Prescription: Makeover (7 page)

He expected her to snap at him. Instead she lifted her chin, shot him a glare he couldn’t even begin to interpret and stalked from the room, slamming the door at her back.

I
KE WAS SHAKING BY
the time she got to the small waiting area that separated the elevator lobby from the hallway leading to Max and William’s offices. She wasn’t trembling because she was scared of what they might decide — hell, she was going to do this with or without Max’s blessing. No, what had her shaking was the rush of adrenaline. The thrill of being someone else. The absolute high of seeing William’s face go blank when he figured out who she was.

She could do this. More importantly she
wanted
to do this. It was almost as though everything she’d done in her adult life had led up to this moment. She had the research background to play the role of a visiting scientist. She had contacts at Boston General who would give glowing references for Maxine Waterson. She had the tech savvy to hack into any computer system and pull out the most carefully hidden files. What could go wrong?

The memory of Zed’s casket flashed in her mind’s eye, showing her exactly what
could
go wrong.

She countered the fear with determination, but even that emotion started to wane as the clock on the deserted secretary’s desk clicked past ten minutes, then fifteen.

Tired of waiting, Ike was headed back into William’s office when she heard a noise out in the hallway near the elevator lobby. Moments later, the outer office door swung open and an enormous man stepped through. He was seven-feet tall if he was an inch, with wide shoulders encased in a skintight purple T-shirt, wearing narrow designer jeans in a lemony color that was a stark contrast to the gray, drab New York spring day.

Ike’s pulse accelerated and she reached for her midback holster, only to remember she still hadn’t replaced the .22.

Before she could decide on plan B, the guy raised his hands. “I’m a friend.” He gestured behind him. “See?”

A woman stepped into the office, perfectly dressed, perfectly made up, perfectly feminine. Not necessarily a friend, though. Ike felt a kink of dismay at the sight of Max’s wife. “What are you doing here?”

The giant man glanced from Raine to Ike and back. “This is our victim?”

Raine frowned for a second before she said, “I guess so. You’re looking…good. Ike?”

Ike bared her teeth, suddenly sweating in the layers she wore beneath her stuffed-tight jeans. “I thought I’d try out a new style.”

The giant shook his head. “Sweetie, if that’s the new look, I really don’t want to see the old one.”

“And you are?” Ike snapped.

“Stephen Flores,” he said as if she should know exactly who that made him. He didn’t bother holding out his hand, probably figuring — correctly — that she wasn’t in the mood for social niceties.

Or else he didn’t want to touch her, just in case drab was contagious.

Raine smirked. “He’s head of makeup and costume for several Broadway productions. Max asked me to call in a favor. He said you need a new look.”

Ike’s heart picked up a beat. “My look is just fine, thank you.”

“Not if you’re going in deep,” William’s voice said from behind her.

She spun and found him and Max standing just inside the waiting area. Her stomach did a backflip when she saw the expression on William’s face, a complex mixture of reluctance, annoyance and something else. Something she couldn’t quite decipher but that had her blood flaring hot, then cold.

Her voice wasn’t quite steady when she said, “You’re sending me into Kupfer’s lab?”

He nodded shortly. “On two conditions. One, you let Stephen and Raine be in charge of the makeover. New hair. New makeup and jewelry. New wardrobe.” His mouth kicked up at the corners. “A whole new you. I don’t want there to be any chance of Odin seeing through your cover.”

A chill chased its way down her spine, but she nodded. “Done. And the second?”

“I’m going in with you.”

She stared at him for a heartbeat before she said, “No, you’re not.” She looked to Max for support. “You can’t possibly expect me to bring him into the lab. How are we going to explain that? And I can’t teach him enough science in the time we’ve got to —”

Max held up a hand. “He’s not going into the lab. But he’s damn well going to be with you every step of the way. You’ll wear a wire and a camera, and if things go bad, he’ll be there to pull you out.” Max stepped to William’s side so the two big men stood shoulder to shoulder, forming a united front that said,
This is nonnegotiable.

“We’ll rent rooms near the Markham Institute and stay together when you’re not at work,” William said as though it made all the sense in the world. “I’ll have a surveillance vehicle outside the lab, and you can sneak me in after hours to look around. It could work. Hell, we’ll make it work.”

