Sealed with a Lie (13 page)

Not to mention the fact that he tells me I’m beautiful. How many girls are immune to that? It’s not a totally unpleasant thing to hear.

“You will forgive me, eh?” Without warning, he snatches my hand and kisses it. The wicked twinkle has returned to his eyes. “Please, my Kari?”

Here’s the thing: I know I’m being manipulated shamelessly. I get that. And Gustav knows I know it . . . and he’s highly entertained by the fact that I can’t stay mad at him.

Evan, on the other hand, is not amused. “She’s not ‘your’ Kari. Get up, you tosser. And please, for the love of God, would you shave?”

Gustav ignores him.

I try to free my hand, but he’s not ready to relinquish it yet. While he doesn’t know my skill set and I could knock him out cold within two seconds, I can’t help but think this reaction might be extreme. So I decide to flirt with him just a little—not that I know how, but I may as well give it a try.

“I’ll, uh, never wash this hand again,” I say awkwardly, then cringe at what a stupid line it is. Couldn’t I have come up with anything better?

“Vraiment?”
He gets to his feet and gazes down at me.

I shift uncomfortably. “Heh.” I tug on my hand again, but to no avail.

“
J’adore
your lingerie,” Gustav murmurs. “Violet. Ze color of passion.” He’s being totally over-the-top, knows it, and doesn’t care.

“Ha!” I’m so uncomfortable and out of my element that I pig-snort. I’m trying for sophisticated banter here.
Trying
. “Yeah. So maybe you should show me yours.”

As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I cringe.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Gustav’s green eyes smolder. At least I think that’s what eyes look like when they smolder—I’m no expert. “Show you my what, Kari?” he asks softly.

“Bah ha!” I jerk my hand out of his as if burned. “So, pastries, anyone?” I turn and root through the bakery bag.

Once the crackling of the paper has subsided, I realize that there is dead silence in the room. Cautiously, I look up from a brioche—it’s either that or a croissant I’m going to inhale—and find Matthis evaluating me as if I’m a science experiment gone wrong. Evan’s face is like thunder. And Gustav is smirking at both of them.

“Uh.” I laugh like a small donkey. “
Pain au chocolat?
Danish? Streudel?”

Evan walks into the bathroom and slams the door.

Matthis falls on a Danish as if he’s a starving zombie and it’s a plump, freshly torn-off human arm.

And I’m left standing there, looking anywhere but at Gustav, who is chuckling now at my expense. I can’t even duck into the bathroom to hide, because Evan’s
cut off that option. So I opt to shove the entire brioche into my mouth, in hopes of camouflaging my flaming face. Flirting? Not part of my repertoire. I clearly
suck
at flirting.

Let’s hope I’m better at high-stakes corporate espionage and grand larceny.

“Of course I will accompany you on ze stakeout,” Gustav says to Evan. “I already know ze Jolie building and some of ze schematics.”

“No,” Evan says dismissively. He stares down at Gustav from his superior height. “You will not. Kari and I will go alone. You will stay here and work with Matthis on
all
of the schematics . . . and if you can get your felonious paws on a blueprint of the laboratory wing, in particular, it would be helpful.”

“I am not a minion,” Gustav declares. “I will not be ordered, eh?”

“We’re all Evan’s minions,” I say drily.

“You’ll bloody well stay in the hotel,” Evan tells him. “Or have you forgotten that your face is plastered all over the telly?”

“Baht—” Gustav breaks off, nonplussed. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.” Evan points at his hair. “And if you’ve got any sense in that Gallic skull of yours, you will tint your hair white blond and bloody-well shave that Euro-scruff off your disgustingly dimpled chin.”

“It’s a cleft,” I correct him.

“What?” Evan swings around.

“Not a dimple.”

Silence.

I shrug. “Just saying.”

Evan glares at me.

“Who pissed in his Cheerios?” Matthis mutters to me.

I shrug again. Evan has been in a sour mood since we arrived yesterday. I wonder why? No telling. I gather my things together.

