Perfect Stranger (7 page)

As the women neared on the opposite side,
they were smiling at the “happy couple” she and Jericho appeared to
be.

Jericho raised his hand to
them. "
Tudo bom?
"
he called to the women.

They giggled amongst
themselves but nodded. "
Boa, boa. Tudo
bom?
"

Jericho nodded and smiled
charmingly to them. "
Bom
dia.
"

As they passed and continued on, Chloe
asked, "What was that all about?"

He shrugged. "Salutations. I asked how they
were." He dropped a questioning stare on her. "You didn’t learn any
Portuguese during your stay? Before I jumped on your car," he
added, grinning.

Chloe blanched. "Only a little. I spent most
of my time regretting having come or recovering from a sunburn or—"
She broke off, her cheeks heating. Suddenly she didn’t want to
share her embarrassment over slipping in the middle of her hotel
and bruising her tailbone. She shook her head. "Or other
stuff."

"Well, remember, everyone here knows
everyone. If those two had gotten suspicious we would quickly have
had every eye in the town on us while we stole clothing and
transportation." Jericho pretended to nuzzle the top of her head,
glancing behind them.

Chloe gnashed her teeth in a little guilty
wince. "I don’t feel good about stealing from these people," she
said, looking up at him. "They have so little as it is."

Jericho shrugged, breaking away from their
charade now that they were out of notice. He readjusted his
backpack. "If it would make you feel any better, leave them your
bracelet." He nodded at her arm.

Chloe bought her wrist up to study the
bracelet. The piece was made from polished orange-red beads, spaced
with perfectly round, metal, gold ones. She'd only gotten the
bracelet because the beads matched her shirt so well—the shirt she
would be leaving, too. "This isn't worth much," she told him.

"I think your slinky top will make someone
here very happy all on its own, no matter the expense. It beats
anything we'll be taking."

Chloe looked down on the shirt, lifting the
bottom out and frowning at the slinky material, rubbing it between
her fingers. "I really liked this top," she muttered. The color
reminded her of a sunset, and the material was cool to her skin
even under the hot Brazilian sun.

Jericho looked at her off the shoulder top,
more so her bare shoulder, as though he really liked it, too,
causing Chloe to blush again.

"Finally," he said, stopping her. Jericho
glanced around them. The women walked on, far behind them now, and
turned the corner at the center of town. "Come on." He pushed her
into a fenced yard. There were only patches of grass, as though the
yard was constantly well trod. Children's bicycles had been tossed
down among a scatter of soccer balls, and at the far side of the
yard a grill had been fired up, but left unattended. Fresh laundry
fluttered from a line pulled tight between posts in the ground,
instead of hung overhead outside between buildings like most
others.

Chloe immediately slouched down to quickly
slide out of notice into the rows of drying shirts, pants, towels
and suchlike. Jericho, too, ducked so his head wouldn’t stick up
over the line, but he quickly skimmed the clothing and pulled down
a boy’s t-shirt with the logo for the World XI 2010 cup. He tossed
the dark-but-faded shirt to Chloe and continued down the line. She
turned the shirt over and held it out to inspect. A player's name,
Lúcio, arched in print across the top on the back over the number
3.

Jericho quickly returned with a pair of tan
pants similar to his own, but small enough to fit Chloe. He handed
them to her and ducked to the other side, to the next row. "Hurry,"
he called to her quietly.

A breeze wafted the clothing against her as
Chloe stuffed the stolen clothing between her legs. She slipped the
straps of her pack from her shoulders and dropped it to the ground,
then thrust her orange top over her head. The Brazilian sun beat
down on her bare skin from over the laundry rows, and the intensity
felt good for all of two seconds.

She quickly tossed down her top, and with
one longing glance to the pool of orange lying on the dirt, she
pulled out the stolen one and shimmied into the damp shirt, then
bent to pull her laces and stepped out of her boots. Looking over
to make sure Jericho was still on the other side of the line, she
flipped the button on her Hollister shorts and let the second-skin
jean material slide down her legs. Chloe stepped from the shorts
and made quick work of the new pants, drawing them up her legs,
zipping, and snapping the button, then stepped into her hiking
boots.