Ike’s stomach shimmied at the thought of sharing space with him, at the thought of having him listening to everything she said, observing everything she did.

It would be like living inside a box.

A very, very small one.

She heard a worried sound, realized it had come from her and covered it with a fake cough. She was aware of Raine and Stephen watching her from one side, Max and William from the other.

She imagined Zed watching from above. Beside him sat a teenage boy with drooping eyelids and an angel’s smile.

“Okay,” she said finally. When the word came out sounding weak and near tears, she swallowed hard and tried again. “Okay. I’m in. When do we start?”

Stephen pointed to the door leading to the elevators. “Right now, because, girlfriend, we have a
lot
of work to do.”

A sinking pit opened up in Ike’s stomach, but she breathed past it and told herself she could handle this, she could handle the makeover, could handle William. When that breath didn’t settle her stomach, she took another. And another.

Then she lifted her chin and marched out the door.

By noon the next day Ike had decided that the term
makeover
was a myth propagated by reality TV and people who sold cosmetics and home gyms. It wasn’t about being made over at all. It was about being unmade, about being stripped of uniqueness and turned into some
Pretty Woman
stereotype.

And even though she knew that was the whole point, there was a line she wasn’t willing to cross.

“No way.” She leaned back in the salon chair and heard a crinkle of protest from the tinfoil the stylist had folded into her newly extended hair. When Stephen kept coming at her, she cupped a hand over her right ear beneath the foils. “The earrings stay. Nonnegotiable.”

“It’s not permanent,” the big makeup artist said in his unexpectedly soft voice. Today’s T-shirt, worn over silver-toned pants, sported a turquoise happy face, but Ike wasn’t smiling.

She shook her head. “Look, I’ve given in on everything else.” Maybe not always gracefully, but she’d given in. “I’ve let you pick new clothes from the skin out, I’ve put up with hair extensions, a new makeup regime and lectures on how to walk, talk and act.”

The worst part was that, unlike the makeover reality shows where the producers kept their victim away from mirrors until it was time to unveil the finished product, Stephen and his minions had let her watch each stage of the unmaking, and she’d seen herself gradually disappear. Everything that made her unique and different, everything that made her stand out from the crowd and made her who she was…it was all gone. No more spiky black hair or tight clothes, no more swagger or attitude.

No more Ike Rombout.

She swallowed past a lump in her throat and continued, “My head is spinning, and I’m going to be paying off my credit card until well into next year. I’m not backing out, not by a long shot, so if that was Caine’s plan, it failed. But I’ve got to draw the line somewhere, and this is it. The earrings stay. Work the hair around them or something.”

She’d meant that last sentence to come out like an order, but it ended up sounding like a plea, one that had Stephen’s eyes darkening with speculation as he said, “Why? Do they remind you of a man?”

Picturing Donny, who’d had more guts than any two grown men she’d ever met, she touched the stud in the middle of the three piercings. The clear diamond had a small blue inclusion at its center, making the stone more beautiful for its flaw. “Yeah, sort of. The middle one is for my brother. The bottom one was a gift from my parents a long time ago. And the top one…” She trailed off as her fingers found the blank spot where the glittering black diamond used to rest. “It’s a work in progress.”

The original stud lay in Zed’s casket. She’d buy herself another once his killer was brought to justice.

Stephen touched her arm through the stylist’s plastic cape. “They’ll still be in your heart. And I bet your family wants you to come home safe. Right,
chica?
”

Her parents had no idea who she was or what she was doing, but the pain of that estrangement had long ago faded to a dull ache, and Ike didn’t want to go there. Instead she said, “Don’t call me
chica.
You’re no more Latin than I am.”

At least she didn’t think he was. Raine’s makeup artist friend seemed to morph among characters on a nearly constant basis, sliding seamlessly from fabulous gay man to slightly seedy hipster to Latin lover without pause. She didn’t know which one was the real Stephen Flores, but did it really matter? The point was that she believed each of the chameleon roles when it was in front of her. He was, in his own way, a master of disguise, changing her perception with a shift in posture and voice.

And, damn it, he was right about the earrings.

