Doom with a View (3 page)

I chuckled ruefully and shook my head. “So, what do we do in the meantime?”

At that moment a cab pulled up in front of us. Candice reached forward and held open the door. “We shop, of course,” she said, making a point to eye my outfit again. “We need to get you into the twenty-first century, toots.”

I sighed as I got into the cab. “Okay, but I only brought along a hundred bucks’ spending money, so let’s make sure to hit the sale rack, okay?”

Candice and I spent the rest of the day arguing over price tags. “Two thousand dollars? Are you
serious
?” I gasped as she held out a pantsuit to me.

Candice looked unfazed. “While you were in the ladies’ room after lunch, I called Dutch and explained to him what happened this morning. I also told him I felt you needed to make a powerful first impression, which would require a complete transformation. Face it, honey—you really need a little
pow
to swim with the fish in this pond.”

“I never liked swimming in ponds,” I grumbled.

“Anyway, Dutch said he was totally behind your makeover, and to put it on his credit card.”

I snickered. “Good luck getting ahold of that,” I said, patting my purse protectively. I had Dutch’s credit card—which he’d insisted on giving me in case of emergencies—safely stashed in my wallet.

“You mean this?” Candice said with a grin as she held up Dutch’s AmEx card.

I gasped and tried to grab it from her, but she was way too quick for me. “Candice,” I said evenly as I glared at her, “I can’t. It would be taking advantage of him!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Abby,” she said, completely ignoring the fact that I was unwilling to take the expensive Marc Jacobs garment from her as she sorted through the other suits on the rack. “Harrison is already sizing us up. He’s sent us a message that he doesn’t consider you worthy of his time. If you show up looking like something right out of
Vogue
, he’ll have to reconsider that, and by getting him to reconsider his first impression, we might just be able to open a crack into that brick wall of his mind.”

“Can’t we look for something on discount at least?” I pleaded, taking the Marc Jacobs and another three suits she handed me, afraid to actually look at the tags.

Candice sighed and turned away from that collection before heading toward another rack labeled AL-EXANDER MCQUEEN. “Dutch has given me a budget,” she called over her shoulder when I failed to follow her.

“How much?”

“I’m not telling,” she said. “But if you don’t cooperate, I’ll go over that limit by a mile.”

I glared at her again. “I hate this whole thing.”

Candice stopped draping items over her arm long enough to regard me soberly. “Welcome to Washington, babe. You want to play in this town, you gotta pony up. Dutch gets that, and let’s face it, the guy can afford it. Besides, we already know the FBI isn’t going to pay you for your services. So let’s say that Harrison is won over by you, and you assist with this investigation. Say it takes a few weeks, as we both know it very well could. I know that you get paid a hundred bones an hour from your regular clients, so you’re actually forgoing thousands of dollars by taking time off to help these guys out. This is just Dutch’s way of paying you back on behalf of the bureau.”

“Gee, if I were only naive enough to buy into that,” I said woodenly.

Candice smiled and pivoted me around to face the dressing room. “Forward and march, Sundance,” she ordered.

By three o’clock I had three suits that cost more than the down payment on my first house. I’d also been accessorized to within an inch of my life. But I will admit—I looked pretty damn good.

“Now what?” I asked as we left the upscale mall Candice had taken me to.

“We’re on to hair and makeup,” Candice said.

I paused to look at my reflection in one of the mirrors on the way out. “What’s wrong with my makeup?”

“It doesn’t say
pow!
It says ‘hey.’” She said that last bit with a stifled yawn. “Plus, that jungle you have going on has got to go,” she added, swirling her finger in a circle at my hair. “I think we should cut off a few feet to really update your look.”

I stopped on the sidewalk and stamped my foot.
“Feet?”
I screeched. “You want to cut
feet
off my hair?”

Candice ignored my tantrum and raised her arm again to hail a cab. “Trust me,” she said. “I’ll take good care of you.”

An hour later I was really trying not to cry. Long chunks of my waist-length hair lay on the floor of the hair salon and all I could think of was the years it had taken to grow it out that long. Juan—the hairdresser fussing over me with giddy excitement—was undeterred by my pitiful expression reflected back at him in the mirror as my now-shoulder-length hair dangled wetly from my scalp. “On to the tint and highlights!” he sang with a big fat smile before disappearing to mix up some hair dye.

