Marshmallow S'More Murder (Merry Wrath Mysteries Book 3) (13 page)

"It took forever. I called your father who called in a few favors at the Agency. I have no idea who he talked to, but they released you once whoever it was called. Sorry I can't tell you more than that."

I sighed. "It doesn't matter. I'm sure Dad will tell me later." Sure, I wanted to know what had happened, but it could wait.

Maria looked at me funny and then started to giggle. The giggle grew into laughter, and it wasn't long before tears were pouring down her face.

"It's not that funny," I said, a little wounded.

She nodded. "Oh yes, it is!" Maria held out her phone to show me a video of me wrestling Mr. Fancy Pants. "It's all over the net. It's viral!" She broke into fits of laughter again.

I took a bite of pot roast so I wouldn't stab her with my fork. That was the one good thing about getting out of espionage—everyone could film you and post it online. I got out before that became a problem to me.

Maria had done a great job of picking a restaurant. I had to hand it to her—the food was amazing. The meat just fell apart in my mouth, and the au jus was to die for. This might've been the best dinner we'd had so far on this trip.

I had just finished buttering an ear of corn when my cell went off. My buttery fingers fumbled the phone. Could it be Riley? Did Kelly have her baby?

"Merry!" Rex's incredibly handsome face filled the screen. "So, how was prison? Any different than it is back here?" He grinned and looked too adorable for me to be angry with him.

"You saw the video, I take it," I said, a little frostily.

"Everyone saw the video," Rex said. "One of my sergeants showed it to me. Then some of the guys blew up a still of you manhandling a national treasure and left it on my desk."

I rolled my eyes and groaned. "Great. I'm sure the whole town knows now."

He nodded. "They didn't say your name, but you might want to wear a baseball cap or something for a while when you get back." Again, he flashed me a mind-numbing grin.

"Well, thanks for calling and rubbing it in," I said.

"No problem." He laughed. "What are boyfriends for?"

My stomach did a little flip-flop when he said that. Even though we'd been dating a little while, I never tired of hearing it.

"I'll let you go. Looks like you have your hands full. Just wanted to tell you you're my favorite jailbird." And with that, he hung up.

I was just buttering a roll when my cell rang again. This time it was Kelly. If she wasn't pregnant and having a baby any day now, I probably wouldn't have answered.

"Hey, hero!" My friend said into the phone. "Saw some of your handiwork. Nice."

"I'll have you know," I said grumpily, "that I saved our girls from that monster. He had giant talons and a razor-sharp beak that—"

"I'm sure you did." Kelly laughed as she cut me off. "And I must say, I prefer this threat over some of the other threats the troop has faced in the last year."

"So are you having that baby or what?" I changed the subject.

"No. Not yet," My best friend's tone changed from laughter to fury. "If it doesn't make an appearance soon, I'm going to make it eat vegetables every day of its life."

"Well, since you're on the phone, I have some people who want to talk to you." Before she could protest, I handed the phone to the first table and announced that Kelly wanted to talk to each and every one of them.

"You're kind of evil," Maria said as she scooped up some potatoes.

"You have no idea…." I said with a wink before shoving more pot roast into my mouth.

My phone was still making the rounds when the pie was served. Apple à la mode. The warm, flaky crust melted the ice cream in a heavenly puddle of goodness. I'd finished my dessert when Inez handed me back my phone. Kelly wasn't there. Probably too angry to talk to me further. Maybe I'd done her a solid. I'd heard that intensity of any kind could stimulate labor.

Maria pushed herself away from the table. "Man! That was terrific. It's almost like we're just here as tourists."

She didn't have to say it, but I understood her meaning. For one meal, we weren't talking about Riley or the yakuza. Of course, we were talking about one of the most humiliating moments in my life—but that was beside the point.

"No word from Riley?" Maria asked finally. I guess she had to bring him up at some point.

I shook my head. "I'm thinking maybe I'll turn this over to the Agency."

Her eyes went wide. "Really?" I couldn't tell if she liked this idea or not.

"Really. I'm supposed to be here for
them
." I nodded toward my troop. "And I don't work for the CIA anymore. I want to spend our last few days having fun with the girls. I don't want their memories to be about the fact I'm never around."

Maria grinned. "I don't think that will be first and foremost in their memories."

"Well, I did take down a significant threat for them. Who knows what might've happened if Mr. Fancy Pants had gotten hold of Hannah?"

