“ Mansfield, I work for you, but I don’t have to. You don’t get to use that tone of voice with me.”
“ Yeah, yeah.” He waved a hand in front of himself, started for the kitchen. His martini had been interrupted, it was time to rectify the situation.
“ I’m serious. I am not one of your lackeys.”
“ Sorry,” he said. “You want one?” He held up the shaker.
“ You know I do.”
He made one for himself, one for her.
“ It’s good,” she said after taking a sip.
“ Glad you like it.” He went to the dining room, took a seat at the table. She did, too.
“ So what was so urgent that I had to drop everything and come right over?”
“ Tucker says you went rogue, that you’re going to take out Amy Eisenhower, without clearing it with him. Or more importantly, with me.”
“ I’m trying to keep my temper here.” She slid her hand into the backpack she always seemed to have with her. He hadn’t noticed it earlier, probably because he’d been too excited to pay attention. She had a gun in there, probably more than one. She was the only person in the world who could get close to him armed. His security had been warned to leave her be when she approached him. She was never searched, never would be. She was a coiled snake without a conscience, but she was his snake.
“ Hold your horses. I’m not upset.”
“ Then why am I here?”
“ I’ll get to that.” He took a sip of his martini, trying to slow the conversation down so he could get his bearings. “But first I want you to know how much Tucker and I appreciate all you’ve done for us.”
“ I don’t go rogue.” She eased her hand out of the backpack. “Amy Eisenhower copied Tucker’s files to a CD. I got it back and I decided to take care of her before she got a chance to go to the authorities. And I decided to do it gratis, something I never, ever do. I was willing to do this for you, because Tucker was out of the country. Because I couldn’t get through to you. And because of our long association. But I made a couple mistakes.”
“ Go on.”
“ One, I left a message on Tucker’s voice mail. That was stupid, because he still had feelings for the girl. He told her grandmother, who threw a spanner into my plans.”
“ And the other mistake?” This is what Mansfield had been waiting for, hoping for.
“ I let my temper get the better of me and I took out granny. Shot her through the heart.” She shook her head. “It was a stupid thing to do. A waste of a good weapon. A waste of my talent. And I put myself at risk for no reason.”
“ You shot her through the heart.”
“ Yes.”
“ So it’s true.” He sighed. For the first time in many months he felt hope. A great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
“ Yes, she’s dead.”
“ I’d like to thank you for that.”
“ You wanted Granny dead.”
“ Yes. You’ll get your usual fee for that.” He gave her a smile, something he didn’t do often these days. “I would’ve wired the money as soon as I’d heard she’d been taken care of, but I had to hear it from you, that it was you who took care of it.”
“ I didn’t expect this.”
“ It’s okay, we appreciate everything you do for us and the last thing I’d want you to think is that we’d take advantage of you.”
“ That’s nice to hear,” Lila said.
“ Now about the granddaughter, Amy Eisenhower. I don’t want her dead.”
“ Don’t tell me you’re going soft because Tucker has feelings for her.”
“ Hardly.”
“ Then what?”
“ I want her alive.”
“ So you want me to leave her be.”
“ Not exactly. I’d like you find her and bring her to me. Alive. Double your usual fee.”
“ Go on.”
“ You get the extra money for two reasons. One, because you don’t get to kill her. I know how much you like to do that. And two, because this is between you and me, I don’t want Tucker to know.”
“ Why not?”
“ Because he has feelings for the girl, because she’s betrayed his trust and because now it’s personal. There was a time when I didn’t need you, because I took care of my own problems. I’m too old and too sick to go out and find her myself, so I need you for that, but I want to get my hands dirty with this one and I want to enjoy it. I want you to bring her here, drugged, with her hands cuffed behind her back.”
“ Why, Mansfield, I’m impressed.”
“ There’s more.”
“ Amy has a twin.”
“ No she doesn’t!”
“ Not a sister. A cousin, at least I think she’s a cousin. She’s also named Isadora. They’re identical, except for the eyes. Amy’s are blue, the cousin’s are brown. I want her, too, same way, drugged up and hands cuffed behind her back. I believe they’ll be together, so if you find one, you’ll find the other.”
“ Two of them,” Lila said. “That’s going be harder.”
“ And that’s why I’m paying you double your usual fee for the cousin as well.”
“ You’re being very generous, Mansfield.”
“ These women took something from me.” He met Lila’s eyes straight on. Like him, she could spot a liar. “Now I’m going to take something from them.” He wasn’t lying, he was going to take something from them, something precious. “Can you do this for me?”
“ Yes.”
Lila Booth’s liar radar was on full alert. He wasn’t lying to her. However, he wasn’t telling her the whole truth either, but he was offering too much money for her to decline. He probably knew that.
She preferred dealing in death. Dead people don’t testify. Still, she was confident she could find the girls and complete her mission in short order, thanks to the GPS tracker she’d put on Amy Eisenhower’s car. Its software was linked to Google Earth, so a couple minutes on her computer when she got home and she’d have Amy pinned down. And if the girls were together, as Mansfield said they would be, then all she had to do was round them up.
“ And to make your job easier, I have a gift for you.” Mansfield got up from the table, went to an antique hutch, opened the cabinet, took out a wooden box. He brought it to the table. “The box is teak. I had it made to house a special weapon.” He gave her a grin, not like the smile he’d favored her with earlier. This was his getting even grin, she’d seen it before and she was afraid of it.
He opened the box.
“ This is an X-2 Gauged CO2 pistol.” He was holding the pistol and looking at it the way a mother might a newborn. “It’s made out of 6061 machined aluminum, so it’s tough and reliable and it’s the best dart pistol money can buy.”
“ It looks like Han Solos’ blaster.”
“ Maybe, but this blaster doesn’t kill. It shoots a tranquilizing dart.” He reached back into the teak box, brought out a couple darts. “These babies are loaded with five cc’s of Ketamine mixed with a powerful sedative. Shoot the girls with these and they’ll go down and they’ll be out. When they wake up, I want them here.”
“ You’re asking a lot.”
“ That’s why you get the big bucks.” He handed her the gun. “How’s it feel?”
“ Heavy.”
“ Three pounds.”
“ I like the feel of a good weapon.”
