Compact with the Devil: A Novel Read online

  “But I like it when you go topless,” she said, looking at him in the mirror. That almost got a smile, but he clearly wasn’t ready to relinquish his mood. She washed the shirt while he watched from the doorway.

  “I got that shirt in Spain,” he said, but he still sounded slightly surly. Nikki nodded.

  “Travel shirts are kind of irreplaceable.” The spot had disappeared to her satisfaction and she twisted the shirt, wringing it out. “There you go,” she said, unfurling the shirt with a wet slap, “good as new. Just have to dry it out.”

  He pushed the shirt out of the way to kiss her.

  “Mmm. I told you I liked topless,” said Nikki. He laughed, backing her up against the sink to kiss her again. Water from the shirt in her hand ran into her blouse as she put her arms around his neck. The scent of rosemary filled the air and the oven timer began to beep incessantly.

  “Ignore it,” Z’ev said, and Nikki laughed, breaking away.

  “The last time we ignored it we almost set the kitchen on fire,” she said. “I really don’t want to have to explain that to the maintenance guy again!”

  “Fine,” said Z’ev, rolling his eyes and jogging to the kitchen to rescue the potatoes while Nikki took his shirt out on the deck to hang over the back of one of the chairs.

  “So,” she said when dinner was through and the last of even the burned potatoes had been eaten. “Are you going to tell me what you were upset about?”

  He grunted in response. Nikki ran it through her Z’ev translator and decided it most closely resembled “Yes, but don’t push me.” She waited.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said after a while. “It was a work thing.”

  “That you can’t talk about?” Nikki asked, squelching a surge of annoyance. He grunted again; this time she guessed that the grunt meant, “Yes, let’s not have this conversation again.”

  “I don’t like coming here when you’re working,” he said suddenly. “There’s nothing to do and I end up cleaning.”

  “Works OK for me,” said Nikki, attempting a joke, but he shot her a sour look.

  “I end up thinking of all the stuff I should be doing at work.”

  “Ah,” said Nikki, sensing they’d reached the real crux of his bad mood.

  “‘Ah’?” he repeated, looking suspicious.

  “You were mad at me because you were here when you felt like you should have been at work.”

  “I never said I was mad at you,” he said.

  “You didn’t have to. Your moods tend to permeate.”

  “I wasn’t mad at you,” he repeated. “I was mad at the situation.”

  Nikki wanted to point out that she was the situation, but she didn’t have the courage. Instead she stared at the setting sun and wondered when he’d break up with her.

  PARIS IV

  Z’ev’s Dead, Baby, Z’ev’s Dead

  December 30

  When they reached the hotel Nikki had every intention of leaving the younger girl on the sidewalk, but Svenka called her back.

  “The director, Madame Feron, said I should give this to you,” said Svenka, reluctantly taking an envelope out of her pocket. “In case your conversation with Camille wasn’t productive. Those were her words. I don’t know what’s in it.” Svenka looked worried and guilty.

  “It’s probably just another copy of that damn letter,” said Nikki with a shrug, tucking the envelope into her jacket.

  “I could give you a ride to the airport,” said Svenka halfheartedly. Nikki gave her a speaking look and Svenka nodded. They both knew she wasn’t going to the airport.

  “I’ll see you later, Svenka,” said Nikki, and headed into the hotel.

  Tiptoeing into her room, she could hear Holly softly breathing and considered what to do while she waited for Mrs. M to call.

  A few hours later she woke with a start, reaching for the gun that she didn’t have, as Holly walked past the bed.

  “Late night?” Holly asked, looking at her strangely.

  “Yeah,” she said, realizing she was still wearing her clothes and shoes.

  Holly returned from the bathroom, brushing her teeth, and they both stared at the ever-brightening sky.

  “Paris is one of those places, isn’t it?” said Holly after a while.

  “Yup,” said Nikki, and Holly giggled.

  “Now there’s an American word. You-up.”

  “Yup.”

  “You-up.”

  “Yup.”

  “You-up.”

  Nikki shook her head with a laugh, and Holly grinned.

