Diamonds Are Truly Forever: An Agent Ex Novel 2 (19 page)

Then she pulled out a tissue and wiped the blush off her cheeks. Whipped out her makeup compact and applied a dash of plum eye shadow. Given her coloring, it made her look like she hadn’t gotten enough sleep in weeks. Weren’t prepackaged makeup compacts grand? Along with the good, you always got those totally hideous colors.

She took a peek at herself in the compact mirror. Perfect! Why hadn’t she thought of going out incognito before?

Drew walked up to the checkout counter farthest from the door. As he did, Lucy shot him a surreptitious look, obviously checking him out. As a potential threat. For an instant, Staci’s heart stopped.

Drew, however, ignored the look and engaged the clerk, chatting it up about the stats on one of the cameras as the clerk rang up his purchases. He spoke in a voice that was just slightly higher than his own, though not so high that it sounded falsetto or faked and put on.

Staci waited for her chance to dash out the door. But Lucy kept nervously glancing out it at something on the street every few seconds. How was Staci supposed to escape?

She’s worried about being seen!
Staci thought. Drew was right.

She sidled down the aisle toward the door, waiting for her break. The audio-amplification devices were right in front of her. She pretended to be browsing and snapped on a sample listening ear just to look authentic. She pointed it in Lucy’s direction.

Lucy was talking to a salesclerk in a near whisper. Those listening ears, however, were fantastic. They picked up her conversation at the register with complete clarity.

“I need a GPS tracking device, either a computer keystroke monitoring device or software, maybe both, a black light, a DNA kit, and a Check Your Spouse testing kit.”

From her vantage point, Staci could only see the clerk’s face.

“Cheating spouse?” he said.

She watched the back of Lucy’s head, imagining the grimace on her face at being asked such a question.

“Something like that,” Lucy acknowledged.

Staci tried to remember what Lucy’s husband looked like, but she drew a blank. Cheating spouses seemed to be in abundance among Attitude employees.

At the counter next to her, Drew slapped his head. “The Check Your Spouse kit. I forgot. I’ll take one of those, too.” He ignored Lucy, but spoke to the clerk as he rang one up for Drew. “I’m a PI. I use them all the time.”

“Yeah, the kit’s a good product,” his clerk said.

Next to him, Lucy’s clerk was talking to her. “May I recommend a cell phone SIM card analyzer?” The clerk put one on the counter.

Lucy nodded again. “Ring it up with the other supplies.” She shot another glance at the door.

Staci was wondering if she should change the plan and just loiter in the store until Lucy left. That was until Lucy did a full-circle scan of the store and Staci dropped her head again just in time. Much more loitering and she’d be caught.

Drew grabbed something out of a clear glass jar on the counter. “Fake fingers?” he said to the clerk.

“Oh, yeah,” said the clerk, a middle-aged man with a big gut who looked more like a doughnut-eating PI than a spy. “
Get Smart
novelty item. Customers love them.”

Staci crossed her fingers and sent Drew a mental message, hoping that as the two of them were still technically one, it would work.
Please, oh, please buy me some!

“Gotta love fake fingers.” Drew threw them into the basket.

Yes!

Lucy turned to look at him, giving Staci her shot at freedom. She tore off the listening ear and bolted out of the shop. She walked to the bus stop so fast, she practically sprinted.

She was breathing hard as she took a seat on the empty bench and leaned out far enough to keep an eye on the spy shop entrance.

A few minutes later, Lucy came out and turned in the opposite direction, walking directly by their parked car. So that’s why Drew had sent Staci to the bus stop! Staci had been thinking it was because she didn’t have a key to his car.

How in the world was that man so darn observant? Sometimes he really gave her the willies with this omniscient power of his.
Spies!

A few minutes after Lucy disappeared, Drew left the shop and joined her at the bus stop.

“A present for you.” He tossed her something as he approached.

She caught it and grinned. “Fake fingers! My hero!” She could have kissed him, but they both knew where that would lead. Sometimes sexual attraction was a real nuisance.

“You got everything?” She admired her fake cling fingers, which were nicely molded plastic versions that looked like hands clutching a ledge.

Drew rattled a large shopping bag. “It’s all here.”

“Great.” She was still studying the fake fingers. “You got me the girlie Ninety-nine fingers!” She held the fingers up against her own. “A little pink nail polish and these will look just like mine.” She smiled at him. “I hope you got yourself a Max pair.”

He grinned and shook his head. “You’re amused by the simplest things. Tell me again why I used to buy you jewelry?”

She grinned back at him and nodded toward the store. “Hey, that was a narrow escape in there.”

“Not by a long shot. That was a piece of cake.”

She glanced back at the spy shop. “I heard the clerk selling Lucy some keystroke-monitoring software.”

“Yeah, I saw you with the listening ears. Smart move.”

She beamed under his praise, though she couldn’t say why it made her so happy. “Should we go back and buy some keystroke-monitoring software?”

He shook his head no. “Attitude will have spyware-detecting software that will erase or block it. I have something better I can borrow from the Agency.”

Of course he did.

“What do you want to do now?” she asked. “Go home and train me how to use our new gadgets?” It sounded like a plan to her. “By the way—what’s the black light really for?”

“Illuminating body fluids,” he said, happily. “Used in conjunction with the Check Your Spouse kit, it’s highly effective in collecting physical evidence of betrayal.”

She didn’t even want to think about that. “Home, then?” Her voice was a little weaker and a lot more grossed-out sounding than she liked.

Drew laughed at her. “Squeamish?”

She frowned at him. “I didn’t know we’d be playing CSI.”

