If Looks Could Kill (13 page)

“When we get out of here, T., I'm going to make it my mission in life to see that Lucien West never sees another ray of sunlight for the rest of his life. I'm going to bury him,” Jo seethed.

“We all are, Jo. I promise you. But we have to get out of here first.”

They edged closer to the snoring guards. Jo tiptoed up to them and delicately stepped over them. Then she turned back to Theresa and motioned for her to do the same.

Theresa did. But in midstep one of the guards stopped snoring.

She froze, one foot dangling in the air.

The guard grunted, shifted, smacked his lips, and continued snoring.

Carefully Theresa licked her lips and stepped over him.

They moved on into the darkness. The tunnels seemed endless. The warehouse took up an entire block,
but this maze went on and on. They had to be beyond the borders of the warehouse. Who knew where they would come out?

Finally Theresa saw a light up ahead.

“I hope that's a door,” Jo said. “And there's a spa on the other side of it. A spa with Swedish masseurs and hot mud and a mineral water Jacuzzi.”

“I'll settle for the door,” Theresa replied.

But it wasn't a door. It was another chamber. It was better lit than the others, with half a dozen electric bulbs hanging from the ceiling. There were three tables in the room, with two bulbs above each one.

But that's not what stopped the Spy Girls dead.

It was the three army-green suitcases, one on each table. The ones with the Russian writing on the side. Poised nice and neat. As if in respect. Or on display.

No guards were there to greet them. Just the girls and the suitcases.

“Those are the cases from the truck,” Jo whispered.

“I knew there had to be gold at the end of this nightmare rainbow,” Theresa replied.

They opened one and flipped back the lid. Then another. And another.

And froze.

Theresa's heart felt like it was in her throat, and Jo stood there with her mouth hanging open.

No one said a word. No one had to.

Theresa knew from her training what she was looking at. It seemed impossible. But it wasn't. The proof was right there in front of her.

The cases held the components of a nuclear warhead, ready for assembly!

“Oh no,” Theresa muttered, gripping a table for support.

“Is that what I think it is?” Jo asked wearily, pointing at a section of the device and hoping, hoping that it wasn't . . .

But she knew it was.

“It sure isn't lost luggage from Siberia,” Theresa replied.

Jo thought about that. “Actually, it is.”

“The real question is, what do we do about it?” Theresa asked, delicately fingering a piece of hardware.

“Do you remember when Uncle Sam briefed us on Carruthers?” Jo asked, allowing herself to touch the device as well, knowing in the pit of her stomach what it was capable of. “He said the guy was affiliated with a terrorist group trying to smuggle nuclear weapons out of Russia.”

“Looks like he succeeded,” Theresa commented, gesturing to the cases.

“Indeed, he did,” came a voice from behind them.

They whirled.

An extremely handsome man stood before them. He had black hair that came to a pronounced widow's peak. His eyes were deep-set, but incredibly bright and piercing. He was dressed in a pair of slacks and a pullover shirt. Very neat, yet not what they expected from a renowned religious leader.

He was surrounded by half a dozen armed guards, all with shaved heads.

And next to him stood a familiar form, dressed in white sweats and slippers.

Caylin!

“Mr. Carruthers, I presume,” Jo said with a smile.

Lucien chuckled. “I'm sorry, dear. You must have me mixed up with someone else. My name is West. Lucien West.”

“You don't look so ‘luscious' to me,” Theresa muttered.

“He's not,” Caylin agreed.

At that comment Lucien shoved Caylin forward. She stumbled over to her comrades. “Why don't you stand with your friends, Caylin. I've had quite enough of you.”

“Yeah, you're a real one-man party yourself, Carruthers,” Caylin replied. She smiled at Jo and Theresa. “How are you guys doing?”

“We were fine until
you
got here,” Theresa replied.

“When did you get busted, Cay?” Jo asked.

“About an hour ago,” Caylin replied.

“Sloppy,” Jo chided. “That's a whole hour before us. We win.” She grinned triumphantly.

“Maybe so,” Caylin responded. “But I picked a lock with a bobby pin in less than a minute. And that's in the field!”

“You're lying,” Theresa muttered, shaking her head. “No way. Not in under a minute.”

