Sake Bomb (15 page)

“Ah-ankles,” she stuttered, never quite
prepared for his abrupt shifts in conversation. “Sumi has ropes
tattooed around her ankles. They didn’t.”

“You’re good with details.” Xander’s eyes
closed, voice fading as though losing the battle with sleep.

Minutes passed in awkward silence. Well,
awkward for Kizzie, who still stood in a tank and panties fighting
back a chill. “Duquesne?”

“Hm?”

“Speaking of details,” Kizzie shifted from
one foot to the other, “there seems to be one
teeeeeeny
tiny
detail you’ve forgotten, slick. You’re married.”

“As you keep reminding me,” he grumbled.
“And how would that make me less tired? In fact, were I, wouldn’t
that make me
more
tired?” He chuckled at his joke. “Come to
bed. I trust you to keep your hands off my irresistible body.”

Tempting as that was, she stayed put. If she
were married—not that she’d ever make
that
mistake—and found
out her husband was off sleeping naked with some chick at a hotel
in Tokyo, Kizzie would feel absolutely horrible about it.

Right after hiding his body…

And the woman’s…

And the shovel.

He opened his eyes, fixed her with a
no-nonsense look that sent an icy shiver down her spine. “Turn.
Off. The light.” She promptly flipped the switch and then resumed
her post at the side of the bed, standing sentinel in the dark.
“Thank you.”

The lump on the mattress shifted.

She was freezing. And sleepy. There were
easily a dozen different arrangements she’d endured that were far
worse than sharing a bed with one sexy Xander Duquesne….

A sexy,
naked
Xander Duquesne…

A sexy, naked,
married
Xander
Duquesne.

Couch.

Kizzie slipped her hand under the pillow and
removed her gun. With just the sliver of light coming through the
split in the curtains, she navigated to the closet and pulled out
the spare blanket and pillow. Then she made her way to the couch in
the common area, tossed the throw pillows to the floor. Her hand
dove between the cushions for the strap. Nothing. Not a sleeper
sofa. Didn’t even convert into a futon. Awesome.

A few adjustments later, Kizzie stretched
out on the comforter and stared up at the ceiling, hands folded
over her middle. Her legs propped up on the arm of the short
furniture—either that or her head would have to be—her ass became
the Titanic, slowly sinking between the two thin cushions. She
rolled her head on the pillow and shifted her shoulders.

Twenty minutes passed. Her left leg and ass
cheek were numb. She bent her knees and they popped, applauding her
stupidity. Ten minutes later the feeling in her back started to go.
Perfectly good bed with a naked man in it and she’d opted for the
couch?

The mental deliberation went for another
quarter hour before Kizzie tossed off the cover and spun her feet
to the floor. Once her legs were functional, she reclaimed her
pistol and silently padded to her side of the bed. Xander faced
her, eyes closed, breathing evenly. Good, he was aslee—

“Didn’t work out, huh?” He pulled back the
covers for her, humor in his groggy voice.

“It’d fit perfectly in a Barbie dream
house.” She cut her eyes at him as she climbed into bed and eased
her weapon back into place. “And I’m too sleepy to argue with
you.”

“You’d dry-swallow No-Doze to stay awake and
argue with me, baby girl.”

Kizzie slid into the cold spot she’d
vacated, twisted onto her side and extended her legs to the max,
pointing and flexing her feet. “Tomorrow you sleep in Phil’s room.
With or without pants—your call, I won’t judge. Stay on your
side.”

Xander snuggled right behind her, draping
the comforter over her shoulder and then his arm over her belly,
solid chest cozy against her back. “We’re all gonna call you Stumpy
come morning. Move that arm.”

He kissed the back of her head.

“My Beretta’s under my pillow.”

“And there’s a SIG under mine. Anybody comes
in here uninvited is gonna catch hell…. Now that we’re clear
neither of us is going to kill the other,” he gave her a squeeze,
“sleep.”

Kizzie grunted low in her throat. She hadn’t
shared a bed with a man in a long,
long
time. Not for just
sleeping anyway. This whole experience was unnerving.

Hyper-aware of his heavy arm over her, she
lay so rigid her jaw ached and her neck cramped.

“Hair smells nice,” Xander murmured. “Glad
you didn’t cut it.”

