Hunt Me (Love Thieves #3) (13 page)

Their path took a circuitous route. They paused for pictures in a couple of places, and he accepted the photo pass card from the photographer. She couldn’t figure out where they were going or what he searched for. They watched a show in front of the castle, rode the carousel, paused for photographs with oversized chipmunks, and waded through a thick crowd heading into the self-proclaimed adventure area.

When he pointed to the log ride, she stared at him.

“Do you have any idea what the water is going to do to my hair?” It may not be styled or looking particularly elegant, but with her curls, any kind of moisture could turn her hair upside down.
No, thank you.

“Trust me.” He led her up the ramp, and they stood in line for nearly fifteen minutes as it inched forward. At a break in the line, a man waved them to the express route even though they didn’t have tickets. Jarod held her hand as they passed the others in the standard line, and, when it curved away from them, he pressed a hand to the wall and a section of it swung inward like a door.

She had no time to gape before they walked inside and down a short flight of stairs to a small room with several computers and a middle-aged man dressed in Bermuda shorts, a red Hawaiian shirt, and pair of loafers.

“Jarod. Good to see you.” The two men shook hands. “And this is?”

“You don’t need her name,” Jarod replied drily.

“Do I need his?” Kit asked, because, as surreal went, they’d arrived.

“No. You don’t.” He led her to a chair and pulled it out. “It’s on her right cheek.”

“Got it.” The man pulled out a black light and flicked off the overhead with a remote. He held it up to her face and studied her silently. “I need to get a sample. It’s a small scraping and it won’t hurt.”

The lights came back on, but Jarod took the small instrument and brushed her cheek with it. He handed the slide to the tech, and the man carried it to his computer. He hummed along with the music she could hear faintly in the background.

“Okay.” He pulled a pair of reading glasses off his head and peered at the screen. “I have some good news, and I have some bad news.”

“Bad news.” She and Jarod spoke at the same time.

The tech turned around with a wry look. “The crap to get the isotope off stinks. But it’s pretty effective, and we can reduce the trace signature in no time.”

“Okay, so what’s the good news?” Jarod stared at him.

“Well, the good news is whoever is using this probably got it from a Scandium 45 derivative from an old Stasi project mothballed in the mid-1980s. A cache of it was stolen from a research facility in Austria a couple of weeks ago. It’s been red flagged.” The man shrugged.

“How does that help me?” No disguising her frown at the information.

“Well, when a shark is hunting you, good to know there’s another shark on its tail.” Another shrug, but he sounded pleased with himself.

“Will it scar?” She didn’t really care about the Stasi or Louis’ ever-evolving resume of criminal acts.

“No. Just stink. You need to get a compound of…. You know, you probably don’t want to know.” He wrote something down on a sheet of paper. “Give me a minute and I’ll see if I can track some down. Most of the park includes heavy metal pieces, so it’s going to provide you with a lot of shielding. They might know you came inside, but they won’t be able to track you unless they’re standing on top of you.”

“Thanks,” Jarod said, and the man nodded, heading to his secret door and stepping out.

Kit glanced up at him. “The U.S. government is operating a secret listening post inside an amusement park? Doesn’t it violate a half-dozen privacy laws?”

“This isn’t a listening post.”

“But he’s an agent, right?”

“Never said he was.” Jarod walked to a small refrigerator and opened it. He pulled out two bottles of water and handed her one.

“So what is this place?”

Jarod glanced around and shrugged. “Tech support for the ride.” He unscrewed the bottle and took a drink. “I told you I could help.”

“I know.”

“But you still don’t trust me.” It wasn’t a question, and she couldn’t give him false assurances. She wanted to trust him—which was more than she could say for when he showed up in her hotel room or tried to talk her into leaving with him.

But she’d been doing this on her own for far too long.

“I’m sorry.” She meant it, too.

“Trust takes time,” he agreed.

It did, and she didn’t understand why he’d shared a secret with her, unless he was ready to leave his alias behind. She wanted to ask him about his comment before they arrived at the tram—about training to gather information and assassinate people. But, at the same time, she didn’t want to know.

“Kit?”

She looked at him.

“You doing okay over there?”

