of dismay and menace. “Some asshole broke into my room.”
Van shot me an excited look. “Let the games begin.”
I darted into the hall, ready to sing the hallelujah chorus. I hadn’t been singled out. Ket hadn’t found and terrorized me.
“My room was ransacked, too!” I yelled down the hall, trying to calm Jim while not sounding
too
elated.
Huff, Cliff, and Steve, who were still talking in the hall, came running to have a look at my room.
“Wow!” Steve, the whiny sidekick of the group, braced his hand on my shoulder as he peered past me into my room. “Cool. How’d you two get so lucky?”
“Luck?” I said. “How much you want to bet your rooms are tossed, too?”
Huff retrieved my car keys from the floor and handed them to me. A woman would have to be dead not to notice how attractive he was—six feet, blond, dancing blue eyes. Despite Ket’s best efforts, I wasn’t dead yet. So I noticed. Even so, Huff didn’t quite set my pulse on its ear like Van did.
“Thanks. I’d forgotten I’d dropped them.” I needed to remember to be more careful.
“Where’s the damage?” Huff asked.
“Straight ahead.” I stepped out of his way.
“Whoa!” Huff let out a whistle. “Nice panties.”
I rolled my eyes. “What is it about panties?”
“You have to ask?” Huff shot me a leer.
Steve and Cliff dashed off to their rooms like young hounds on the scent. Huff smiled at me, winked, and ambled off, a study of easygoing sex appeal.
People often wondered how I could still like men after what I’d gone through, was still going through, with Ket. I called them the one-bad-apple believers. Not me. To me one bad apple was just one bad apple. Toss the apple out of the barrel and you’re good. There were plenty of men who were good fruit. Some, like Van, were even luscious ripe fruit. The kind of fruit a girl like me who’d been living like a monk-ette was just dying to try.
Van went across the hall to his room, yelling at another camper, Peewee Canarino, four doors down. I knew Peewee slightly. He worked out at Ket’s gym. Even the slight association was enough to make me leery of him. “Canary, your room tossed, too?”
“Shit, yes!” Canarino replied.
“See if anything’s missing and meet us in the hall,” Van called back to him.
Less than five minutes later, the seven of us gathered in front of Van’s door. I was the only woman in the group. I’d grown up with brothers. I could handle it. But it would have been nice to have a confidante.
“They got us good.” Cliff, the movie director, had his hands stuffed into his shorts pockets. He sounded amused and excited. Short, not more than five foot nine, soft, with hairy legs, and a scraggly beard, Cliff was not on my list of men to ogle. Unfortunately, he liked the sight of me. Short men always did.
“What do you think they wanted?” Steve crowded in.
“Information.” Huff leaned casually against the wall. “Anything they can use against us in camp.”
Van nodded his agreement. “They’re looking for weaknesses.” His gaze flicked to me, amused. “And whether we can follow directions.”
I smiled and shrugged.
“Anyone leave anything incriminating in their room?” Van scanned the group, landing his gaze on me.
“Don’t look at
me
! I had my purse with me the entire time. The only thing they learned from me is that I don’t have a favorite style of panties.”
“Nice to know,” Huff said.
The discussion continued until we determined FSC had succeeded only in scaring us. Me, mostly. We split up and headed back to our rooms.
In my room, I reassured myself of my safety. Just like I did practically every day of my life now. My room was above the fifth floor, which made it statistically less likely to be burgled. And away from the stairs. The farther away from the stairs, the riskier it was to get to me. I wasn’t going to make things easy for Ket.
I had my trusty Louisville Slugger, my gun, pepper spray, and a self-defense whistle. No one but my parents, Grandpa, and Nicki knew where I was. I was on a floor full of macho guys who wanted to be spies. For most of camp, there’d be three well-trained instructors to watch out for me. Ket was locked up for contempt, a guest of the California penal system. He wasn’t Vapor Man. He couldn’t just glide through the bars at will. What could possibly go wrong?
I carefully picked through the mayhem, gently refolding clothes and packing them back in my suitcase, ready for flight, like always. I could have hung my things in the closet, packed away my lingerie in the drawers, lined the bathroom counter with my cosmetics. Only I didn’t.
I lived like a butterfly perched on a flower—always poised for flight. I kept a packed bag in the car. One at the office. One here. Better to be prepared than end up pinned to an exhibition board.
I sighed. Without paying much attention to my work, I smoothed out a pair of panties and picked them up to fold. A matchbook tumbled out of the crotch.
Madam Lou’s Martini Bar
.
I flinched and jumped back as if I expected the matches to spontaneously combust and consume me. My mouth went dry and I began to tremble uncontrollably.
Ket!
Lou’s
was Ket’s favorite Seattle bar.
Before he’d gone to jail, Ket had broken into my home, my office, my best friend’s house, and anywhere I was or was likely to be. He always left a calling card. A little memento to let me know he was watching and had the upper hand.
Always
.
I rubbed the scar that Ket had given me on my chin. Beneath my breath, I cursed him to the fieriest recesses of hell. He wouldn’t win. I wouldn’t let him ruin my life.
I pulled at the collar of my blouse, fighting off claustrophobia. I shouldn’t have put Van in danger by flirting with him and letting him into my room alone. I needed a new room. I needed a new one
now
!