3
“BE YOURSELF.”If ever she’d received a worthless piece of advice, Jake’s parting words were it. “Herself” was a dull woman with mousy hair and no life, who’d been balancing the books at a cement company for nineyears.
The woman walking toward Oceanic Import-Export was the artificial creation of Michael at the hair salon, the sales clerk at Tres Chic and the optometrist who’d fitted her withcontacts.
Cynthia was wearing the most conservative suit in her new wardrobe, a tight-fitting short black wool jacket and knee-length skirt with a pair of black leather boots. Though nobody knew it but her, the boots were lined with faux leopard skin, which boosted her confidence. The jacket had a faux fur collar, but she’d removed it before the interview, not wanting to appear toostylish.
As she clacked along the pavement in her snazzy new boots, she rehearsed what she’d say at the jobinterview.
Jake had laughed at her when she’d tried to practice on him. “You’re not pretending to be somebody else, you know. Just tell thetruth.”
Hah.Little did he know. She was living a huge lie, pretending to be fashionable andexciting.
She smelled the smog of a million cars, mixed in with the briny scent of the harbor. The downtown noises hammered at her senses: a bus wheezing as it pulled away from the curb, the honk of an impatient motorist, some kind of generator, and hammering and male voices from a constructionsite.
A long, appreciative wolf whistle rolled over her, and she glanced around, then realized she was the only one in front of the construction site. Startled, she glanced up. “Lookin’ good, babe!” yelled a burly man in a plaid shirt andhardhat.
“Thank you,” she said politely, smiling back with real gratitude. The butterflies in her stomach settled. Why shouldn’t she get this job or any other job she wanted? She was the new, improved, better than ever Cynthia—make that Cyn—Baxter, full-time CPA, part-timespy.
All she had to do was land a job she could do with her eyesclosed.
The den of iniquity, as she’d taken to calling it in her head, had wide double glass doors and a welcoming foyer in marble and granite. Behind the imposing front entrance, the statuesque receptionist led Cynthia down a carpeted corridor to a small boardroom. Cynthia blinked twice at the woman. She looked like one of the models inRaunch,from the “Erotically Advanced”section.
On the short journey, Cynthia glanced right and left, but instead of seeing swarthy, pockmarked faces, arsenals of weapons and hastily secured bags of white powder, she saw the same kind of people she’d seen at her last job. They worked on computers, talked on phones, made notes. Nothing remotelysinister.
Unaccountably disappointed, she entered theboardroom.
In it were three men. The middle one smiled politely and rose to extend his hand. Somewhere in his early forties, he had the kind of face that made her relax and smile back. He reminded her of an anchorman she’d seen on a Canadian TV station. Balding, blue-eyed, with the sincere look that suggested he cared about every one of the people injured in the train wreck he’d just described—only he was too much of a professional to let tears well in hiseyes.
His handshake was firm and businesslike. No drug-induced tremors, no red haze in the clear blueeyes.
“I’m Neville Percivald,” he informed her in an accent that was half-British, with the vowels rounded as though he’d lived for some time on this side of the Atlantic. “These are my associates, Doug Ormond and LesterDart.”
The flunkies gave her hope. They looked awfully muscular for desk jockeys. Doug Ormond had hairy knuckles, she noted when he gripped her hand and grunted a greeting, and Lester Dart deserved the slammer on the grounds of hiscologne.
She smiled politely and sat in the chairindicated.
They interviewed her extensively about her previous job. Most of the questions were routine, but every once in a while they threw in an odd one. They even asked if she knew a couple of people who’d she was fairly certain had never worked at Goring Cement, at least not during the past nineyears.
Still, she remained polite, privately thinking they didn’t have enough brains to run a successful criminal organization. She wondered how the legitimate one was doing, then reminded herself it didn’t matter. Once she’d completed her undercover espionage, she could move on. The important thing was she’d made a break from her dull career and her dulllife.
In fact, as soon as she wrapped this case up, she was taking a vacation. She was going to buy a ticket for the first place that caught her fancy, and keep ongoing.
“Thank you, Miss Baxter. We’ll be in touch,” the TV anchorman type said. And his eyes telegraphed to her the message that no matter what happened, she’d be the one he’d have chosen if it were up tohim.
“ICAN DO THIS.I am Cyn the Bold.” But her hands had a death grip on the long roller. She couldn’t quite make the move that would put the paint on thewall.
It looked so dark in the tin, a big purple puddle. And the antique white walls looked so unprepared for a purple assault. “Dull. You’re dull, dull, dull,” she muttered. A quick glance at the magazine picture she’d taped to the wall gave her courage. The color was claret, notpurple.
The purple was already on the ceiling. When she looked up she felt like she was standing inside a giganticgrape.
Resolutely, she tore her gaze away, reminding herself she’d loved the magazine layout she was copying. Still, she let out a quiet shriek when the first slash of color hit the wall, looking like a blade had knifed the pale wall, making itbleed.
“I can always paint over it,” she reminded herself as she gritted her teeth and keptrolling.
“Going for the grape Kool-Aid look?” a deep masculine voice taunted from behindher.
“Aaah!” Her nerveless hands dropped the roller, and it streaked downward until a dark shape hurtled past her. Jake Wheeler grabbed the roller and only a few dark drops hit the tarp that covered thefloor.
