Touch of Magic (9 page)

He was looking directly at her, as though his eyes
were taking a photograph. Channing felt the sudden and chilling realization that she was all on her
own. Bill Ellery didn't arrive till tomorrow. She had
no way of contacting him, or Oliver Lemming.

"Lovely afternoon," she said, summoning a lazy
smile.

Prepare the ground for later, when she made
contact, she decided.

  
A fraction of a second passed, and then
Ballieu
moved aside. Her nerves tingled as she entered the
winding path without looking back, knowing he was
behind her. Her ears strained, and for the first time,
on a gut level, she understood what Bill Ellery had
tried to tell her about this man: He was a killer. As
likely to strike as she was to brush her teeth. And
probably noiseless.

What was he doing here? He wasn't due till to
morrow.

By the time she emerged into the noise and hot concrete of poolside, her palms felt cold.

She found her way through the pool complex and
past tennis courts down to the bungalows, locating hers by the number on the key Wilbur had handed
her.
Serafin
, ensconced in the smaller of their unit's
two bedrooms, was watching TV.

"No going out without me," she said, and made her face a blank so he couldn't see her worry. She
didn't like this, being here on her own with
Ballieu
.
Should she start the plan into motion? Prudence told her not to, without a backup. Besides, she
hadn't been given the names of
Yussuf's
contacts
that were supposed to establish her authenticity.

Closing the door to her room, she showered and
changed. Then, removing the large piece of film from her purse, she started to practice. The cotton
underpants helped. Or she was getting better.
Maybe both. But her movements weren't as deft as
she wanted. It had taken fifty hours of practice, at
least, to perfect that trick with the coins she'd
learned for
Yussuf
. She didn't have a hundred hours
for this one. Grimly she repeated her movements over and over, the part that would make one piece of film vanish, the part that would make another
piece take its place.

Outside, the sky grew dark. Stars pricked their
way into being. From the other side of the door
Serafin's
voice, apologetic, broke into her concen
tration.

"Channing? Should we get some supper?"

She glanced at the clock.

"Oh,
Serafin
! I'm sorry."

She opened the door.

"Just let me hang up a few things."

Her everyday clothes could wait, but her care
fully rigged jackets and her black dress ought to go
on hangers. She hung the black dress first, smooth
ing its seams and straightening its pockets. Her fin
gers hit something and she stopped, remembering,
as she drew out a cassette tape.

"Instructions for a trick of
Yussuf's
," she said to
Serafin's
look of curiosity. "He gave it to me." She
turned it in her hand. "I'd forgotten ... and I
don't think I feel like hearing it just now. Maybe never." She stuffed it down into the side lining of
her suitcase. "Come on. I'm starved."

*
  
*
  
*

Still seething from
Ballieu's
tongue-lashing -- and
from her own failure --
Khadija
watched the woman
and the boy who seemed to be with her leave their
bungalow.

Now.

She had to find the tape or
Ballieu
would report
her.

Bastard, she thought. He could have searched
that house himself. Had he sent her to prove his own power, or was there something wrong with him? She'd seen him squeezing his belly.

  
Reluctantly she acknowledged that
Ballieu's
cau
tion now seemed justified. The woman had come
here. She knew something. She was a threat.

Khadija
began to move through the darkness, a
shadow in black slacks and high-necked black
jersey. She was eager to even scores with this
woman who had startled her two nights ago, who had come awake and thrown something so unexpectedly and made
Khadija
fail in her mission. Al
most never had she been thwarted in something
she set out to do for their cause -- never by another
woman.

She would not fail this time. American meddling had deprived her of a homeland. American money had bought the planes and weapons that had killed
her mother and little sister. Americans were wolves
who fed on the weak. Whether she found the tape
or not, killing the Stuart woman would be a triumph
for
Khadija's
people.

Glancing around to make sure she was unobserved, she unscrewed the light on the porch of the bungalow and in only a matter of seconds sprang
the lock on the door. The thin black gloves she wore
insured there would be no prints.
Khadija
felt in
creasing confidence. She was good at locks. Good at
rearranging electrical systems. She would show the
old bastard
Ballieu
how good she was. Then perhaps
she would mock him with what she knew.

With penlight in hand she began a methodical search of the bungalow. She found what she was
after so quickly, she was almost suspicious. Then she
decided that was just like a rich American woman,
hiding a valuable tape in the side of a suitcase. It
proved how stupid and weak such women were.

Khadija
stuffed the tape into her pocket, eyes
slit
ted
with pleasure. The easy part was all that re
mained. She removed the electrical switch plate
inside the bungalow door. She made a small rear
rangement in the electrical wiring. Coming in
across the darkened porch, the first thing anyone
was likely to do was reach for the light switch. It would look like an accident.

