When Kathy returned to the villa, she was so shaken up she
went straight to the bar in the living room and poured herself a scotch.
That kiss was the last thing she had expected!
She was wracked with guilt for what she had almost done up
on that ridge.
The stars lining up perfectly?
What on earth had she been thinking?
She had almost murdered this poor girl who had apparently,
without one grain of Kathy’s knowledge, fallen madly in love with her.
When she finished the first drink, she poured herself a
second, her hands still shaking. The ride back on the boat, and in the limo,
had been extremely awkward. After Gwen had kissed her, Kathy had been so
stunned she had merely wiped her mouth and continued along the trail after
Alexander, not knowing what to say or do. After that unexpected turn of events,
it had been hard for her to even look Gwen in the eyes. Apparently, because she
hadn’t resisted, Gwen thought that the feeling was mutual and that Kathy wanted
to have an affair, or at least have a sexual relationship.
Kathy couldn’t believe it.
Now she realized that she probably had seen someone peeking
at her from around the door frame last week when she had gotten out of the tub.
Not Alexander—it had been Gwen!
And those lingering gazes she’d gotten from Gwen at dinner
last night. Not driven by suspicion, but sexual attraction.
When she finished her second drink, she looked down at the
empty glass, trying to resist the urge to pour herself a third...and all at once,
everything became as clear as the ice cubes in the bottom of the glass.
She let out a little, girlish laugh.
All she had to do was give the girl what she wanted!
The stars had lined up perfectly, after all.
At exactly twelve midnight that same evening, Kathy heard
the faint squeak of her bedroom door slowly swinging open in the darkness.
Kathy was lying in bed, almost naked and waiting.
When the door closed again, she heard the lock twist shut.
Kathy sat up and turned on the nightstand light.
Gwen padded across the floor towards her, smiling
self-consciously. She was wearing a rather frumpy-looking nightgown that came
down to her knobby knees.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Kathy whispered. She offered
Gwen a crystal flute of champagne that she had poured a few minutes earlier.
“Me, too,” Gwen whispered back. Trembling with excitement,
she sat down on the edge of the bed and sipped the champagne as Kathy sipped from
her own glass. It was Dom Perignon, which Kathy thought was suitable for the
occasion.
Two sleeping pills had been stirred into Gwen’s glass.
The young governess glanced down at the breasts that her
host presented—Kathy was wearing a see-through negligee that left little to the
imagination.
“Are you sure this is okay?” Gwen whispered, glancing at
the door. “What if Mr. Leandrou—?”
“I’ve taken precautions, honey, don’t worry. The last thing
I want is for Spyro to find out.”
Gwen nervously
finished off her champagne and set her glass on the nightstand. Smiling
lustfully, she bent down and began tenderly kissing Kathy’s shoulder.
Kathy leaned back and closed her eyes, feigning a satisfied
moan, trying not to think about that ugly mole on the back of the girl’s neck. The
only way she could tolerate the thin, cracked lips exploring her body was to
imagine they belonged to Hakim, the handsome gigolo she’d picked up a few days
ago to make her trick phone call.
Kathy woke up very early the next morning, just as the sun’s
rays struck the curtains.
They were all tightly closed—she had made sure of that
before Gwen had fallen asleep.
Now, the lanky governess was sprawled across the bed, stark
naked, her pale, bony butt and hips exposed, her head on Kathy’s stomach, a
dreamy smile touching her lips.
The door was unlocked now—Kathy had slipped out of bed and
taken care of that.
Soon, Kathy could hear the faint thumps of Fenia and the
cook moving around downstairs.
Gwen was still sleeping like the dead, and Kathy allowed
herself to doze off again. It was only a matter of time now. Spyro, Kathy and Alexander
attended the Greek Orthodox Church in Fenia every Sunday morning, and the
service started at seven o’clock.
After a while, Kathy woke up again, hearing voices out in
the hallway. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand, Gwen’s head still resting
on Kathy’s stomach, her mouth open, taking long, deep breaths.
“I knocked on the door,” she heard Fenia say, “but she do
not answer.”
There was a loud rap on the door. “Darling?” Spyro called,
and he tried the handle.
As the door swung open, Kathy hugged Gwen a little tighter,
and lightly stroked the back of the girl’s neck.
Spyro squinted into the dimly lit room, then flipped on the
light switch. Alexander was standing right behind him, looking on
inquisitively.
Kathy sat up a little in the bed, and Gwen finally stirred,
raising her head and looking up at Kathy’s face with sleepy but contented eyes.
“Do you
mind?” Kathy said to Spyro, pulling the
sheet higher up over her breasts.
There was a moment of stunned silence.
The bomb finally exploded.
When Elaine Brogan drove into work the following Monday
morning, she was more depressed than ever. Now it had been almost a week since
Kathy had left. She was sure something had gone wrong.
As she turned down the narrow Rue Armény to park in her
paid spot near the American Consulate, she was thinking of buying a plane
ticket to Santorini Island to go and see what had happened.
Her cellphone started ringing.
