The Lady Is a Thief (17 page)

 
   
“You don't need her name.” Jarod replied
drily.

 
   
“Do I need his?” Kit asked, because as
surreal went, they'd arrived.

 
   
“No. You don't.” He led her over to a chair
and pulled it out. “It's on her right cheek.”

 
   
“Got it.”
The man
pulled out a black light and flicked off the overhead with a remote. He held it
up to her face and studied her silently. “I need to get a sample. It's a small
scraping and it won't hurt.”

 
   
The lights came back on, but Jarod took the
small instrument and brushed her cheek with it. He handed the slide over to the
tech and the man carried it over to his computer. He hummed along with the
music she could hear faintly in the background.

 
   
“Okay.” He pulled a pair of reading glasses
off his head and peered at the screen. “I have some good news and I have some
bad news.”

 
   
“Bad news.”
She and
Jarod spoke at the same time.

 
   
The tech turned around with a wry grin. “The
crap to get that off stinks. But it's pretty effective and we can reduce the
trace signature in no time.”

 
   
“Okay, so what's the good news?” Jarod
stared at him.

 
   
“Well, the good news is that a cache of
Scandium 45 derivative is from an old Stasi project in the mid-1980s, which had
been stolen from a research facility in Austria. It's been red flagged. So,
wherever you got it, they probably know who took it.”

 
   
“Will it scar?” She didn't really care about
the Stasi or Louis' ever-evolving resume of criminal acts.

 
   
“No. Just stink. You need to get a compound
of—you know—you probably don't want to know.” He wrote something down on a
sheet of paper. “Give me a minute and I'll see if I can track some down. Most
of the park includes heavy metal pieces so it's going to provide you with a lot
of shielding. They might know you came inside, but they won't be able to track
you unless they're standing on top of you.”

 
   
“Thanks.” Jarod said and the man nodded,
heading to his secret door and stepping out.

 
   
Kit glanced up at him. “The U.S. government
is operating a secret listening post inside an amusement park? Doesn't that
violate a half-dozen privacy laws?”

 
   
“This isn't a listening post.”

 
   
“But he's—an agent, right?”

 
   
“Never said that and this
isn't a listening post.”
Jarod walked over to a small refrigerator and
opened it up. He pulled out two bottles of water and handed her one.

 
   
“So what is this place?”

 
   
Jarod glanced around and shrugged.
“Tech support for the ride.”
He unscrewed the bottle and
took a drink. “I told you, I could help.”

 
   
“I know.”

 
   
“But you still don't trust me.” It wasn't a
question and she couldn't give him false assurances. She wanted to trust
him—which was more than she could say for when he showed up in her hotel room
or tried to talk her into leaving with him.

 
   
But she'd been doing this on her own for far
too long.

 
   
“I'm sorry.” She meant it, too.

 
   
“Trust takes time.” He agreed.

 
   
It did and she didn't understand why he'd
shared a secret with her,
unlesss
he was ready to
leave that alias behind. She wanted to ask him about his comment before they
arrived at the tram—about training to gather information and assassinate
people. But at the same time, she didn't want to know.

 
   
“Kit?”

 
   
She looked at him.

 
   
“You doing okay over
there?”

 
   
“I'm fine.” No she wasn't, but it sounded
better than
I'm ready to freak the hell
out now. Do you mind waiting while I run around in circles and scream?

 
   
Her face itched, but she tried to ignore it
and opened her bottle to drink. The hum of the machines grated on her nerves,
but she distanced herself from the sound. On the run in the middle of an
amusement park with radiation eating away at her face or sitting at a party for
five hundred businessmen and
celebutantes
, the
etiquette prevailed—
maintain
her calm.

 
   
 
The
door burst open and their red shirted technician returned with a small jar.
“And here is the stinky crap. It's got a small amount of lead in it, so you
might get some redness on your face, but it will neutralize the compound and
you'll be isotope free
lickety
split.” He finished
his statement with a flourish and unscrewed the cap.

 
   
The smell hit her like a hammer—a
combination of something soggy and decaying mixed with heavy metals and cold
cream. Her stomach lurched and Jarod jerked the pot away from her face.
“Harry.”

 
   
“Sorry, man.” He looked sheepish, but she
concentrated on breathing through her mouth rather than taking another whiff of
the gunk they wanted her to put on her face. Using toxic waste to remove
radiation—she led a charmed life.

 
   
Taking the jar from Jarod's hand, she looked
to Harry. “How long does it have to stay on my face?”

 
   
“Five—no more than ten
minutes.
Then wash it off thoroughly. There's a restroom right there.”
He pointed to a door hidden behind one of his half-walls of computers. She
nodded.

 
   
“Thank you.”

 
   
“Hey, let me help.” Jarod touched her arm,
but she shook her head at him.

