Merit Badge Murder (8 page)

Lana nodded. "She haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated me. I think Kelleeee hates me too." She set her glass on the counter and gave me her full attention. It was like staring into the sun. A blinding, bright sun with a 34 DD cup.

"Why do women hate me, Finny?" she asked, her lips in an adorable pout.

Hmmm…what to do here. I decided, perhaps a little meanly, on the truth. "Well, you fling yourself at every man around. You're more beautiful than any Hollywood starlet, and you dress like a tramp."

Lana stared at me for a long, terrifying moment. I thought I could see the synapses connecting in her brain. Did she really not know this? Did she really have no idea how she affected people? Had I gone too far?

"Do
you
hate me Finny?" Her eyes with the impossibly huge pupils searched my face.

"No." I slammed the other glass of wine and set the glass back on the table. "I'm getting used to you. But if you don't start calling me Merry, we might have a problem."

Lana responded by hurling herself into my arms. I stood there, stunned for a moment, before wrapping my arms around her and hugging her awkwardly. I guess this was better…

She pulled back but kept her hands on my arms. She grinned like she'd just invaded the Crimea and they made a postage stamp in her likeness. "I knew you and I would be best friends!" Lana squealed. Then she hugged me. Again.

I gently extricated myself from her grip. "I'll be your best friend forever if you can help me get out of this mess," I said jokingly.

Lana's eyes grew wide, and her mouth opened into a charming
O
. "You mean it? I will help you! I will solve this, and we will be best of friends forever!" She smiled like I'd never seen her smile before. This smile was…more genuine? It wasn't the smile she gave corrupt Russian politicians or even the media horde in front of my house. This was the real thing. I couldn't help falling for it. It reminded me of bunnies and freshly baked cookies.

As she bounced off down the hallway to go to bed, I wondered. Had Lana ever really had a friend before? And then I realized, besides Kelly, I didn't have other friends. Being a spy is a very lonely business. Are we so starved for attention that we'll do anything for any kind relationship?

My mind went back to Riley in the car—how I thought he was going to kiss me. Kiss me
romantically
. Was I that desperate and lonely that I'd let his charms overwhelm me? I felt a rush of humiliation at the idea.

I recycled the empty bottle of wine (Yes, I'm that awesome.) and washed the two glasses (And I'm domestic—how am I not a total catch?). It was nearly two in the morning. I needed to get some sleep.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out. Kelly was ending her shift at the hospital and had left me a message. I pulled it out of my pocket and checked it out. What I read made me more terrified than when I found out I'd accidentally eaten the wrong part of the blowfish.

Don't forget we have a Girl Scout meeting tomorrow!

Damn.

The troop was meeting at the state park about ten minutes away. We were going to work on knots and making fires. A month ago, this had seemed like a terrific idea. We'd planned for a full afternoon in the great outdoors. I'd even been looking forward to it.

But now…

It was too late to call Kelly or the girls to cancel. I'd have to go through with it. And worse yet, I'd have to bring Lana. What else could I do with her? Riley wanted me to keep an eye on the blonde bimbo.

This was going to be a disaster. Lana would be useful only if we were working on a
How To Sleep Your Way Through The Kremlin
merit badge, and I was pretty sure the Girl Scouts didn't have one of those. I imagined all sorts of scenarios—Lana screaming at the sight of a daddy longlegs spider…Lana breaking a nail just looking at the outdoors…Lana getting poison ivy on her… Well, I guess it wasn't all bad. I'd just have to make her stay out of the way. It was going to be hard enough as it was with the fire and knots and any dads in the area standing there like brain-dead mouth breathers.

Damn it. Instead of being an afternoon of awkward quality time with my girls, it was now going to be a tense babysitting session with me trying to keep Lana out of trouble while trying to teach something I was terrible at. I was angry and worried, which meant I wasn't getting any beauty sleep tonight. Sigh.

*  *  *

I woke up early and stumbled through the shower. After digging out my rope supplies from the garage, I got Lana up and dressed without killing her. The park was only twenty minutes away, so we didn't have far to go. Lana and I snuck out the back and using the back yards of my neighbors, made it to Kelly's house unnoticed by the slowly dissipating media mob. I knocked on her sliding glass door at 12:30pm. She did not look happy to see us.