He laughed again. “Home can wait. I thought we’d get the ball rolling. Let’s swing by Linda’s. Show her how happy we are together. And while she’s distracted, I’ll install some of our great stuff. After all, I know how to use it.”

Staci froze. They could
not
go to her mom’s!

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“I don’t think this is a good idea. We’re not ready for this. We need a plan. Don’t we need a plan? You know, a strategy? A map of where we’re going to plant the bugs and cameras. We’re just heading out blind with a bag of gadgets.” Staci hovered over Drew as he spread out their new gear in the trunk of his bland sedan.

He hated this sedan, but at least no one would suspect a young middle-class couple in a car like this, parked in a strip mall parking lot, of being up to anything even mildly subversive. Or top-secret government work.

He shook his head. “What do you think I’m doing here? I’m putting together our plan.”

Staci glanced around the parking lot, looking as worried as if they were about to be caught building a bomb.

“You look furtive. Cut it out. Rule number one of effective spying—no furtive glances, no suspicious, nervous behavior.” He pulled one of the cameras out of the bag and took it out of its box. This was a deluxe model Emmett had sent. Not the cheap mass-produced variety. Emmett had left him a gold mine’s worth of gear in that store.

Staci hadn’t noticed, but he’d given the clerk at Spy Gear Seattle a code word. The clerk had then swapped out his stuff for what Emmett left for him. Funneling top-secret military-grade spy gear through a spy store. How audacious! Who would think it?

Yes, sometimes the Agency really did have a sense of humor.

Staci hovered around him, peering over his shoulder and biting her nails.

“Why don’t you take your hair out of those ponytails—”

“Dog ears.”

“—and fix your makeup and just let me take care of things here?”

“Are you saying you don’t like my plum eye shadow?”

Now, there was a landmine he wasn’t stepping on. “I’m saying your mother is going to tell you it’s not your color and wonder why you chose it. And then you’ll have to think up a lie to explain it. Is that what you want, more lies?”

“I don’t have any makeup remover.”

He whipped out his wallet and handed her a ten. “There’s a drugstore over there. Go buy some.”

She took the money, but didn’t move. “We haven’t even read the instructions yet.” Staci shook her head as if to emphasize her words. She looked gloomy.

“Give me some credit for knowing how to use a bug.” He took a deep breath.

“Stopping by Mom’s unannounced really isn’t a good idea. You know her. She hates surprises. Why don’t I give her a call?” She looked at him with way-too-hopeful-and-eager an expression as she pulled her cell phone out.

He reached out and grabbed her hand before she could dial. “Stace, we want the element of surprise. We don’t want Sam picking up and hiding evidence. We want to see the house as it really is when no one else is around.” He looked at her, watching to see if she understood.

“What if they catch you?” she asked Drew.

He rolled his eyes. “Give me some credit. They won’t catch me.”

Something was up with Staci. She didn’t want to go to her mom’s. At least not with him. There was something she wasn’t telling him.

“Besides, you’ll be playing lookout and diverting their attention.”

Staci’s phone buzzed in her hand. She flipped it open and read a text. A second later her fingers were flying over the keyboard as she typed a response, holding the phone so he couldn’t see.

Damn that woman, she had no spy subtlety. She was obviously hiding something from him. With one quick move, he snatched the phone from her.

It was a text from her mom that made it clear she didn’t know about the reconciliation.

He stared into his wife’s eyes. “You little liar. You haven’t told Linda yet.”

Staci blushed, but didn’t deny her guilt.

Now everything made sense, including her hesitation over going to her mom’s. He took a deep breath.

She turned to leave. “I’ll just go get that makeup remover now.”

He grabbed her arm. “Stace?”

She sighed and wore a crumpled, defeated expression as she stopped and looked over her shoulder at him. “No. I didn’t tell her. I meant to. But then she started telling me about Sam and there really wasn’t an opportunity. How could I just jump in with my ‘joy’ over our miraculous reunion when her heart was breaking?”

He cursed beneath his breath, even as he begrudgingly admitted she had a point. He reached into his wallet and handed her an additional fifty. “Get your mom some flowers. What kind of gum does Sam chew? Get some of that, too.”

She frowned at him. “Gum? Now there’s a nice hostess gift.”

He laughed. “Think bugged gum. As in, in his desk drawer or briefcase.”

“Good thinking, Sherlock,” she said. “Should I text Mom that I’m on my way over?”

“No. Element of surprise, remember?”

Ten minutes later, she was back with the flowers and gum. Her hair was down and the plum eye shadow was gone. “I found some great nail polish, too. I think I’ll paint the cling fingernails later.”

Drew had things under control and ready to go. Fortunately, it was a cool May day. He had his sweatshirt on and loaded up with so many bugs and gadgets, he was armed to his espionage teeth. He unwrapped the black light.

“I’m not going to go through Sam’s underwear drawer with that black light,” Staci said, holding a bouquet of spring roses. “Why are you wearing a sweatshirt?”

“I have to hide the equipment somewhere.” He turned sideways and grinned at her. “Does all this spy gear make me look fat?”

She shook her head. “You look fine.”

To his surprise, she opened the car door, set the flowers and her shopping bag down, and came over and gave him a great big, tight, body-to-body hug. Breasts to chest. Thigh to thigh.

Damn, he wished she wouldn’t do that.

“To what do I owe this unexpected show of affection?” He was unsure if he was supposed to return the embrace.

She squeezed him tighter. “Feeling for spy gear. You know my mom is going to give you one of her squeezy, squishy hugs. I don’t want her coming in contact with a big gun.”

No, that only happened when Staci hugged him.

“Or the black light, the GPS tracking device, or anything else you might have strapped to your person.” She pressed herself more tightly against him and stuffed her hands in his back jean pockets, pressing her head against his chest.