Merit Badge Murder (11 page)

"Just trying to fit in," Riley said. He looked worried. Something bothered him enough to go all undercovery on me.

"So what's up?" I asked, taking another drink.

"You know, I've been in shitholes all over the world. It always amazes me when I find them here in the U.S.," Riley snarled.

Wow. It must be worse than I thought.

"This is a good place," I said defensively. "The owners have had it all their lives, and their kids work here." I indicated the two young men working the bar. "It's clean, and the food is great. So give it a break, Andrews. Why am I here?"

Just then the waitress dumped two baskets full of beer-battered French fries and the biggest burgers Riley had probably ever seen. The Reuben Burger truly is a work of art. Half a pound of corn-fed Iowa beef, piled high with corned beef, smothered in melted Swiss cheese, and topped off with fresh, authentic German sauerkraut. The buns were made of rye bread. I took a huge bite and savored it.

Riley watched me, bug-eyed, before picking up the bun and staring at what was underneath. I went up to the bar and grabbed a small plate, which I brought back and filled with ketchup. I dipped a couple of fries, ate, and washed it all down with beer. Heaven.

"I'm not going to talk to you until you at least take a bite," I said. His snobbery was bothering me. He'd picked the place, after all. What did he expect them to serve? Bean sprouts? I was pretty sure they still tarred and feathered you here if you asked for that.

Riley shot me a look before lifting the huge burger to his mouth and taking a fairly plausible bite. His expression changed from horror to surprise. He chewed, swallowed, then ate a couple of fries.

"That's pretty good," he said. "I owe you an apology."

"Whatever." I rolled my eyes. "What's wrong?"

Riley held up two fingers. "Two things. First, the Middle East office picked up some chatter about you. Al-Qaeda's considering a jihad against you for Ahmed's death."

"What?" I wasn't quite sure I heard that right. "For a moment there I thought you'd said Ahmed's friends have called for a holy war against me."

"They're just considering it. I thought you should know," he added.
"Okay…" I said slowly as I tried to digest this information, "next you'll be telling me the Colombian Cartel is coming after me."

There was a brief pause as Riley smiled weakly, "Actually…"

"Oh come on! Really?" I slapped my hand on the table. I was more angry than anything. If I was smart, I would've been terrified. But I wasn't. Smart, that is.

He nodded. "We're on top of it. We have some inside guys trying to spread misinformation. Hopefully, they'll give up on the idea before they start auditioning hit men."

"Hopefully?" I just stared at him. "We can't get a little more concrete on that? Like maybe
definitely
or
absolutely
?"

"I'm working on it. I don't want you to worry about it. Think of it as something that's being taken care of."

I grumbled, "I'd rather think of it as something that didn't happen at all." Great. Now I also ran the risk of being hunted by two different kinds of terrorists. Which is fine if you're actually still an employee of the CIA, but not so great if you are retired. Maybe instead of getting a cat, I should get an attack dog. Or two.

"What's the other thing?" I asked. "You said there were two things you had to tell me. I'm hoping this won't be as bad as having al-Qaeda and the Colombians after me."

Riley sighed. "I don't think you're the target," he said, looking at me as if that piece of news would upset me.

"Oh good. So this will all blow over and go away then," I said, taking another bite of burger.

He shook his head. "It won't. Not as long as Lana's at your house."

I dropped the burger into the basket. "What? You think Lana's the target? But that's ridiculous. She showed up after Ahmed and Carlos. Whoever is doing this didn't even know she was coming here."

"I've found several connections between Lana and all three dead guys." He shrugged. "Several," he repeated—which was unnecessary since I'd heard him the first time. "I haven't found a secure connection on all three to you."

I frowned. "It still doesn't make sense. Why make it look like they are targeting me?"

"Red herring," he said.

"You know, you use that phrase too much." I pointed a fry at him before eating it. I thought about asking the waitress to bring me some mayonnaise. I liked dipping my fries in mayo. But that would probably give Riley an empathetic heart attack.

"The bad guys—let's call them
X
— wanted us to think of you as the target. They wanted us to worry about and fuss over you. Then, while we were focused on that, they'd go after Lana."

