Blue Clouds (52 page)

Customs. She still had to carry the bag through customs. She'd hoped they'd had the efficiency to inspect the bags while she'd waited in those interminable lines in the first room. She should have known better. Airports and efficiency were a contradiction in terms.

Resignedly listening to her stomach growl—she couldn't find so much as a vending machine in this barn—Penelope arrived in still another mob of harried tourists with crying toddlers. She eyed the children with suspicion and chose a different line. She didn't have time for thinking about children. Even her sister's had become alien creatures now that her brother-in-law had them. Considering her options right now, it was probably best if she kept things that way.

She transferred her attention to the line ahead of her. She couldn't decide what system the clerks used for inspecting baggage. A muscled man in a tank top, heavy mustache, and mirrored sunglasses she could swear was a drug dealer passed through with a wave of a hand. Teenage girls with pimply faces had their purses emptied.

Penelope's nerves teetered on edge as a tall man jostled her from behind, and another traveling alone eyed her with an interest she recognized only too well. She had contemplated removing her stiff, buttoned jacket in the heat, but she tugged it around her now. She pushed her glasses farther up her nose and checked to make certain her hair hadn't strayed from its knot. The glasses were more protective disguise than necessity. She'd bought them to correct her distance vision but discovered they aided her goal of emphasizing her intelligence, not her looks.

Ahead, the muscle-bound jock in the revealing red tank top handed his backpack to a porter, then leaned his shoulders against the far wall, apparently waiting for someone. She hated people who affected sunglasses inside, and she hated mirrored sunglasses even more. The men who wore them were inevitably egotistical asses. This one with his droopy mustache definitely looked like a drug dealer.

Uneasy, she checked her money belt and the pepper spray in her pocket.

The man in the mirrored glasses seemed to be staring at her. She hated this adolescent self-consciousness that struck her at the most inopportune times.

The man in the sunglasses was still lounging against the wall by the time she reached the desk. The clown probably thought he was hot stuff, showing off that bronzed-all-over look. To Penelope, it simply meant the man had nothing better to do but feed his vanity while developing skin cancer in tanning booths. He reminded her of Zack. Except by now, Zack probably had a beer belly and a bald head. This man proudly displayed his trim physique in low-cut jeans that emphasized slim hips and muscled thighs, and there was nothing balding about that headful of wind-blown chestnut hair.

He crossed his arms over his massive chest as the customs agent ordered her to open her suitcase. Cringing at the thought of revealing her undergarments and nightwear, Penelope bit her tongue and reluctantly unzipped the case. At least she'd had the forethought to put her more intimate items in the overnight bag.

She winced as the uniformed agent dangled a bra in one hand while rummaging through her clothes with the other. He couldn't have been ruder if he'd done it deliberately. Tired, starving, and nerves already frayed, Penelope contemplated the tongue-lashing he deserved. Before she could express her frustration, the agent held up a plastic bag of suspicious white powder and yelled excitedly over his shoulder.

Pure panic swept over her, amplified by the gasps of people behind her. She knew what that white powder meant. So did everyone else. Her empty stomach knotted and nausea rose in her throat. Visions of foreign jails danced through her head. This couldn't be happening. She'd dozed off in the heat and was having a nightmare. There was no way that powder could have gotten into her suitcase—unless someone had planted it there.

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Volcano
by Patricia Rice.

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