  “I’m going to go find some breakfast—want to come?” asked Holly, pulling on jeans.

  “No, thanks, I’ve got a few errands to run.” Nikki said the words automatically, although at the moment she couldn’t think of what she possibly had to do.

  “Oh. ’Kay.”

  Holly returned to the bathroom while Nikki sat on the bed and thought about taking off her shoes. What did she have to do? She had been derailed from her intended destination, and now the effort to reorient herself seemed Herculean.

  “You sure you won’t come to breakfast? You look like you could use a decent meal,” said Holly, coming out of the bathroom, applying a smear of lip gloss. “Actually, you look like you could use a decent night’s sleep, but that never happens on tour.”

  “Thanks, Holly, but I really do need to take care of a few things.”

  Holly shrugged again and headed for the door, picking up her jacket as she left.

  The loaner phone buzzed; Nikki picked it up and groaned as she recognized her mother’s phone number.

  “Mom, how did you even get this number?” asked Nikki, picking up.

  “I called your company and was annoying until they gave it to me,” said Nell. “The power of annoyance is amazingly strong.”

  “Mom, why couldn’t you just wait until I called you?”

  “That’ll be the day,” said Nell with a snort. “Besides, it was slow at the office and I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been thinking about the ambassador boy.”

  Nell was under the impression that Z’ev worked for a U.S. embassy somewhere. Nikki had given up trying to correct her, figuring that explaining that he really worked for the CIA probably wouldn’t go over very well. “I told you to bring him home for the holidays, but no, you thought Mexico was going to be better. Thought you needed couple time. Should have listened to your mother, now, don’t you think?”

  “Mom, did you just call to tell me how much I suck at relationships?” asked Nikki. “I figured that out on my own; don’t really need the reinforcement.”

  “You don’t suck,” said Nell, cutting short the “mother knows best” tirade. “Men are just stupid. That’s why I called.”

  Nikki laughed. “Mom, you wasted what was probably hours on the phone to get my phone number to tell me that men are stupid? Seriously?”

  Nell sighed, managing to breathe the idea that Nikki was a remarkably stupid daughter into one single sound.

  “You really liked him, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Nikki glumly. She didn’t want to explain that what she had felt went well beyond “like.” Then again, maybe her mother knew.

  “Well, I was thinking that if you apologized he would probably come back.”

  “I’m not apologizing!” exclaimed Nikki. “He should apologize to me! He was treating me like I was an accessory to his life!”

  “Look, I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just saying that men sometimes don’t learn too quickly. They get all goal-oriented and job-focused and don’t realize that no one’s going to give a crap about them when they’re eighty if they don’t start giving a crap about someone now. But they figure it out eventually.”

  “I don’t think I can hang in there till he’s eighty, Mom,” said Nikki.

  “No, it really only takes a year or two. You just have to get them used to the idea. I see it all the time. So if you call and apologize, he’ll take you back and then by this time nex
t year he’ll be proposing.”

  “And you get some grandbabies?” asked Nikki suspiciously.

  “That might be a pleasant side effect, yes,” said her mother, as if the idea had never occurred to her.

  “You spent Christmas with Grandma, didn’t you?” asked Nikki.

  “That has nothing to do with it,” said Nell sharply.

  “You only start bringing up grandkids when you go to see Grandma,” said Nikki.

  Nell sighed again, but sadly this time. “She’s out there on that farm by herself. I mean, the woman annoys the crap out of me, but …” There was a pause and Nikki wondered what to say. Nell hardly ever got sentimental about her mother. “We used to be a big family, you know? But your father left, and Dad died, and the cousins moved back east. It’s just the three of us now, Nikki, and that’s kind of sad.”

  “I know,” said Nikki, not knowing what else to say. “But I’m not apologizing to Z’ev. I can’t trick him into thinking I’m important to his life. He’s got to think it on his own.”

  “That’ll be a long wait,” said Nell dryly.

  “Thanks for the encouragement, Mom.”

  “Just saying … Men are stupid.”

  “Not any stupider than women,” said Nikki, feeling a crushing sense of depression.

  “Probably true,” said Nell, “but think it over.”