I shook my head. "No. I still come back to the fact that Ahmed showed up dead at the camp, where Mr. X knew I'd be. Then he threw Carlos in front of my car. Lana didn't even come into play until after that."

"Mr. X?" Riley asked.

I shrugged. "It's more sinister than just
X
, don't you think? Or
Dr. X
. That might be better."

He rolled his eyes. "I don't understand how the murders of Ahmed and Carlos are involved either," Riley said. Half of his fries were gone now. "But the connections are there, and they are hard to refute."

I sighed. "Okay, what are the connections?" I didn't really think this Monsieur X (kind of a French twist to that one) was after Lana. But Riley must've felt he was being ignored, so I'd hear him out. I hoped this didn't mean I wasn't still getting a forged backstory from the CIA. I was kind of looking forward to that.

Riley held up one finger. "Number one, Lana had a connection to Ahmed. The Russian mob had sent her to the Middle East on two separate occasions to serve as a liaison. We don't know what she did there, but in each case she entered Ahmed's safe house and left a couple of hours later."

I nodded. "Okay, so that makes sense. The Arabs love blonde, blue-eyed bimbos. I can see where that might work. But maybe she didn't even meet with Ahmed. They wouldn't risk exposing him like that. Chances are she met with underlings."

Riley shook his head. His fries were gone, and he was now eating mine. I pretended I didn't see that. "Ahmed's always had a thing for blondes. He went through a slew of European prostitutes over the years. Hell, I almost bleached your hair and sent you in there once."

"What? You almost what?" I stared at him. Part of me thought,
Well, you wished you'd been hot enough to be used for sex
, but the other part of me wanted to strangle my former handler with a bar rag. A dirty, greasy one.

"I didn't
do
it." Riley waved me off like this was no big deal. "I just said I thought about it." Like that was okay.

"I told you," I growled through clenched teeth, "that I didn't do stuff like that. Don't you remember that I specifically told you the 'sex-for-secrets' thing was a total no-go?" I was pissed. I'd always thought of our working relationship as a partnership. I had no idea he thought he could dress me up and whore me out anytime he wanted.

"I didn't do it, Merry." He rolled his eyes like he didn't know what the big deal was. "It's a non-issue."

I glared at him for a few moments. Toyed with the thought of killing him with a straw right here. Straws make excellent weapons. You just need to put your thumb over one end and it'll go through an eyeball like nothing.

"It's not a non-issue," I hissed.

"Fine. Whatever," he said, throwing his hands up in the air. "We can argue about that later. The important thing is that Lana met with him, and may have had sex with him, on two occasions."

"You thought you controlled me so thoroughly that you could just send me out to sleep with anyone." He reached out for one of my fries, and I yanked the basket out of reach.

Riley sighed. "I didn't do it, Wrath. I thought of it for, like, about one second, but I didn't act on it."

I folded my arms across my chest. "The fact you thought about it is bad enough."

"Let's deal with this later. We need to focus on the task at hand."

"Which is? That Herr X (German was definitely more sinister) is after Lana? You still haven't proved your point," I said with a hint of total hostility. I wasn't going to let him off the hook, but we needed go over whatever it was he thought he had.

"Wait for it." He held up two fingers. "Number two—I found flight records showing Lana made six different trips to Medellín over the last two years."

"That doesn't necessarily mean she met Carlos the Armadillo. Maybe she was on vacation." I said that, but to be honest, now I was starting to wonder. I mean, who goes to Medellín on vacation?

Riley nodded. "Yes, but each time, she took the same taxi out to the country—to the same location as Carlos' third home. The place where he goes with his mistresses." He sat back in the booth and loosened his tie a little. "I had Espinoza, our South American guy, check into it. Lana always used the same cab driver from the same cab company. Always." What was with him repeating things to me? Did he think I was an idiot? I needed to talk to him about that.

"Espinoza is good…" I murmured. He was used for everything down there. "But why would Lana be so stupid as to use the same cab and driver every time?" I felt a small nibble of doubt in my stomach. Until just recently I'd thought Lana stupid enough to do something like that.

