The Spy Who Left Me (40 page)

Ty dropped it in his lap. “Plug it in. Get it streaming. Then I’m going to need that encryption software, stego genius.”

*   *   *

A Chinese minister walked to the front of the row of grooms and crowd, which consisted mostly of the gang from Big Auau and some Chinese travel agents. “Welcome most honored guests to this ceremony of great happiness and joy…”

Still no Ty.

The minister finished his welcome. A Hawaiian guitarist began playing the opening strains of “Ke Kali Nei Au,” the Hawaiian Wedding Song. The minister lifted his arms, indicating the crowd should stand. The brides began the walk up the red carpet aisle.

Abi looked glowingly happy and beautiful as she walked up the aisle toward Feng. She smiled at Treflee and nodded ever so slightly as she walked past her. Treflee smiled back, trying not to cry. Weddings were meant for tears, but this one in particular got to Treflee. She and Ty had been that beamingly happy once.

The couples took their places in front of the official.

The ceremony began in Chinese without waiting for Ty to show up.

*   *   *

The underground room was shielded as tightly as a top-secret U.S. government facility and carefully concealed, a real marvel of engineering below the old historic plantation house. And even with the electronic whirs and buzzes, exceedingly creepy.

With the waiter bound and gagged and stuffed into the corner with the photographer’s assistant, Ty made a copy of the encryption software that embedded the analysis model code into the video stream of the happy couples. He’d just sent the file off to Langley when he heard the click of the door opening behind him.

*   *   *

An older Chinese man, a father of one of the grooms, got up and gave a speech, shouting in such a loud, military-drill-sergeant voice he probably interrupted sunset weddings all along the beach.

Looking bored, Hal pulled his cell phone from his pants pocket and checked something on the Internet. By the time he slid his phone back in his pocket, he was grinning as if he owned the world.

Just confirmed his payoff, no doubt.

Treflee had to stifle the urge to crane around and look for Ty. Instead she focused on Abi. Where was that man? Her nerves were completely and utterly frayed. Not knowing what was going on was the worst kind of torture. She forced herself not to panic.

Hal grabbed her hand and squeezed, probably resisting doing a victory punch.

The father finished his speech and took his seat again. The Chinese official took his place in front of the line of couples and said something to them in Chinese. In unison, the grooms bowed toward their brides, looking like dippy birds as their heads bobbed low toward the sand.

“The deeper the bow, the deeper the groom’s love for the bride,” Hal, who seemed to know a bit about Chinese weddings, whispered to Treflee.

“How romantic,” Treflee whispered back, noticing how low Feng bowed to Abi, so low he practically kissed her tiny feet. She was very lucky.

Where is Ty?
Treflee had a vision of Mrs. Ho standing over him with a bloody knife. Speaking of Mrs. Ho, where was she?

“I wonder where Mrs. Ho is,” she said aloud for Ty’s benefit, hoping to warn him, wherever he was, that Mrs. Ho wasn’t at the wedding. “You’d think the wedding planner would be out here.”

“She’s probably overseeing the preparations for the reception.” Hal sounded too smug. He knew very well that she was probably checking her purchase.

*   *   *

Mrs. Ho burst into the control room and trained her semiautomatic on Ty. “
You!
You’re the spy?” She looked dumbfounded.

Ah, the element of surprise. Unfortunately, the wrong kind. At least my cover was good. And Tref, in her ineptitude, was a second too late with the “Mrs. Ho’s not at the wedding” warning.

“Who is the girl, then?”

“What girl?”

“Don’t play dumb with me!” She waved the gun at him. “Tleflee, the one with Hal.”

Ty shrugged. “A guest of yours, I imagine. Like me. I thought I saw her at the wedding.” He nodded toward the semiautomatic. “Is that any way to treat a guest who’s wandered slightly off track?”

Mrs. Ho ignored his jibe and called out to someone behind her. One of the wedding ushers entered the room. She spoke to him in Chinese. Fortunately, Ty understood her.