Stepping cautiously,
Khadija
carried the ice
bucket from the dresser into the bathroom, filled it with water, and, when she was safely on the other
side, door open behind her, upended it to leave a puddle where the Stuart woman would step. She
gave the bucket a toss. It landed agreeably near the wetness, as though it had tipped over, the culprit in
all this.

Allowing herself a brief, sullen smile of satisfac
tion,
Khadija
closed the door.

*
  
*
  
*

"Aw, Channing, can't I just play a couple more
games?"

Channing sighed, glad to find that
Serafin
was a
normal twelve-year-old, at least when it came to addiction to video games. They'd found the arcade
when they went exploring the main lodge complex
after dinner.

Now, at the edge of one of the terraces, she considered. He'd be safe in the arcade, and she had her
kunjar
around her waist. On the way to dinner one
of the guests had complimented her on her belt.

"All right," she said, shelling out a couple of dol
lars. "Stay there, though. I'll come and find you."

  
Relieved to leave the party-time noise of the
lodge behind her, she made her way down a walk to
the twisting path that led to the bungalows. Of all
the resort's accommodations, these were the most private, probably designed for honeymooners,
Channing thought. Each sat well back from the
path and apart from its neighbors. As she reached the point where she'd leave the main path to walk
toward her door, Channing stopped.

The light was out. It shouldn't worry her, yet she
was starting to have the feeling of too many coinci
dences. The break-in, the brown car that had been
behind her all the way from L.A., and
Ballieu
here ...
.

"I help you, lady?"

A Mexican maintenance man scrambled up from
his knees. He'd been fixing a sprinkler, she saw now.
She hadn't noticed him there.

"No ... no, it's all right, thanks."

But he'd seen the direction in which she was look
ing.

"That your cabin? With light out? You twist an
kle? I go put on light inside so you can see some."

He brandished keys.

"No, don't bother--"

She started after him as he hurried to help. In the
darkness she stumbled and dropped her purse,
which spilled its contents.

"Damn!"

Probably she was just imagining things. She
paused to sweep items back toward the mouth of
her purse. Surely they'd made enough noise to scare
off anyone waiting inside, hadn't they?

  
"I come right back with new bulb for porch," the maintenance man called cheerfully over his shoul
der.

He unlocked her door as he spoke and reached
inside.

The darkened doorway seemed to explode in
sparks, gold against black, a thin deadly fountain.
Channing heard a terrible crackling, high-voltage
buzz. She stumbled to her feet as his body fell.

Halfway there, her tightly strung nerves picked
up a sound behind her. She whirled.

"Channing?"

The voice, her racing brain told her, belonged to
Bill Ellery. He was coming toward her.

"How's everything going?"

The words sounded closer but she could just
make out his shape against the backlit path. Her
tongue froze.

He wasn't supposed to arrive till tomorrow! What
was he doing here? She was suspicious of him. She
was suspicious of
Ballieu
. She pitched her voice to
reach anyone near, anyone in the neighboring bun
galows.

"Help me!" she called. "Someone please help me!
A man's been electrocuted!"

Six

Members of the resort's executive staff darted
down the path to the bungalows like bees from a
hive. Their hushed and frantic buzzing had nothing to do with the loss of a man's life, everything to do
with business.

"Is the body covered?"

"Jesus! Let's hope they don't use a siren and spook
the guests!"

"If the press shows up, you handle them!"

They jostled Channing as Bill Ellery began to steer her away from the area. His mouth was set.
His grip on her elbow was half protective, half warning. Behind them, the entrance to her bunga
low was being roped off. What few guests happened
along were being rerouted with some story about a
faulty transformer. Only minutes had passed.

"I thought you weren't arriving till morning."
Channing fought to control her voice.

"I got restless."

Ellery pulled her out of the way as two more hotel officials came huffing toward the site of the tragedy.

"Are you okay, dear?" one of them asked, pausing
to turn.

"Of course she's not all right!" snapped Ellery.
"She's just seen a man electrocuted!"

  
He shoved her into a corridor of the lodge that
was mercifully empty. Channing felt glad for the
bruising hold he had on her, even for his anger. Was
it weak to feel shaken? This was the second time in
four days she'd seen someone die.

"No one's supposed to know why I'm here, except
you and Oliver." She kept her voice just above a whisper, the shaken feeling giving way to rage at
last. All she'd felt, all her suspicions of these last few
minutes, began to spew free. "That man was inno
cent -- he died in something set up for me. And don't tell me you believe what happened was an
accident! I never touched that ice bucket -- never put anything in it to spill. For another thing, Ballieu's
already here. I've seen him. How else can you
explain what happened?"