“I’m fine.” No, she wasn’t, but it sounded better than “I’m ready to freak the hell out now. Do you mind waiting while I run around in circles and scream?”

Her face itched, but she tried to ignore it and opened her bottle to drink. The hum of the machines grated on her nerves, but she distanced herself from the sound. On the run in the middle of an amusement park with radiation eating away at her face or sitting at a party for five hundred businessmen and celebutantes, the etiquette prevailed—maintain her calm.

The door burst open, and their red-shirted technician returned with a small jar. “And here is the stinky crap. It’s got a small amount of lead in it, so you might get some redness on your face, but it will neutralize the compound, and you’ll be isotope free lickety-split.” He finished his statement with a flourish and unscrewed the cap.

The smell hit her like a hammer—a combination of something soggy and decaying mixed with heavy metals and cold cream. Her stomach lurched, and Jarod jerked the pot away from her face. “Harry.”

“Sorry, man.” He looked sheepish, but she concentrated on breathing through her mouth rather than taking another whiff of the gunk they wanted her to put on her face. Using toxic waste to remove radiation. She led a charmed life.

Taking the jar from Jarod’s hand, she looked to Harry. “How long does it have to stay on my face?”

“Five, no more than ten minutes. Then wash it off thoroughly. There’s a restroom right there.” He pointed to a door partly hidden behind one of his half-walls of computers.

She nodded. “Thank you.”

“Hey, let me help.” Jarod touched her arm, but she shook her head at him.

“Someone should be conscious if I pass out from the fumes.” Shut inside the tiny bathroom, she turned on the water. She glanced at herself in the mirror. The woman looking back at her really seemed nothing at all like the lady who’d graced the cover of a recent
Sun-Times
article. She opened the jar before she could change her mind and used a folded up tissue to apply it to her cheek.

Cold, clammy, and disgusting.

She glanced at her watch and screwed the lid back on the jar. Outside the bathroom, the men murmured in voices too low for her to quite make out. Probably catching up. She fished one of the burner phones out of her purse. She had two left. The other two were still in the car they were most likely abandoning.

Dialing Enrique’s number, she left the water running.

He answered on the second ring. “I am not going to ask why you are at Disneyland.”

“Good. I don’t really want to discuss it.”

He laughed. “You are calling for the profile, yes?”

“Yes please.”

“Jarod Parker does not exist. Well, let me rephrase this, he does exist, but he is so blandly ordinary he cannot be a real person.”

“What do you mean?” Her eyes watered, and she looked at her watch. Six minutes to go.

“Exactly what I said. He’s been scrubbed, from top to bottom. No details about family, average high school career, even more average college, a brief stint in law school—where he didn’t graduate—and, after, a desk job in a Midwest banking establishment. He’s…ordinary.”

No, he’s extraordinary.
“Is it a cover?”

“
Si, senorita
. Are you in trouble?”

She coughed and squinted her eyes shut against the burn. “I am fine, Enrique. Thank you for looking into this.”

“Katerina”—he was the only person on Earth who called her that—“I can be in Los Angeles by tomorrow morning.”

“No.” She sniffed as her nose began to run along with her eyes. She peered at her watch. Two minutes left. “But I may need to vacation in a few days…. How is the weather there?”

“Balmy skies, warm sunshine, and all the seclusion a body could desire. Call me when you are ready.”

Message sent. Message received.

She had a place to run to if she needed it.

“Gracias, Enrique.”

“De nada, señorita.”

They rang off, and she swayed before stripping out the sim card and dropping it into the toilet and flushing it. The rest of the phone went into the trash. Jarod knocked on the door.

“Kit?”

“Washing it off now. I can barely breathe, so I recommend getting away from the door when I open it.”

She scrubbed at her face with the water, peeling away the goopy gel-like substance the cream had become. It plopped into the sink, and she gagged. She barely made it to the toilet before she brought up the few French fries she’d managed to eat earlier.

A strong arm braced her and held her up. When the retching passed, Jarod flushed the toilet and grabbed the washcloth. He sat her on the closed toilet lid and went to cleaning her face. She could barely see him around the tears rolling down her cheeks.

