Sealed with a Lie (16 page)

I remind myself that the end justifies the means, and the end is Charlie’s freedom. Charlie’s safety.

Without a blink or any other clue that she has a conscience, Rita accepts two kisses from Madame, one on each cheek, and a bottle of Jolie’s latest perfume for her mother. They agree on a starting date for her internship, pending approval from Kennedy Prep back in DC.

“Now, what have I done with my reading glasses?” Madame says with a frown, patting around her neckline and checking on top of her head. “I am always losing things. . . .”

Rita pretends to help her look.

Madame’s gaze roams to her raincoat. She lifts it up and checks the pockets while collectively, we hold our breath.

Jesus-God-no-please-don’t-let-her-figure-it-out. . . .

“How odd,” Madame murmurs. “What—?”

Rita, the ultimate pro, looks totally innocent. She even locates Madame’s spectacles for her—they were wedged between two stacks of files and pamphlets on her desk.

And then my friend and coconspirator strides cheerily out the door, spike heels, Louis Vuitton purse, stolen badge, and all.

She’s done it!

Our group gets back to the hotel room before Rita does, so we’re waiting when she unlocks the door, strides in, and kicks off her heels. We give her a standing ovation, and she preens, accepting it as her due.

“You were awesome, Rita,” I say.

“My badass Bond girl!” Kale grabs her, kisses her on the lips, and then raises her high over his head like a trophy while she squeals.

“Put me down!” Rita orders.

Kale sets her on her feet again. “Your wish is my command.”

Then Rita swivels her hips and does a sexy little dance as she slides Madame d’Haussonville’s ID badge out of her waistband and dangles it in front of Matthis. He snatches it, dying to create the fake badges.

I have to voice a concern, though, before he gets to
work. “Guys—and Rita—it’s unbelievable that we have the company founder’s badge, but what if she goes straight to her security team, alerts them that it’s missing, and they have this one voided?”

“Well, duh,” Rita says, looking unfazed. “Of course that’s exactly what will happen.”

I stare at her. “So then we’re screwed. The badge is useless.”

Rita smiles, removes her glasses, and polishes the lenses with a microfiber cloth. “Not true. When I uploaded the virus into Jolie’s system, I gained us access to everything, not just the security cameras.”

“Brilliant,” Evan says.

“Thank you.” Rita slips her glasses back onto her nose. “So we’ll be able to create two Jolie badges with Gustav’s and Evan’s photos on them, using the names and codes of two real employees. But we did need a real badge so that we could duplicate the look exactly.”

Okay, I feel better now.

“So was I born to be a spy, or what?” She laughs.

I raise my eyebrows. “I just hope Madame d’Haussonville never figures it out.”

“She won’t,” Rita promises.

It still bothers me that Rita doesn’t seem to have any conscience about trading on the woman’s goodwill this way. . . . I guess it reminds me too much of my double-crossing, double-dipping parents. How could my own mom have pointed a gun at me without even blinking?

Not that I’m implying that Rita’d ever do that—but
let’s just say that I trust very few people these days. I need my friends to
have
my back, not stab me in it.

“Isn’t it amazing that I got the internship?” Rita says, flopping on one of the beds next to Kale.

One look at Kale’s face tells me that he’s not at all happy about this. He doesn’t want to go back to DC without his girlfriend. Poor Kale. He and Rita used to hate each other, and now he can’t live without her.

“Yeah, amazing,” Kale says flatly. He refuses to look at her.

“What’s wrong?” Rita asks.

“What do you think?” He rolls off the bed and walks to the window, shoving his hands into his pockets while he gazes outside.

“Kale, it won’t be for that long.”

“Uh-huh.”

Rita gives me a helpless look. “Luke and Kari are still dating, even though she lives in Paris. If they can do it, we can. It’s just a few weeks.”

“Right. And when they offer you a job after graduation? What will you do then?”