“I sure did!” Caylin protested.

“Not a chance,” Jo agreed.

“Just ask Lucien, girls. His security cameras have it on tape.” Caylin glared at Lucien. “Tell them, Lucien. And while you're at it, tell them about the rec room in your basement that's filled to the ceiling with hundred-dollar bills.”

“Cool,” Theresa said.

“That's my kind of rec room,” Jo added.

“If you girls are quite finished, we have some business
to attend to,” Lucien said with a smile. “So if you'll just tell me who you're working for, we can get on to the unpleasant part of the evening.”

“Working for?” Theresa asked, raising her eyebrows.

“We don't think of this as work,” Jo said, buffing her nails. “It's more of a spiritual thing.”

“Yeah,” Caylin agreed, clapping a hand on Theresa's shoulder. “We go around the world exposing trash bag con men for the vermin that they are. Then—
bam
—instant inner peace. You understand, don't you?”

Lucien shut his eyes and rubbed his head like it hurt. “No, I don't think I do,” he muttered.

Theresa stepped forward. “Why don't I give it a try?” she asked. “It goes something like this. The cult is a front for the sweatshop. You launder all the cash that comes in from knockoff clothing by running it through the cult's books. You make all the money look like cash donations. Nice and legal.”

“But the one question that's been nagging us,” Jo went on, arms held out expansively, “is, why all the cash? I mean, you have way more cash than you could ever generate from
knockoffs. So where did it all come from?” Her eyes narrowed, and she pointed at the nuke. “Our answer's right there on those tables, isn't it?”

Caylin nodded. “You've been using your terrorist contacts to get the nukes. Then you're selling them to the highest bidder.”

“That's what you're calling ‘the Purchase' in all your ledgers,” Theresa said. She folded her arms across her chest and smiled. “By the way. Your computer security systems stink. I broke right in and downloaded the whole thing. You really should have your security beefed up. Any old moron can hack in there. Very sloppy.”

“So,” Jo asked, shrugging. “Does that just about cover it?”

Lucien broke out into gales of laughter. The girls didn't even crack a smile. “No,” he said, snickering. “You're wrong. You're completely wrong.”

Theresa's brow furrowed. “I doubt it,” she replied. “We're pretty good at this stuff. And you're not that smart.”

Lucien beamed. “Oh yes, I am.”

“Prove it,” Jo challenged.

“As I told Caylin, the temple is quite legitimate,” Lucien
replied. He paced the floor as he spoke, slipping into preacher mode. “All the students are there because they want to be. I don't brainwash. I just happen to have something that they crave.”

“It can't be charm,” Jo said with a disgusted scowl.

“No, Jo,” Caylin said as she leaned closer to her friend. “The word's
smarm
.”

Lucien shook his head. “Try empathy, ladies. Empathy. I feel their pain. I accept them for who they are. I let them become who they've always wanted to be. It's really very simple.” Lucien ran a hand along the lid of one of the green cases and gently shut it. Then he smiled. “As for the money-laundering part, yes, that's true. But that's just on the surface. It's how I got started in Kinh-Sanh five years ago.”

“Is he always this wordy?” Theresa asked Caylin.

“Oh yeah,” Caylin answered immediately.

“Great. Should we sit down?” Jo asked sarcastically.

“No,” Lucien ordered, pointing a menacing finger at them. “Stand. For it's really quite fascinating.”

“It is?” Jo griped.

“Shhh, Jo,” Theresa whispered. “The guy's giving it all up.”

Lucien moved to the remaining cases as he spoke, shutting and latching them in turn. “The shop and the temple ran smoothly for a few years. But then the Kinh-Sanh government tried to shut down the shop as a goodwill gesture to the United States. You know, a little brownnosing by the third world country to impress the Yanks. I was desperate. I would've been out of business. And this was the best operation I had ever set up. It was perfect.”

“So you
are
Carruthers,” Caylin pointed out.

“If you say so, Caylin,” he replied, shrugging. “It hardly matters. Anyway, I had to find a way to keep the dream alive. So I went to the prime minister of Kinh-Sanh and made him an offer he couldn't refuse.”

