Chapter 23
Chapter 23
“ W hy does this entire country smell like falafel?” Logan complained.
“That’s your upper lip,” Eliza returned, earning a fist bump from Ribs. She was one of those women who was equally good at being a guy, a good thing when she worked with them in such close proximity.
Logan was right too, though. The country did smell. Not like falafel, but putrid and hot, like necrosis and disease. Or maybe it was merely his imagination because it was Not Home and anywhere Not Home at the moment was instinctively bad. When he said he wanted to go home, he didn’t picture his waste of space house, the place he somehow never got around to making cozy, the uncomfortable, badly furnished little dwelling. His mind referred instead to Jordan and Nash and Charlotte. At last he’d found something he loved more than his job, and it was his bad luck that his job had been the thing to drive a wedge between them. Both physically and otherwise. His mind kept coming back to the look on Jordan’s face when he left her, when she realized she was once again back in that place of relying on a part-time person, someone who could only be there on occasion.
In that instant, in the moment he saw her face, he understood everything Ridge had been trying to tell him—the toll Shimmer’s job had taken on her, the toll his job would take on her if they continued on this path. It had been a gut punch, all of it, and the clock was still ticking on Charlotte’s birthday. Somehow he felt like that was a make-or-break event, that if he could arrive home in time it would restore Jordan’s faith in him, her willingness to give them a try.
It was also time to be honest; it wasn’t looking good.
“Man, why doesn’t he do something?” Logan complained.
Logan and Eliza were young, impetuous, and impatient. It was up to Ribs, the seasoned agent, to keep them in check. But at the moment he agreed with Logan. Boredom was a killer, one they’d had too much of on this assignment. It felt pointless to be here when he could be so much more productive at home.
“Tell me again why we can’t flush him out,” Eliza demanded.
“Because…” Ribs began, but lacked the will to continue.
“Ah, good point. That’s why you’re the one in charge,” Eliza murmured, staring dully through her scope.
Their target was a Russian suspected of trying to procure a tank for an offshoot of Chechen rebels. Everyone knew he was guilty, but no one wanted to touch him without proof. The Chechens were too desperate for any outside help. The Russians were afraid of his political allies in the Kremlin, and the Americans feared his source was similarly American. And so they waited and watched, waited and watched, hoping he would make a mistake. He would, Ribs knew, because he was good but not perfect.
“What do we know about this guy?” Ribs asked. He’d asked it so often they were tired of hearing it, but they swallowed their complaints and dutifully answered.
“He’s a jerk,” Logan said, swiping a hand wearily over his face.
“No, he’s a bro ,” Eliza clarified.
Logan and Ribs looked at her because this was something new, something she hadn’t said before. And that meant she’d been pondering. Eliza’s insights, odd as they were, could be invaluable.
“Expand on that,” Ribs said, using a nearby pencil to poke her.
She batted the pencil away with an annoyed swipe, absently rubbing the spot he’d poked. “A jerk is anyone with a bad attitude or grudge. A bro is someone who adds entitlement into that mix. They can be charming, until they choose not to be.”
Ribs stared thoughtfully at their target, now a blurry image, too many meters away to be in focus.
“Something’s happening,” Logan said, poking Eliza as he studied Ribs’s face.
“Why does everyone keep poking me?” Eliza exploded, giving Logan a hard shove.
“He has the look,” Logan hissed.
Now Eliza studied Ribs, smiling when she saw him staring intently. “Good, then maybe we can go home. My weird, old-maid, cat-lady lifestyle isn’t going to nurture itself from over here.” She fluffed her hair, patting whatever strange hairstyle she’d come up with that day.
“Eliza,” Ribs said at last, slowly swiveling his attention to her instead of their far away target. “How would you feel about going Ugly American on us?”
Eliza grinned, preening. “Why, boss, I’d be delighted.”
“Yes,” Logan exclaimed, already gathering their things and tossing them haphazardly in his bag.