My things include Matthis’s video sunglasses, a key fob that’s a code scanner, and a cute little set of lock-picks that my dad gave me for my thirteenth birthday. I also have a 4.5 million-volt stun gun that looks exactly like a pink, girlie cell phone. It will drop a charging bull.

I may have zero ambition to be a spy, but as the daughter of two of them, I’ve gotten to play with some cool gadgets. Rita, who does want to be a spy, unearths new ones all the time. She is not-so-secretly envious that I’m in Paris at GI and she’s stuck back at Kennedy Prep in Washington, DC.

Rita’s also rebelling against the six-month moratorium on technology that her parents slapped on her. I know she’s on Kale’s computer and iPad every chance she gets. Her parents, Senator and Mrs. Jordan, are so busy and so clueless that they haven’t figured it out.

The Zurich headquarters of Jolie, Inc. are huge, modern, and beautifully designed. The six-story white building stretches an entire city block, and to either side of the main entrance rises a giant decorative structure that reminds me of a Matisse paper cutout. The effect is airy, artsy, whimsical, and elegant.

We hoped initially that we might be able to blend in with some of the employees and walk in, but that’s not going to happen. Every worker wears a scannable ID badge around his or her neck, with a photo on it, and goes through security on the way in and out. My guess is that the company’s founders are extremely protective of their innovative technology and wary of competitors—not to mention corporate spies. And they should be; Jolie, Inc. is a leading worldwide brand worth billions of dollars.

Evan and I must be aware that while we’re doing surveillance, Jolie, Inc. is surveilling us. There are cameras everywhere. So we don’t want to be loitering on the street. Across from Jolie is a hotel with a café/bar on the ground floor. We take a table there and order cappuccinos.

Evan takes our task seriously, as do I, but he still seems moody and he’s not at all talkative. I put up with this for about half an hour, until I finally get exasperated.

“Why are you so cranky?” I ask him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He takes a sip of his coffee, keeping his eyes on a newspaper in front of him.

“Yes, you do.” I shiver in the chilly December air and fill my mouth with cappuccino, taking comfort from the
heat and slight bitterness as it travels down my throat. Evan’s expression is neutral and professional, as if I’m some stranger he happens to be sharing a table with. It’s an expression that sets my teeth on edge—as if I’ve turned on the television to a familiar channel and am getting nothing but “snow.”

Across the street, a limousine pulls up to the Jolie headquarters. A uniformed chauffeur gets out and opens the door for a party of four très chic, important-looking people—an older woman, a twenty-something woman, and two middle-aged men.

“Valerie d’Haussonville, founder of Jolie, and her granddaughter CoCo,” I tell Evan, reading from my phone. Rita has been up to her old hacking tricks and is providing a wealth of information. “The two suits are the COO and the in-house counsel.”

“Great. That doesn’t help us get inside,” Evan comments.

“Rita says they’re here for a very high-level meeting; the unveiling of an important new antiaging product. And that product may just contain the ingredient we need. She’s doing her best to hack into Madame d’Haussonville’s e-mails, but they’re password protected and heavily encrypted.”

“Encryption usually doesn’t stop Rita,” Evan muses. “As for the password, does she still have that Backtrack software? The program she was going to use to get into Mr. Carson’s laptop?”

“I’m sure she does.” My attention wanders from the Jolie building. Mr. Carson is not my biggest fan. He happens to be the director of the Agency my parents
double-crossed . . . and Luke’s dad. Mr. C is probably thrilled that his son will be taking Tessa Wellington to that dance. Almost as thrilled as he is that I’m thousands of miles away from Luke.

So is Luke my boyfriend—or is he my ex-boyfriend now? He hasn’t called me back to say. Go figure.

A steady stream of traffic whizzes by. The air gets colder; so does my coffee. We’re going to have to move on soon; nobody stays in a café all day long. Before we do that, however, we need to plant a couple of small cameras. We’ll let those do the work for us in the next few hours, as we return to the hotel. Then we’ll disguise ourselves and return here this evening after dark.

