Friday#3

"Do you want me to cook?"

She turned around. "You quit, you lying, cheating bastard?—"

Agnes, you dumbass, you need him.

"I know," Taylor said. "That was wrong."

Agnes ...

Dr. Garvin, I hate him.

Okay, first of all, this isn't Dr. Garvin, this is you, talking to yourself, obviously, so pull yourself together.

Second, you need help and he owes you big.

Third, you can use this to your advantage, if you'd get your head out of your butt and stop doing the easiest thing, which is anger, but no, you have to wallow in your emotions and hide behind your rage, so go ahead and screw up your life again. Go ahead. Feel free.

I want Dr. Garvin back.

"What's Joey got in there?" Taylor reached around her and opened the fridge, and Rhett growled again, and Agnes hesitated and then bent to pat the dog.

"It's okay, Rhett," she whispered, and the dog looked at her as if to say, Sucker, and then padded back to his place under the table and collapsed into semi-slumber.

"Huh," Taylor said. "Okay. Sure." He began to take things out of the fridge. "Get me a tray or a box or something so I can get this stuff down to the kitchen in the barn. Did you do the dessert?"

"Raspberry-chocolate heart-shaped cakes," Agnes said. "I covered them with ganache and plated them, and I'm going to use raspberry sauce as ... Look, Taylor?—"

He closed the fridge door and opened the cupboard next to it. "I screwed up. I know this won't make up for it, but it's something. And besides ..." He grinned down at her. "I want to show the Keyeses I can cook."

You gonna be smart or you gonna be dumb, Agnes?

Agnes drew a deep breath. "You want back in. You've looked around and realized you backed the wrong woman and that the Keyeses aren't going to side with Brenda, especially since she's losing her grip and killing people now, and your future is going down the tubes, and you want to switch sides."

"Yes." He looked embarrassed but determined.

"So you want to come back so you can be part of the wedding and have the catering business and the Two Rivers Cookbook and everything we were going to do."

"Yes." He was eager now, and she began to see how easy it had been for Brenda to lay things out for him. Almost like leaving a trail of bread crumbs for him to follow.

"Okay," Agnes said, starting her own trail. "You can cater the dinner tonight and the wedding tomorrow, on two conditions. The first is that you work your ass off on this wedding and make sure it happens. You are on my side now, and you do everything in your power to make sure this wedding happens and that I keep the house."

"Yes," Taylor said.

"The second is that you sign your share of the house over to me." Taylor's face went blank.

"I'll finish the cookbook with you, and I'll let you cater out of the barn, but you sign your share of this place over to me. You tried to swindle me out of it, you sign it over to me. The house belongs to me entirely. I get it all."

"Agnes," Taylor said, trying to smile. "Agnes, honey, with the down payment and everything I put into the barn, that's over a hundred and fifty thousand?—"

"The high price of being a bastard," Agnes said. "You sign your half of the house over to me, and I'll finish the cookbook with you and let you cater from the barn. Otherwise you lose everything."

Taylor tried one more charming smile, which slid right off Agnes, and then he nodded. "All right. But maybe when you've had time to think about us again?—"

"I never think about us," Agnes said. "Us is deader than a doornail. I have a new Us, and I'm keeping it. The only thing I want you for is this rehearsal dinner and the wedding tomorrow. Cook. And show Garth how to do everything, because you need an assistant and he needs skills, and for God's sake, try to remember whose side you're on this time."

Taylor nodded and emptied her cupboards while she went to get a tray for him, not even trying to understand why he'd do anything like what he'd done to her, just crossing her fingers he'd stay on her side until the wedding was over or until Brenda found out what he was doing and came after him with whatever she was driving next. She was really going to miss Dr. Garvin.

"We're much obliged, Mister Jimbo,"Carpenter said as the shrimp boat edged up to the floating dock at Two Rivers three hours later.

"Just Jimbo," the burly man at the wheel of ancient boat said.

Shane watched in the furious silence he'd maintained since they'd hauled Joey ashore on the closest island and then used Carpenter's sat phone in its waterproof case—of course Carpenter had his phone in a waterproof case—to let Joey call for help.

