Love Is in the Air (104 page)

Wait a minute. Hold the phone. He turned back to Jazmine.

“You seem to know a lot about animals.”

“Yes…” Jazmine stretched the word out, clearly suspicious.

“Are you feeling what I’m feeling?”

“What?” her eyes twinkled. “The remnants of the ferret attack?”

Ouch
. “You saw that, huh?”

“Yeah.
Everyone
saw that.”

Okay, Wyatt couldn’t linger on that especially painful memory. “Well then, more proof positive we should work together.”

* * *

Seriously? Jazmine nearly choked. That was the worst idea she had heard since… well going to the pet whispering event in the first place.

“Excuse me? What?”

Wyatt beamed at her, excited though. “You need a job. I need someone who knows the difference between a weevil and a weasel.”

She responded automatically, “First of all, a weevil is a beetle, whereas—”

“Hey, hey!” Wyatt said holding up his hand. “Save it for when you’re on the clock!”

“I don’t know…” This was a crazy idea, right? An idea that really should be thrown out into that trashcan helmet, right?

“C’mon,” Wyatt wheedled, lifting up a pile of cards. “Right here are people needing—” He paused and squinted at the cards. “Okay, ladies needing a little Wyatt in their lives.” He switched stacks.

“People needing help, remember?” He said. “You like helping people? Huh? Huh?”

“Yes, but—”

“And you need the income?” Wyatt pressed, not letting up. “Am I right? Am I?”

Ugh. She really hated it that he was more than right. “Yes.”

“All right then! You be the brains…” Diablo turned his head to try to bite Wyatt’s gesticulating hand and Wyatt squirmed out of the way to save himself.

“And you’ll be the brawn?” she chuckled. “Really?”

“No.” Wyatt said taking on the air of a radio announcer. “I’ll be the pet whisperer…er…” Diablo growled, giving one last
rrrrr
to Wyatt’s self appointed title.

Dear God, had her life really gotten to the point where she was considering actually working with the wonkiest-haired pet whisperer that ever lived? Sadly, it appeared that it had.

“All right. For a week,” she conceded, but then rapidly qualified it as Wyatt’s grin grew. “We’ll see how it goes for a
week
.”

Before he could respond, the nurse poked her head in the door, glared at Diablo, then picked up her cell phone to dial as she scurried away.

“We should get out of here before animal control catches our scent.”

* * *

Wyatt too sensed that the time for getting out was getting good. First though he turned back to his uncle.

“I’m taking Diablo home, then I’ll be right back, Bodhi…”

His uncle’s skin had a sickly cast to it as the machines breathed for him. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?”

“But he—”

Wyatt turned to Jazmine. He knew how ill his uncle was. It was the tree that he didn’t want him going to yet.

“You’re right,” she said, seeming to understand. “He can’t go anywhere.” Jazmine grinned. “We’ve got too much work to do.”

Right she was. And the good news? She was now in charge of the clients. He took the
correct
stack of cards, the ones
without
the lady’s numbers and ceremoniously presented them to Jazmine. She smiled, her dimples popping up again.

He opened up the door like the gentleman that he was and let her walk out first. The nurse scowled at them as they walked past. Which was fine since Diablo scowled right back.

Wyatt indicated to the cards he’d passed Jazmine’s. “So, what’s going on there, anyway? That elephant guy didn’t book me, did he? Because that trunk…” He shuddered. “Let’s just say it wanders.” Oh the flashbacks. “It made me very uncomfortable.”

“No, Dumbo went with the wicked witch lady.”

“Good fit.” Literally. The chick looked very fit which was necessary for the stamina needed to run from Dumbo’s more than enthusiastic trunk.

“I think our first one should be this Dalmatian,” Jazmine said as she scanned the referral cared. Seems he’s afraid of sirens.”

“Being a police dog,” Wyatt said as he nodded sagely. “That would be a problem.”

Jazmine looked askance. “No. Dalmatians are the
firemen’s
mascot.”

Silly girl
. “Where are you getting your information? Those spotted canids help fight crime.” He noticed that despite Jazmine’s outrage, the corner of her mouth twitched upward. Somehow out of this crappy day, that little grin made him feel better. Wyatt barked twice and gave a quick whine. “See? That’s armed robbery.”