"What's
she
doing here?" Kelly folded her arms across her chest.

Lana piped up cheerfully, ignoring the insult. "I was Girl Scout back in Russia! Fifteen years!"

What? Lana had been a scout? I imagined the blonde as a Brownie with long, lustrous hair and huge boobs. I'd bet she sold more cookies than anyone. If they sold cookies, that was. What else would they sell? Vodka and borscht?

I gave Kelly a weak smile. "Come on. We're doing knots and making fires. We'll need all the help we can get." It was an okay argument. Not my best, but I just needed Kelly to buy it. Fourteen second-graders were about to be dropped off in a park, and we had to make sure to send them home without third-degree burns or partially strangled by rope.

Kelly narrowed her eyes and studied Lana. I'd dressed my roomie carefully—T-shirt, khakis, tennis shoes, and a baseball hat with her hair in a ponytail behind it. I didn't even let her wear makeup. She still looked like a super model, but it was the best I could do.

"Fine," Kelly said finally, "she can help." She turned and went into her house, and we followed meekly. My argument had worked. It had taken all my talents as a persuasive spy to convince my best friend. I was exhausted.

The drive was agonizing. Kelly didn't speak to me, not once. I could feel her hostility with every bump in the road. In fact, I was pretty sure she was hitting every bump in the road just to get back at me.

I had a tiny, fragile sense of hope that maybe Lana would be okay. I didn't know what Russian Girl Scouts did—maybe just evaded wolves or wrestled bears or sent Boy Scouts to gulags—but there had to be a shred of skill there, right? Maybe it would be kind of okay. And by that I meant that maybe I could keep Kelly from killing her.

My fears and concerns—the ones that kept me up all night, I might add—dissolved the minute we arrived. At the campsite we'd rented for the afternoon, Lana jumped into action. She met each car as it drove up and dazzled the parents, men and women alike, before shepherding their daughters to Kelly and me. The girls looked at Lana as if she was a living Barbie/Fairy Princess. They were hypnotized. Lana apparently
liked
kids.

"I've got to admit," Kelly grumbled, "she's pretty good at this part."

I nodded. Usually parents just dumped their kids and left, sometimes complaining that this was inconvenient for them. I was pretty sure the parents hated us most of the time. But now, many of them parked and came back to join us. Of course, almost all of them were men…

I started to talk to the girls as they sat on the ground, waiting. But Lana interrupted me.

"We need tinder, kindling, and fuel!" She bubbled enthusiastically as she held up examples of the three that were so perfect I had a hard time believing those twigs actually existed in nature.

"And we need a lot of all three of them. Who wants to help me gather the tinder, kindling, and fuel?" Lana asked.

Every single hand shot up into the air. And that included the parents who were with us. For a second, I thought I saw Kelly's hand twitching. I put my hand on her arm to keep it down, just in case.

Lana divided the girls into teams, each with strict orders to bring back one of the three kinds of sticks. Then she marched them into the woods with storm trooper precision and led them off to collect the wood. I was not surprised to see the dads following her.

"Who's that?" One of the Kaitlyn's moms asked. Her eyes were glazed, and she was certainly in Lana's thrall. No real shock there. Lana had that effect on women, if they didn't have their men around, that is. I tried to remember this mom's name, but to be honest, I really didn't interact with the parents much.

"Her name is Lana." I looked at Kelly and she shrugged. "She's with WAGGS—the World Association of Girl Guides." Which wasn't totally a lie, necessarily. "She's in the U.S. to work with different scout troops."

The mom nodded, her eyes still trained on the woods. "That's nice. Gives the girls access to someone from another country…" she said absently.

I nodded, making the lie true. The mom stood there, gazing at the woods while Kelly and I set up the ropes for knot tying. To be fair, it was kind of nice having an extra pair of hands even if they were Lana's. Kelly and I usually felt like we were in over our heads. Fourteen girls was a lot to work with. Maybe between the three of us, we could actually get through a whole meeting minus the usual chaos and bleeding.