In the mirror I could see Candice approaching my chair, holding on to her ringing cell phone. When she was right behind me, she wiggled it in the mirror but didn’t answer it. “Guess who that was?” she said.

“I hate you,” I said meanly, ignoring her question.

Her face softened. “Abby, I promise you, Juan is one of the best. You are really going to love this new look. And think about how freeing it will be not to be a slave to your long hair anymore. I mean, the drying time alone must take half an hour.”

“I still hate you,” I groused, slumping down in the chair.

Candice smoothed a few of the locks away from my face. “You can hate me now,” she said, “but just wait to see the end result before you hate me permanently, okay?”

I sighed heavily and stared at my lap. “Was that Harrison?” I asked, wanting to change the subject before I really did start crying.

“It was,” she said. “Or at least the caller ID said it was from the FBI.” Candice glanced at her watch. “And he was twenty whole minutes earlier than I thought he’d be, the sneaky bastard.”

I raised my eyes and cocked my head. “Why is that sneaky?”

“Well,” Candice said, leaning an elbow against the next chair, “it means that I gave him until five to contact us. And if he had waited until about quarter to, or even four fifty, and we had just ignored him, then he knew he’d be given the riot act by Gaston. But since he was earlier than expected, well, now he can say that he attempted to call us and we didn’t respond, so Gaston can’t accuse him of being uncooperative.”

“So now what?” I asked, feeling like I was way out of my political league.

“We blow him off for tonight,” she said. “And tomorrow we call him early—before he gets into his office, in fact. We’ll leave him a message telling him that our plane departs at ten a.m. If he wants to meet with us, he’ll have to rearrange his morning schedule, which will no doubt royally tick him off, but he’ll do it just to say he did.”

At that moment Juan came bouncing back with several containers of brightly colored hair dye. I gulped and gave Candice a pleading look. “Help me,” I mouthed.

She smiled broadly and gave my shoulder a gentle pat. “See you in a bit,” she sang, then went back to sit in the lobby.

Two hours later Candice and I had made our way back to the hotel. As we stepped out of the cab and approached the door, loaded down with shopping bags, a man walking down the street jumped right in front of us and reached for the lobby door. “Let me get that for you,” he said with a
huge
smile and eyes that looked directly into mine.

I blushed and gave a quick “Thank you” as I hurried past him into the lobby.

Behind me I could hear Candice’s soft laughter. “That’s the third time in twenty minutes!” She giggled.

I could feel my cheeks flush even hotter and saw the evidence as we passed a large mirror on our way to the elevators. My new look was definitely turning heads and as I caught a glimpse of my reflection, I had to admit, even with those bright red embarrassed cheeks, I looked friggin’ amazing.

“I barely recognize myself,” I said to my partner as we waited by the elevator.

“You look stunning,” Candice said. I blushed some more and looked down at the floor. “Really, Abs, I can’t believe the transformation.”

“I hope Dutch likes it,” I said as we got on and turned around to face the doors again. I noticed then that we were surrounded by men all openly ogling.

Candice raised a hand to her lips to stifle a giggle. “Oh, something tells me he’ll like it all right.”

We left our bags in the room and then headed downstairs to dinner at the elegant Bistro Bis. As we were seated, Candice’s cell began to ring.

“Harrison?” I asked as she looked at the caller ID.

“Nope,” she said with a smile. “It’s your boy.” Candice answered the call. “Hi, Dutch,” she said. I scrunched my eyebrows, wondering why my boyfriend was calling my partner before calling me. “. . . Uh-huh,” she was saying, “mission accomplished, and I only had to wrestle her to the ground two or three times.” Then she laughed and laughed and I snapped open my menu, thoroughly irritated. “Believe me,” she continued, “you wouldn’t recognize her if she walked right past you on the street. She looks like one of Charlie’s Angels.”