  “’Kay,” said Nikki.

  “Love you,” said Nell. “Don’t forget to call.”

  “I won’t,” answered Nikki. “Love you too. Bye.”

  Hanging up the phone, Nikki scrubbed her hand through her hair. Her mother possessed awesome powers for creating annoyance, depression, and low self-esteem. She was like a walking women’s magazine. Nikki knew she should immediately get up and do the important things she’d told Holly she was going to do, but she felt drained of energy and coherent thought. Instead she went into the bathroom and washed her face. She thought about simply going back to bed. She had been ordered off the case, after all. Who was going to care if she took the day off to wallow in misery?

  Kit’s face sprang unbidden to her mind, and with a sigh Nikki began to reapply her makeup. For all his foibles, Kit was trying very hard to put his life together. A life that was at risk from Antonio Mergado Cano. She couldn’t abandon him—no matter what Camille and her letter from the director of the Paris branch told her to do.

  She dialed Astriz’s number and got voice mail.

  “Astriz, it’s Nikki. Camille got the Paris branch to order me off the case. I’m appealing it, but it’ll take a little time. You may need to lay low for a bit. Call me when you’ve got Jane.”

  She tossed the phone down on the bed next to her jacket and pulled on a new shirt from her luggage. She couldn’t wallow. She had things to do. She had to … Nikki paused, trying to formulate her checklist. She had called Astriz—check. She had to read the airbrush manual—those devil girls weren’t going to paint themselves. And she had to call Z’ev. Nikki winced in a physical reaction to her own thoughts.

  She’d been trying to avoid thinking about Z’ev for almost a week now, but it hadn’t made things any better. She was going to have to call him and say something. He deserved better than an angry hang-up. Besides, she wasn’t really sure she wanted to break up with him anyway. But what did she want?

  “I want a vacation,” she grumbled out loud to herself, picking up the airbrush manual. She flipped through the pages. The concept seemed simple enough, but she suspected the actual practice would be a different matter. Holly had also brought up Trista’s notebooks. As befitted a Carrie Mae lady, Trista’s notes were obsessively detailed when it came to color mixing and sequence. Sketches, fabric swatches, and neatly smeared samples filled a notebook. She had half-expected personal notes to be scattered among the information, but the notes were strictly business. Trista had apparently lived for the job and Nikki grimaced in fear.

  “I don’t want a vacation,” muttered Nikki, “I want a life.”

  Maybe that was what she needed to tell Z’ev. Living in separate cities, spending vacations and weekends together, wasn’t working. They needed to have an actual life together if they wanted to succeed as a couple. That’s if they wanted to succeed. Her phone wasn’t exactly ringing off the hook with messages from Z’ev.

  Thinking of her phone, she stood up and went to the bed. She spotted it, half-hidden in the folds of her jacket, and yanked the jacket off the bed. As it lifted, an envelope fluttered onto the floor.

  Nikki sighed and picked up the Paris director’s mysterious envelope, belatedly remembering Svenka’s message about having a productive conversation with Camille. Whatever that meant; Nikki snorted in irritation. She ripped open the sealed envelope and pulled out several sheets of paper.

  Do you want to explain to Mrs. Merrivel how your boyfriend knew about Nina Alvarez? Or do you want me to? Leave Paris.

  Madame Feron.

  Nikki frowned—there was no way Madame Feron could have known about Jane’s gaffe. There was no proof. Camille might have told her some suspicions, but they had to be bluffing, and Nikki wasn’t about to fold over a bad bluff. Setting aside the note, she turned to the next sheet of paper.

  It was a printed e-mail, addressed to Camille from Rosalia, Camille’s second-in-command at the Colombian branch. Nikki frowned and checked the heading again. It was a routine update report, nothing unusual there. She skimmed through the parts she already knew.

  Nina Alvarez, the wife of an international drug dealer and victim of spousal abuse, had desperately begged for their help. Her parents had been afraid to even call her, and with no access to any money of her own, Nina Alvarez had effectively become a prisoner in her own home. The only person she had regular outside contact with was her Carrie Mae lady. Fortunately for Nina, knowing a Carrie Mae lady was more useful than knowing the Marines. Carrie Mae had sent in the troops, only Nina hadn’t been there. With frustration Nikki remembered how their month of planning had gone down the drain at the exact same moment as Nikki’s relationship.