A n hour later Eliza reached the front of the line for a latte.
“Excuse me,” she said, leaning farther over the counter than propriety allowed. “I asked for an inch of foam. This is barely a skim.”
The barista frowned, an easy thing to do because he had the heavy brow of his ancestors. “Is latte. Foam is for cappuccino.”
“I wanted a latte with foam ,” Eliza insisted, shoving the cup at him. “Please make it again.”
“You want I make cappuccino, I will charge you for cappuccino. Otherwise, enjoy latte,” the barista said, his accent becoming almost too thick to discern in his irritation.
“I want what I paid for, which was a latte with an inch of foam .” Eliza held the cup aloft, jangling it.
The beleaguered barista, realizing she wouldn’t go away, grabbed the cup out of her hand, dumped it, and began making her drink anew. “Thank you,” Eliza exclaimed, loudly and full of sarcasm.
The barista muttered a few words in his own language that did not sound like endearments.
Behind her, the customer sighed. Eliza whirled on him. “You got a problem?”
“This isn’t Starbucks,” he said, his accent clipped and precise. He pointed to the quaint wooden sign over the coffee shop’s interior, one that proclaimed it the thirsty trout, if her quick translation was correct. Picturing a trout in relation to coffee made her answering grimace authentic.
“If it were, maybe I’d have a better chance of getting my drink order made right.”
“Americans,” the customer said, shaking his head. Behind the counter the barista grunted his heartfelt agreement.
“Listen, we saved your life in World War II. Just smile and say thanks.” She put out a hand and poked the man in the chest. With that small gesture his demeanor went from annoyed to dangerously icy.
“We were on the same side in World War II, you imbecile, and do not ever touch me.”
Eliza let her lower lip quiver dramatically before bursting into noisy, disruptive tears that caused several more people in the café to look at her in disgust. She found it telling that they were more disturbed by her tears than her unruly outburst.
“Is there a problem?” Ribs asked, stepping from the tail end of the line.
“This man insulted me,” Eliza exclaimed, pointing at their target. “All I’m trying to do is get a coffee and he…is…so…mean.” Here she put both hands over her face and wept, feeling a genuine bitterness over her ruined mascara. Waterproof my Aunt Fanny. And she’d forgotten to pack makeup remover. Her face would be streaked like a comic book character for days after this.
Ribs scowled at the man. “Mister, I don’t know where you’re from, but where I come from, we don’t pick on women.”
“This is unbelievable,” the man said. “You Americans are deranged. This woman is being obnoxiously abusive to the wait staff and you’re taking her side because of a few tears.”
Ribs made a show of inspecting Eliza who dabbed at her eyes and shuddered pathetically. Naturally small, she looked tiny and harmless next to the two larger men. “This woman?” Ribs asked, incredulous as he pointed to Eliza.
“She…the…” The target spluttered, pointing between Eliza and the counter. At another time it would have been a delicious victory because the man wasn’t the sort to splutter. But they needed more from him, so much more.
Ribs took a tiny step forward, straightening. “I don’t like your tone. Maybe someone needs to teach you a lesson about picking on someone your own size.”
The target straightened, losing the bluster. “Trust me when I tell you that you do not want a piece of me, as your saying goes. It would go better for you if you turn and walk away right now, taking the idiot American millennial with you.”
“How about we step outside and settle this like men?” Ribs suggested.
The target sighed and looked away, willfully ignoring him.
Ribs placed a hand on his chest and gave him a provoking shove.
The target showed no reaction.
Eliza placed a hand on Ribs’s arm. “It’s nice what you’re trying to do, but I’m afraid it’s wasted effort. Obviously this German cretin has no concept of American chivalry. And for the record, I am not a millennial; I’m Gen Z, Grandpa.”
His eyes snapped back to Eliza, explosive with fire. “I am not German,” he ground out.
