Partners in Crime, page 14
“That’s interesting,” Adesh said, sounding like he was just trying to be polite. “Are you two going to get married? I could see you getting married. Would you have a family wedding or a beach wedding?”
“I don’t think Peter is the marrying type, and if he was, I don’t think he would want to marry me. I think he would want to marry a twenty-year-old named Muffy with pointy acrylic nails and hair extensions who sells smoothie mixes on YouTube and giggles at his jokes,” Piper said and felt irrational jealousy of all Muffy’s.
She took a deep breath and reminded herself that she didn’t even know if she was the marrying kind or if she was already married. “When you say he looks at me like a S’mores Pop-Tart, what do you mean exactly? Are you sure he’s looking at me like that? Maybe he’s looking at me like I’m a royal pain in the ass.”
“I think with Peter it’s the same thing. He wouldn’t be happy with a boring woman. He needs excitement in his life, and not just the dirty kind of excitement.”
“Do you think he’s okay?” Piper asked again. It was the worry that swirled around her in her brain, never letting up since her hood was removed. Was he alive? Was he hurt? Where was he? She couldn’t think of anything else. She didn’t want something bad to happen to him, she realized. She didn’t want it more than she didn’t want to be hurt herself.
“We should try to get out of here and escape so we can find him,” Piper said.
They struggled against their bindings, trying to get free, but they made little headway. After a couple of minutes, a man and a woman entered the structure holding two towels. The man unbound their wrists, and the woman handed them each a towel. She yelled something at them in Indonesian, pointing at the towel and then to them.
Adesh and Piper wiped off as much mud as they could from their bodies, but they were still filthy. The woman yelled at them and pointed at the open doorway. They got up and left with her. They followed the woman through the compound to an area with tables and chairs. It looked like an outdoor café, and there were at least fifty people sitting and eating.
The woman yelled at them to sit down, and they did. Within a minute, they were served two large bowls of soup with noodles. They both attacked their meal with gusto. The soup served not only to fill Piper’s belly, but it was also much-needed liquid and warmth.
Dracula’s castle loomed over them while they ate, making Piper wonder again what it was and who was living in it. When they finished their soup, the woman disappeared, and it didn’t seem like they were being watched anymore. Piper and Adesh left the café area on their own, and no one stopped them or even seemed to notice them, even though they stood out like a sore thumb.
“This is our time to escape,” Adesh whispered to her.
“After we find Peter,” she insisted.
They wandered through the compound. The more they searched for Peter, the more she realized that the compound was like a mini-city. There was the area to eat, an area to bathe, and even a small area to exchange clothes. They continued looking for Peter, but there was no sign of him, and Piper was growing more and more despondent. Then they heard men shouting excitedly, and they walked quickly toward the sound.
Behind one of the squat buildings, there was a large makeshift ring with a dirt floor. The ring was surrounded by men who were shouting and waving their arms. Adesh and Piper pushed their way past the men to see what they were cheering. Two roosters were fighting in the ring, ripping each other to shreds and drawing blood. Piper felt sick at the brutality, and turned away. She was disgusted that the men were so excited by watching helpless animals kill each other.
“Gross, right?” she heard. She looked up to see Peter smiling down at her.
“Peter!” she cried and embraced him, hugging him hard. Without thinking, her lips found his, and she pressed hard against them. Peter returned the embrace, slipping his arms around her and pulling her close to him. He kissed her with a fierce passion, and her mouth opened wider to let his eager tongue enter.
She felt a wave of euphoria, relief, desire, and sexual attraction all in one kiss. Their tongues darted and played with each other, and she got dizzy from a hormonal rush that nearly knocked her off her feet.
She tried to muster up information about the world’s longest kiss or the world’s most passionate kiss or the world’s sexiest kiss, but she found nothing. Nothing could ever compare to this kiss.
“Peter, you’re alive,” Piper heard Adesh say. “They took my computer.”