It had taken Jimbo a while to reach them, and Joey had done a guilt-stricken play by play over letting Agnes down on catering the rehearsal dinner, saying now they'd be sitting down to the dinner, now it was dessert, now they'd be breaking up for the bachelor and bachelorette parties, until Shane thought about holding his uncle's head under water just to shut him up. It should have been a great relief to be on board the shrimp boat, watching Jimbo expertly reducing the throttle while turning the large wheel at the same time, but it was just one more thing that was pissing Shane off. He was supposed to be an expert, too, but if you judged by his performance the past couple of days, he was a fucking beginner, they'd have kicked him out of Hitman Prep, hell, they'd have kicked sand in his face at the Hitman Preschool?—

The boat touched the floats on the edge of Agnes's dock with the slightest of bumps. Shane's chest throbbed with pain, but it didn't appear that anything had been broken, so at least his body hadn't betrayed him?—

"I owe you one," Joey said to Jimbo, touching the white bandage on his forehead.

"Call me any time you need help, Joey," Jimbo said.

Shane could see lights on in every window in the main house and hear loud music thumping away in the barn, pretty much in time to the vein pulsing in his forehead —

"Sounds like we made it back in time for the bachelor party, but not the dinner," Carpenter said. "I sure would have liked to have had some of that turkey?—"

Shane ignored him, and Carpenter fell silent as they trooped off the boat onto the dock.

Shane led the way up the metal plank to the high dock and then down the long walkway to land.

"You know," Joey said, "it wasn't your fault?—"

Shane shot him a look, and Joey shut up.

At the top of the dock Carpenter said, "My friend, you are taking this too much to heart," and Shane faced him. "That's three times— four if I count the time I ran into Casey Dean in the woods—that he's beaten me. It's obvious he uses women to front for him and protect him. That redhead in the room in Savannah with Marinelli was one of Casey Dean's people, the same one with the RPG on the boat while he drove. And I let her go."

"You might be missing something," Carpenter said.

"That's what I'm saying. I've been missing a lot of things," Shane said with a glare at Joey. "But that's done with."

He turned and went on and then stopped short of the house, hearing the sound of girls giggling and catching the silhouette of a skimpily clad woman in one of the upstairs windows. "Great," he muttered.

"Bachelorette party," Carpenter said. "Lisa Livia told me that?—"

"I don't care," Shane snapped. He cocked his head, listening to the music coming from the barn.

"Bachelor party," Carpenter said. "You know, Casey Dean's target, given that it's not your uncle here?—"

"Hey," Joey said in warning, but Carpenter spoke over him.

"—and on the off chance it's not you, will most likely be at the bachelor party. Although the bachelorette party could be interesting."

"Focus," Shane said.

"There's a shower in the barn in the rear," Carpenter said. "I could grab some clothes for us from my van. We could get cleaned up." He sniffed. "You might not be aware of it, but we smell of?—"

"Get the clothes." Shane turned on his heel and headed down the path for the barn. Carpenter disappeared into the dark, and Joey fell in beside Shane. They trudged up the path, their shoes making squeaking noises as water squished out of them.

Shane reached the barn. The music was overwhelming, and he could see a crowd of men inside split into two distinct groups: a bunch of a-couple-years-out-of-college former frat boys on one side with mugs of beer in their hands acting stupid with several kegs surrounding them and Palmer looking miserable in the middle with a flamingo hat on his head; and a smaller bunch of goombahs from New Jersey seated on the other side, shot glasses in hand, a neat row of bottles stacked on one of their tables. Shane noticed Hammond standing off to one side, looking equally miserable, with neither group.

"This looks like fun," Joey muttered.

"Downer invited the Don's men?" Shane shook his head. First the flamingos, now this. He recognized a tall figure seated at the rear of the mobsters. "That's the consigliere. You know him?"

Joey shook his head. "Nah. It's been twenty-five years since I seen any of those mutts."

"Let's go around and take the back stairs."

They skirted around the building and climbed up the stairs to the loft apartment. "You use the shower first," he told Joey. "Carpenter should be here in a minute."

Joey went into the bathroom while Shane went to the balcony door and cracked it open so he could look down on the barn floor. The frat boys were now chanting something Shane couldn't make out, all looking in one direction at something underneath the balcony. Shane opened the door further to see, when the lights in the barn went out for a moment, then a spotlight, controlled by Downer—who else?—was trained in the direction everyone had been staring. Shane edged forward and looked down.

Two of the groomsmen appeared below, pushing a large round bed toward the light. They stopped it and then ran to join their buddies. Shane noted that even the goombahs were perking up in anticipation.