Behind the menu I rolled my eyes, but deep down I felt the smallest hint of satisfaction. Candice’s hand appeared at the top of my menu and pulled it gently down. “Your man would like to whisper sweet noth ings to you,” she said, handing me the phone.

I took it and gave an unenthused, “Hey.”

“I hear you’ve had a transformation,” Dutch said.

“Something like that,” I replied, brushing a bang out of my eyes.

“I can’t wait to see you,” he said.

I sighed, still feeling a bit miffed that he and Candice had gotten together and made me their science project. “Uh-huh,” I said.

“What’s up?” he asked, sensing my mood.

“Nothing,” I said a little too quickly. “I’m just tired.”

“Hey,” he cooed in that smoky baritone that always sent butterflies into my stomach. “You understand why Candice wanted to give you a makeover, right?”

“Yes,” I said, surprised that my eyes were welling with tears and even more so when I realized that I felt a teensy bit hurt and betrayed. “I was looking a bit matronly or something.”

“Abs,” Dutch said softly, and I could hear the smallest bit of humor in his voice. “You’re as far away from matronly as they come, babe. You’re a beautiful woman and Candice wasn’t out to try to make you look prettier as much as she was out to make you look powerful.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, still staring at my menu and blinking back the tears. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Candice staring at me with concern.

“She was trying to give you a big dose of confidence, sweetheart; that’s all. She knows the best way for you to get through this interview with Harrison is to show up looking like a million bucks and with the attitude that you don’t give a rat’s ass what this guy thinks of you, because you are a strong, confident,
beautiful
woman, and you know what, doll?”

“What?”

“She’s right.”

I let that sit with me for a little bit before I said anything. Finally, I whispered, “Okay, I get it.”

“Good,” he said. “And sweethot?”

“Yeah?”

“No matter what happens tomorrow, I’m in your corner and I believe in you, okay?”

I swallowed hard, suddenly missing him so much. I closed my eyes and just listened to the sound of his breathing in the background and then, like a switch being thrown in my head, my mind’s eye filled with images of moving boxes. My eyes snapped back open and I asked, “Dutch?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you thinking of moving?”

There was the slightest pause before he said, “Moving? Why would I move?”

I closed my eyes again and saw that same image of the boxes and then my radar suggested that this move could be major . . . and soon. “Shit!” I swore into the phone.

“What’s the matter?”

“You’re moving.”

Dutch laughed softly. He thought I was joking. “Oh yeah?” he asked. “Where am I moving to?”

My heart sank. “South.”

“Like where? Ferndale?” he asked, speaking of a town slightly south of us.

“No,” I said, feeling it in my bones. “To the Southwest. Texas. Arizona. New Mexico. Somewhere around there.”

Dutch’s laughter intensified. “Abs,” he said. “I’m not moving. I’ve got everything I want right here, okay?”

“Yeah, right. Listen, our waiter is here and I haven’t even looked at the menu. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Hey,” he said seriously. I waited without speaking for him to say something and after a moment he did. “Babe, I wouldn’t leave you. You have to know that, all right? I’m not moving. You and me, we make a pretty good team, and there’s no way I’d break that up.”

I wanted to trust him on that one, but my radar never lied and this new insight I was feeling in my bones. Still, I put a little faith into him as I said, “I hear you. Thanks, Dutch. I’ll call you tonight before we hit the hay.”

“Love you,” he said softly.

“Me too.”

The next morning I woke up to the sound of Candice leaving a message for Harrison. Her tone was clipped and direct, and groggy as I was, I still appreciated having her along. “. . . our flight departs at ten hundred hours. If we do not hear back from you by eight a.m., we will assume you cannot accommodate a meeting and head to the airport. You have my number for a callback. Good day, Agent Harrison.”

I rubbed my eyes and stifled a yawn. “What time is it?”

Candice slid her phone into her purse. “It’s six a.m.”

I blinked a few times and noticed that she was already showered, dressed, and looking pretty spiffy. “What time did you get up?”

“Five.”

“Good Lord,” I moaned, lying back on the bed. “Why so early?”

Candice came over to my bed and hovered over me. “I had to shower first so that I could help you get ready just in case we need to sprint over to the bureau.”