Hopefully he thought she was snoozing and
not grinning like an idiot the way she was now. His breathing
leveled off, and eventually Kizzie’s slowed to match it. Inch by
inch her body relaxed, sagging into his warmth.

“And your ass looks amazing in the red
ones.”

She jammed her elbow into his abs and he
flinched. “Get off me.”

Chuckling, Xander whispered, “Sweet dreams,
Princess.” Another tight squeeze and he rolled away.

His absence left her cold, and curling into
the heavy blankets didn’t chase the chill. A block of ice, Kizzie
grit her teeth and forced herself into a fitful sleep.

July 29
^th

Langley, VA

T
he kid wasn’t his
problem.

Staff Operations Officer Douglas “Fletch”
Fletcher swallowed a mouthful of the swamp water his office called
coffee and chucked the Galletti folder onto a growing pile. Why was
Kizzie so adamant about following up on the kid? It was just a
picture in a cell phone and most likely unrelated. Her involvement
in the case yielded the desired results, tagging Sanzio in order to
reach his brother and his brother’s contacts, but she’d jumped the
gun on the timing. No matter. It went down as a successful
operation, and Fletcher’s concern was results. However, using
Connolly’s best came with a steep price as Kizzie seemed to believe
she now had a personal errand-boy in SOO Fletch.

Everything nuclear-related came in from the
usual offenders—Iran, North Korea. Chatter in Pakistan and India,
but the Agency took the necessary measures to flush those out.
Otherwise, “Ten o’clock and all’s well.” But, in addition to this
kid, she kept going on about HRV, a
theoretical
nuclear
device America had never built.

Would never build.

Nuclear disarmament: the current
administration’s rally cry. So to think some other country built a
bomb America hadn’t was absurd.

Of course, he still checked into it. Fletch
didn’t believe her, but he wasn’t crazy enough to ignore it
completely. He’d found nothing, had told Kizzie as much several
times now. So why was she still hung up on it?

And why wasn’t she telling Connolly?

Fletch logged onto his computer and pulled
up one set of the images she’d sent. Definitely a dead girl.
Definitely needed cleaning. He could get an intern on it, but he
didn’t want to risk word getting out that an agent was flying solo
unlicensed; or that he knew about it. And he didn’t want Kizzie
paying him a visit unless it involved irreverent jokes and inhaling
shooters at Gasser’s bar. Damn, that was years ago… Where had the
time gone?

The photos went through one program to
enhance resolution, and a second for facial identification. He let
it run in the background and opened a program to do another data
mining for any word on Harvey, using a couple tags to hone in on
his target.

Two sharp raps on his door preceded its
opening. A strawberry blonde head popped in, snapping Fletcher’s
gaze up. “Got a minute?”

Fletch motioned toward the seat on the other
side of his desk. Agent Rachel Hayford’s non-descript office
attire—black skirt/jacket combo and white blouse—barely creased as
she settled onto the wooden seat.

She dropped a sheaf of papers onto the
tabletop. “The Ellerson report you requested,” laid a second set on
top of it, “and the follow up on Sanzio Galletti. No new Intel on
Ellerson; Galletti still has the cell phone. Tracers are working
just fine and he’s remained in Belém. No contact with his brother
yet, however...” She flipped to a section of the report where two
photographs had been paper-clipped to the page and tapped a
French-tipped nail on the sheet. “These are numbers two and three,
Dougie.”

His brow lifted.

“Sir,” she amended quickly, spinning the
page for him to have a look. Two more kids, boys, around the same
age as the first one they had a picture of.

“What am I supposed to get from this, Agent
Hayford?”

The creamy skin of her forehead wrinkled and
she leaned forward in the chair. “Something’s not right here. These
aren’t his kids… They’re not nephews or the children of family
friends, as far as we can tell, and they’re not—”

“Our problem,” he said. “Our purpose is to
track Sanzio to Abrahan, and Abrahan to the big fish. So unless
he’s using the kids as mules to shuttle info to his brother, we
don’t even
think
about risking the op on some juju
feeling
you have.” She drew back, violet-blue eyes widened a
hair. “Drop the kids and stay on task, Hayford.”

