License to Thrill (6 page)

“What a blazing idiot,” she cursed the absent office inhabitant while staring at a smiling family portrait on his desk. People who leave open Coke cans in trash cans don't deserve to smile, she thought, barely resisting the urge to smash its frame to bits. During training at The Tower she had been taught that a lot could be learned about a person by going through his or her trash. It sure sounded good in theory, but actually
doing
it was another matter entirely. Basically all she'd learned so far was that the bigwigs at the U.S. Embassy had a taste for junk food and a distaste for junk mail.

As she stormed out of the office and started down the hall Caylin took a deep breath. “Keep your eyes on the prize,
Louise
,” she told her alter ego. The suites, where Jonathon Nicholson hopefully lived, were her next stop.

Snooping through Jonathon's garbage will make up for all this other . . . uh, garbage, she assured herself. Her pulse raced as she got closer and closer to the door. Will he be behind it? she wondered. The possibility gave her a thrilling rush.

She reached the door of the mystery suite, opened the
lock easily with her all-access service key, and placed a trembling hand on the knob. Breath held in anticipation, she hastily pushed open the door, unable to stand the suspense a moment longer. She was dying to know what—or who—lay in wait on the other side.

•  •  •

“So Jonathon wasn't even
there
,” Caylin complained to Uncle Sam's silhouette via videophone that evening. “After my bore of a day I thought his suite would be pay dirt. But it was practically empty—just a few shirts, a pair of pants, and that's it. Anticlimactic, to say the least.”

“Well, I've got some scoop,” Jo piped up. “I met William Nicholson through Sandra, the translator coordinator. It was your typical meet-and-greet, no biggie. But he did mention that I'd be meeting Jonathon ‘one of these days.' ”

“If Jonathon's father said that and Jonathon's suite is practically empty, then he must be out of town,” Theresa deduced. “His name came up a lot in the call-forwarding area at the embassy today. Everyone in the department was told to take messages for him—and he gets a
lot
of
calls. I asked around about where he could be, but no one in the department had a clue.”

“Keep your eyes and ears open,” Uncle Sam instructed. “Anything else to report?”

“There's this World Peace Conference coming up, and it sounds like it's going to be major,” Jo said.

“It's about time you mentioned that,” Uncle Sam remarked.

“What do you mean?” Theresa wrinkled her brow in thought. “Oh, I get it. You didn't tell us about the conference because you wanted us to find out about it ourselves. Just like you didn't tell me about my faked credential working for my ‘uncle' Sam Walton!”

Uncle Sam chuckled. “That was quite clever, I thought.”

“Oh, please!” Theresa cried. “That joke was so lame.”

“All right, all right, let's deep-six this discussion,” Caylin demanded with a wave of her hand. “We've got more important things to think about—like how this race for the list of nuclear warheads is timed to coincide with the conference.”

“Exactly,” Uncle Sam replied. “Now grab a pen, Caylin. I've got an assignment for you.”

Caylin jumped up and retrieved a pen from the antique desk in the corner of the room. “Okay, Uncle Sam, shoot.”

“You will go to the first-floor bathroom in the embassy,” he commanded. “There will be eight bugs in the sanitary napkin machine, hidden in a tampon.”

A tampon? Caylin thought, looking at Jo and Theresa in horror.

“Then you are to take those and place four in Jonathon's suite and four in William's suite,” he continued. “The offices we'll do later since that will be a bit riskier and take some more planning. Any questions?”

Caylin looked up from the notes she'd been scrawling furiously and grinned, her grossed-out look replaced with one of delicious anticipation. “Nope, I got it,” she said. “Four bugs each, and we're not talking about the ones you could kill with Raid.”

Uncle Sam's silhouette nodded. “Okay, Theresa, you're next.”

“Pass that pen over, Cay,” Theresa requested gleefully. She caught it in midair and looked directly into the video cam. “Okay, Uncle Sam, give me the news.”

“Will do, Theresa,” Uncle Sam said. “You're to record all calls William and Jonathon receive—time, date, from whom—into your tape recorder–watch.”

Her face fell. “That's it?” she asked.