We laughed for a moment, and it felt good. I hadn't seen Maria in so long. It was nice spending time with someone who had a past similar to mine. If she wanted to stay with us, we could have some fun before we left for Iowa.

"This won't affect your job, will it?" I asked. "If I turn what I know over to Langley?"

Maria looked thoughtful. "I don't think so. Remember, I'm on vacation. It's just a coincidence I was helping you when you got these weird phone calls."

"You're sure you are okay with it?" Hurting her career was not a risk I wanted to take.

"Yes, it'll be fine. Plus, I'll get to hang out with you and the kids. They really are fun." Maria smiled and looked at her watch. "Uh-oh. It's getting late. We need to head back to the hotel. We can call the Agency tomorrow."

As we corralled the girls into the van and headed to the hotel, I felt relieved. Letting this go and letting the professionals handle it would work. They had more resources and a lot less to lose. Yes, there was the pinch of guilt here and there for not helping Riley myself. But what did I really owe him?

Okay—so he helped me with a couple of cases recently. He didn't have to do that. But then, the CIA had a vested interest because it involved terrorists. I was a civilian now. Running around after the yakuza wasn't something I wanted to do anymore.

Maria and I discussed the details once Evelyn and the girls were in bed. I'd call Riley's boss and explain what had been going on. And that would be that. They would find my old handler, and I'd finish up the last two days of our trip on a high note.

To be perfectly honest, my conversation with Hannah had hit a nerve. Her favorite thing about the trip was spending time with me. Except for the fact that they hadn't spent much time with me. I'd been brushing them off to chase nonexistent clues that had led nowhere.

In the past, when I'd been an agent, I'd worked with less. But now I shouldn't have had to. Unless the Japanese crime syndicate was going to send me the details on where Riley was and promise not to hurt my troop, I wasn't going any further with this. Riley was on his own.

Ouch. I didn't mean that. But come tomorrow, he'd have every resource the Agency had put toward finding him. I had nothing to go on. The only clues I'd found—the cell phone and the weird documents in Japanese—did nothing to further the case. I was a civilian and needed to start acting like it.

Maria said good night and went into her room. I was alone. After brushing my teeth and changing into jammies, I stretched out on the couch. For the first time on this trip, I drifted to sleep without any concerns.

Riley set me up in another safe house once I got back from my meeting with Chlotilde. I toyed with mentioning my meeting with her—partly because I'd have loved to see my handler's face when he found out he'd slept with an Interpol agent. For some reason, though, I decided not to. I wasn't going to spy for the German woman, no matter what she did.

It wasn't that unusual in our field to get propositioned like that. Every nation's spy agency tried to do the same thing. It was just part of the game. Turning people to your own advantage was like filling a sales quota.

I found the new apartment easily enough. It was in a crowded residential district, so having a cab let me off there wasn't going to tip anyone off. I waited until the cabbie was out of sight before entering the building. The elevator took me to the seventh floor, and I found the place easy enough. In minutes, I was already running a nice hot bath.

As I stepped into the steaming water, I thought about Chlotilde. If she wasn't actually interested in Riley, why sleep with him? Seemed a bit unnecessary. I could understand it a little. Riley could charm the panties off most women. It had even worked for me, briefly. But she could've exercised a little restraint.

I toyed with these thoughts until the water turned tepid, and I got out. Slipping into yoga pants and a sweatshirt, I settled on the generic couch and pulled out the packet the German had given me. Inside a blank envelope, I found ten thousand Euros and some newspaper clippings. Disgusted, I shoved the money back into the envelope. They couldn't buy me. That was the oldest trick in the book.

The newspaper clippings were from the last few days. The first article was about an investigation into Midori Ito's dealings with some sort of bank fraud. What did that have to do with me? The yakuza was on my radar here—that was true. But my main assignment dealt with tracing an arms dealer from Russia to Japan. I hadn't found anything that linked the yakuza to the Russians.

The second clipping was an editorial about the US Embassy in Tokyo. There was some concern that the Americans were getting involved in Japanese politics. There was some hinting that the British might be involved. I thought about overhearing Riley talking to someone with a British accent the other night. Again—nothing that related to me. If Riley was involved with the UK, that was his business. I wasn't supposed to get involved in anything outside my assignment.

I rubbed my eyes and read both articles again but could find nothing that had anything to do with me. Interpol was known to chase down international bank fraud. But what did they care if the Americans were schmoozing with Japanese politicians? And what else did they think we were doing here? Holding a chess tournament? Embassies were set up for interaction between nations.

