"So all of it?"
"Pretty much, yeah."
"We'll be back in an hour."
After they left, Chester asked, "Now what?"
"Now we wait," I told her. "We can't do anything until we hear from Drama."
"At which point what?" She was pulling pieces of stuffing from the hole in the sofa, apparently unaware she was doing it.
"She either tells us what she wants for Lady Antonia, or she'll tell us to keep waiting."
Her fingers stopped moving and she got shrill again. "We can't keep waiting, someone is bound to notice she's gone missing! I should be making calls as it is, I should be making excuses for her absence…"
"Soon as we get this sorted you'll be on the phone, lying through your teeth," Moore interrupted. "We have to wait until after the Fed is dispensed with."
She straightened, indignant. "I wasn't planning on saying that Her Ladyship had been kidnapped, Mr. Moore."
"She's got a point," Corry said.
"Of course not." Moore sounded annoyed. "The story should be that Her Ladyship has fallen ill, food poisoning will do fine. I'm not asking for any grand fabrication."
"That's not what I mean," Corry explained. "Drama's window is as limited as ours. She can't tease this out for too long, because as much as we try to keep the lid on, something's going to leak out. With all the media attention Her Ladyship gets, we can't have much more than twenty-four hours."
"Maybe a little longer," Chester said. "I can be very convincing."
"Good," I said. "Her life will depend on that."
Chester smiled ice at me. "At least she can rely on me."
The intercom went off again just before two, Scott Fowler asking me to please let him inside, and I responded by telling him instead that I'd be right down. I came off the button before he could ask why, told Moore I was going to be gone for a few minutes, and that if Drama called, to tell her I'd call her back.
Chester, still slowly destroying my couch, didn't think that was very funny at all.
Fowler was leaning against the side of the building as I stepped out, and the first thing he said was, "What the hell happened to your face?"
"Keith caught me with a wild arm," I said.
"Thought Moore bagged him."
"Hey, I helped."
One of his eyebrows rose slightly as he took another look at my jaw. "Why don't you want me coming upstairs?"
"I can't tell you."
"Why isn't Lady Ainsley-Hunter at the Edmonton?"
"I can't tell you."
"Why did you call Bridgett and try to pretend you were someone else?"
That threw me for a moment.
"Her cell phone identifies the incoming number." Scott tapped his forehead with an index finger. "Nothing escapes the ever-vigilant eye of the FBI."
"You're thinking of the Pinkertons."
"I'm thinking there's something going on and you're freezing me out. And I'm thinking there are a couple of reasons you might do that, none of them good, and one of them might have to do with the Backroom Boys." He shoved his hands into his pants pockets, frowning at me. "I'll ask again, and you can give me an answer."
"No, I'll give you a response, and it'll be the same one you just heard."
"What's going on, Atticus?"
I looked him in the eye and said, "I'm in a bad position, Scott. I know you're on the job, but so am I, and right now I've got a situation with my principal that requires my discretion."
"I'm listening."
"She's upstairs right now. She's well protected. She's also got company."
"Company how?"
I didn't say anything, hoping he'd do the math for me. He did.
"Male or female?"
"I can't say."
"You can tell me."
I shook my head. "I can't, Scott. I've already said too much. She's afraid you'll report something back and that it'll leak out of the Bureau office and to the media…"
"We don't do that kind of shit, Atticus, you know that."
"I know you, Scott," I said. "She doesn't. She's used to dealing with the British tabloids, you understand? She's gun-shy, she's scared of being discovered, and my job is to protect not only her person, but her reputation. The thing with Keith this morning really rattled her, we got her back to the hotel, she told me that she wanted this arranged. She's young and in love, what can I say?"
He searched my face a second longer, then looked up the side of the building, as if he might be able to see into my apartment windows. "And you're using your place instead of the Edmonton because it's easier to slip in and out unnoticed?"
"There's a fear that some of the staff at the Edmonton could be bought. She's worried about photographs."
He accepted that with a nod, but I couldn't tell if he was believing me. "So how long is this going to last?"
"No idea. She had Chester cancel her appointments for today and tomorrow. Food poisoning."
"That'll work for a while."
"For a while. I'm hoping this won't last more than the night."
He smiled slowly. "What, you don't like listening?"
"What kind of guy do you take me for?"
"The kind who likes listening."
I laughed and he laughed, and then I said, "I need to head back up. I'll call you as soon as she's mobile again, all right?"
"Do that. And you can tell her that her secret's safe with me."
Chapter 12
Bridgett arrived thirty-nine minutes after Scott left, just in time to help Natalie, Corry, and Dale unload the gear. Dale had driven over in the hardened Benz, but he came back driving his van, with Natalie following in her Audi. With the addition of Bridgett's Porsche, that gave us three cars in case we had to go mobile. Moore, Chester, and I sorted the equipment as it arrived, putting the weapons in the living room, the electronics in the office, and the radio gear in the kitchen.
Once everyone was in the apartment, Corry set immediately to work getting the electronics in order, beginning by taking all our radios and swapping their batteries with fresh ones. Natalie, Dale, and Bridgett went back downstairs, this time to put tracking gear in all of the cars. The Porsche, the Audi, and my motorcycle would all be outfitted with tracers. Dale's van would be excluded, because he'd have one of the receivers, and that meant that the other receiver would be hooked up in the apartment. The nature of tracking – unless one has access to, say, a spy satellite – is that two units have to be used, otherwise it's impossible to triangulate the signal. Assuming that we would, indeed, be mobile at some point, the tracers would be vital.
Nonetheless I was surprised when I found Corry in the bedroom, going through my underwear drawer.
"Having fun?"
"I didn't know you wore boxers. Well, not boxers, these are those mutant things, those boxer-briefs." He held up a pair and in all seriousness asked, "Are these comfortable?"
"They're one of my favorites."
"Good. I'm going to sew a tracker into the elastic."
"That will make them less comfortable."
"I want to be able to find you if you get lost." He pulled a spool of thread from his back pocket, and a small plastic box of sewing needles. "I'll let you know when I'm done, then you can model them."
"Sure. Fine."
He nodded and began threading the needle. "Like the silk ones, by the way."
"They were a gift."
"Sure they were."
The last person who had commented on my silk boxer shorts had been Drama, and maybe because of that, I decided to let the matter drop.
Dale, Bridgett, and I pгеррed the weapons, cleaning all of the guns, then loading them one by one, making certain the safeties were set and that everything was working properly. Chester watched from the sofa, her legs drawn up beneath her as if she was afraid to set her feet on the floor.
"Are you planning to go to war?"
"You don't know Drama," Dale said. "This won't be enough."
"God save us," she muttered, and then got up and headed into the kitchen.
Bridgett was loading the Benelli when she stopped suddenly and grabbed my arm. I was chambering rounds into the Mossberg pump when she did it, and I nearly dropped the damn thing. As it was, I lost the box of twelve-gauge cartridges, sending them rolling around the floor and under my misbegotten couch.