Piper began to slowly come back to reality. And the reality was that this kiss was dangerous. After all, she really didn’t know Peter, and she didn’t know herself. She was running for her life, and she didn’t have time for kissing or for the fallout that came from kissing.
But Peter kept kissing her. He kissed her as if this would be their last kiss. As if he would never get the chance again. As if he had been starving his entire life for her, and now he could finally feast upon her.
The nearby shouts from the men and the reality of the moment made Piper break the kiss, and she stepped back. Peter and Piper looked at each other for a moment, each out of breath and breathing hard.
Peter’s face was flushed, his lips dark with arousal. He looked shocked, and he looked like there was a question on the tip of his tongue that he was too afraid to ask.
The men cheered around them, and money changed hands as bets were made again and new roosters were thrown into the ring to fight.
“I’m a member of PETA. I despise the abuse of animals,” Peter told Piper.
“You? I saw you eat foie gras,” Piper said.
“Did I say PETA? I meant AAA. I’m a card-carrying member of AAA. But I still hate the abuse of animals.”
“You look good,” Adesh said, taking stock of Peter.
He was right. Somehow, Peter had gotten completely clean, and he was wearing fresh clothes. It wasn’t his usual suit, but he was wearing what looked like pressed khakis and a white button-down shirt.
“Where’d you get the clothes?” Piper asked.
“The princess arranged it for me,” he said, pointing his thumb back toward the castle.
“Princess?” Adesh asked. “You found a princess?”
Peter nodded. “Yes, unfortunately I did. It’s not one of the Disney princesses. This one’s batshit crazy. We might’ve found ourselves in a pickle.”
Piper threw her hands up in the air. “A pickle? In the past week, we’ve found ourselves in a giant jar of pickles. I’ve got pickles coming out of every pore. I’m sick and tired of pickles. I need a pickle break. I need to be in a no-pickle zone for at least a week. Hell, I’ll take a morning of no pickles.”
Peter smiled and waggled his eyebrows. “Now, that’s just not fair, Piper. You can’t open up a pickle discussion without me throwing back a frat boy joke.”
Adesh laughed. “Pickle. I get it. That’s a funny one, Peter. You’re talking about your pickle. I get it. I get it.”
A man with a gun approached and yelled something in Indonesian. He pointed at them and then up at the castle.
“What did he say?” Adesh asked.
“I don’t speak the language, but I think the message is pretty clear,” Peter said. “We’ve been summoned by the princess.”
CHAPTER 16
Peter had met a lot of psychopaths in his career as a spy. Lunatics, terrorism, and espionage seemed to go together. But Princess Anna Svetlova was on the top of the list of cuckoo birds.
The princess was part of the royal family of a small Eastern European country that had disappeared some time ago at the turn of the twentieth century. Her family had fled the country with an impressive collection of jewels and most of the country’s wealth. Since then, the family had spent all of their cash and died off, all except the princess.
Peter had heard about her before, and it turned out that she had heard about him, too. But they had never met.
When Peter, Piper, and Adesh had been abducted on the mountain, he was brought to the princess as an offering. It wasn’t every day that an American spy was brought wrapped like a present to a royal underworld figure.
Peter had heard that the princess lived in a castle, fashioned on the royal castle of her native country, but he had no idea that it was in Indonesia of all places. In the over one hundred years since her family had been kicked out of their country, the wealth had disappeared under years of trying to maintain a certain quality of life without actually doing any work.
That all changed with the princess. Peter had to hand it to her. She had an amazing work ethic. Unfortunately, the work she decided to do wasn’t something honorable like being a dentist or a bomb maker. The princess was into big moneymakers, like kidnapping, extortion, money laundering, and just about every other insidious way to make a living. With her amazing work ethic, she had amassed a fortune that far surpassed her family’s original fortune.
