Hot Toy (7 page)

“I Maced him. How'd you know I'd be here?”

“I figured this is where you'd run to once the other guys blocked the door. You were supposed to get out.”

“Yeah, well, you were supposed to be the good guy,” Trudy whispered back. “You took the instructions, you bastard.”

“Yeah,” Nolan said. “So?”

“So you're not a cop,” Trudy said. “You're a double agent for the Chinese, you rat—”

“He
told
you that?”

Trudy stopped. “That is pretty far-fetched.”

“Trudy, he's the double agent for the Chinese.”

Trudy glared at where she thought he was in the darkness. “Do you guys just make this stuff up as you go?”

“MacGuffins are made in China,” Nolan whispered. “They marked one box last year and sent it over to that toy store. We just found out that it went missing and never got picked up, which is why we had the toy store staked out.”

“We who?” Trudy whispered back. “No, wait, I know this part. You're the CIA. And I'm pissed off. Do you really think I'm going to believe this crap? That the Chinese secret service puts codes in dolls? Why don't they just
e-mail
them?”

“Computers can be hacked.”

“And Major MacGuffins can't?” Trudy looked at the doll in her arms.

“One sheet of paper, all the codes,” Nolan said. “On microdot. Very efficient. Except they lost them last year.”

“So this is about last year's codes?” Trudy shook her head. “Why would you want last year's codes? This story needs work.”

“Because with last year's codes we can decipher all of last year's transmissions that we intercepted. Which is what's going on right now.”

“Right now.”

“I took them out of the box and passed them on,” Nolan said. “If you'll give the doll to Reese, he'll realize it's over and hit the road.”

“Evidently not,” Trudy said. “He knows you've got the instruction sheet and he doesn't seem to be leaving. I'm not buying any of this, you know. But I also don't care about any of it. As long as Leroy—”

“I know, I know, he gets the doll.” Nolan sighed. “I can't believe I promised you that. I'm going to end up getting shot for some stupid doll.”

“Yes, but you're saving a little boy's Christmas,” Trudy said. “That's very heroic.”

“I'm still gonna get shot,” Nolan said. “So here's what we're going to do. You're going to take your Mace—”

“I dropped it,” Trudy said.

“Great,” Nolan said.

“Well, I never Maced anybody before. He scared the hell out of me when he screamed. But I'll be better now. And I don't need the Mace. I've seen
Miss Congeniality
twenty times, it's Courtney's favorite movie.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That SING thing. Solar plexus, Instep, Nose, Groin.”

“No.” Nolan's whisper was flat in the darkness. “Do not think you're Rambo. Just run for the damn door.”

“Okay.” Trudy shifted the Mac to her other arm as she tried to remember what other weapons she might have in her purse. No Mace. No knife. No gun. She clearly hadn't come out prepared for Christmas Eve. Not even a nail file.… “Wait a minute.” She reached in one of the bags, pulled out Courtney's Twinkletoes box, and pried the top open.

“What are you doing?” Nolan whispered.

“Arming myself.” Trudy opened the manicure set wired next to Twink's feet. There was a nail file in there, just as she'd remembered. “Got it.”

“Do not fight with anybody,” Nolan whispered, the order clear. “Just run for the damn door.”

“Okay.” Trudy put the nail file in her coat pocket.

“We need something to create a disturbance. Too bad that grenade in the Mac doesn't work. I could use a grenade.”

“There's a gun,” Trudy brought up the Mac's hand so she could look down the barrel of the Mac's revolver. “What's this thing stuck on the end?”

“A silencer,” Nolan whispered. “If only I had one for you.”

“So is the gun louder with it off?”

“
Don't
fire that thing, we don't know what it'll do.” Nolan peered over the edge of the stairs.

Trudy leaned back against the staircase and looked at the gun. It was a horrible thing to give a kid. What were people thinking? Evil Nemesis Brandon's mother must have had a politically correct meltdown when she realized what was in the box, but she got it for him anyway. Well, good for ENB's mom. Trudy resisted the urge to pull the trigger and pulled on the silencer instead, which popped right off. “Whoops.”