She held out for a moment longer before she exhaled on a sigh that felt as if it came up from her now-painted toes. “Right.” She undid the earrings, pulled them free and tucked them in her jeans pocket beneath the cape, leaving her earlobe feeling naked and exposed. “What’s next?”

He didn’t gloat, merely pointed to the shampoo station. “First we rinse. Then we talk about a name for your character while we cover up those holes in your ear.”

But by the time Stephen and the stylist had rinsed the gunk out of her hair, they’d gotten caught up in a deep discussion about bangs and layers and seemed to forget about her name. That was a good thing, because as Ike watched her new hair take shape in the mirror, she felt the panic build.

The long tresses were significantly lighter than her trademark blue-black, and the honey-brown waves glowed with highlights of auburn and gold. Wisps framed her face, making it look soft and feminine beneath the light touch of blush and eye shadow Stephen had assured her would take no time at all to apply each morning.

Ike, whose normal makeup routine was limited to a swipe of waterproof black mascara, had been skeptical. Now, looking at the nearly finished product, she had to swallow a bubble of panic.

She looked familiar, damn it. Not like herself but like her childhood memories of her mother, before Donny’s long string of illnesses had taken their toll. She looked like a member of her own family, which was something she hadn’t been in many years.

As she blinked hard, Stephen crouched down so their faces were level in the big mirror. “You look great, hon. You’ll
do
great. As long as you remember to play your part, nobody’ll make the connection between Ike Rombout and this woman.” He squeezed her shoulders, partly in support, partly in warning. “Speaking of which,” he continued, “what have you decided to name her?”

This isn’t permanent,
Ike told herself when a big knot threatened to block off her throat and steal her breath.
It’s an act. A job. You can do this. You
have
to do this. For Zed. For everyone else who’s been hurt by The Nine.

“Eleanor,” she said finally, and her voice cracked on the word. “My name is Eleanor.”

“E
LEANOR
R
OTH
?” M
AX
shuffled through the IDs, credit cards and other assorted paperwork on William’s cluttered desk, nearly dumping the cup of pens in the process. “Did you pick that or did she?”

William snorted. “She did, of course. If it’d been up to me, I would’ve gone with something more appropriate.”

He shoved the pens to the other side of the desk and turned the cup so the FBI logo faced away from him. Max liked him to have the cup on the desk to impress the clients, but that didn’t mean William should have to look at the damn thing every day and remember that Michael Grosskill was still in charge.

“Like what?”

It took him a moment to remember they’d been talking about Ike’s name. He shrugged. “I’m not sure, maybe Spike or Killer. An Eleanor is soft and feminine, which Ike is definitely not.”

That earned him a sidelong look from Max. “You don’t think Ike is manly, and we both know it.”

Wincing at the thought that his partner had picked up on the subtle sexual tension that seemed to be growing between him and Ike, William said, “You’re right, she’s not masculine. She’s a very attractive woman.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“There’s no problem.” When Max simply sat on the corner of his desk, waiting, William exhaled. “Okay, you’re right, there’s a problem. But it’s with me, not her. At least not directly.”

He pushed away from the desk, stood and moved to stare out the window, not because he particularly cared about the cityscape beyond or the gray sky and falling rain but because he needed to move, needed to do something to burn off a sudden spurt of restlessness. “I haven’t told you much about why I left the Bureau.”

“I figured you’d talk about it when you were ready,” Max said. “I know you were undercover in the Trehern organization and that Viggo Trehern was scum of the first order. BoGen rumor had it that you were the only one to stay undercover — and alive — long enough to bring him down. You received a presidential commendation and helped put the bastard in jail for life. Sounds like a job well done.”

“Except for the collateral damage.” William jammed his hands in his pockets and stared at the raindrops splatting onto the window. “It was about a year after I went in undercover. I’d roughed up a few bottom-feeders and put a crooked dealer in the hospital on Viggo’s behalf, and he’d started trusting me with bigger things, mostly personal protection. Bodyguard stuff. I’d hit the clubs with him and his boys, sometimes make sure his female flavor of the week didn’t stray. Mostly the women came and went, but there was this one girl who stuck for a few months. Sharilee.”