“Kale, that’s a big assumption—”

“Is it? Mrs. d’Haussonville’s your biggest fan now. Why wouldn’t she want to hire her friend’s daughter?”

“Well—”

“So what would you do, Rita?” he asks in a quietly confrontational tone. “Would you move to Zurich?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Wrong answer, brat.” I can see
Kale clenching his fists inside his pockets, and it’s not a good sign.

“Brat” is what he used to call her, before they started seeing each other. He thought she was a snot. She couldn’t stand him either and used to call him “Grease Monkey” because he liked to work on old cars with his dad.

I don’t like where this argument is going, and we can’t afford for any member of this team to not be focused. Our mission is to get Charlie back, unharmed. It’s time for me to become Drill Sergeant Kari.

“That’s enough, you two.” My voice is a bucket of cold water. “You’ll have to get into this later, in private—after we rescue Charlie.”

Kale turns his head and fixes me with a hard, resentful stare. “I don’t take orders from you, Kari.”

“Actually, mate, you do,” Evan says, standing up. “We’re all in this together, for one reason and one reason only: to get Charlie back alive and in one piece. Our personal issues and emotions have absolutely no place here right now.”

As usual, I’m half-annoyed and half-grateful for his interference.

Kale’s shoulders tense; he stands like a statue without turning his head again. “We’re golden, then, ’cause evidently Rita doesn’t have any emotions.”

Gustav, silent until now, gives a whistle and walks to the window. He’s clearly uncomfortable.

Rita fidgets on the bed; she’s uncharacteristically quiet.

I know, and she knows, that if she wants a future with Kale, they’ve got some major hurdles to overcome. Kale’s mom took off on him and his dad when he was really young. He’s not going to be happy dating someone who wants to be a spy, always in the field and on the move. But none of this is new, and we cannot afford distractions right now.

“Pull it together, both of you,” I say. “I’m sorry, but we need everyone’s head in the game here. We’re not breaking into a puppet theater tonight. We’re breaking into Jolie, Inc. And failure is not an option. We can’t screw this up.” I stare at everyone in the room. “Do you understand?”

Nobody says anything. The air is thick with tension.

“If the kidnappers send me Charlie’s head in a box,” I say, “I will not be responsible for my actions.”

Everyone focuses intensely on tonight’s mission. We pore over the schematics and isolate the one area of the laboratory that seems to have ridiculously over-the-top security. It’s an inner sanctum in the inner sanctum, protected by the biometrics fingerprint scanner, then a key-card lock for the safety-glass enclosed room, and finally a stainless steel safe. A safe that Gustav will have to crack.

I don’t like the fact that I’m stuck on monitoring duty with Rita and Matthis while Gustav, Evan, and Kale get to go on the heist, but Evan talks me into it.

“We could get caught,” he says flatly. “And if that
happens, and you’re along with us, then Charlie has no backup team.”

I can’t really argue with that.

Rita’s not pleased to be left behind either, but if she wants to salvage a real internship at Jolie, she cannot be caught on surveillance tape breaking into the building, can she?

Kale grouses about being stuck in the role of getaway driver, but Evan reasons with him. “Like it or not, Kale, you’re the muscle. You haven’t had the training, and we do need someone on the outside who can take care of any physical threat to us. Preferably someone with a black belt in karate, like yourself. For obvious reasons, we need Gustav inside—he’s the expert burglar.”

Gustav takes a small bow. He looks quite comfortable in his gray business suit, black dress shirt, and gray-and-black striped tie. Without his customary leer, he looks almost trustworthy.

He and Matthis are content with their roles.

Matthis doesn’t want to go; he is a behind-the-scenes guy all the way. Give him a computer or something to engineer, and he’s a happy dude.

The badges that Matthis has produced are things of beauty. I doubt that even the head of security at Jolie could tell that they’re counterfeit. I guess we’re about to find out. I swallow hard and start double-checking things, for about the seventh time.