“Shhhh.”

The silencer felt a little heavy for something that was basically a plastic cap. Trudy stuck her hand in her purse and found her miniflash. Hunching over to shield the light from the warehouse, she looked inside the cylinder. There was something rectangular stuck in there, about half an inch wide, with a slice of something white in it.

“Oh, hell,” Trudy said out loud.

“Shhhh.” Nolan turned on her. “You—”

“It's a thumb drive,” Trudy whispered.

“What?”

“The silencer. It's a USB key, a thumb drive, you know, a mini hard drive. It wasn't just the code in the instructions—”

Nolan leaned in to look, and Trudy felt him press warm against her as he took the silencer, his weight a comfort, especially since she knew she was holding something that Reese probably would shoot her for.

“This is not good,” she whispered.

“Oh, honey, this is great,” Nolan said in her ear. “Oh, babe, do you have any idea what you just found?”

“The thing Reese is going to kill me for?” Trudy said.

“He's not going to kill you,” Nolan said, but he didn't sound as though he were giving the thought his full attention. “Give me that doll.”

“No,” Trudy said. “You can have the silencer, but you can't have—”

She heard something and shut up as Nolan froze.

Then he leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “I need your tape.”

She frowned at him, and he began to go silently through her bags until he held up the Scotch tape she'd bought to wrap Leroy's Mac a million years ago. Then he put the gray plastic silencer on the underside of the gray railing along the wall and began to wrap tape around it.

Good thing I got the invisible kind,
she thought, and wondered if she was ever going to get home.

“Okay,” Nolan whispered when he was done. “We're going out there again. And I will distract them and this time you will run for the door even if your phone rings.”

“How are you going to distract them?”

“Give me that cow.”

“The cow?” Trudy handed over the bag with the cow and hugged the Mac to her.

“You pull the string and it talks, right?”

“It says, ‘Eat chicken.'”

“Right. Come on.”

“Aren't you going to kiss me good-bye again?”

“No. I'm going with you this time.”

“That's good, I like that better,” Trudy said, and followed him down the stairs again, clutching the Mac and the Twinkletoes bag.

When they were back at the end of the row by the door, Nolan pulled the string and wrapped it around the cow's body. “Door's there,” he whispered, nodding toward it.

She nodded back and gripped the nail file in her pocket while he drew his arm back.

“With your shield or on it, cow,” he said, and tossed it over the shelves.

The string unwound itself before the cow cleared the top, and it mooed, “Eat chicken” as a fusillade rang out. Nolan shoved her toward the door, and she ran for it, hitting Reese, who was running around the end of the shelves, his eyes still red and streaming from the Mace as he raised his gun. He grabbed for her, and she stabbed him in the gun arm, dropping her Twinkletoes bag but still clutching the Mac as he screamed, and then she kicked him in the knee and ran like hell for the door, wrenching it open as Reese fired, hearing the bullet ping on the metal as she dove for the darkness.

*   *   *

Trudy ran for the edge of the parking lot, clutching the Mac, adrenaline pumping, not stopping when she heard,
“Hold it!”

Somebody grabbed Trudy's arm and swung her around and she saw it was the cabdriver.
“Give me that doll,”
he said.

“No.”
She smacked him with the bag and as he raised one hand to protect his head, she saw the gun in the shoulder holster under his leather jacket.

“Damn it,”
she said, and swung her elbow sharply into his solar plexus, stamped down on his instep, punched him in the nose, and then tried to kick him in the groin and missed and got his thigh instead, collapsing him onto the pavement.

Good enough,
she thought, and took off for the street, only to have somebody else grab her arm just as she reached the chain-link fence.

“No,”
she said, and tried to turn, but whoever it was wrapped his other arm around her waist and pulled her back against him.

“Stop it!” Nolan said. “It's me. Give me the Mac.”

“No,”
Trudy said, furious, and smacked her head back into his nose. She heard him swear and knew she'd gotten him, but he didn't let go, so she tried for his instep, but he jerked her off her feet.