“And that was?” Theresa asked.

Lucien's grin was sinister. “I would help him make Kinh-Sanh a major world power overnight. A country that would be more powerful than all of its neighbors. A country that could stand proudly and point to its beautiful capital city,
its clean streets, and its friendly natives, and say, ‘Kinh-Sanh's voice will now be heard around the world.' ”

The realization hit Jo like a thunderbolt. It must have hit the other girls as well because Theresa blurted out: “You're selling the prime minister the nukes!”

“Selling?” Lucien asked impatiently.

Jo chuckled. “Oh, sorry, I guess you're just
giving
them to him,” she mused.

“That's exactly what I'm doing,” Lucien replied, patting one of the cases. “Make no mistake, he's paying for them. But I'm acting as a broker, so to speak.”

Great, Jo thought. Just what the world needs. A trash bag of nuclear proportions.

“The almighty middleman,” Caylin muttered.

“Precisely,” Lucien said. “I get a hefty ‘finder's fee' and the eternal gratitude of the prime minister. He immediately saw the light when it came to my other operations. The shop keeps his streets free of unsightly homeless people, which brings in the tourists, which brings in the cash. In exchange, I get a cut of the pie.”

“So that's it?” Theresa asked.

“Not quite,” Lucien replied smugly. “I also get to operate my businesses unchallenged. You see, believe it or not, I
am
a spiritual man. But I am also a big believer in free enterprise. And this nuclear-sized deal will not just tip the scales of world order, it'll make me a billionaire in the process.”

“At the cost of hundreds of lives in your shop,” Theresa said in disgust.

“Or millions if those nukes ever get used,” Caylin added grimly.

Lucien only smiled and spread his arms. “Name a billionaire who hasn't squashed a few hundred lives in his day?”

Jo started laughing. Laughing hard. She felt the other girls staring at her, probably wondering if she'd snapped.

“Something amusing?” Lucien asked, glaring at her.

Jo giggled, nodding. “Yeah, big time. You've formulated the perfect plan here, Carruthers. But it's not quite perfect.”

Lucien smiled pleasantly. “No?”

“No. You left out one tiny but crucial detail.”

Lucien's smile became a smirk. “Well? Are you going to enlighten me?”

“Showers, Lucien. Showers for your guards! They stink!
They stink worse than my high school football team, and they practiced in a cow pasture!”

Lucien couldn't suppress his own chuckle. He turned to his guards. “Well, gentlemen, what do you think about that?”

The biggest, hairiest guard stepped forward.

He smiled at Jo. Jo smiled back nervously. Then her nervousness turned to horror as she watched the man lift his arm and literally blow his body odor toward them!

“How disgusting!” Jo moaned, fanning with her hand. “Why don't you just cut me in half with a laser or something quick?”

The guards chuckled and slapped their smelly comrade on the back for his ingenuity.

“What a shame that all this is for nothing,” Theresa said to Lucien. “Our people will be along any minute now. And then it's bye-bye, Carruthers.”

Lucien laughed even harder. “So what? Let them come. What do you think they'll find? An empty warehouse. Meanwhile you three will be earning back all the money you've cost me by standing here talking.”

“What do you mean?” Caylin asked uneasily.

Lucien nodded to his guards. “Put these young ladies to work. Give them their own machines. And let them sew until they either die of exhaustion or dehydration.” The smile widened on his face. “Whichever comes first.”

Caylin squinted at her dark, murky surroundings as the Spy Girls were led back to the sweatshop. All the tired, tortured eyes of the workers focused on her and her friends as they were searched.

The guards took all their gear. Everything. Then they sat the girls down in a row in front of three decrepit sewing machines and shackled their ankles to a steel bar underneath.

Caylin tested the bonds. Solid. Very solid. And heavy. Caylin knew she was in shape—but she wondered how the slaves could even move their feet on the sewing machine pedals. They looked so skinny and weak.

We'll look like that, too, if we don't do something, she thought.

Huge piles of unsewn sleeves were slapped down
before them. The big hairy guard ran down the instructions, plain and simple. The Spy Girls were to sew the long hem the length of the sleeve, making a tube. Someone else would be sewing them to the body.