He eyed the streets behind the boardwalk, his hand tightening on her forearm. “Here,” he said.
She posed for him, leaning back against the railing as he snapped photos. Though he pretended to focus on her, he was really zooming in over her shoulder on a building up the hill from the beach.
She blew kisses. Scoop-crossed her arms to shove her tits together. Turned sideways and threw up a Marilyn Monroe leg.
He continued shooting the boulevard behind her. “Most of them have cleared out, but he’s still in the office on the second floor,” he said, his words snatched away by the wind.
They’d spent the day photographing the building from every angle.
The mottled skin of Candy’s back complained beneath her fitted top, no doubt angry from the cold breeze and salty air. She put the pain in the bank, a mental account she’d been saving up for Orphan X. She couldn’t wait to start taking withdrawals out of his flesh.
Willing away the discomfort, she smacked her bubble gum. The gum was neon green, her lipstick orange, both props to help her blend in. A gaggle of girls legged by, giving her competitive glares. God bless these Ukrainian-Russian broads. They oozed so much natural sexuality that they could slap the 1980s all over themselves and still knock the skin right off an American girl.
Except for Candy, of course.
She leaned over, grabbing her knees, gave the knock-’em-dead smile. Jaggers clicked and clicked.
“Everyone else is gone,” he said. “He’s the last one there now.”
“Hey, M,” she said. “It’s not polite to not stare at a lady. Especially when she looks like this.” She straightened up, spreading her stance, arms on her hips, her breasts pushing high — Colossus of Rhodes if he was fucking hot.
Jaggers moved the camera to the side of his cheek. His flat eyes observed her. Blinked. The zoom lens drifted over her shoulder. More clicking. At least it blocked his face.
She should be thankful for small mercies.
She thought about the kind of fun she could have here if it weren’t for Orphan M.
Of course, the mission was primary. Though they’d been in-country for only twelve hours, they’d ascertained a few things.
The phone-service company to which Orphan X had moved his number was located on the second and third floors of the converted cannery that Jaggers was currently lensed in on. Given present conditions in Crimea and the Nowhere Man’s proclivities, it was no surprise that TeleFon Star placed a premium on the privacy of their customers.
Van Sciver had identified the target as Refat Setyeyiva, vice president of operations, a thick-bodied man with scruffy good looks. A youthful forty, he had come up as a hammer thrower in the Soviet Olympic program, juiced and primed from the age of eight. He’d blown out his knees in his late teens, and here he was, overseeing operations for the discreet comms company that Candy and Jaggers needed to infiltrate.
Rather than dick around with hacking through firewalls, which neither of them specialized in, they’d been tasked with stealing Setyeyiva’s laptop to get the passwords and access the company databases. They were to eliminate him to buy themselves time with the computer before it could be reported as missing.
Given Setyeyiva’s sturdiness and physical prowess, this would be challenging. Attaining a gun in this climate would be conspicuous. So they’d come up with another plan.
Jaggers let the camera drop from around his neck. “He’s leaving now.” He checked his watch, jotted down the time in his notepad with a skinny silver pen.
Candy pictured the route Refat Setyeyiva would likely trace on his way out — through the rear door and across the narrow alley to the parking structure next door. There were specifics to lock down, angles to consider, sight lines to account for. It would be a complex, sticky business, and success rested on timing and preparation.
As her junior-high shop teacher used to say, Measure twice, cut once.
25
Not Very Nice
Back in his luxurious cell, Evan checked his phone to see if the boy had called back, but the shattered screen showed no missed calls. He slid the RoamZone between mattress and box spring again and went into the bathroom. Getting down on his hands and knees by the sink in the hidden camera’s blind spot, he stared at the J-plug outlet placed beneath the floating counter. Then he rolled onto his back and smashed the plastic cover with the heel of his boot. It took only a few kicks for it to chip and fall away.
Beneath it was nothing but an empty hole in the drywall. Wires stubbed out of the socket, connected to nothing. It was a prop, inserted in the space where a functional outlet had been.
He broke the cover into smaller pieces and flushed them down the toilet.
In the bedroom again, he crawled beneath the built-in desk. The Type C outlet was there in the darkness behind the back panel and the wall. He slipped his hand into the gap and managed to slide the edge of his thumbnail into the groove of one of the tiny screws. After five minutes of cramped machinations, the screw pinged loose, the outlet cover swinging down to reveal the blank wall beneath.
Evan sat back on his heels and marveled at René’s attention to detail. So many fakes and misdirects. Impeccable tradecraft.
When he crawled out, Despi was once more standing by the fireplace. She wore lipstick and a hair tie.
“Wanna not have sex again?” Her full lips shaped the words, a hoarse whisper to thwart the surveillance.
He drew himself upright. “Don’t you get cold?”
She stepped closer, her hips ticktocking. She ran a finger along his jaw. “What I feel is irrelevant. There’s only what I have to do.” Her flat words and expression were divorced from her body language, which she laid on thick for the hidden camera.
He regretted the joke.
She undressed him, pulling off the layers. Then she slid her hand to the nape of his neck, tugging him toward her. “Should we get this over with?” The sensuous affect paired with her matter-of-fact declarations made her seem like an actress who’d been given the wrong dialogue.
Evan steered her to the same spot on the bed, keeping them mostly in the camera’s blind spot. She pulled him on top of her, putting her mouth to his ear. “You have very strong willpower.”
“To not rape you?”
“What it would be,” she said, “is complicated.”
“Not to me.”
“So virtuous.” Her lips tugged to one side, a smirk. “Have you decided that you trust me?”
“Mostly.”
“Only mostly?” She feigned offense. “Well, I have no chopstick. So how would you kill me now, Virtuous Man? Right now?”
He ran his fingers through her thick hair. “I’d rake your head to the side hard enough to fragment your C2 vertebra into your brain stem.”
She took a moment with that one. “And there is a Hollywood movie crackle, and then I die instantly?”
“No. You’d be a quadriplegic. Maybe you could still speak. Or scream. But the break would cut off impulses from your brain to your diaphragm, and you’d eventually suffocate.”
Their faces were close, and they spoke in whispers. “That’s not very nice,” she said.
“No.”
“I’m glad you mostly trust me.” She clasped her hands around his ribs and pulled him tighter. She was skilled at selling the performance. He cringed to think of the experiences that had led her to perfect this skill set.
“How did you get here?” he asked. “Were you taken like me?”
“I was stupid. There was a party on a yacht docked off the coast of Rhodes — that’s where I’m from. My girlfriend was going, and she asked me to join. I was recently divorced, so I said what the hell. René was there. I interested him. Not sexually. But as an object. He takes things and people. He doesn’t understand the difference.”