No. Oh, Walt had to unfreeze his dead corpse long enough to give her a second screwing. Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland in California? 15 minutes and 30 seconds.

  The one at Disneyland Paris? 10 minutes and 30 seconds.

  Who the hell cuts five minutes out of a fifteen-minute ride?

  Tempest was fuming. What should have been a casual stroll and assassination had turned into a marathon sprint—one that would no doubt draw the attention of security.

  Disney was very good about security. They had hidden cameras everywhere, watching everything. Rumor had it they even had software looking for behavioral abnormalities, flagging suspicious guests so that their smiling, blonde “helpers”—in reality, highly trained security personnel—could escort ne'er-do-wells into the bowels of the park.

  Tempest saw the boats. They had reached the end of the line.

  It was go-time.

  She checked the map on her phone. The tracker was nearly at the entrance to the Haunted Mansion. It was now or never.

  Ahead of her, the Belarusian couple escorted their daughter onto the ride—only to be stopped by an overly enthusiastic attendant who informed them that the child’s balloons were not allowed.

  This sparked a small kerfuffle, as the couple tried to decide whether their French or their English was worse while protesting the injustice.

  Tempest stepped forward.

  “Excuse me. I actually have to use the restroom. If you’ll watch my son on the ride, I can hold your daughter’s balloon and make sure she gets it when you get off.”

  She said it with her best I’m definitely not an international assassin smile.

  They were grateful. They ate it up.

  Only Tyler looked disappointed.

  “Mommy?”

  “I’m sorry, sweetie. Mommy has to go to the bathroom. But you don’t have to wait to see Jack Sparrow. These nice people are going to go with you. And Mommy will be right there when you get off the ride.”

  That was all Tyler needed to hear. He nodded happily and lifted his arms to be taken by the Belarusian mother. She did so without hesitation.

  Tempest took the balloon. A gaudy pink monstrosity, complete with ever-present Mickey Mouse ears—or Minnie Mouse, she supposed.

  And then she ran like a bat out of hell.

  It took her thirty seconds to exit the ride and hit the streets of Frontierland.

  Seriously, Disneyland Paris? Pirates? Frontierland? Have you no shame?

  She sprinted down the main thoroughfare and realized she’d picked up an unexpected gift from the Belarusians.

  Running with a pink balloon made her look far less like a security threat and far more like a harried mother trying to get a balloon to her child before a meltdown.

  Solid cover, all things considered.

  It took another three minutes to cross the park to the Haunted Mansion. She and Tyler had already ridden it earlier—part nostalgia, part reconnaissance. She knew the ride well: the long preamble; the elevator descending into darkness.

  The elevator was key. Tight confines. Close quarters. Perfect.

  What she couldn’t do was wait in the line.

  But she knew where the employee entrance was.

  She slipped in, encountering only one pimple-faced Gallic teenager who tried to object—until Tempest put her hand squarely in his face.

  “My daughter is having a total breakdown if I don’t get her this balloon.”

  He was too young to have kids, but he worked here. He’d seen meltdowns. He nodded and let her pass.

  Tempest saw the foreign minister and his entourage enter the elevator room, and she raced inside on their heels. She was the last one through before the doors closed.

  She pocketed her phone, making sure no one saw that her dot and the tracker dot overlapped perfectly.

  The security team was good. Thorough. Professional. But all their attention was focused outward—making sure no one approached their principal.

  None of their focus was on the back of their own jackets.

  The tallest guard—whom Tempest privately named Lurch—had a nearly invisible tracking tag on the back of his jacket.

  Now the job was simple.

  As the lights dimmed and flickered, all Tempest needed was a moment close enough to uncap the novelty Disney pencil she’d coated with contact poison that morning and touch the minister.

  She glanced at her watch. She’d burned another minute getting into position.

  Tyler and the Belarusians would be getting off the ride in five minutes. The elevator would take another minute to reach the bottom.

  That was all the time she had.