The music suddenly changed, going from the loud thumping techno-whatever that had been playing, to what sounded like monks chanting in Latin.

Shane stepped back as Downer drunkenly turned the spotlight, which flickered over a slight figure dressed in black robes at the top of the stairs from the balcony. Downer corrected, bringing it back and fixing the figure in the glare: a woman dressed in a nun's habit and dress.

"This is going to be interesting," Carpenter said, coming up behind Shane.

The woman moved down the stairs, head bowed in apparent prayer—I'd be praying, too, with that crowd, Shane thought. She reached the bed, and the music abruptly shifted to Madonna's "Like a Virgin," and the nun began to dance, dropping pieces of her habit, which came as a surprise to no one, although the frat boys roared anyway. She took off her wimple to reveal her long blonde hair, and then she dropped her robe to reveal a lace bustier, a black leather miniskirt, and fishnet stockings. Downer yelled, "I always wondered what they wore under there!" and his buddies roared again while Palmer continued to drink and look miserable.

"And that's the future of America," Shane said.

"Downer?" Carpenter said. "Surely not."

The blonde jumped on the bed and unhooked her bustier to reveal perfect breasts, covered with pasties of pink-sequined flamingos. When she bumped, her breasts bumped, and the flamingos' sparkly heads bobbed. The flamingos were a terrible thing to do to a great pair of breasts, Shane thought, but you really couldn't help but watch the shiny pink sequins, and after a minute, there was something almost Zen about it. Then she shimmied the miniskirt off her washboard abs and the hoot grew louder: she was wearing garters and a

G-string, also decorated with sequined flamingos so that with every bump and grind, spangled flamingos bounced on her beautiful body. Jesus, Shane thought. That is truly tasteless. Agnes would look great in those flamingos.

And she'd laugh her ass off, too, if he showed up and handed them to her.

"That's for you, buddy!" Downer said as the stripper began to de-flamingo herself toward her big finish. He slapped Palmer on the back, making him spill his drink.

The goombahs watched, the consigliere in the back row with his arms folded. Evidently the flamingos weren't impressing them.

"Flamingos," Carpenter said. "Tasteful."

"Downer," Shane said. "Most likely to be shot by accident on purpose on Halloween."

Carpenter's phone rang and he answered it, his face growing serious. "I'll be right there," he said finally, and when Shane looked curious, he said, "Lisa Livia. She had a really bad day. If we're done, I'll go see her."

"What's going on?" Joey asked, coming out of the bathroom, rubbing his head with a towel. He looked out. "Flamingos?"

Shane shook his head. "We're done. I'm going to shower and then go find Agnes."

Carpenter nodded. "The flamingos got the blood going, didn't they?"

"Yeah," Shane said. "Flamingos. They do it for me every time. If Casey Dean's target is down there, he can have him."

By the timethe rehearsal dinner ended, Agnes had been ready to go out and stand in the water with Cerise and Hot Pink and scream. Jefferson Keyes had pinched the bridesmaids, Evie had ignored him by drinking steadily, and Lisa Livia had stared like a basilisk at her mother throughout. That, Agnes thought, was entirely understandable, given that LL had gone out to the yacht and confronted Brenda about her theft, and Brenda had flat out denied it and then accused Lisa Livia of breaking her heart with her suspicion. Because LL hadn't been quiet about it, the rest of the party had found out and had pretty much cut a wide swath around Brenda instead of making her the belle of the party as usual, so that by the end of the evening she was thin-lipped, her eyes narrow and sharp and often as not fixed on Agnes, who was getting all the compliments. Only Taylor had come through, serving a perfect dinner on the beautiful china he'd bought for his catering, and even he had kept up a running commentary that was practically a prospectus for Taylor's Two Rivers Catering Service. "The best thing you can say about this dinner," Agnes told Lisa Livia, tying on her Cranky Agnes apron to help with the cleanup, "is that it's over."

"The food was really good, and Garth was terrific," Lisa Livia said as they watched the teenager clear the tables with what was almost a practiced hand, looking like a fine upstanding citizen in the clothes Palmer had bought him and the haircut Palmer had made him get in exchange for the clothes. "And you got a lot of payback tonight. Taylor was all but wearing a hair T-shirt that said, I Married the Wrong Woman."