  She went back to the report. Nina had returned to her husband’s house. The Carrie Mae assault had been blamed on rival drug dealers, which had touched off a minor drug war, and Nina had been moved to the Alvarez beach property, where she had been seen canoodling with a young man. Nikki laughed at the use of “canoodling.” The word was probably entirely accurate, but it smacked of either translation or the fact that English was Rosalia’s second language. Nikki flipped the page to see a photo of the young man in question.

  The photo filled the entire page. But even in black and white laser print, Nina looked like Jennifer Lopez in her brief period of Latina glamour between P. Diddy and Bennifer. Nina had lustrous copper skin and waves of obsidian black hair; she was all curves and sex appeal. She might as well have had “Most Wanted” tattooed on her ass. But next to Nina was number one on Nikki’s top ten list: Z’ev Coralles. And worse than simply being next to her, which was enough to make Nikki hyperventilate, his lips were actively involved with Nina’s. Z’ev Coralles, her boyfriend, was kissing Nina Alvarez.

  PARIS V

  The El Nina Effect

  Nikki jumped to her feet, scattering papers everywhere. Scrambling to shove the e-mails back into the envelope, she found herself sobbing in dry, gasping coughs. The waterworks came a moment later in big, fat blobby tears that ran down her nose, messing up her foundation. Nikki shoved the envelope into her luggage and locked it, only then noticing that the picture of Z’ev and Nina had slipped elusively under the bed.

  Nikki ignored it, reaching for her boots, yanking them on with fingers made clumsy by the jumble of emotions twisting in her gut. She had to get out of this room. She had to get away. She stood with her hand on the doorknob for a long moment, then, hanging her head, she ran back and scooped up the picture, shoving it into her pocket.

  Nikki walked angrily throught the front doors of the Hilton, brushing tears off her face. How could he? Nina’s image floated across her mind and she
wondered how she could think he wouldn’t. Nina was perfect, and with her sad eyes and sob story any man would be aching to rescue her. And Z’ev was good at rescuing. Nikki sniffed fiercely and blinked back fresh tears.

  What had she been thinking? How could she have thought that she could possibly hold on to a guy like Z’ev? Who did she think she was?

  Someone bumped into her with a muttered “Excuse me.” It was the voice that caught her ear. It was over-the-top, imperfect American—a foreigner’s idea of what an American should sound like. Acting on instinct Nikki reached out and caught the man’s arm. Her pull swung him around, and Nikki found herself looking into Kit’s blue eyes. He had a knit cap pulled down low over his forehead, and he was bundled into a scarf and windbreaker over a sweater.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Nikki asked.

  “Going out,” he said haughtily.

  “Where’s Duncan?”

  He hunched one shoulder and looked away. “I don’t need Duncan.”

  “Yes, you do,” said Nikki.

  “Look, I’ve got to get out of there. The press guys Brandt set me up with …” He shook his head in frustration. “They’re driving me starkers. I just want to get out and breathe a little.”

  “I don’t know what ‘starkers’ is, so I’ll assume it means crazy,” said Nikki. “And I get that, but take Duncan with you.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “Not a babysitter, backup. In case something goes wrong.”

  “OK, I’ll go with you. You were going out, right? You can be my backup.” There was a devilish light in his eyes Nikki didn’t trust.

  “You can’t go with me,” said Nikki firmly. “Go back and get Duncan.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m going to a bar,” answered Nikki, starting to walk away. He followed her, almost skipping.

  “So?”

  “So, you’re a recovering alcoholic; you aren’t supposed to go to places like that.” Nikki realized she was sounding like Duncan but didn’t really care. Maybe Duncan was right. Maybe Camille was right. Maybe everyone was right. Everyone but Nikki. Nikki picked up her pace; she didn’t care. She just had to get away. “And I’m going to get really drunk.”