  The problem was the cordon. The guards had formed a nearly impenetrable wall around their principal. Maybe instinct. Maybe training. Either way, she couldn’t get close.

  So she hit Lurch in the face with the balloon.

  “Oh! Pardon, monsieur.”

  He didn’t move.

  She hit him again.

  Still nothing.

  The ride’s narration swelled. The stretching portraits revealed grotesque, comical horrors. The foreign minister stared upward in delight.

  It occurred to Tempest that he had no family with him.

  One of those Disney adults.

  It made her want to kill him even more.

  Ten seconds left.

  The lights were about to cut out completely. Lightning would draw everyone’s eyes upward.

  She struck Lurch a third time with the balloon—this time stomping on his foot to punctuate the attack.

  His yelp blended perfectly with the thunderclap.

  He stepped aside—barely—but it was enough. He grabbed the balloon, yanking it in confusion.

  Tempest was already behind him.

  She jabbed the minister’s neck with the eraser end of the pencil.

  It couldn’t have hurt. He didn’t even notice, too absorbed by the spectacle above.

  She recapped the pencil and stepped away.

  The poison would take effect in ten minutes. For the first four, nothing. Then, convulsions followed by a swift death.

  A hefty paycheck awaited her. The fact that the foreign minister of Turkmenistan was a xenophobic psychopath advocating regional war was just icing.

  The elevator doors opened.

  Tempest slipped out through an emergency exit and ran.

  Back to Tyler. Back to normal.

  The only hiccup in an otherwise flawless operation?

  Lurch still had the pink balloon. Tempest made a mental note to buy that little Belarusian girl a replacement if she got a chance. After all, she was seriously Mother of the Year material.

  CHAPTER 12

  Tempest guided Tyler into the RER A train station at Marne-la-Vallée Chessy. The station was just outside Disneyland Paris and even had two fake medieval towers at its entrance. This kept the boy from noticing that he’d left the park. Well, that and the fact that Tempest loaded him down with hundreds of dollars of the finest Jack Sparrow gear. So total was his focus on his Captain Jack action figure that he barely saw the small fleet of CRS and GIGN special police units swarm the park.

  Tempest heard them closing the park gates in the distance as she led Tyler onto the waiting train. The investigation into a foreign dignitary’s death on park grounds would go nowhere. Just then, Tempest’s phone rang.

  She checked the caller ID and was amused to see Chaucer’s name come up. She glanced down at Tyler, making sure the boy was lost in a magical Caribbean world, and she took the call.

  “Chaucer 3.0. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Tempest asked.

  “I've got a job for you. For us, actually.”

  Tempest smiled to herself, happy Chaucer couldn’t see it. “What makes you think I want a job? I can provide for myself very well, thank you very much.”

  “I know you can. How’s Disneyland?”

  “Good. Fun. Tyler loved it.”

  “Well, more than that guy from Turkmenistan anyway, I’d hope.”

  Tempest felt the overwhelming urge to look over her shoulder, even though she was on a moving train. “You know about that, huh?”

  “Not me. Remember my brother’s funeral? The guy in the grey suit? I took a job with his outfit. They seem to know almost everything.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t like know-it-alls.”

  “They’ll pay your rate, full freight. And Tempest? We’d get to go on a vacation.”

  Tempest was intrigued. She chastised herself silently. She was looking for an excuse to see Chaucer again, and she hated that about herself. Did she always have a thing for broken men, or did she just have a thing for Malcolm Chaucer? She resolved right then to turn the job down.

  “Yeah, I’ll do it. Where do you need me, and when?” Tempest shocked herself when she heard the words come out of her mouth. She made a mental note to find a good therapist. Just not that French bitch Chaucer was keen on. This was becoming an all-hands-on-deck situation.

  Chaucer replied, “D.C.. As soon as you can. And Tempest? Pack for the beach.”

  Tempest hung up before Chaucer, trying to regain some dignity she’d lost in the last couple of minutes. As she presented her tickets to the conductor, she thought to herself, the beach?