“No, no, no,” Jazmine protested. “Dalmatians were trained to run alongside the firemen’s water trucks to keep the horses running toward the flames rather than away from them.”

“What? That’s just plain… well, ludicrous. And
not
the rapper.” Wyatt gave a growl and one short yap. “That right there is Dalmatian for grand theft auto.” Jazmine opened her mouth to protest, but Wyatt rushed on. “With a speeding violation.”

Jazmine shook her head, but that smile played at the edge of her lips. “Now that there aren’t water trucks, the fire department mainly uses the dogs to go out to schools to help teach fire safety.”

Wyatt whined with an upward inflection. “That’s Dalmatian for jay walking.”

“It is
not
jay walking.”

“It totally was,” he said with all the sincerity he could muster. “Look, if we’re going to work together, you’re going to have to brush up on your phonetics.”

Jazmine seemed to chuckle despite herself. “You are such a dork.”

Yes, yes he was. But a dork that could make her laugh.

Perhaps this pet psychic thing wasn’t so bad after all.

My Dangerous Valentine

CHAPTER 1

CIA operative Valentine Rutger rushed down the snow-slicked sidewalk. Her heels clicked along the pavement, punctuating the urgency of her mission. Finally, she reached her location. The local mall. She opened the glass door and was hit by a wave of warm air. The place was hopping. Actually the place was crammed. With Christmas Eve shoppers.

“How’s Operation: Desperation going?” Trinka, her tech support, asked in her ear.

“Just fine,” Valentine tapped the bud in her ear to turn on her mic, and answered.

There really wasn’t any other option. She’d been in Madagascar until last night and was heading out to Belarus in the morning. This was her window. Her one and only window.

Val passed by a short older woman dressed in a dark blue cloak, ringing a bell. “Care to donate?”

Val shook her head. “Sorry, I’m here to pick up a present for my daughter. Maybe later.”

The woman, probably used to the answer, simply nodded, ringing the bell again. Val hurried away from the woman and her guilt. Then she saw the long line snaking out of the toy store. The staff had posted on Facebook that they had received a shipment of the Baby Gaga dolls. Apparently, every desperate parent in the tri-state area had descended on the store.

Val walked up to the back of the line, right behind a woman with three toddlers. The Mother looked about as tired as Val felt. The youngest one was trying to throw herself from her mother’s arms, wailing as she did so. The other two boys were wrestling on the floor. And they looked like they were fighting pretty dirty. Hair-pulling was on the table.

Val had survived torture in Micronesia that was not as painful as the children’s screams. But Val was on a mission, and she would not be undone by some rambunctious toddlers.

Trying to tune out the pre-school war in front of her, Val glanced around the mall. The place looked like Christmas had hurled on the mall. There wasn’t a square inch of wall, ceiling, or railing that wasn’t covered in red or green. Apparently, poinsettias were in fashion this year. Along with gold bows. And angels. Angels were big, too.

Even someone from Tunisia would know it was Christmastime. The season was burned into your retinas.

Val’s eyes scanned over to the only other store with a line to challenge the toy store’s. It was the only coffee shop in the mall. Tired mothers and jonesing teens lined up to get their caffeine fix.

A tall, dark-haired man gathered his drink and turned toward her, blowing on his latte. Val stiffened. She knew that dark, handsome face.
Ukav
. He looked up and gave a sad smile.

“Be careful,” he mouthed.

No shit. “Trinka, what the hell is Ukav doing here?”

“What do you mean?” the young tech asked. You could hear her chair swivel around—the girl was at the ready at her keyboard.

“Ukav, at the mall, Trinka. Why didn’t we have an alert he was in the country?”

Val looked back over to the coffee bar to find him gone. She was sure he had been there and had warned her, but how, and more importantly, why?

“I don’t know. We’ve got all of his aliases flagged,” Trinka reported. “I’m bringing up the mall footage now.”

“Where did he go?”

“Oh my god,” Trinka said. “It is Ukav.”

“Yes,” Val said, waiting for the tech to catch up. “Now, I need to know where he went.”

It wasn’t every day you found a KGB officer in the mall. Actually, technically, he was SVR, but that was the modern day equivalent of the KGB and there were still old-school KGB operatives running off-the-books missions. Ukav ran with the movers and shakers.