Unfortunately, Peter was more or less certain that when he had been brought to her with a hood over his head, she saw dollar signs. Kidnapping a government agent could net her all kinds of money, either by the U.S. as a ransom, or by selling him off to one of his enemies.
Peter knew that the U.S. government wouldn’t pay a penny for him because that was against policy, so he imagined that she planned to sell him off to one of the numerous enemies that he had accumulated in his illustrious career.
He wasn’t worried about that fact, however. There had been many a psychopath who tried to sell him off to his enemies, but he always managed to escape. Things were different, now. He had Piper and Adesh to worry about, and that complicated matters significantly.
So far, the princess had shown him hospitality in the form of new clothing, a shower, and two pepperoni Hot Pockets. She also gave him the freedom to roam her compound, and unbelievably, none of them were dead yet, but as he and his two friends walked through the castle to the princess’s throne room after they were summoned, he knew that all of that was about to change.
In other words, the shit was going to get real.
The throne room had three-story high ceilings and gold-plated walls. They walked across the marble floor and were stopped by two armed men in front of a massive pedestal that had one large throne on it, which was gold with thick red upholstery.
A man hit Peter over the shoulder with his gun and barked at the three of them to kneel. “I have bad knees,” Adesh complained. The man pulled back the gun to hit Adesh, but Peter blocked him and grabbed the gun away from him.
Suddenly, the throne room was filled with armed men yelling and waving their weapons at them. Peter placed the gun on the floor and put his hands up in surrender. “Don’t get overexcited,” he called, smiling. “We’re calm, and we’re kneeling. Adesh, kneel down. I’ll buy you Advil later,” Peter told Adesh.
They kneeled, and finally, the armed men calmed down. The sound of trumpets came through a loudspeaker system, and a large door opened at the side of the room. Princess Anna walked in wearing fatigues, a general’s epaulets, and a long red cape that trailed behind her on the floor.
“All hail Princess Anna!” one of the armed men yelled in broken English.
Peter bowed his head to her, but she wasn’t looking at him. She only had eyes for Piper. She walked slowly to her throne and took a seat.
“Vut do vee have here?” she said, smiling at Piper. She sounded like Eva Gabor in Green Acres, and Peter wondered if they were related.
“Princess Anna, may I introduce to you my two friends?” he asked, like they were at a cocktail party. “This is Adesh and my lady friend.”
Piper looked at him, startled. She probably noticed that he had carefully omitted her name. He had been trying to do that since he met her. The more anonymity she could maintain, the safer she was, as far as he was concerned.
“Nice to meet you,” the princess said. “To what do I owe this great pleasure?” the princess said, as if they had arrived unannounced to sell Tupperware instead of abducted and dragged there at gunpoint.
“We heard about your castle, and let me tell you, it didn’t do it justice,” Peter said. “It’s a glory to architecture and historical accuracy.”
“It looks just like Dracula’s castle,” Adesh said happily, as if they were completely out of danger and the princess wasn’t a psychopath who would’ve gladly skinned him alive.
“Dracula was a distant cousin,” the princess drawled. “A small, unimportant man. I don’t know why he is remembered in history when my family is not. My family is much more consequential than a mere Vlad the Impaler,” she spat.
“Who’s your family?” Adesh asked.
Peter could practically see smoke come out of the Princess’s ears.
“Vut do you mean, who is my family?” she bellowed. “I am Princess Anna Svetlova of the Svetlova dynasty. Of course you have heard of us.”
Peter roared with laughter and slapped his thigh, as if this was the funniest thing in the world. “Oh Adesh, you’re such a card,” he announced. “Forgive him, your Majesty. My friend is known for being very amusing.”
“Vee are not amused,” she spat, but she was visibly pacified. “Are you joking about this Dracula? You don’t care about Dracula, am I right?” she asked Adesh.
Peter gave Adesh a big dose of a stink eye, warning him through his look to say the right thing or they would all be murdered in a painful and medieval way.