“That's it for now,” he said sweetly. “Even though it may not sound very exciting, it's
very
important that we have a record of who calls. It could lead us to the warheads.”

“Okay,” Theresa said, perking up a bit. “I won't let you down.”

Uncle Sam cleared his throat. “Good. Jo, you're up.”

Jo bounced up and down with excitement. “I thought you'd forgotten about me! Hang on a sec.”

Uncle Sam laughed. “You're certainly in rare form tonight. Jo, you need to pay special attention to anyone the Nicholsons speak with from any foreign country since we suspect the group Jonathon is in cahoots with is definitely not a domestic one. Set up a file of people they talk to, countries they're from, matters discussed, that sort of thing.”

“Gotcha,” Jo said, smiling.

“That's it for now, ladies, unless you have anything else,” Uncle Sam said.

“I have a mission for
you
,” Jo replied mock huskily. “You have to let me know what you look like. It's a health precaution because I'm
dying
to know.”

“Worry about the list, not my looks,” he said, “and you'll be just fine.”

“Great, a
downpour
,” Jo moaned as she walked out of the Ritz bright and early Thursday morning. “That's going to do wonders for my hair.”

“Umbrellas up,” Caylin said, clicking hers open.

As Theresa followed suit she spied a woman without an umbrella standing at the café across the street. “Check out that chick getting drenched over there!” she observed. “Wait—is that—?”

The short brown hair, the lean frame—where did Theresa know her from? Staring at her a moment longer, Theresa gasped as it clicked. It was
her
—the woman from the elevator. The shiny cap of hair was a dead giveaway. Without a word Theresa fished her lipstick camera out of her purse. She removed the cap, twisted up the red lipstick “lens,” and hit the button on the
bottom of the tube, which activated the shutter.

“Check it—it's her,” Theresa whispered, clicking the lipstick cam as quickly as she could. “That creepy woman—over there.” But by the time Jo and Caylin looked up, the mystery woman was nowhere in sight.

“You're probably imagining things, T.,” Jo said.

“No!” Theresa looked at the empty space where Short Hair had been, her nerves frayed with frustration. “She was right there—the woman from the elevator, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” Jo murmured. “I liked her hair.”

“Well, now it's immortalized on film,” Theresa said, holding up her lipstick cam. “I got some really great shots.”

Caylin snatched the camera out of her hands. “Oh, I was so green when you got this! This is the glammest gadget going.”

Jo stole it from Caylin. “How does it work?”

“Just point, click, and shoot,” Theresa explained, saying cheese as Jo aimed it her way. “But, seriously, this woman is following us.”

“But, seriously, you're being paranoid,” Jo replied.

“I hope so,” Theresa murmured. “For our safety's sake, I really do.”

•  •  •

“I'm getting cramps already!” Caylin snickered as she crept toward the embassy bathroom. She scoped out the hall, shifty eyed; to make sure no one was around to blow her cover. But just as she was about to make a quick entrance a young executive type barreled out, high heels clickety-clacking on the tile floors.

“Good morning,” Caylin said with a nod as she continued rolling her trash can down the hall, pail of cleaning supplies in hand. When the coast was clear, Caylin backtracked and ditched her supplies near the door so she could execute her operation unencumbered. Taking a deep breath, she ducked into the empty bathroom.

Operation On The Rag is now in full effect, Caylin thought as she placed five shillings into the machine and retrieved one tampon. It didn't feel all that special to her, so she dug out more shillings and cranked out more tampons to be safe.

What if someone walked off with my magic tampon?
Caylin lamented, her stomach lurching with worry. Just then her five shillings were eaten up with a sickening clank—she'd bought every last tampon in the machine.

Suddenly the door swung open and an efficient-looking woman entered the bathroom. Caylin stifled a gasp, stuffed the tampons in her housedress pockets, and pretended to clean the machine with the sleeve of her dress.

“Good morning,” the woman said. She eyed Caylin's pockets curiously.

“Can't hurt to be prepared, cannit?” Caylin replied, accent pitch perfect. Once the woman ducked in a stall, Caylin slipped into a stall of her own and began ripping open tampon after tampon. The fifth one revealed gold—eight bugs, just as Uncle Sam promised. She dumped the loot into the breast pocket of her housedress. Talk about my time of the month! she thought, chuckling softly.