  Tempest didn’t fly from Charles de Gaulle to Dulles. She flew into JFK.

  Once in New York, she and Tyler hopped in her brand-new Lucid, and less than two hours later they drove down into the valley that was Paige MacLaren’s Sanctuary.

  Tempest stared at the nearby cabin, Paige’s cabin, as if she was staring down a division of T-90 tanks, steeling herself for the battle to come.

  A moment later, she knocked on the door. She counted twenty-seven breaths before it opened.

  Paige opened the door, and Tempest was hit by a wall of clove and lavender essential oil scents. Paige had the same cornrows she had a week ago when Tempest picked little Tyler up, and she had the same skeptical smirk on her face.

  Paige said, “Hey, sis, how’s it going?”

  “Great. Just great. We had a fantastic time, isn’t that right, Tyler?”

  Tyler leapt onto the porch, bouncing up and down, screaming, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!”

  He ran at Paige’s legs, hugging them tightly and almost barreling her over, and then he disappeared into the cabin.

  Paige looked less than thrilled. “You’ve been giving him sugar, haven’t you?”

  Tempest tried to control her eye-roll. She really did. But her sister had a knack for getting on her last nerve. “Should I wait until the police arrive? I took him to Disneyland. How is he not supposed to have sugar at Disneyland? It’s literally the happiest place on earth.”

  “It’s a corporate fantasy that serves poison in their restaurants. But I’m not the boy’s mother.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  They were at a standoff. Neither sister was about to budge.

  Then Tyler ran back out and hugged his mother, and Tempest’s heart melted just a little bit. “Mommy, are you going to stay?”

  Tempest fought the emotions building up. She brushed her boy’s hair out of his face and gave him a gentle kiss on his forehead. “No, baby. Momma’s got to go back to work. But I’ll be back soon. You’ll see. And maybe Momma will take you to a different corporate fantasy land.”

  This drew a scowl from Paige.

  Tempest smothered her boy with kisses until he got disgusted and ran off. When Tempest rose to face Paige again, she did so with a change of heart. “I don’t want to fight.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re just so good at it, is all. It’s like leaving Michael Jordan on the bench. But seriously. This week with Ty? It was amazing. The things you’ve been doing for him, for us—in a million years, I couldn’t pay you back for that.”

  Paige’s face relented just a little. “He’s a great kid. And he’s my only chance to be an auntie, so that’s something. I actually really like it. So, you got more work?”

  Tempest nodded. “You know me. Terminator in a dress.”

  Paige said, “It’s Hannibal Lecter in a dress, but I guess that fits too. I thought you were talking about hanging up your spurs sometime?”

  Tempest scowled. “Yeah. Was. Didn’t take.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Just a temporary setback. I picked up an enemy. They robbed my nest egg. I gotta refill the nest. Then? Yeah. I’d like to hang up the spurs.”

  Paige said, “I think we’d all like that, sis. Well, can I entice you with a little lentil soup? It’s got a ton of coriander, good for the liver.”

  Tempest laughed. “No. I really do have to be going. Thanks again. I’ll be back soon.”

  With that, Tempest turned and stepped off the porch.

  Paige called after her. “Hey, Tempest?”

  Tempest turned, half-dreading what would come next. She’d almost made a clean getaway. But Paige’s face remained soft. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

  Tempest could only nod. Another wave of emotion overcame her. She fought it down and walked back to her Lucid.

  She had no sooner opened the car door when she heard, “Yo, Auntie T! In the house!”

  She turned to see Bodhi, Paige’s boy, loping her way. He still looked like every bit of the wild child Paige had raised, with unkempt hair and a goofy smile. But right now, it looked like he was being attacked by an anaconda.

  “What you got there, Bodhi?”

  “Oh, this? Just a bungee setup. My buddies and I like to set up on the old train bridge up the road.”

  He unspooled it from around his neck, and Tempest could see more clearly that, sure enough, it was a very long bungee cord, with an anchor on one end and a harness on the other.