Lips pressed into a thin line, she nodded
once and then left without closing his door. The measured click of
her pumps echoed as she moved down the hall.

Fletch picked up a nearby pencil, flipped it
around his thumb twice; dragged the palm of his other hand over his
mouth. He shouldn’t have snapped at her. He’d make it up to Rachel
later, but someone had to rein in these tangents everyone suddenly
seemed so ready to jump on. The mission was the important part.
Collateral damage couldn’t be helped.

The pencil rolled from his thumb to his
index finger, passed between index and middle, making the circuit
over and over again. A beep drew Fletch’s attention to the computer
screen—the dead girl wasn’t in the primary database. He could run
it through another, see if it brought up a hit. Then there was the
POI Kizzie requested…

Fletch huffed. This was why agents had
controllers. Kizzie was all over the place and dragging him along
for the ride.

Before he could finish the mental scolding,
a second beep brought up preliminary results for the data sweep on
Harvey. This was new. One Harvey Fischbach recently updated his
social networking status. The 15-year-old thought
Atomic Dog
was, quote, “bomb.” 127 of his 450-odd friends “Liked” it. George
Clinton would be proud.

The pencil stopped its dance.

Fletch snapped it in half, slamming the
split wood onto the table with a grunt. The dead girl wasn’t the
priority, Harvey was a ghost, and Agent Baldwin was wasting his
goddamned time.

He shoved the useless Galletti papers aside
and opened the Ellerson report. There was real work to do. Friend
or not, whatever unofficial business Kizzie was involved in, she’d
have to deal with it, officially, on her own.

July 30
^th

Tokyo, Japan

W
aiting was the
unglamorous side of being an agent, and the part Kizzie hated most.
The accommodations at present—the tenth or so such location
today—was in a music store across from
Ink-Scribed.
Better
than some of her usual hidey-holes, but the 3
W
s were
exactly the same: Wait, watch, “wepeat.” The only break in the
sequence came when she inserted an annoyed huff.

Day two of surveillance and they’d been
sitting on the tattoo parlor since it opened at noon. Through a
live-link from Phil’s phone to Xander’s display, she and Xander
were able to watch the lack of activity at the shop’s rear door.
Almost 7 hours later, not a single Sumi-sighting. Not even a
near
Sumi-sighting. A shot in the dark from the moment Koji
had it literally squeezed out of him. That kid had better hope
something came from this monumental waste of her time or he could
forget about threats from Xander and Phil. Kizzie would break the
punk’s arms herself.

She unlocked her phone and dialed a number.
The automated recording for Dornwell Holdings started up and she
keyed in the code.

The second ring went by…the third…

Jane Doe just rocketed to the top of their
list of options; the sole link to finding Sumi and her Mistress.
Not good odds in a city of 13 million people. She needed some
help.

Ring number 5…. 6…. 7….

Xander returned from yet another pass-by of
the parlor. “There a problem?” he asked, eyeing her phone.

For the fourth time today Fletch didn’t
answer. Fletch should have answered. Problem? There’d better not be
a problem. Disconnecting the call, Kizzie shook her head. “No.”

“Let’s go.”

Her brow shot up. Go meant movement—the
antithesis of ‘wait’ and therefore earned her vote every time. Go
was good. But
go
where? “Go?”

“In.” Xander jerked his head in the general
direction of the tattoo shop. He took her hand and pulled her to
standing. He did that a lot, and she wasn’t sure what to do about
it.

“Waste of time.” But they were already
moving past a bargain bin overflowing with CDs. “Not sure how
familiar you are with humans, X, but most people don’t have a ‘get
involved’ attitude. You mind your business, especially when
outsiders come through interrogating.”

Crickets.

Xander opened the door to the music shop,
the noisy street traffic and the smells of Tokyo hitting Kizzie all
at once. “Did you hear me?”

“I did.”

The dominant ‘because-I-said-so’ stance
really
wasn’t Kizzie’s style. They zigzagged through the
horde of people on the street. “Your plan?”

“Do you always need a plan?”

“In my world, plans keep things nice and
tidy. And since I’m pretty fond of breathing…” her head bobbed
enthusiastically, “I’d say I’m kinda partial to ‘em.” Whether she
actually followed them or not was neither here nor there.