Even though tensions were not nearly as high as they were during the Cold War, that did not mean the two superpowers were buddy-buddy. As a matter of fact, in regards to any of the hotspots around the world— Iran, Syria and North Korea in particular—the USSR and the USA were on opposite sides of the negotiating table.

But why was Ukav here at the
mall
? Buying a latte, of all things? And why had he warned her? About the only thing the USSR and the USA agreed upon was the danger of China. Were the Chinese here, as well?

“He went toward the restrooms,” Trinka informed her.

Val turned to the harried woman in front of her. “Can you hold my place?”

The woman seemed to notice her for the first time. “Sure.”

Val took off down the mall, passing three shoe stores and a tattoo shop. When did tattoos become mainstream enough to show up in a mall? Kind of undercut the rebellious nature of ink, didn’t it? Even parental rebellion had turned corporate.

But she wasn’t here to provide cultural commentary. She was here to find out why a foreign agent was on US soil.

“Trinka, I need to know if he’s got his team with him.”

“I’m running facial recognition software already.”

“And the Chinese—run the footage against
all
foreign operatives.”

“Will do,” Trinka answered, sounding a little caffeinated herself.

“I’ve got to say though, Ukav wasn’t hiding,” Trinka explained. “He looked up, full-face, into the first camera he encountered.”

Yes, there was nothing stealthy about how he had revealed himself to Val. So un-KGB-like. They were usually ghosts. And equally as hard to document as apparitions.

Val arrived at the barren hallway that led to the bathrooms. “Which way?”

“He went in the women’s restroom,” Trinka said, then hurried on. “But he put something on the payphone hook.”

Cautiously, Valentine walked up to the payphone. Was it a trap? It didn’t feel very sophisticated, though, and Ukav was nothing but sophisticated in his approach. Gulping, Val put her hand on the phone and jerked it from its cradle. No bombs. No explosions. Not even a shock. Ukav must be getting rusty.

Instead, she found a sticky note attached to the lever. It was in Cyrillic. Val was fluent in a lot of languages, but written Cyrillic? Was Ukav busting her chops? She took a picture of it and sent it to Trinka.

“Um, the note says ‘run.’”

Well, that wasn’t going to happen. Val headed to the women’s restroom. She pulled her gun from its thigh holster before carefully opening the door. The restroom appeared empty. She checked each stall just to be sure. He was nowhere to be seen. The only evidence of his passing was a loose vent.

“He’s gone up,” Val relayed to Trinka.

Climbing up on a toilet, Val checked her gun to make sure there was a bullet in the chamber. She had a knife in her boot, of course, but would it be enough? She still sported a nasty scar on her ribcage from one of Ukav’s bullets. Just because he was warning her off didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill her if she got in the way of his mission.

Without hesitation.

The scar under her bra, chafing, was proof positive.

“I’m going in,” Val informed Trinka.

“Roger that,” the petite tech replied. Such military terms sounded so odd coming out of such a cutie.

Stepping onto a toilet, Val made her way up into the duct. Penlight in her mouth, she swept the light back and forth. Scrape marks went west, so she went west. She followed the trail until she came to a junction in the ducts. Right in the middle of the crossroads was a grate that had been removed. Clearly, Ukav had gone down. She checked the opposite grate to find rope marks in the grime. He had brought repelling equipment.

Funny, she hadn’t. Wonder why? Maybe because she was just trying to get her Christmas shopping done. Was a little heads up too much to ask?

The shaft went straight down into the bowels of the building.

“I’m going down.”

“Holy crap,” Trinka announced.

Yes, it was a steep climb, but that reaction seemed a little out of context. “Trinka, what’s wrong?”

“Ukav isn’t the only foreign agent here.”

“Okay…”

“We’ve got three men from the Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami in the mall.”

Holy crap was right. The Harkats were hardcore terrorists. “From Pakistan or Bangladesh?”

“Bangladesh,” Trinka replied.

That only made it worse. That splinter group had been responsible for numerous foreign store bombings in India. The chatter was that they were working their way up to taking on America.

And a major American mall on Christmas Eve? That would be quite the statement.

“Get the Director looped in. Plus the FBI, Homeland and NSA.”

“Yes, ma’am,” another voice said. “Trigger here. Standing by in case you find an explosive device.”