"Done," she whispered a minute later as she
double knotted the last lace on her boot. She picked up her pack as
she stood and thrust it back on.

Jericho flipped a towel
aside as he crossed back over and steered her from the laundry by
the arm. "We have to hurry. The town is starting to perk up from
their
cervejas
last night."

"I haven’t seen many vehicles here, so how
are we going to steal one?" she asked as they exited the fence. The
thought alone drove her heart to beating a little heavier.

"I saw something on the way in yesterday.
Four alleyways up," he said, his stare indicating the
direction.

Jericho continued steering her, but as they
passed a group of children, he didn’t bother with pleasantries. As
she walked by, however, Chloe briefly wondered if one of them had
owned the clothing she'd stolen and noticed the shirt even now.

She cringed as she waited for one of them to
call her on her thievery, but none did, and the boys went back to
what they were doing. She and Jericho continued along, leaving
behind the stacked houses for a more industrial part of town. The
area, as well as the buildings, was small and old. Chloe suspected
they were also abandoned.

She could feel an energy rolling off Jericho
as they ducked into the dirty alley and then a few yards down into
a niche to the right between two bricked, industrial buildings with
weeds growing up between the bricks and trash blown into piles at
the corners of the structures.

There was a rusted drainpipe on the wall of
one building and a blown out tire just under, where rainwater had
collected on the inside and weeds began to grow around the base.
The alcove formed a small square, three sides bricked and one left
open to the alley. The area looked like a dumpster might have once
set within.

A rusted, white car missing a wheel sat in
the center beside a motorcycle.

Jericho went to the motorcycle.

Her eyes widened. "That!" Chloe said in a
forced whisper, looking all around them wildly. "I've never ridden
one of those things." She began to panic.

"There's a first time for everything," he
mumbled as he crouched down to pull at the wires of the engine.

Chloe tensed, hearing a door open and slam
down the alley somewhere to her right. She tiptoed to the open
area, facing into the alley. There were footsteps headed their
way.

"Jericho, someone is coming. I hear them,"
she whispered. She tried to peep around the corner, but pulled
back. Another set of women were coming close. "Hurry!"

He growled low. "I hear them. Damn it.
Almost—" The bike roared as Jericho pushed on the gas. "Come on,"
he called, hopping on. He revved the engine again, the exhaust
popping loudly.

Chloe burned with guilt for what they were
doing, but as she skipped to him and slung her leg over just as the
women came into view, she tried to remind herself their lives were
in jeopardy.

The women gaped.

One of them clutched her
breast. "
Pára! Pára,
" she shouted accusingly. "
Socorro!
"
Help!

The other woman pointed and started toward
them, but Jericho revved the bike, causing both women to jump
back.

"
Pára! Ladrão! Políca!
Políca!
" they shouted, slightly in
unison.

"
Socorro! Motocicleta,"
the woman
pointing screamed.

Jericho spun out and raced past them,
planting his foot on the ground at the corner and slinging the bike
at an angle. The tires screeched in the alley as they zipped off,
leaving the women shouting of their thievery behind them and
calling for the police.

Chloe closed her arms tightly around
Jericho, her face buried in his back as the wind whipped at her
hair. She closed her eyes tight and made a hard attempt to pretend
she was in a different setting.

****

1330 hours, Saturday

Barbacena, Brazil

Jericho pulled Chloe off the stolen bike in
a shadowed back alley behind their destination. Tin roofs butted
against other like roofs above, leaving only slivers between where
sunlight filtered down on them in the dark. The cool shadow was a
reprieve from the open road. Chloe could swear her skin should have
burnt to a crisp. Instead, she was tanner and only a little rosy on
the tops of her arms, and going by feeling, her nose, too.