She expected it to be Tony or Nick, but when she saw the
BLOCKED NUMBER message in the display, she slowed the SUV to take the call.
Her pulse was racing as she answered. “Yes?”
Elaine instantly recognized her mother’s voice. She was
more relieved than she cared to admit to hear that Kathy was alive and well. “The
governess has been fired?”
“Yes,” Kathy whispered, as if in a hurry to get off the
phone. “The interviews for her replacement will be held next week in London.” Elaine
had told Kathy not to use any names when she made the call. “A search firm has
been hired to screen applicants and narrow them down. The firm will shortlist
three people for him to interview in person.”
“Do you know which search firm?”
“No, but the ads will appear today or tomorrow in the
classifieds sections of some UK papers.” Kathy paused. “I have to go.” Now Elaine
thought she sounded more exhausted than nervous.
“How did you manage to get her fired?” Elaine asked.
“You wouldn’t believe what I had to go through.”
When Kathy failed to elaborate, Elaine said, “It might be
important for me to know, for the interview.”
Kathy hesitated. “Okay, let’s just call it sexual
misconduct.”
As soon as Elaine arrived at her office, she turned on her
computer and started searching for the ad. It took her less than a minute to
find it in the Jobs section of
The Guardian:
GOVERNOR/GOVERNESS
wanted, €1200 per week. American/Greek family living in Greece needs
live-in tutor for gifted eight year old boy. Duties include all home-school
teaching and co-participation in extracurricular outdoor sports. Some travel
required (all expenses paid). Full room and board, with private separate
bedroom/bathroom. Five days per week,
seven hours per day. Requirements: native English speaker, college diploma,
high degree of ethics/integrity. Must be intelligent AND athletic.
Elaine read the last line twice. It matched exactly what
Kathy had told her. Spyro Leandrou sounded like a hard man to please indeed,
and finding someone to meet his exacting requirements must have been a
challenge. But based on everything Kathy had told her about Spyro, Elaine
thought she and Luna had come up with the perfect cover identity and ‘“legend”
to go with it, a woman with the perfect background who he would not be able to
resist hiring as a replacement.
Elaine couldn’t wait to flesh out all the details.
She picked up her desk phone and punched in a number.
When Luna answered, Elaine said, “Good news, girl. We’re
on!”
Two hours later, Elaine was aboard an Air France jet bound
for Lyon.
Luna picked up Elaine at the airport. By noon, they were
both working feverishly in Luna’s office in Interpol Headquarters, hoping they
had enough new information to convince Martin Valdez to sign off on an official
investigation that would involve undercover work.
Luna had been given the perk of a private office rather
than a cubicle in the Secret Service’s section, but the space was stuffy,
cramped, and windowless. It was
filled with an odd combination of martial arts equipment and case files.
Elaine set up her laptop on Luna’s worktable and the two of
them clicked away on their keyboards back to back, talking to each other over
their shoulders. Elaine focused on the finer details of the cover identity and
legend, and Luna continued to fill in the UOA form that they had to get Valdez
to sign. Luna had briefed Valdez after Elaine had called this morning, and they
had a meeting set up with him for 4:30, his last appointment of the day.
The meeting with the new director would be tricky. All the
new information for the case had been supplied by informants—there really was
no hard evidence, nothing concrete. But taken in whole, it was a juicy case. One
bit they planned to use, which they had held back before, was the fact that
Leandrou was suspected of orchestrating a contract killing on one of his
criminal associates in Pittsburgh fifteen years ago. Of course the name of the
victim would not be revealed to Valdez.
The trickiest part was that some of the information had
been supplied by Kathy, listed as, “Informant #1 - wife of Spyro Leandrou,” and
some had been supplied by “Informant #2,” known only to Luna and Elaine as the
notorious Giorgio Cattoretti, still the Secret Service’s most wanted criminal. There
was no way they could share the name of the latter source with Valdez. Nor
would they utter a word about the Panacea clinic, because if the facility
catered to the elite clientele that Cattoretti said it did, Valdez might get
cold feet. Anyway, neither Luna nor Elaine had any idea how Spyro was connected
to Panacea—the clinic might be irrelevant.
They did have a “secret weapon,” as Luna called it, and
they planned on using it on Valdez if necessary.
As they were printing out the final copy of the form and
steeling themselves for their meeting with the director, Elaine pointed out
that there was one significant downside to her having Raj Malik ousted from his
position. “When the Director of European Operations is a crook,” she said in a
low voice, “you don’t need to worry much about trivialities like ethical codes
of conduct or undercover operations guidelines.”
Luna laughed. “Yeah, it’s all one big party...until said
director decides to put you in a black site and torture you for a few weeks.”
“Touché,” Elaine muttered. She gave a small shudder at the
memory.
It was now 4:25 p.m. Luna picked up the final copy of the
printout and they both went over it one last time while nervously standing in
Luna’s office side by side.
“Do you think he’ll go for it?”
Luna glanced at her watch. “There’s only one way to find
out.” She buttoned up her suit jacket, which was a tight fit around her shoulder
holster and bulging service pistol.
Elaine did the same, and they headed out the door.
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