  “I didn’t know you were into extreme sports.”

  Bodhi laughed. “Extreme? Come on, Auntie T. It’s just bungee jumping. It’s about as extreme as a bouncy castle.”

  Bodhi rushed up and gave her a big bear hug, kissing her on the cheek. The boy had real golden retriever energy.

  Tempest said, “Hey, hey. Cut that out, would you? Save it for the touchy-feelies around here.”

  Bodhi shook his head and backed away a foot. “Sorry, Auntie T. Didn’t mean to blow up your rep. But we all know you’re as hard as a marshmallow on the inside.”

  “Hey! Keep that under your hat. And—any news about our ongoing project?”

  Bodhi shook his head. “The intertubes have been fairly quiet regarding one Tempest McLaren and one Malcolm Chaucer. Things died down about six months ago, and they’ve stayed pretty chill since then.”

  “When’s the last time you checked?”

  “This morning. Why?”

  It relieved Tempest to hear that Chaucer’s job offer wasn’t accompanied by any uptick in interest in her. She trusted Bodhi implicitly. He looked like just another hippie kid, but he was one of the best hackers she had ever met. She paid him enough to update his gaming rig anytime he wanted in return for him keeping an eye on her digital back.

  Tempest leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You’re the best, my nephew. The absolute best. Gotta go.”

  “Smooth sailing, Auntie T. You need anything, you know who to call.”

  She powered up the Lucid, pulled out of the valley, and back into civilization.

  She thought to herself: the boy was right. She did know who to call.

  CHAPTER 13

  Tempest met Chaucer at the temporary apartment Praxis put him in. She glanced around at the generic accommodation. “Looks just like your place.”

  Chaucer saw it in her eyes; she was itching for a fight. “Would it be possible to go on a vacation and then fight?”

  Tempest eyed him up and down, detecting something off. “Is that…is that a spray tan?”

  “I’ve been running a lot lately. And yes, I got a little spray tan—for purposes of this assignment.”

  Tempest looked both skeptical and amused. “Riiiight. So, where are we going?”

  “Tongata.”

  By the look on Tempest’s face, it was obvious she’d heard of the place.

  “You and me?”

  Chaucer nodded.

  “Tongata?”

  Chaucer nodded again.

  She said, “Fancy. A girl can really work on her tan in a place like that.”

  “I thought you might like it.”

  Tempest frowned, “Of course, technically you’d be on the job, during what was supposed to be a vacation…”

  Chaucer knew she was referring to an argument they had recently in Paris. She ruined what could have been a wonderful time together by contracting out for a job during their stay. “We’d both be on the job, and the difference here is I told you about it right up front.”

  “And the truth shall set you free?”

  Chaucer sighed. “Something like that.”

  Tempest thought about that and eventually nodded. “Fine. Probably right. Now tell me about our legend”

  “Matthew and Tamara Walsh, in Tongata to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary.”

  “That shouldn’t be too hard to pull off.”

  “A loving marriage.”

  Tempest laughed. “Oh well. Hopefully, we’ll have some time to work on that.”

  “Our flight leaves in four hours.”

  “Well then, you better start telling me about you, and this bitch.”

  Chaucer began, “I’m a V.P. of risk assessment at a regional insurance carrier.”

  Tempest rolled her eyes. “Snooze city. Good cover, actually. Who the hell would ask a follow-up question to that? And me?”

  “You’re a fitness instructor who owns three upscale gyms in the Denver, Colorado area.”

  Tempest’s lips curled. “Ugh. I hate her already.”

  Then Chaucer saw it. The way her lips were curling. It wasn’t genuine. It was to hide a smile. Stone-cold, iron-willed Tempest MacLaren was very happy to see Malcolm Chaucer.

  They flew business class to L.A., the same from L.A. to Papeete, Tahiti, and then in no class whatsoever on a puddle jumper to Tongata. They reviewed their legends on the way to L.A., slept on the way to Tahiti, and were fully in character for the final leg on the puddle jumper.