They’d made one small stop in Valença where
Jericho picked up what he had called a DAGR, or Defense Advance GPS
Receiver. The device had been taped to the inside of a trashcan,
between the can and bag, at a petrol station there. He had told her
a friend left the device for them. The preset directions led them
to this alley. Of course, when she'd asked who the friend was, he
wouldn’t tell her. Nor would he tell her when exactly he had
contacted this friend or how, but she suspected he'd done this by
the cell phone he had taken outside when he disappeared a short
time the night before.

Chloe handed Jericho the GPS as she shook
out the kinks from her muscles, sore from the long ride. The bike
hadn’t been as bad as she'd expected. Her butt felt bruised from
all the bumps though. He took the device and stuck it in the
backpack before leading her up and rapping his knuckles on the
steel door.

They were at the back of the house to avoid
being seen, particularly so no one speculated Jericho's contact
after they left.

Chloe rubbed her arms as they waited. The
alley wasn't dirty, per se, just dark, which lent a prickly feeling
at the back of her neck. The tunnel-like alleyway looked like a
place for miscreants, yet no one was in sight.

They didn’t wait long before hearing
footsteps inside, and then a few seconds later a Brazilian man
opened the door and poked his head out, glancing up and down the
alleyway uneasily before he turned his stare on them. His eyes
crinkled at the corner as he looked them over, a toothpick sticking
out of the side of his lips. At last, he stepped back and crooked
two fingers, motioning them inside.

Chloe hesitantly followed Jericho up the one
step and into a laundry area off a kitchen. As the man shut the
door behind them, the sight before her surprised her. The house was
brightly lit, and children played on a rug with toy cars in the
next room. The children, both boys, one around eight and the other
about ten, seemed just as startled by Jericho and herself as she
was of them, but the boys quickly turned their attention back to
their play.

The house surprised her
only because she had expected something more …
spy-
ish
.

"I am Miguél Carvalho," their host said,
skirting around Chloe.

Jericho turned to him. "Jericho Eden, Army
Special Forces."

The man nodded, his gaze
flickering to Chloe. "
Not
Special Forces?" he asked, with a hint of
certainty, removing his toothpick and pointing at her with the
end.

"No," Jericho said. "She helped me escape,
and one of the men after me saw her. I have no doubt they are
looking for Chloe, too, now."

Miguél nodded slowly and brought the
toothpick up to stick back in his mouth. He regarded Chloe
tightly.

"My name is Chloe," she told him, uneasy
under his dark stare. He gave her a thin smile and lowered his head
in a small bow, but Chloe still sensed an unpleasant air toward
her.

"Miguél!" A woman sashayed
into the room then, grabbing their attention and instantly shifting
the tension. She began to confront her husband rapidly in
Portuguese, ending on a loud
tsk
. She swayed to Chloe, the skirt
around her wide hips waving at the hem. She glared at her husband,
who in turn lowered his head. Chloe had the feeling the woman had
berated her husband for not being more hospitable to
her.

"Come." She beckoned Chloe
to join her. "Let the men do the men things,
sim, senhorita
? You must forgive my
husband. He is not so trusting or friendly sometimes." She cut
Miguél another cross look.

Chloe laughed a little at the woman's manner
and allowed Mrs. Carvalho to pull her along, away from Jericho. The
woman's easy, warm nature lulled her into a sense of safety.

****

"I need fake passports and IDs," Jericho
said, following Miguél.

"That is what Logan told me. He relayed what
happened, you know." Carvalho pulled a string, and the basement
light flashed on. "Well, not everything naturally, but I understood
the gist."

Jericho followed the retired CIA operative
down the steps into the cooler room where they would be out of
earshot of the women and children. Carvalho pulled out a pair of
glasses and put them on as he sat in a chair by a wall of machinery
and computers.

"I usually don’t work this way, but Logan
said this was urgent. A matter of life and death," Carvalho
said.