High-Caliber Concealer (8 page)

“I’m your only grandchild, so that better be
true,” said Nikki laughing.

“Don’t check the fine print, honey, just
accept the compliment,” said her grandmother, not quite
laughing.

Nikki pictured her grandmother, Peg
Connelly, standing in the kitchen of her farmhouse, short, gray
hair fluffing out around her ears, probably barefoot and wearing
jeans with some heinously pastel plaid shirt from Wal-Mart. It made
her nostalgic and it made her feel the emptiness of the apartment
even more. She yanked out the ice cream and shut the freezer door
with a round house kick.

“I’m glad you called, honey,” said Peg.
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. I feel like I’ve hardly
spoken to you in the last year.”

Nikki ignored the shooting stab of guilt.
“It’s been a really busy year. But it turns out I’ve got some time
off and I was thinking about coming up for a visit.”

“A visit? Well, that would be great. When do
you think you’ll be here? I’ll have to clean up your room.”

Nikki ignored that comment, since her
grandmother’s idea of horrible filth barely registered on Nikki’s
scale of unclean. “I was thinking I would drive up, so…” Nikki
stared at the calendar, trying to math out miles to days. “Maybe,
Wednesday?”

“Wednesday is fine, but I don’t think you
should drive up,” said Peg. “Not by yourself. I don’t think that
would be safe.”

“Mmm,” said Nikki. “You make a point.” She
flipped the lid off the ice cream.

“You should check the flights and let me
know when you’ll arrive. I’ll come pick you up in Spokane.”

“I’ll have to think about that,” said Nikki,
opening the cupboard to look for a bowl and then realizing that
they were all in the dishwasher.

“OK,” said Peg. “You can email me when
you’ve got some flight numbers and let me know when you
arrive.”

“I think we can still say that I’ll be
arriving on Wednesday,” said Nikki.

“Great. I can get your room clean by then.
Or, you know, you can call me when you land at Seatac because I’ll
leave for Spokane when you leave Seattle. There aren’t any direct
flights from LAX to Spokane are there?”

“I don’t know if there are or not,” replied
Nikki. She pulled out a large spoon and levered out a chunk of ice
cream.

“You’ll have to look into that.”

There was a pause as Nikki said nothing and
tried to juggle the phone while bracing the ice cream against the
toaster for better leverage.

“Well, honey, I’m so excited that you’re
coming to visit!” said Peg. “It’s really good because I’ve been
wanting to talk to you about something kind of important.”

Nikki paused with the spoon half-way to her
mouth. Her mother had been hinting that Peg might be looking into
selling the farm, and the idea of selling the family home made
Nikki want to cry. She did not think she could face talking about
it right now. Her mind flipped through a rolodex of responses. Then
the doorbell rang.

“Is that your doorbell?”

“Yes,” said Nikki.

“Well, you’d better go. I’ll see you on
Wednesday. Bye, honey!”

“Bye, Grandma.” Nikki hung up the phone, set
down the spoon, and reached for her gun. She flipped open the app
on her phone that was tied to the web cam that watched her door.
Jane waved up at it.

“Hey, Jane,” said Nikki opening the
door.

“Hey,” said Jane, breezing into the
apartment with take-out bags. “I bought Chinese and then I thought
maybe you would want some too.” She set the bags down on the
kitchen counter next to the ice cream. “But we can always start
with dessert.”

“I’ll take the Chinese first,” said Nikki.
“It’ll give the ice cream time to soften. Where are the girls?”

“Ellen’s at her kickboxing class and Jenny
went to the range to blow off steam. They said they would be by
later.”

Nikki pulled some chopsticks out of the
drawer and opened a container that turned out to be Mongolian Beef.
“Jane, do you ever think that we ought to get out and meet other
people? Maybe associate with someone who isn’t Carrie Mae?”

“We do. We go to the gym, and you go to the
linguistics group, and I have my Comic-Con friends. We see other
people.” Jane’s hand paused over the Moo Shu Pork. “Why?”

“I’m not trying to break up with you, Jane.
I’ve just been thinking a lot about my life lately.”

“You mean you’ve been thinking about
breaking up with Z’ev again,” said Jane rolling her eyes. “You’re
not going to do it. I don’t know why you keep talking about it. You
look into his big brown eyes and you go all gooey and you don’t do
it.”