We affix one tiny camera to a table leg and another to a black wrought-iron lamppost. We pay our bill and fade into the pedestrian street traffic.

On Skype later, Rita is triumphant. She wears red-and-black rectangular Marc Jacobs glasses that make her look like the editor of some fashion magazine. She’s clad in head-to-toe black, from her turtleneck and leather jacket down to her leggings and pointy-toed, criminally expensive Prada boots. She wears a spiky ponytail pulled high on her head.

“I know how to get inside Jolie!” she says, almost vibrating with excitement.

Kale waves. He’s sprawled full-length on the ugly plaid couch behind her, his arm draped around her waist as she sits on the edge. They’re in the living room of his dad’s apartment in DC.

Evan, Matthis, and I are grouped around Evan’s
computer at the desk in the hotel room, me in the middle. We all exchange glances. We’ve had zero ideas, if you don’t count driving a Range Rover straight through the front doors of Jolie, Inc., which is not exactly subtle. “You do?” I ask Rita.

Gustav is not part of this little electronic powwow because he’s in the shower—singing. Very badly.

“They take interns!” Rita announces. “Year-round. And guess who’s looking to intern abroad over the winter break, to brush up on my French and German? And guess whose mom actually
knows
Madame d’Haussonville from the international charity circuit?”

We all exchange looks again. I may have mentioned that Rita’s parents are Senator and Mrs. Jordan, who are very influential and very social. It’s not so surprising that Mrs. J has these connections.

“So guess what?!” Rita jumps up from Kale’s ugly plaid sofa and does some kind of dance move—one unknown to me. The cha-cha? Her ponytail develops a life of its own. Kale stares at her gyrating butt. Guess he can’t help himself.

“What?” I ask.

“I’m flying out this evening, girl!”

“Huh? Flying out to where?”

“Zurich, dimwit. For an interview. At Jolie, Inc.”

It takes me a couple of seconds to process this. “Oh, my God! That’s
awesome
.”

“I know.” Rita preens. Then she wrinkles her forehead. “What is that
noise
?”

Gustav is still strangling two or three cats in the shower. “Uh, you don’t want to know.”

“Is someone
singing
?”

Evan gives a short bark of laughter. “I wouldn’t call it that.”

I’m doing my level best to tune out the caterwauling. “So back to our issue: You can literally walk right in the door of Jolie. . . .”

“Yep. And I’ll probably be taken on a tour of the whole premises, including the laboratories.”

Evan folds his arms across his chest. “It’s the best option we have so far,” he says, sort of grudgingly.

“Damn straight,” I tell him. I turn back to the computer screen and Rita. “You’re a genius.”

“Well, yeah.” She tosses her ponytail.

“When does your flight get in? What airline are you taking?” The singing mercifully stops, thank God. The bathroom door opens and a cloud of steam rolls out.

“Um, I’m not sure.”

“But you said—”

“I know, I know. I’m still figuring it out. Don’t worry about the details, okay? I’ll text you my arrival time in Zurich. And it will be sometime tomorrow. I promise.”

“But—”

“Hey, Kari?” She sounds a little alarmed. “Why is there a wet, naked, strange guy next to you?”

I turn my head. Matthis has shrunk away and gone back to his own computer. Gustav is, in fact, still dripping, though to my relief he’s not entirely nude. There’s
a towel riding low on his hips and the trademark smutty grin playing around his mouth.

“And who ees thees?” he asks in his heavily accented English. He gives Rita a slow, thorough once-over and raises an eyebrow.

Rita’s mouth forms a silent O.

Kale frowns and sits up, squinting at the computer screen.

“Rita, may I introduce Gustav-the-thief? And Kale, her boyfriend. Who is a
black belt
in karate.” I include this friendly warning. “Gustav, this is Rita, our computer genius.”

Matthis’s head comes up; his expression is a little wounded.

“Excuse me,” I amend. “Our
other
computer genius.”

Matthis smiles, then looks back down. Everyone has an ego, even the shy among us. “I’ve got the blueprints to the building,” he says softly.