This was ridiculous and obviously a case of mistaken identity. I shoved the papers back into the envelope with the money and got ready for bed. Tomorrow, I'd send the envelope by courier to Chlotilde, rejecting whatever the offer was. Seriously, these Interpol agents didn't do their homework, and I wasn't about to do it for them. I slipped into bed as the whole thing slipped from my mind.

I woke with a start. It was only one in the morning. The dream had kind of gotten to me, but I wasn't sure why. All of this had happened years ago. And it had been a nonevent as far as I'd been concerned. So why was I remembering it all now?

It didn't make sense, really. I'd messengered the envelope back to Chlotilde and never heard from her again. Oh sure, I kept an eye out for a while. You never knew when information you thought was useless could turn out to be something important. But it hadn't. Nothing ever came of it as far as I knew. I'd never mentioned the whole, weird thing to Riley and couldn't find a connection worth exploring.

This was probably my guilt coming out through dreams. And yet…why were the dreams coming in chronological order like this? I hadn't thought about this since I'd left Japan. What was the point of thinking about it now?

It had to be the fact that I was dealing with Riley and the yakuza. My dreams reflected the only other time those two things were even remotely together. That had to be it.

My assignment in Japan had hit a dead end. The CIA had decided that there was no connection in the case, and a few weeks later, I'd been transferred to another country and another case. I'd thought about Chlotilde. She'd never contacted me after that. I remembered thinking at the time that maybe she had just been trying to get back at Riley for seducing her. And I'd never thought of it again before now.

I fell back asleep after tossing these thoughts around for a few more minutes. I'd learned to let go of a case that went nowhere. It happened a lot more than you might have thought. Sometimes a case turned out not to be a case after all. You dropped it and moved on. And that's what I was going to do.

The girls woke me up the next morning, jumping around like the little balls of energy they were. More than one showed me the video of me wrestling the vulture to the ground. It always ended with them laughing hysterically and me wishing I knew a black-hat hacker who could remove it from YouTube.

We decided to take them to a pancake restaurant for breakfast, and they were beyond excited. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been so excited about breakfast. I couldn't help but smile as they danced around us, singing songs they made up about waffles—Mr. Fancy Pants suddenly forgotten. This time, I was going to enjoy a meal with them instead of worrying about my old boss or anything else.

Maria and Evelyn emerged from their room, both smiling. Well, I think Evelyn was smiling. It was hard to tell. It might have been more like a disgruntled smirk. But I didn't care. We only had two days left in this city, and dammit, we were going to enjoy them.

"When are you going to call it in?" Maria murmured as we climbed into the van.

"After breakfast," I answered. No point in calling out the troops on an empty stomach. That was never a good idea. Breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and they weren't kidding. Some of the biggest mistakes in judgment I ever made were when I was hungry. In fact, that should be in the training. Maybe I'd throw that at them after I handed Riley's case over.

The waitresses were fun. They teased the girls and brought them crayons and paper to color with. The girls were having a great time, and for once, the Kaitlins mixed it up and didn't sit together. Now that was huge.

"What's on the agenda today?" Evelyn startled me by speaking. She was sitting with Maria and me for the first time on this trip. It was kind of weird.

"The Spy Museum," I said with a wink to Maria.

Maria shot me a look. "Seriously? The Spy Museum?"

I shrugged. "Why not? I've wanted to check it out since it opened. You can't tell me you aren't curious."

"Yeah, sure. I guess I was afraid it'd be corny," she said. "But what the hell? Let's go."

The girls erupted into screams when we told them. And the screaming didn't abate until we pulled up and parked. Have you ever been in a vehicle with a bunch of squealing little girls? I thought we should have considered weaponizing them.

After we paid admission and dragged the girls out of the gift shop, we headed in. I was getting excited. It was the one place in DC I'd never been to, and I couldn't wait to see what they had. I'd just have to be careful and not tip my hand to the girls. They didn't know I'd been a spy, and I didn't want that to change.

The first thing we had to do was go into a room with placards on the walls every foot or so. We were told to line up in front of the cards and memorize what was on them. That would be our cover story and assignment.

"Who designed this?" I asked with a giggle.

Maria shushed me. "I'm trying to memorize my cover."

I looked at mine. Okay, I'd play. Usually I did this for real, so how hard could it be? My card said that I was a sixty-five-year-old male Italian fishmonger who was in the US visiting his son who lived in Alexandria, Virginia.