“Trudy, stop it.”

She swung her elbow back again and missed, and he kicked her feet out from under her and dumped her onto the grimy, wet pavement, yanking her arms behind her.

“You couldn't make this easy, could you?” he said as her cheek scraped on the ground. “You had to be a hard-ass.”

“You bastard, you promised me I'd keep the doll,”
she said, and then she felt him yank her wrists together as he slapped handcuffs on her and took the Mac away from her.

“Trudy Maxwell. You've been taken into custody for criminal obstinacy.”

“Fuck you,” Trudy said into the pavement. “And you have to be an actual cop to take me into custody, which you are not, so don't think I'm not going to sue your ass for kidnapping.”

He put his arm under her and lifted her gently back onto her feet. “I'm not kidnapping you.”

“Yeah?” Her hair fell in her eyes and she couldn't brush it out, which made her madder. “You and Reese, this was all a setup. He didn't even shoot at you back there, he shot at me. You were working together.”

Nolan swung her around and gave her a gentle push back toward the warehouse. There were more cars there now and a van, and while she watched, somebody shoved Reese into the back of one of the cars. He was handcuffed.

“Not working with Reese,” Nolan said.

“I don't see any police department insignia on these cars,” Trudy said, shrugging off his hand as he prodded her forward. “In fact, I don't see any insignia at all.”

Nolan stopped her in the pool of light from one of the warehouse lamps and showed her his ID.

“‘NSA,'” Trudy read. “Very cute. Got one for the CIA and the FBI, too? How about FEMA, I hear they're really tough. Not as tough as double agents for the Chinese, of course. How dumb do you think I am?”

“Trudy, I am NSA, Reese was a double agent for the Chinese, and I really did try to help you.”

“Yeah,” Trudy said bitterly. “That's why I'm in handcuffs now.”

“You're in handcuffs because you're resisting,” Nolan said. “I'm trying to get a promotion here, and you're beating me up. It makes me look bad.”

“Great. That's what this is about, some damn promotion? Knock a helpless woman to the ground and steal her little nephew's Christmas present?”

“The ‘helpless' is debatable,” Nolan said as they went past the cabbie, who was dabbing at his bleeding nose and glaring at her. “You owe Alex an apology.”

“He attacked me.”

“He was trying to get you into the cab so he could get you away from here,” Nolan said. “He's one of ours.”

“He was trying to take the doll, so he's not one of mine,” Trudy said, and then she saw the woman they were moving toward. She was wearing a red and green bobble hat, but she didn't look like a Christmas shopper anymore. “Who the hell is she?”

“My boss,” Nolan said.

Trudy waited until they were in front of the woman, and then she said, “Is this guy really an NSA agent?”

“Yes.” The woman spoke without any expression whatsoever, which only made Trudy madder.

“Well, he groped me in that warehouse,” Trudy said.

“I'm not at all surprised,” the woman said, and held her hand out for the Mac.

Nolan gave it to her.

“You
bastard,
” Trudy said.

“Trudy, it's national security.”

“No, it isn't,” Trudy snapped. “You got the codes when you got the instruction sheet, and then you got the USB key when you got the silencer. You don't need the doll. You don't care that a little kid is going to wake up tomorrow and know that everything in his world is a lie, that doesn't bother you—”

“Trudy,” Nolan said, misery in his voice.

“—as long as your
work
gets done.” She wrenched away from him, her hands still cuffed behind her. “You guys, guys like you and Reese and Prescott, you don't care about anything as long as you get what you want. Well,
fine,
you got it. Now take these handcuffs off me, because you know damn well you're not going to arrest me for anything.”

“You have to promise to stop hitting people,” Nolan said.

“Fine,” Trudy said. “I promise.”

He unlocked the cuffs and she kicked him in the shin. He said, “Ouch,” and grabbed at his leg.

“You promised me,” Trudy said. “You said I could trust you, and I was as dumb as Courtney, I believed you.” She turned back to his boss. “You need me for anything else or can I go home to my devastated family?”