"Yes, and Brenda's going to make him pay for that," Agnes said. "My heart bleeds for him," Lisa Livia said, and went back to the house.

Taylor had caught her arm. "Thank you," he said, and his sincerity was clear.

"Dinner was great," Agnes said, because that was true.

"The wedding luncheon will be, too," he said eagerly. "I'm going to make it up to you?—"

"Did you sign the house over to me?" Agnes said flatly.

"Barry's bringing the papers tomorrow," Taylor said. "When he comes to the wedding. He's got them drawn up. We'll do it tomorrow morning. You can call him and ask."

"Until those papers are signed, you haven't even begun to make it up to me," Agnes said. "But the food was terrific."

When the barn had been cleared for the bachelor party, and Garth had been given money to go into town to the movies so he wouldn't be corrupted by the sight of the stripper, Agnes had gone down to talk to the flamingos as usual—"Butch is coming for you in the morning, swear to God, but at least you have each other, how's the shrimp?"— and then gone back to the house where the bachelorette party was in full swing upstairs and finally worked on her column.

Two hours later, she was still staring at her laptop screen. The recipe was done. She had the points she wanted to make: sturdy enough to hold the fondant, tastes great, reflects the personality of the bride and groom, and oh, those Romans, what a bunch of cutups, breaking the cake on the bride's head. But the column was ... blah.

She looked up at Palmer's groom's cake, the flamingo cake with the lurid green icing and the equally lurid pink flamingos on the sides and the golf balls on white springs popping out from the layers, topped with the two pink flamingo pens, one with a paper top hat and the other with a paper doily veil. Not blah. And right beside it, Maria's white wedding cake—with the concentric circles—easy—and the fondant butterflies on springs—a little harder—pearl trim— much harder—and the antique bride and groom—expensive—that was a work of art. I did good, she thought, and relaxed a little before she went to back to the column.

It's worse than blah, she thought. Anybody could have written this—it's ordinary. I'm not saying anything new, there's nothing here that would make people think, "Gee, she's a great writer, better rush out and get ten copies of Mob Food." Damn it, what do I know about wedding cake that's important? C'mon, Cranky Agnes, be brilliant: Your future's on the line.

Inside her skull, the emptiness echoed for eternity.

Nothing, I got nothing. God, I'm a fraud. The two hundred columns I've done up to now have all been flukes. I got lucky. Now the truth is here. I can't write, it's all been a fake, I'm going to have to eat worms and die.

Maybe she could do a column on eating worms.

She saved the file and got up and saw the Venus. She looked awful.

Okay,she thought, accomplish something. She got the cleanser out and began to scrub the statue down, getting more vigorous as it became apparent that the thing was made out of some kind of eternal compound that wasn't going to collapse under her enthusiasm. And once the scrubbing became automatic and the pearly plastic began to shine, she began to think about the week she'd just survived.

Things were good, if you looked at them just right. For example, she'd survived. And she was going to pull off the wedding, with a lot of help from her friends: The lawn was manicured to golf course perfection, the house gleamed in its new white paint, the shutters were up, the stolen landscaping was beautiful, and the gazebo was magnificent. Even the pink sand had a certain kitsch glow to it. And Taylor was going to cater and Maisie was going to do the white daisies with a few pink accents, and Maria was going to wear her white gown down the aisle, and Evie would be relieved and wouldn't ask questions, and Butch was coming for Cerise and Hot Pink early in the morning so they'd be gone before the wedding, and everything would be beautiful. And at the end of all of it would be Shane—she slowed her scrubbing—he was worth the whole week right there, getting shot at was a small price to pay for a guy like that. She thought about him and scrubbed harder, cleaning the last of the mildew off because he'd be back soon, and she wanted— "AGNES!" Maria screamed.

"Mother of God,"Agnes said, almost dropping her sponge as Maria came running into the kitchen. "What?"

Maria grabbed her arms. "Palmer is in the barn having sex with the stripper!"

"Oh, he is not," Agnes said, shaking her off and going back to scrubbing the Venus. "This is Palmer we're talking about. He adores you. And he has much too much good taste to have sex with a stripper. He doesn't know where she's been. Or who her people are. He wouldn't dream of it." She put the sponge down on the counter and said, "Listen, could you read this column and tell me what's missing? Because I?—"

"Don't make jokes," Maria said, her face sheet white with stress and too many champagne cocktails. "He's just like his father."