Riley ignored me. "And the third thing is that we found a connection between Lana and Midori."

My head snapped up at that. "Lana told me that Midori was a real bitch. She didn't say anything more. I chalked it up to those rumors we'd heard about the Russian mob and the Yakuza."

He nodded. "They had the closest connection of all. Lana was holed up with a highly-placed Russian official back in 2012, for about nine months. Midori was his aunt."

My eyes grew wide. "What? Are you serious? Midori had family? I'd heard that she ate her young."

"So you see—we have a bit of a problem here." Riley sat back, ignoring my jab. His basket was completely empty. He'd eaten all of it. I thought of warning him that he should get some antacid for tonight but changed my mind.

"Lana!" I cried.

"What is it?" Riley asked.

"I left her at home. Alone!"

Riley threw money on the table, and we ran out to his SUV and climbed in. His car was faster, and I had the keys to the house. I dialed the cell Riley had bought Lana before he'd dumped her at my place, but there was no answer.

"If she's the target, I left her alone…practically gift-wrapped!" I shouted. How could I be so stupid? I dialed again. No answer.

"We weren't gone that long," Riley said. "She's probably just in the shower or something." But he didn't sound like he believed that.

It took six minutes to reach the house. We roared up into the driveway and ran to the front door. I fumbled with the keys until I got the right one. Then we burst into the house.

"Lana!" I shouted as I ran back to the bedrooms. Riley went into the kitchen. We met in the hallway.

"She's not here!" I said. Riley nodded. The house wasn't that big. If she was there, we'd have found her.

"I'll search her room. You try her phone," I said over my shoulder as I took off down the hall.

Her door was open. All of her stuff was still inside. There was no sign of a struggle. It looked like she'd just gone for a walk with every intention of coming back.

I called Kelly. It was a slim chance, but maybe, for some inexplicable reason, Lana had gone off to visit with her new friend. Kelly answered and told me she was at work. Robert wouldn't be home either. It was a dead end.

"Any luck?" Riley stuck his head in the room.

"No. You?" There was a slight hint of panic in my voice.

"Nothing."

"This is all my fault." I looked around the room again. "I should never have left her alone. I should've brought her with me."

Riley put his hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye. "This is not your fault. And I didn't want you to bring her with you. I needed to bounce these ideas off of you before approaching Lana."

"Yes, but you should've given me a hint, and I could've parked her at Kelly's or something." I wasn't really mad at Riley. I was mad at myself. And a little surprised. A few days ago I would've done anything to get rid of the Russian. Now I was worried about her and wanted her back. Did that make sense? Yes, because she's great with my Girl Scouts, and I kinda sorta enjoyed having her around a little bit. Believe it—no one's more surprised about this than me.

"Who else did she meet here?" Riley asked. "Besides Kelly?"

I felt a twinge as he said my best friend's name, but I ignored it. "Well, she helped with my Girl Scout troop today. The girls loved her. But I don't think we should put second-graders on the watch list."

"Has she called anyone? Acted weird?" Riley asked.

"I have no idea. She's in her room a lot. She takes really long showers and spends an hour on her hair afterwards. As for weird, I don't think so. Do you think maybe she thought of this too and fled? Would she do that?" I asked.

Riley shook his head. "I don't think so. You don't seem to think any of her stuff is missing." His gaze swept the room, taking in clothes, the air mattress, cosmetics. "How did she go from a woman with nothing but a dress and stilettos to having so much stuff?"

"I took her shopping." I said. "You'll be getting a bill." Everything seemed to be there—I didn't see anything missing.

Where did she go? And how long had she been gone? I was really worried about her. Now that Riley thought she was the target of Overlord X (Yes! That's the one!), all I could think about was making sure she was alright. I would never forgive myself if anything happened to Lana.

The front door slammed. Riley and I raced down the hall to find one giggly blonde with none other than
my
Detective. Lana had her arm looped over his, and Rex was clearly enjoying her company.

Now I wanted her gone. All concern for her safety flew right out the window. She'd taken things too far.