•  •  •

No one answered when Caylin rapped on Jonathon's door—a very good sign.

“Housekeeping,” she hollered, letting herself in. Her pulse quickened as she noticed a brown suitcase in front of
the door. Jonathon was back in town! As excited as Caylin was to finally have the chance to see him in the flesh, right now she had other priorities.

“Mr. Nicholson?” she called, just in case he was asleep. No answer, no sign, no problem. But I've gotta move fast, she thought.

Surveillance search—check, Caylin noted as she scoped around for hidden cameras or any tape recorders. When her search came up empty, Caylin breathed a sigh of relief. At least no one had beaten her to the punch.

The first bug went under Jonathon's oak desk. The second, on the bedroom nightstand. The third, in the bathroom. Caylin installed them quickly and methodically, all that security training paying off in spades.

The last bug, destined for the phone, was a tad trickier. Caylin grabbed the receiver clumsily, twisting the top off the earpiece to place the bug inside. She replaced the earpiece, already cheering her success. But with a few turns of the earpiece left to go, it stuck. Just then the doorknob rattled.

Looks like I've got company, Caylin thought. She wrenched the earpiece on tightly, the intensity of the
moment giving her extra speed. Without a second's panic she replaced the assembled phone on its cradle, grabbed her orange feather duster, and started dusting up a storm as the door opened with a bang.

“Just who are you, and
what
are you doing in my room?” Jonathon Nicholson demanded angrily.

Caylin jumped, totally taken aback by both Jonathon's tone and how hot his white-T-and-khakis-clad self was in person. The tousled brown hair! The sparkling dark eyes! The way his eyebrows scrunched up when he was mad! All the excuses she had planned to make went out of her head and up in smoke at the mere sight of him. But in order to save face, she made a split-second decision to play off her moshing hormones as jitters.

“Cripes, settle down!” she shrieked. “I'm only the bloody housekeeper. Thanks a lot for scaring the living daylights out of me.”

“Oh, uh, I'm sorry,” Jonathon said, shutting the door with a guilty look on his face.

“You bloody well should be, giving an innocent girl the collywobbles like that.”

Jonathon shrugged and approached the desk she was “dusting.” “I'm really sorry. Honestly.” He extended a Rolex-flanked hand. “Jonathon Nicholson.”

“Louise Browning,” she said, nearly falling over from the electric charge she felt as he grasped her hand in his.

“I'm William Nicholson's son,” he explained, releasing his grip. “Interning for the summer.”

“And scaring housekeepers to death while you're at it,” Caylin joked flirtatiously.

He chuckled, meeting her starry-eyed gaze. “Yes, I guess I
am
doing that as well, Louise Browning.”

She joined in the laughter. “Well, just don't let it happen again, Jonathon Nicholson.”

He scratched his chin. “I just didn't expect anybody in here. The old housekeeper used to come at two o'clock every day. You could set your clock by her. Are you new?”

She nodded. “Yes, started yesterday and still trying to figure out this blasted cleaning schedule, I'm afraid. You weren't in yesterday, were you?”

“I was at a funeral in Washington, D.C.,” Jonathon said, his features clouding slightly.

“I'm sorry to hear that. Family?”

“No. A friend.”

Frank Devaroux, Caylin deduced. “I'll be out of your hair, then, so you can settle in.”

He smiled again, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Okay. Thanks.”

For someone possibly involved in a murder, Caylin thought, he sure has looks that kill. As she gathered her things and bid adieu, however, Caylin reminded herself that she had to keep her mind off Jonathon's looks and on the mission at hand. But as she stole one last glance at him before walking out the door, she got the feeling that wasn't going to be easy at
all
.

•  •  •

Jo chowed down on a grilled cheese sandwich in the embassy commissary, lost in thought. Her morning had been utterly uneventful. The files Sandra wanted her to translate were endless, barely leaving her time to breathe, much less talk to any of the other translators. Plus Sandra kept bugging her about doing the music-for-the-ball thing, making Jo sincerely regret she'd ever offered to help in the
first place. She desperately wanted to get the dirt on the Nicholsons. There'd been no chance thus far.