"He is not." Agnes went over and got her a cup of coffee. "Drink this and stop hyperventilating or I'll make you breathe into a paper bag. He's just like his mother. Evie would never have sex with a stripper. Who told you this garbage?"

Maria got a wary look on her face and sipped her coffee. "Somebody who knows about men," she said finally.

"Oh," Agnes said. "Brenda called, did she?"

Maria put the cup down on the counter. "She and Taylor had finished up in the barn kitchen and were coming back and they looked through the double doors and saw him. He had that dumb flamingo hat on his head that Downer got him for the party. She knew it was him."

"Because nobody else could be wearing that hat since Palmer sure as hell wouldn't have taken it off the first chance he got," Agnes said.

"She saw his face," Maria said. "She told me to go down and look."

"She's a lying bitch from hell," Agnes said. "But let's be adults about this and do what she said. Let's go find out"

"What?" Maria pulled back.

"Let's go find out." Agnes came out from around the counter. "Let's go down to the barn and see what old Palmer and the boys are doing."

"We can't go down there," Maria said, aghast

"Why?" Agnes looked her straight in the eye. "Afraid you'll find out he's innocent?"

"Hey," Maria said, getting some of her old temper back.

"That's more like it." Agnes sighed. "Look, if you don't want to marry him, don't marry him. But he's a good guy. Be up front about it. Don't let your bitch of grandmother frame him for something he didn't do. Go down there and tell him you don't want him."

Maria swallowed. "I do want him. If he's really the man I thought he was?—"

"Why do you listen to Brenda?" Agnes asked tiredly. "Because she sounds right," Maria said.

"Well, she isn't. She preys on your fears to destroy your happiness so she can get this house back." Agnes opened the drawer in the counter by the basement door and got out her flashlight. "Did your mother tell you what she did to her?"

Maria shook her head.

"She will. Come on. Let's see who's getting up close and personal with the stripper. I'll bet you six MM'S it's not Palmer."

"I don't want that bet," Maria said.

"Good girl," Agnes said, and opened the screen door, looking back at the Venus as she went.

She was looking pretty good. Well, there's one thing I finally got right, Agnes thought, and then followed Maria down the path to the barn.

When Shane cameout of the shower, Joey and Carpenter were gone. He went downstairs and saw that the large round bed was still there below the balcony, but the party appeared to have moved outside toward the lawn and dock, where he heard male voices chanting "Drink, drink, drink." Yeah, there's a good time, he thought, and went down the balcony stairs and started for the big house, but paused when he heard a woman's voice raised in anger coming from the one of the rooms under the balcony.

Great. Some stupid frat boy and an angry stripper. Just what Agnes needed, a scandal the night before the wedding.

The woman's voice was definitely coming from the door marked office. "You fucking tried to rip us off," she was yelling. "You think you can short us?"

Downer was probably trying to stiff her, Shane thought. In more ways than one.

"Twenty-five large," the woman said, and Shane frowned. No stripper got paid twenty-five large. "I want the damn money. Tonight."

Shane opened the door and paused. In the moonlight coming in the window he could see the stripper, in her miniskirt and bustier, standing at the side of a desk. She had a gun against the forehead of the man seated in the desk chair. The Don's consigliere, Shane realized.

She turned at the sound of the door, and Shane lunged forward, grabbing her gun hand with both hands as she brought it to bear on him. She smacked him on the side of the head with her free hand, the open palm against his ear, stunning him on top of the damage from the RPG explosion earlier in the day.

Shane squeezed her hand and she dropped the gun just as she brought her knee up hard, missing his groin by scant inches to slam into his right hip as the consigliere scrambled across the room. Shane jerked her arm up and then twisted it, spinning her about as he kicked the gun under the desk.

He put his other arm around her neck in a half nelson and applied pressure, bending the stripper forward, and saw the compass tattoo in the gap between the skirt and bustier.

"Casey Dean's girl," Shane said.

She was bent over the desk, her ass in his crotch, just as it had been in Savannah.

"Fuck you," she said, but she was grinding against him again.

"Didn't work last time, won't work this time," Shane said. "I've finally?—"

He didn't finish as she turned her body counterclockwise under him, locking his arm under her body, and smashed her free elbow into his face, the perfect reversal move to a half nelson.