Damn. I'd never been to Italy. I would've loved an assignment there but never got one. It would've been a far cushier job than the one I had in Bulgaria. That was for sure. You really didn't appreciate electricity and fresh water until you didn't have it.

And an old man who sold fish? I didn't even like fish. Oooh, maybe I could build that in—I sold fish because I didn't like it and therefore was not likely to "get high on my own supply!" I had a good memory but still went over and over the placard to burn Guiseppe Tutti's life into my head. I'd never had to be a different age, let alone sex, before. This was going to be interesting.

"Time's up!" A woman in a docent uniform announced. She told us that we had to check in on computers throughout the exhibit for assignments and leads. At the end of our tour, we'd be tested by a computer program to see if we'd survived. I was grinning like an idiot. This would be so easy. How cool was it that I got to pretend to be something I already was?

"Who are you?" I asked Lauren.

She scowled. "I'm just an insurance salesman from Buffalo. Why?" Her eyes slid sideways, checking for threats. Good girl.

"Just asking," I said.

"Would you be interested in buying a life insurance policy?" Lauren asked. "You know, you're not getting any younger."

Evelyn began laughing. It was the first time I'd heard her do anything but complain, and I jumped about two feet in the air. Not as good as an American bison, but I thought it was impressive.

So Evelyn Trout wasn't an angry robot after all. I wondered what her cover story was.

"I'm good," I answered Lauren. "Selling fish in Italy isn't very dangerous."

Lauren shook her head. "You never know. You could accidentally slice open a major artery with a boning knife. Or you could fall into the sea and drown. What would your loved ones do if that happened?"

I tried to recall if Lauren's parents were in insurance or regularly used a boning knife or if she was just really, really good at this. The girl shrugged and ran off to look at a collection of weapons made from everyday household items. When I spotted the camera built into a pack of cigarettes, it was all I could do not to blow my cover. I had that camera once. In Libya. It was eaten by a camel.

The lipstick gun also looked promising…until you had to use it to prove it wasn't a gun. There was no real pigment in it. It was fake. And I put on one hell of an act in Austria once just trying to prove it was real makeup. A helpful tip—you could color your lips and skin by pinching or biting it. Of course, this effect didn't last long, and I almost shot my lip off, but that was just splitting hairs.

"I hate to admit it," Maria said. "But this is kind of awesome. I've seen some of this stuff in action before."

"
Buongiorno
, do you speak Italian?" I asked her, deciding to keep to my cover. I could pull off the accent, but the language was hopeless. Maybe if I'd studied Italian I could've been sent to the Riviera. Of course, this was the United States government we were talking about. I had a few friends in the Foreign Service. Todd was fluent in Mandarin and Farsi. They sent him to Spain. And Amelia spoke Russian and Czech. She'd never been assigned to either place. She was doing a lovely stint in Bali though. The rule of thumb seemed to be if you spoke it and were completely solid with the culture, we'd send you to a place where it was completely useless.

She answered without missing a beat. "No, I'm just a college student here on break." Maria tossed her glossy curls arrogantly. "Do you know where the best club for any action is? I've got an awesome fake ID."

Inez came over and joined us. "Mrs. Wrath? Do you think they'll sell belt-buckle derringers in the gift shop?" No matter how many times I'd told the girls I wasn't married, they always called me "Mrs." I figured it was a kid thing.

I shook my head. "I don't think so, Inez." At least, I hoped not.

"I'm not Inez," the girl said. "My name is Angela, and I'm a puppeteer from Idaho."

Now why didn't I get that? I could pull off a puppeteer, and I'd been to Idaho. Well, not at the same time, but I thought I could have pulled it off better than an eight-year-old girl.

The kids were having a great time, and I had to admit that I was too. Even Evelyn was checking the computer in each room for updates to her assignment. The Kaitlins ran from exhibit to exhibit, oohing and aahing over things that had been the tricks of my trade for years.

"Did you talk to Langley?" Maria asked.

"Oh crap." I smacked my forehead. "I totally forgot. I'll do it when we get outside." I was starting to have fun for the first time on this trip and didn't want to spoil it by getting yelled at by the CIA.

Maria nodded and went back to browsing. This really was a cool place. There was a lot of history—some I didn't even know about. My favorite spy stories were of George Washington during the Revolutionary War. He was the first spymaster in this country and had an elaborate network of ordinary people feeding him information on British movements.