She had to make herself refrain from glancing at Ribs, but really? Everything they’d thrown at him, and that was what stuck? “Could have fooled me, Adolf,” she said softly, sickly sweet. She reached over the counter for her drink and he lunged at her. Only Ribs’s quick action kept the man from punching her.
“Out,” the barista shouted. “Out of our shop, we want no trouble.”
Hand tangled in the back of his shirt, Ribs dragged the man outside, letting him go in time for the man to take a hard swing at him, one big enough to catch the attention of the police officer who’d been tipped off about an illegally parked car. Hastily, he stuffed his ticket book away and reached for his nightstick, brandishing it at the target.
“What is going on?” he roared, or at least that was what Eliza presumed he said in his language. It had that tone, however.
Ribs backed down and tried to look innocent, something he was able to accomplish after so many years of being a good actor. And now it was only the target that was enraged and blustering, a stuck bull.
He tried to tell the cop about Eliza’s bad behavior in the shop, Ribs’s ill-placed machismo, but he was the one yelling like a madman and waving his hands while Ribs and Eliza stood innocently by. Eliza sniffled between sips of her coffee. The officer kept darting her glances, which was unfortunate timing because he was cute . She could appreciate that, even when she was on duty. But there was no time for exploration, only confuscation and escalation, something that happened naturally now that the officer was involved and seemed to be taking their side.
“Have you gone mad?” their target demanded. “These two…” he motioned toward Eliza and Ribs, unable to think of an adjective dire enough to describe them. “ Americans ,” he hissed at last, tone stuffed with loathing, “are everything wrong with the world right now, and you are trying to make me the problem.”
“My tourist agency assured me this area was safe,” Eliza said, words wobbly to match her leaky eyes. “They bring people here all the time. What are they going to say when I tell them I’ve been manhandled?”
That did it. Tourism was up and coming in this part of the world, highly sought after for the money it would bring. If there was one thing everyone in the city agreed on, it was the need to keep the tourists happy.
“I think we should discuss this downtown,” the officer said. He was young and eager to impress, in this case it worked well for them that the person he seemed most eager to impress was Eliza. She gave an encouraging nod and he pulled out his cuffs.
The target exploded, now prepared to take a swing at the cop, but Ribs dropped the innocent act and gave him a look. Puzzled now, the man stared inquiringly at Ribs as the officer cuffed him behind his back.
“We’ll merely have a conversation in a less public environment,” the officer assured him, but the wheels of bureaucracy were such that it would take hours before he was released, a fact Ribs and his team counted on.
The man stared at Ribs afresh, with dawning horror that this was something more than a mere annoyance. The officer tucked him into the back of the car, and Ribs gave him a little salute, pressing his finger to his ear when Logan spoke.
“I’m in. Oh, man, this guy is not good at hiding his tracks.”
Ribs put his arm companionably on Eliza’s shoulders and herded her toward the target’s apartment. “Kudos on being as obnoxious as humanly possible, Eliza.”
“Thank you. I learned it from my mom,” Eliza said, ducking her head with false modesty.
Ribs laughed and dropped his arm, suppressing a yawn. “Let’s hope our guy is so relentlessly stupid we can tie this up tonight and go home.”
“Are you sure I shouldn’t go to the station, oversee things?” She stared hopefully after the target, along with the cute cop who’d taken him.
“There are plenty of boys back home,” Ribs assured her.
“None I’ve found,” she said with a sigh, facing forward again.
“Sometimes it takes a while,” he comforted. Thirteen years, in fact.
“You’re a good dad,” Eliza said, linking arms with him.
“I hope to be,” Ribs returned.
“Oh, geez, you’ve gone all earnest. Stop it, you’re creeping me out.” She dropped his arm and gave it a shove.
“Does it help that I’m about to break into someone’s house and rifle their most treasured possessions?” he asked.
She pressed a finger to her cheek, thinking. “It does, a little. Thanks.”
“Anytime,” he said, holding out his fist for a bump. She returned it, and they walked in companionable silence to the target’s house.