Stunned, Shane let go for a moment, and she slithered out of his grip. She dived for the floor, searching for the gun. He leapt for her just as she decided to make a break for it and grabbed her ankle, and she kicked her foot into his face, breaking free. Shane scrambled to his feet, saw her silhouetted against the door to the room, and jumped, and his momentum shoved both of them through the door and onto the big round bed where she'd stripped, the girl squirming in his arms, trying in get away hum under him where he had her pinned facedown.

That's when he heard Maria's voice from the open sliding glass door: "Oh, Cod, Agnes, now Shane's doing her, too!"

Oh, fuck,Shane thought as the girl elbowed him low.

Maria turnedand tried to run and Agnes caught her and said, "Don't be ridiculous," and then looked past her to where Shane had a half-naked squirming woman under him on a bed. "Okay, that looks bad," Agnes said, clamping down on her automatic urge to kill him, "but that's not what it looks like."

Maria looked at her, outraged. "How can you be so blind! Look at them!"

Agnes looked at them. Shane was pinning the woman to the bed, bearing down on her, and it was hard to tell, sex and violence being so closely related but... "No," she said. "I'm pretty sure he's trying to kill her."

Maria looked at the bed and then at Agnes. "You're insane," she said, and then took off down the path.

"I didn't mean it the way it sounded," Agnes said, and went after her. "Maria!" She caught up with her halfway down the path. "I'm sorry, that wasn't right, I didn't mean kill kill. I mean, you know, subdue, arrest, Shane's kind of a cop, and ..." Her voice trailed off as Maria shook her head. "Look, the bottom line is Shane wouldn't do that to me, and Palmer wouldn't do that to you. Things aren't always what they look like; sometimes you just have to trust the guy you love."

"All guys do that,"Maria said. "Brenda said?—"

"Brenda is a hag from hell who is trying to destroy your wedding so she can take my house," Agnes snapped.

"And you're trying to push me into this wedding so you can keep your house," Maria said.

Agnes threw up her hands. "You really think that? You fell in love with Palmer, who is a great guy, and you came down here completely in love with him, positive you wanted to marry him, and then that peroxided bitch poured poison in your ear and now I'm the one with the ulterior motive. Thanks a lot."

Off in the woods, they heard voices and then someone gag, and Maria made a disgusted sound. "Probably Palmer barfing." She raised her voice toward the sounds. "Sex and booze don't mix, you dummy, and neither does cheating and marriage."

"Well, it's clear to see you love him and care about his well-being," Agnes said, fed up with her. "Don't put yourself out any. I'll go see if he's all right."

"Hey,"Maria said as a male voice up on the path said, "Maria? Is that you?"

"No, really, stay here," Agnes said, turning her back on her. "You've never looked more like your grandmother than you do right now."

She left the path and went into the woods, shining the flash on the ground so she didn't trip on any tree roots, and she saw his shoe first. "Palmer," she said, and played the light up his leg onto this shirt and then his face, seeing his eyes staring terrified at the same time she saw the meat fork sticking out of his throat, not Palmer but Taylor, and then she screamed as he reached for her, she screamed and screamed and screamed.

Shane cursedto himself as the stripper tried to worm free. Then she pulled a stiletto from some hidden sheath on the miniskirt and jabbed with it and he felt it pierce into his shoulder.

Fuck this,Shane thought. He pulled back his left fist and hit her in the base of her skull as hard as he could. Her head bounced off the bed, but she was still conscious, albeit stunned. She slashed at him, narrowly missing his eyes.

Shane punched again, this time aiming for her temple, but she moved just enough so the blow didn't strike dead on, but rather bounced off his skull. He ducked as the knife came tor his eyes once more, and then forgot all but total combat, blocked the knife hand, grabbed her head, left hand on the back, right hand on her jaw, and twisted violently. The sound of her neck snapping echoed through the barn even as he felt the point of the knife pierce the skin in his shoulder.

Shane felt the body spasm beneath him, then become still.

He rolled over onto his back, breathing hard and staring up at the ceiling of the barn.

Agnes,he thought, but he couldn't summon the energy to get up and go after her.

He checked his shoulder. Not deep. He'd killed her before she could do real damage. He reached over and pulled off the blonde wig, revealing the short red hair.

Finally, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his replacement satellite phone. He hit speed-dial.

"Yes?" Carpenter whispered.