“Gustav, you got your equipment into place?” For obvious reasons, he can’t walk into Jolie carrying a bag of safe-cracking tools.

“Yes, Kari,” he answers tolerantly, if somewhat wearily. “As I told you, I stored my case earlier this morning, on ze roof of ze building, eh?”

“But what if someone saw it and removed it?”

“I promise you, zey are not going to find it. It is well—how you say?—camouflaged.”

“What if you’re unable to get up there? What if one of those rooftop access doors trips a silent alarm?”

Gustav shakes his head and casts a speaking glance at Evan, who reminds me quietly that we’ve been over all this.

“Kari, Gustav has gotten into and out of museums all over France, Germany, Spain, and Italy—not to mention the Getty, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Kimball in the States. So he knows what he’s doing.”

“He was in custody because he got caught red-handed at Jolie’s Munich branch!”

Gustav’s mouth tightens. “I made a mistake there. But I never make the same mistake twice. I am very, very good at what I do, Kari.” His eyes rove lazily over my body. “And I assure you zat I am good at other things too.” He winks.

I can’t believe he’s trying to flirt at a time like this. “You never stop, do you?”

The dirty smile plays over his mouth. “It is part of my charm.”

“Is that what you call it?” Evan asks.

Evan, too, is wearing business attire. I’m quite sure that Evan came out of the birth canal in custom-tailored
suit and French cuffs, so his new black suit doesn’t look at all odd on him, and the glasses he’s put on only make him look older and more handsome. But for the first time in all the months I’ve known him, he seems a little tense. Is it just nerves before the heist? Or something else?

Rita and Matthis get the guys fitted with tiny comm units that attach to the backs of pins on their lapels. Kale’s not wearing a suit, so Rita puts his comm unit onto the back of an old silver coin that hangs on a leather cord around his neck. He stares straight ahead, ignoring her as she ties the cord.

Great.

We test the comm units there in the room, and then once again the guys get into the car that we’ve borrowed from another unsuspecting hotel guest. He or she won’t miss it at one a.m.

Before we let the guys go, Rita and Matthis make sure that they have access to the cameras in Jolie’s CCTV system.

“Yup,” Matthis says. “I got the feed from camera number five pulled up. What about you, Rita?”

Her fingers clatter on the keyboard of her laptop. “Pulling up feed from number nineteen, near the entrance to the lab wing.”

“Okay.” He stares at his own screen. “Try number eight. Are you seeing—”

“Ugh,” Rita says. “Yeah, I’m seeing the guard picking his nose. Next.”

“Number three.”

“Mercedes S-Class going up ramp into parking garage. Okay, you try number eleven.”

“Elevators on second floor.”

They go on like this for a while, testing the feed on every single camera. It’s crucial that they can freeze and then splice into the feed that the guards see for the few minutes that Gustav and Evan will need to access the lab.

Finally it’s time. Gustav and Evan are junior sales executives, returning to the office for presentation materials they’ve forgotten. We hang their badges around their necks, saying a silent prayer that everything will go well.

I check my watch and make sure that it’s synchronized with everyone else’s.

Before I let the guys out the door, I have one last thing to say—privately, to Evan. I lean forward and whisper into his ear. “Once you two have the
jungbrunnen
, don’t you let Gustav out of your sight—I don’t trust him. That stuff must be worth millions of dollars on the black market.”

Evan closes his eyes and shakes his head. When he opens them, he flicks my own comm unit with a fingernail. Thunder fills my ears.

Gustav says mournfully, “You accuse me?”

I have forgotten that the comm units are on and working very well.

Mortified, I stand there with my mouth hanging open until Gustav leans forward and covers it with his. He chuckles softly and slips his tongue in between my lips for good measure.

He tastes of espresso, mint, musk, and adrenaline. When he pulls away, his green eyes dance with a peculiar combination of friendly malice and desire. “Wish us
bon chance
, Kari.”

Evan’s face is like thunder as he shoves Gustav out the door.