It was interesting to note that espionage was really frowned on back then. Spies were outranked by dysentery and rats. The museum had a letter from Washington himself. That was so cool. How did they get this stuff? It wasn't like the CIA willingly gave stuff up. I knew agents who'd received the highest honors you could get, only to have them confiscated moments later and locked up for decades until they were declassified. This wasn't the business to be in if you wanted fame and recognition.

I browsed the weapons. The nineteenth-century ring gun was beyond cool, and I went all fangirl over the courier shoes and Enigma machine. The technology was impressive for its time. There was nothing from this decade and probably wouldn't be for another forty years. I thought about that. What would be in the museum then? Things I couldn't even imagine…exploding breath mints? Cell phones that turned into jet packs? Laptops that were bulletproof and purified water? Poisonous breath so you could kill your enemies with halitosis?

I shuddered at the sight of the rectal tool kit. The little knives lay next to the capsule they were supposed to hide in. I had to draw the line at rectal knives. Sure, it seemed like a good idea, until you had to
use
them. And how exactly did you get them out in a fight? If anyone at the CIA had ever used them, they never said anything. I wouldn't have either.

Oh, my God. They had the one weapon I'd always wanted to see—the umbrella that injected its victim with a tiny capsule of poison! In 1978, the assassin, code name
Piccadilly,
came up behind a Bulgarian author named Georgi Markov at a bus stop in London and injected him with the ricin capsule, using the infamous umbrella. The murder was orchestrated by the Bulgarian government with a little help from the KGB. Markov died a few days later. This terrible event was legendary in the history of espionage—and here I was, standing next to it! Squee!

Looking around, I didn't see any of the girls, so I allowed myself a little end-zone dance.
I mean, come on!
This was a huge piece of the history of spy activity during the Cold War! It was comparable to seeing Michael Jackson's white, studded glove or Hitler's bunker!

This place was amazing. I found myself getting lost in the exhibits, reading absolutely every plaque on every item. For the first time on this trip, I was really enjoying myself. When I caught up with them, the four Kaitlins plus Inez were peppering Maria with questions about spies. It made me a smidge wistful. They knew she'd worked at the CIA. Wouldn't they think I was cool if they knew my past? Oh, well. It wasn't meant to be. I'd have to live with that.

I took the opportunity of being alone to log in to a computer myself. I selected my cover and hit enter.

You are being followed and are in great danger. Keep your eyes open!

I couldn't help but smile. It was just the kind of vague alert I expected. As I stopped to read a list of the Moscow Rules from the Cold War, I made a point to look around. No point in breaking character.

And that's when I spotted her.

Leiko Ito was standing a few feet to my left, pretending to be fascinated by a diorama of the Berlin Wall.

My blood ran cold. There was no reason for her to be here. I couldn't imagine someone like her being interested in spy culture. The yakuza were a little too
in your face
for covert activities.

Maria, Evelyn, and the girls were leaving the room, and I scrambled to join them.

"Stay with a crowd," I whispered as I caught up to Maria. I told her about Baby Ito in the next room. She nodded, concern played out on her face. Very gingerly, she reached out and squeezed my elbow. Then she herded the girls and moved them along. In any other situation, I'd have had her take the girls and get out of here. But my guess was that Ito had guys in the gift shop waiting for us. In which case, we were trapped.

No. Way. I spotted something I thought would be useful and made for it. Overhead was a large duct system inviting me to crawl through it to spy on other people in the museum. I ran up the stairs and dove in, following the ductwork to the room where I'd seen Ito. How convenient for them to have this here! Who knew the International Spy Museum would actually be a location for real spy activities?

Baby Ito was still in the last room, but her eyes were trained on the doorway my troop had just gone through. She was dressed casually in capri pants, a black T-shirt, and ballet flats. But it was her alright. I didn't doubt it for a moment.

Things were escalating if she was personally involved. And that wasn't good. Not good at all. We might've been beyond the point of no return, making it too late to alert the Agency. If she was doing the actual legwork, she was getting ready to strike.

Two men in business suits joined her, and I gasped. They were the two men at the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials yesterday. I'd been right about them. I leaned closer to the vent to hear what she was telling them, but she was too quiet.

The men nodded and headed back toward the entrance to the museum. They were going to catch us in the gift shop at the end. Damn. If I ever found Riley and he was still alive, I was going to kill him. Now my girls really were caught up in an international incident. I crawled back to the beginning of the duct and rejoined my group as Ito entered the room.