“We’ve been compromised. Tie him up. Call the helicopter. Then release those two and activate the self-destruct sequence.” She stared at Ty with eyes glittering with hate and returned to English. “I could shoot you now, but why waste good bullets? You’ll be in a million pieces soon enough.”

Ty shook his head, trying to buy time and think of a way out of this mess. The odds were definitely against him. “Blowing me up is really going to throw things out of harmony now, isn’t it? How will you ever put them back in balance?”

He rolled to his feet and charged her.

*   *   *

The Chinese wedding official raised his arms, smiled, and said in English, “I now pronounce you men and—”

Treflee frowned. She was sure she heard the pounding of footsteps coming from behind her from Sugar Love.
Ty?
She turned to look.

“Stop! Stop this ceremony!”

“Oh, boy,” Treflee whispered when she saw who it was.

Every head turned now.

Kane came running down the aisle, ambling like the great big defensive-tackle kind of guy he was. “Carrie! Carrie!”

He looked around wildly, trying to find her and seeming confused by the one hundred percent Chinese wedding parties up front. Not a white girl in sight up there at the figurative altar. Just a bunch of terrified-looking Chinese brides whose wedding day was rapidly deteriorating into a spectacle.

Someone had given Kane bad intel.

He scanned the crowd. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t marry someone else. I love you, baby! I never cheated. I swear.” He waved a piece of paper he held. “I have the lie detector test to prove it. It’s right here. Right here, baby. Done by your favorite examiner. Twice.

“You know,
you know,
baby, these things are nearly one hundred percent accurate. If you won’t believe me, believe it.”

In front of her, the girls were all encouraging Carrie to talk to Kane. Carrie slumped down and dabbed her eyes with the tissue. Since she was smiling, they must have been tears of joy she was wiping away.

Carrie is going to ruin poor Abi’s dream wedding if she doesn’t respond to Kane soon.

Treflee gave her cousin a nudge in the shoulder and leaned forward to whisper, “Come on. Give the guy a break. How long are you going to make him beg? Do something. The Chinese brides up there look like they’re going to faint.”

“You have to believe me,” Kane yelled. “This is our day, damn it!”

An usher half his size stepped in to block Kane from making it to the altar. He slammed into Kane with the full force of his puny half-pint size. As his shoulder hit Kane in the chest, the ground shook with the force of a volcano erupting, knocking Kane to his knees and sending the usher flying. The roar of an explosion rocked the air. Behind them, Sugar Love plantation house exploded into a ball of flame, spewing debris and bits of wedding feast two hundred yards onto the beach.

Treflee stared in horror as the implications of what had happened hit her. Last time she’d seen Ty he’d been standing right next to Sugar Love. She kicked back her chair and stood. “No. No. No! Ty! Ty!”

She’d blown her cover. But it didn’t matter. Her ears rang so loudly she couldn’t even hear herself. The explosion and crackle of flames had rendered them all temporarily deaf.

The brides’ shoulders shook, crying silently. The grooms held them in their arms. Abi broke away from Feng and ran toward the plantation.

Beside Treflee, Hal shoved back out of his chair and started to bolt.

No! No way was he getting away. Rage took over. Treflee threw herself into him, tackling him and thumping him onto his back on the red carpet. She jumped on him, knocking his breath from him, straddling his hips with her flowing skirt spreading around them.

“Not exactly the way you planned to have me straddling you, is it?” She pulled off a flip-flop, wishing it were a lethal high-heeled stiletto, and began beating him about the head, screaming for Ty. He’d been inside Sugar Love. She was sure of it.

Oh, damn you, Ty! Where are you? Just don’t be dead or dying.

Next to her, Kane held Carrie in a passionate kiss. With the flames in the background, they looked like a movie poster for an action adventure flick.

Faye, Brandy, Carla, and Laci formed a protective barrier around Hal and cheered Treflee on.