Harry appeared with a fan and set it up blowing cold air into the stench of the bathroom. She couldn’t breathe through her nose at all now, so she had no idea if it was helping. Three more scrubs with soap and water and Jarod led her out. She dabbed at her eyes repeatedly, but they were swollen and sore.

“Yeah, it stinks. That’s the only problem with it!” Jarod’s voice was cold and hostile.

She squinted to see which of them he spoke to, but he stared at Harry.

“Like I said…it’s got a bad smell. She probably shouldn’t have shut the bathroom door. It contained all of it in a small place. But it’s only a little toxic—”

She couldn’t help it, she laughed. The sound came out like a strangled sob, and she dabbed her eyes again. “A little toxic. Is it like being a little pregnant?”

“Well, yes and no. You feel like crap, but it won’t kill you.” Harry retreated when Jarod took a step toward him. “I’m serious. She’ll be fine. The worst is she looks like a massive case of hay fever. Grab some antihistamines, and it will clear up. But check her face with the black light, isotope is all gone.”

“You know, I don’t even care anymore.” She really couldn’t breathe.
Ridiculous
. She blew her nose and accepted a fresh tissue from Jarod. The lights turned off, and she waited while they put the black light on her.

“It’s gone,” Jarod confirmed.

“Well, at least it was worth it. Now you can be rid of me.” The flip remark came out a lot whinier and more pathetic than intended. She sighed and took a long drink from the water bottle Jarod pressed into her hands.

“We’ll talk when we’re out of here.” He looked back at Harry. “Did you get us a car?”

“Yep, Mickey lot, slot five. I’ll take care of yours and get it cleaned and dropped back at the airport. Want me to dead drop any gear in it?”

They both shook their heads. “No.”

She wheezed a laugh, but at least the watery eyes slowly abated. She didn’t want to even begin looking at herself. They left Harry a few minutes later and went back to the line then down an exit staircase for employees. Their circuitous route through the park took a more direct line to the gates and then out again. They didn’t pause to sight see.

In the Mickey lot, they found a four door tan SUV. Twenty minutes later, they were back on a freeway and so ready to go to sleep, but they didn’t have time for rest.

“Pasadena?”

She said nothing. Her insides twisted, her face hurt, her eyes burned, and her soul ached. The only bright spot in the last twenty-four hours sat right next to her, but she couldn’t trust it.

She couldn’t trust him.

“Yes, please.” She licked her lips and reached for the water bottle again. “If I ask you a question, will you tell me the truth?”

“As much as I am able.” It wasn’t an unfair answer.

“Why do you want the Buddha?”

“Because I want to return it to where it belongs—the temple in Thailand. It is a treasured piece of their cultural and artistic history. It should go home.”

“And that’s it?” She pulled her knee up to her chest and stared out the window, not at him. She wanted to hear the honesty in his voice—the man could play too many expressions, be too many people. He was some kind of government spy or had been at one time.

“That’s it.”

“So if I promise to help you facilitate your desire, can you give me twenty-four hours?”

“Kit….”

“Seriously, Jarod. You name the place, and I will be there in twenty-four hours. But I need some time…and then I’ll…I’ll help you return the Buddha to where it belongs.”

They drove another five miles before he spoke. “Who are you protecting, Kit?”

“If I tell you, then I’m not protecting them anymore.”

“Then tell me what you can—”

She cut a look at him.

“I told you I would help you take your two days, and I meant it. duMonde is still out there, and when he figures out we thwarted his little tracer, he’s going to get meaner. So leaving you to fend for yourself…. It’s not going to happen. I can look the other way and not see anything if you need discretion, but I need you to tell me what you can so I know what you need.”

“I want to trust you.” She really did.

“Then, read me in. Tell me what you can, and I promise you, I will help you make happen whatever it is you need to make happen.”

He didn’t touch her, but he didn’t have to. His presence in the car wrapped around her like a blanket, and damn if she didn’t want to snuggle into it. She’d known him less than forty-eight hours. How was it possible she wanted to trust him?

“At sixteen years old, I found out my mother was alive.” It sounded rather ridiculous in some ways. She wasn’t sure where else to start this story, though.