"Come on girls!" Lana shouted cheerfully. She emerged from the woods, followed by the girls in two perfect lines, each carrying a load of wood.

My jaw dropped open. The girls weren't chattering. They weren't goofing off and trying to hit each other. They didn't try to eat the sticks. They were
listening.
What alternate universe was this? Lana didn't even have to use the universal quiet sign. Not even once!

We stared in awe as the girls followed Lana to the fire pit and unloaded their wood into three neat piles—one for each size stick. Then she selected two of the Kaitlins to fetch a bucket of water and find a rake. I noticed the mom next to me was grinning with pride that her daughter had been selected for this seemingly amazing honor.

Lana somehow
wordlessly
got the girls to surround the fire pit in a perfect circle. No girl was left out. Every girl was spaced completely evenly. And none of them spoke. It was like watching a Soviet propaganda movie on manners.

We watched in gaping silence, Kelly, the mom, the random dads, and me were all hypnotized by Lana's performance.

"She's really good," the mom murmured to me.

On a cue that I didn't see (or that happened under some sort of collective group mind control), every girl picked up in an
orderly
manner, a handful of tinder, kindling, and logs and took them to her spot in the circle. Each girl then knelt down and under Lana's instructions, built a perfect teepee-framed base.

Kelly and I looked at each other in shock. We couldn't even speak.

Lana reviewed fire safety with the girls as if she was Smokey the freakin' Bear. The girls listened in a way second grade girls
never
listen, and I wondered for a moment if they'd been secretly replaced with Russian little people. I've seen a lot of bizarre things throughout my career as a spy, from a man being killed by his own elbow to an otter that delivered secret messages, but I'd never seen anything like this.

"Okay girls! Now we start the fire! Katelynn! You first!" Lana enthused. She knew the girls' names already! She even
pronounced
the kaitlins in a way that somehow reflected how you'd spell their names. I don't know how she did it, but it was completely obvious that she did.

One by one, the girls came forward as she called on them to help build the main fire. Then each girl lit a match without setting her clothes on fire and held it to the tinder. It was like watching a surreal movie that you knew couldn't be true, even though you were watching it with your own eyes. I expected that George Lucas would walk in at any moment and yell, "Cut!"

A small part of me was jealous. I'll admit that. But a large part of me watched in wonder that something like this could actually happen. And another part of me was ridiculously happy that Lana was here with my troop.

I had no idea what Kelly was thinking. I could only guess she thought the same thing. At least I hoped she was thinking the same thing.

"Great job girls!" Lana praised, and the girls almost fainted under the glow. "Who wants to make s'mores?" she asked, and every hand shot up, including the five dads. Lana laughed and clapped her hands. It was obvious she was having fun.

Kelly took charge and called for the girls to come over to her. The girls blinked at each other, then looked to Lana. Lana nodded, and the girls broke loose, racing over to us in loud, chattering chaos. We were swarmed as we put marshmallows on sticks and handed them out. When the last one was handed out, Kelly and I exhaled.

"Did you see how they descended into complete chaos when we asked them to do something?" Kelly whispered.

"Yeah. I think we should have Lana run everything from now on." I was covered with sticky marshmallow goo—and they hadn't even melted the marshmallows yet.

"Agreed," Kelly said as she tore the wrappers off the Hershey bars and I opened the graham crackers.

It started up again as the girls crowded us with their burned and squishy marshmallows. We somehow managed to scrape each one off the stick onto the chocolate and graham crackers. When the last girl walked away, I noticed Kelly had bits of graham cracker in her hair, and I had a huge smear of chocolate down one leg.

"You know," the mom spoke up, "you really should have had Lana handle that."

Kelly and I looked at each other and nodded. She was right. We really should have.

Lana took over for clean up. Once again, the girls snapped to silent attention, and in brigades worthy of a military parade on Red Square, erased all evidence of the mess they'd created and put out the fire.

And no one got hurt. No one.

When they were finished, Lana got the girls to sit in their circle around the fire pit again. I noticed with amazement that each girl was sitting exactly where they'd stood during the fire lesson. They were replaced with robot girls. I was dealing with Stepford Scouts.