Luckily, Adesh caught on. “Dracula who?” Adesh said. He was sweating buckets, and it was dripping off his face. “He was a very overrated guy. Vlad the Impaler? Nobody’s scared of impaling anymore. That’s totally old news. What your family did was much scarier.”
Adesh wiped his wet face nervously.
The princess studied him a moment, probably deciding whether to believe him or whether to turn him into food for her dogs.
“You are right,” she said. “My family has done more impressive things than merely impale our enemies. We have always been known for our imagination,” she added, addressing her last comment to Piper.
The hair on the back of Peter’s neck stood up straight. It was obvious that the princess had more information about Piper than was safe.
Piper’s life was definitely in danger, but what else was new? Piper’s life was always in danger. On some level, he wondered if meeting her was a test of his skills.
“So, how can I repay you, my dear friend Peter, for this gift that you’ve brought me?” the princess asked, changing the subject and gesturing toward Piper.
“A gift?” Piper croaked.
“I’m afraid there’s been some misunderstanding, your Highness,” Peter interrupted. “My friend is not exactly a gift, although I am deeply ashamed that I forgot to bring you one. But that can be remedied. I can bring you lots of gifts. Just let us go, and I’ll send them along. Amazon has next-day delivery, you know. I can get you just about anything you want.”
The princess scowled at him. “I will accept humor from your fat friend but not from you, my dear Peter. With you, we are only business. No laughter.”
Peter bowed his head. “I beg your forgiveness, your Worship. Let me explain. My friends and I were having a picnic when your kind men saved us from an avalanche and brought us here. We are so grateful for all of your help, and now we must leave because Adesh has to get to Comic Con, and I have to get my yearly prostate exam, and my friend here is going to hold my hand during that and take me to Denny’s later, so we need to get going.”
The princess nodded to one of the armed men, and he slammed the butt of his gun between Peter’s shoulders, making him fall face forward. Peter groaned in pain. He rubbed his shoulder, and he returned to his kneeling position.
“You’ve been a bad boy,” the princess told Peter, lowering her voice an octave. “You’ve been asking many questions. Impertinent questions. Questions that have gotten very close to me and my operations. How do you explain that?”
How did he explain that? Searching for the serial killer and the person who hired the paramilitary group had led him to Princess Anna. Had she hired the paramilitary group? Was she behind the serial killer? Did she know the serial killer?
Had Peter stumbled on the answer to their problem? And was the answer to his problem surrounded by hundreds of armed guards?
He hoped the answer to the last question was no.
“I can assure you, Supreme High Commander, we were never looking for you, and we weren’t asking anything about your business. We had different goals entirely. Unless you hired a group to take us down in Paris. You didn’t do that, did you?”
She dismissed this with a wave. “Paris is not my territory. I do not care about Paris. And your impertinent questions are not the only thing that I have to talk to you about. You are asking questions, this is true, but many more are asking about you…and her.”
Adesh and Peter looked at Piper, who had blanched significantly.
“Who is asking about us?” Peter asked.
“A lot of people. From all corners. Many are interested in you and what you’re doing and where you are.”
“Many from all corners?” Peter asked. “Well, we’re not interested in them. To be perfectly frank, your Royalness, we’re only interested in a contract killer who’s moonlighting as a serial killer. If you can enlighten us about him, we’ll be on our merry way and send you more Amazon packages than you’ll know what to do with as a thank you.”
They also wanted to find out who hired the paramilitary soldiers to kill them in a department store, but if he could find the serial killer, it wouldn’t matter who hired them because it would lead to the same person. Besides, he thought, there was a fifty-fifty chance that he was staring at the woman who had hired their would-be killers, even though she had denied it.
The princess smiled, and Peter could have sworn that her incisors were twice the normal length. His eyes slid to Adesh, who had noticed the same thing and was sweating at an alarming, steady rate. In his geek’s mind, he probably thought he was looking at a descendant of the real Dracula, and Peter wasn’t sure he was wrong.