 
   
“Someone should be conscious if I pass out
from the fumes.” She shut herself in the tiny bathroom and turned on the water.
She glanced at herself in the mirror. She really did look nothing at all like
the lady who'd graced the cover of a recent Sun-Times article. She opened the
jar before she could change her mind and used a folded up tissue to apply it to
her cheek.

 
   
Cold, clammy, and
disgusting.

 
   
She glanced at her watch and screwed the lid
back on the jar. Outside the bathroom, the men murmured in voices too low for
her to quite make out.
Probably catching up.
She
fished one of the burner phones out of her purse. She had just two left. The
other two were still in the car they were most likely abandoning.

 
   
Dialing Enrique's number, she left the water
running.

 
   
He answered on the second ring. “I am not
going to ask why you are at Disneyland.”

 
   
“Good. I don't really want to discuss that.”

 
   
He laughed. “You are calling for the
profile, yes?”

 
   
“Yes please.”

 
   
“Well, Jarod Parker does not exist—well let
me rephrase this, he does exist, but he is so blandly ordinary that he cannot
be a real person.”

 
   
“What do you mean?” Her eyes watered, and
she looked at her watch. Six minutes to go.

 
   
“Just exactly that.
He's been scrubbed, from top to bottom. No details about family, average high
school career, even more average college, a brief stint in law school—where he
didn't graduate—and after that—a desk job in a Midwest banking establishment.
He's—ordinary.”

 
   
No,
he's extraordinary.
“Is it a cover?”

 
   
“
Si, senorita
.
Are you in trouble?”

 
   
She coughed, and
squinted
her eyes shut against the burn. “I am fine Enrique. Thank you for looking into
this.”

 
   
“
Katerina
,” he was
the only person on Earth that called her that. “I can be in Los Angeles by
tomorrow morning.”

 
   
“No.” She sniffed as her nose began to run
along with her eyes. She peered at her watch. Two minutes left. “But I may need
to vacation in a few days…how is the weather there?”

 
   
“Balmy skies, warm sunshine, and all the
seclusion a body could desire. Call me when you are ready.”

 
   
Message sent. Message received.

 
   
She had a place to run to if she needed it.

 
   
“
Gracias,
Enrique
.”

 
   
“De nada, senorita
.”

 
   
They rang off and she swayed before
stripping out the
sim
card and dropping it into the
toilet and flushing it. The rest of the phone went into the trash. Jarod
knocked on the door.

 
   
“Kit?”

 
   
“Washing it off now.
I can barely breathe, so I recommend getting away from that door when I open
it.”

 
   
She scrubbed at her face with the water,
peeling away the goopy gel-like substance the cream became. It plopped into the
sink and she gagged, she barely made it to the toilet before she brought up
what few French fries she'd managed to eat earlier.

 
   
A strong arm braced her and held her up.
When the retching passed, Jarod flushed the toilet and grabbed the washcloth.
He sat her on the closed toilet lid and went to cleaning her face. She could
barely see him around the tears rolling down her cheeks.

 
   
Harry appeared with a fan and he had it
blowing cold air into the stench of the bathroom, she couldn't breathe through
her nose at all now, so she had no idea if it was helping. Three more scrubs
with soap and water and Jarod led her out. She dabbed at her eyes repeatedly,
but they were swollen and sore.

 
   
“Yeah, it stinks. That's the only problem
with it!” Jarod's voice was cold and hostile. She squinted to see which of them
he spoke to, but he stared at Harry.

 
   
“Like I said—it's got a bad smell. She
probably shouldn't have shut the bathroom. It contained all of it in a small
place. But it's only a little toxic—”

 
   
She couldn't help it, she laughed. The sound
came out like a strangled sob and she dabbed her eyes again.
“A
little toxic.
Isn't that like being a little pregnant?”

 
   
“Well, yes and no. You feel like crap, but
it won't kill you.” Harry retreated when Jarod took a step toward him. “I'm
serious. She'll be fine. The worst is she looks like a massive case of
hayfever
. Grab some antihistamines and it will clear up.
But check her face with the black light, isotope is all gone.”

 
   
“You know, I don't even care anymore.” She
really couldn't breathe.
Ridiculous.
She blew her nose
and accepted a fresh tissue from Jarod after. The lights turned off and she
waited while they put the black light on her.

 
   
“It's gone.” Jarod confirmed.

 
   
“Well, at least that was worth it. Now you
can be rid of me.” That came out a lot whinier and more pathetic than intended.
She sighed and took a long drink of water.

 
   
“We'll talk when we're out of here.” He
looked back at Harry. “Did you get us a car?”

 
   
“Yep, Mickey lot, slot five. I'll take care
of yours and get it cleaned and dropped back at the airport. Want me to dead
drop any gear in it?”