“Yeah, but I should,” said Nikki. “He’s kind
of incompatible with this job. He’s a real danger to Carrie
Mae.”

Jane shrugged. “He is. But you’re making it
work.”

“I’m making it work,” Nikki repeated. “But
my bigger question is: for how long? I keep thinking life would be
easier without him. And then I start to ponder what else life would
be easier without.”

Jane stared at her, a worried crease forming
between her eyebrows. “And, um, when you have these thoughts, do
any particular names spring to mind? Do you have any ideas about
how you would like to get rid of the names on said list?”

“I’m not going on a killing rampage,” said
Nikki.

“OK, but if you decide to go all Val
Robinson on us, I’d like some prior warning.”

Nikki thought about saying that sometimes
she thought Val Robinson’s lone wolf approach had some real merits,
but she knew Jane would blow a gasket if she so much as suggested
it. Also, Val hadn’t been an indiscriminate killer. She simply got
rid of the people in her way. It was just that at one point, Nikki
had unfortunately been in the way.

“So have you decided what you’re going to do
with your two weeks off?” she asked changing the topic.

“Jenny keeps saying we’re going to Cancun,”
said Jane, looking doubtful.

“Won’t the tan interfere with your preferred
Goth lifestyle?”

“It would, if all of my Goth friends hadn’t
moved to San Diego and started having babies. Plus, I do carry
sunscreen at all times.”

Both their phones chirped and Nikki leaned
over to check the message.

Coming in—don’t shoot me.

“I wish Jenny wouldn’t text that every
time,” said Jane, sighing. “The mobile companies can look at those
texts if they want.”

“They should get in line with the NSA,” said
Nikki with a shrug. “It reads like a joke.”

Jane looked unconvinced.

“Hey, y’all,” said Jenny, breezing in,
smelling faintly of Dolce and cordite. “I brought some really fresh
berries for dessert.” She plunked the bag down on the counter next
to the ice cream. “In case you want to try something healthy for a
change.”

“Yeah, we probably don’t,” said Nikki. “But
they’ll go good on the ice cream.”

Jenny shook her head and investigated the
Chinese food containers, selecting the grilled vegetables and
chicken option. “So what are we talking about?”

“Breaking up with Z’ev and what to do on our
unpaid leave,” said Jane, making a sour face.

Jenny wrinkled her nose. “Honey, I don’t
want to be mean, but it’s time to shit or get off the pot.” Then
she pointed her chopsticks at Jane. “Cancun.”

“The problem is,” said Nikki. “that I don’t
know whether to… Can we use a different metaphor while we’re
eating?”

“You had a perfect opportunity with Kit
Masters,” said Jenny. Being the son of an agent, he was covered
under the immediate-danger-family-clause. Z’ev had cancelled your
vacation plans at the last second, and you were even mostly broken
up due to that phone issue. It was the perfect opportunity. It
would have been like the break-up win of the century—dump Z’ev,
find someone new in a week, and have that someone new be a European
rock star. I’m telling you, it was the break-up trifecta and you
blew it.” Jenny shook her head sadly. “Anyway, my point is that the
problem isn’t knowing what to do. You know what you should do. You
just don’t want to do it.”

“You really think I should break up with
him?” asked Nikki and watched Jenny and Jane exchange glances
filled with the telepathy of previous conversations.

“Yes,” said Jenny, taking a deep breath. “I
do. He’s a threat to Carrie Mae and to you, and the only way that
you’re making this work is because he’s never around, which is
making you miserable.”

Nikki looked at Jane, who nodded and then
smiled apologetically. “Ellen feels the same way, I suppose?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t answer that,” said
Jenny, who had clearly been spending time with Mr. Merrivel, “as we
do not speak about you behind your back.”

Nikki laughed and threw one of the fortune
cookies at her. “Yes, you do. Behind my back, in front of my back,
beside my back.”

“Well, there’s more of us,” said Jane,
practically. “We have you surrounded. What are you going to do on
your leave?”

“I’m going to drive up and see my
grandmother in Kaniksu Falls,” said Nikki.

“That should be fun. You’ve been saying you
need to visit her,” said Jenny scooping some white rice out of her
dish and into Jane’s container.