Treflee bounced on Hal and pummeled him with her ineffective flapping jeweled flip-flop as he struggled to get his breath back and flailed, trying to grab her arms.

She leaned in and yelled into the hibiscus cam in Hal’s pocket, “Ty! Ty, I love you, baby. I have Hal pinned on the beach. Get the software, take down those bastards in there, and come out here and help me!”

Next to her, Kane broke away from kissing Carrie. From the corner of her eye, Treflee saw him studying her. He leaned down and yelled at her in a booming voice she felt more than heard above the surf and the ringing in her ears. “Need help?”

She shook her head no. “Thanks. I got him.” No way was she giving up the pleasure of subduing Hal. Not until her rage was spent, anyway.

Kane shrugged and slipped off his sturdy leather dress slip-on shoe. He grabbed her arm and shoved it into her hand.

She hefted it. It had a manly-sized clunky heel. Excellent! A pulverizing size thirteen was so much more effective than a size seven thong. She knew she hadn’t been wrong about Kane. He had keen police sense, recognizing the bad guy right away. She liked him more than ever. Carrie could do far worse.

As if hearing Treflee’s thoughts, Carrie snuggled into Kane’s arms and rested her head against his chest. Kane squeezed Carrie tight, watching Tref with that look in his eye that said he was ready to step in and subdue at a moment’s notice.

As Treflee raised Kane’s shoe, she caught the silhouette of Mrs. Ho running into the sunset from the plantation. At the same time, a helicopter appeared on the horizon over the ocean. The sun sat on top of the water, creating a sunset as brilliant as a Haleakala sunrise.

The bitch is escaping!

“Don’t let her get away!” Treflee screamed. She tugged on Kane’s pant leg, pointing toward Mrs. Ho and pantomiming a cop taking down a criminal.

Carrie caught her drift first. She grabbed Kane’s arm and motioned to the other girls. They took off after Mrs. Ho and the two goons who appeared from the foliage following their leader.

Wait! Is that Abi chasing Mrs. Ho, too?

As Treflee lifted the shoe to clobber Hal again, a strong hand caught her wrist.

She looked up, startled and ready to take down anyone who’d come to help Hal. Her breath caught. “Ty!”

Ty grinned and shook his head. “I leave you alone for a minute and find you riding another guy.”

At least that’s what she thought he said as she read his lips. It was the kind of thing he would say, anyway.

He pulled the shoe out of her hand and tossed it away. “You know you could have subdued him with your sedative dart?”

In the heat of the moment, she’d forgotten all about that.

Greg appeared beside him. Both men glistened with sweat tracked with soot. Treflee wiped a hand across her eyes. She was a smudge pot of mascara. Always wear waterproof to weddings and explosions.

Ty pulled her to her feet and into his arms. Greg cuffed Hal and removed the hibiscus cam.

Treflee braced her hands against Ty’s chest. “What are you doing here?” She pointed toward the approaching helicopter and Mrs. Ho’s sunset silhouette. “Mrs. Ho’s getting away! After her!”

He remained fixed in place. She wasn’t sure he could hear her. She pointed more wildly.

Ty shook his head no and pointed between Treflee and himself before crushing her to his chest.

“Damn you, you scared me to death,” she said into his shirt as she cuddled against him and hung on to him for dear life.

“Nice to see you, too.” Ty pressed her against him and kissed the top of her head as she listened to the reassuringly calm, steady beat of his heart. His breath moved against her hair. He was saying something. She hoped it was, “I love you, Tref.” She believed it was.

*   *   *

Back at the plantation, Tita greeted them with cold glasses of guava juice and directed them to paramedics to be checked over. Carla was in her element as head nurse.

Having brought in Mrs. Ho’s two accomplices and demonstrated his fidelity and undying love for Carrie, Kane was the hero of the day. And Carrie, having decided she would marry him after all, was the happy, radiant, and slightly sooty bride-to-be.