“It’s rice,” said Jane rolling her eyes.
“You can eat rice.”

“It’s white rice. It’s devoid of
nutrients.”

“It should be nice to visit,” said Nikki,
ignoring the dietary squabble. “But I think she’s going to ask if I
want to buy the farm.”

“She’s going to ask if you want to die?”
Jenny looked up, startled.

“What?” They stared at each other trying to
figure out where the conversation had gone wrong. “No, she owns a
farm. I think she’s starting to feel too old to take care of it,
and she’s thinking about selling.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, we had to work that out
with my Granny. We were all so sad the day we had to take her cows
away.”

“I don’t know what you have to do to get
your cow license revoked,” said Jane. “And it’s possible,
considering how deeply Southern you are, that I don’t want to
know.”

“That is a slander on my heritage and my
Granny,” said Jenny. “You’d better watch yourself young lady or I
will not teach you how to get free drinks in Cancun.”

“I know how to get free drinks,” said Jane.
“I just have higher standards for my breasts.”

“Ladies,” said Nikki, “before this turns
into a fistfight, can we focus on the really important
question?”

“Sure,” said Jenny, “What is the really
important question? Is Z’ev getting suspicious?”

“What?” Nikki laughed casually. “No, I was
going to say, chocolate syrup or berries on the ice cream?”

Jane’s phone let out a chirp and she picked
it up to read the incoming text.

“Can I have all of them?” asked Jane,
setting the phone down. “That was the office letting me know that
my mainframe access has been suspended for the next two weeks. This
sucks, guys! I don’t want to be on unpaid leave. It goes on our
permanent record. It’s not fair.”

Jenny leaned over to give her a hug. “I had
to turn in Freddy.”

Nikki winced in sympathy. “I’m sorry,
Jenny.”

“It’s OK,” said Jenny, straightening her
spine and putting on an obviously brave face. “We did the crime; I
can do the time. Besides, I couldn’t take an M-16 to Cancun
anyway.”

Nikki paused at the four-way stop,
considering her options. The problem with taking a road trip to
find oneself was that she wasn’t really lost and now she had
arrived in Kaniksu Falls and was heartily sick of the company, but
still no closer to any decisions. It was 7:30 p.m. on a Tuesday,
which meant that her grandmother would be firmly ensconced at the
Bingo hall for at least another hour. A flash of headlights behind
her indicated that she’d taken too much time even by polite
Washington standards. She took a left and headed for the tavern
sign she could see cycling through a pattern of lights that formed
an arrow pointing at a dark building barely visible in the dusk of
day and smoke haze from the nearest forest fire. She could get a
drink and a burger and then go home to her grandmother, who was
almost certain to have pie.

The bar was called the Kessel Run and it was
decorated in a plethora of twelfth man football flags and kitschy
alien crap.

She thought about calling Donny.
Theoretically, he would also be in town somewhere. After their
brief rendezvous in LA, she figured they had a lot of catching up
to do. And she really did want to talk to him, but not on the
phone. Phones were never secure these days. Nikki scanned the
parking lot. There was only one car, a boring blue four-door. Nikki
shook her head. She couldn’t understand why anyone would drive a
car so devoid of personality. She couldn’t even tell what kind it
was—Oldsmobile? Buick? It was the equivalent of the high-school
wallflower, going out of its way to not be noticed. Volvos were
like the AV club, full of weird boxy angles that no one understood,
but were beloved by the in-crowd. Sports cars were the popular
kids. SUV’s and trucks were the jocks. This car was so blah, Nikki
wanted to key it just because it would be character building for
the car.

“That car was me in high-school—totally
forgettable.” Shaking her head again, she went inside. Nikki pushed
aside a cardboard cutout of Harrison Ford, listing into the
doorway, and sat down at the bar. Aside from a trio sitting in the
back near the jukebox, she was the only one in the place.

“What can I get you?” asked the bartender,
putting down the sports section and placing a menu in front of
her.

Nikki considered ordering a glass of wine,
but thought that she already stood out enough as it was. She
glanced at the bar menu. It was heavy on the fried substances and
beer. “Um ... How about a gin and tonic and a,” She shifted a
grease spot on the menu with her thumb, “Wookie burger? You know,
as long as it’s ethically farmed Wookie.”