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Indy cocked her head the other way like a surprised sparrow. “Wait, someone named Rhett activated someone named Scarlet to kill someone named India? What is this, the script for a middle-school play in suburban Atlanta?”
Ice chuckled, rubbed the back of his head. “You ever worked for Rhett Rodgers?”
Indy shook her head.
“Ever met him?” Ice felt the questions bubbling up like hot vapors from a simmering volcano. “Maybe at some CIA social event or conference or even in the hallway at Langley, at the water cooler, the coffee machine, the damn parking lot? Think, dammit, Indy.”
Indy took a hurried step back away from him. Ice realized he’d raised his voice, that passers-by were passing curious looks. He exhaled in embarrassment, then led Indy off to the side of the busy sidewalk, where a sun-crusted old man was brewing an enormous metal vat of milky-sweet tea on a kerosene stove. Ice held up two fingers to the tea-man, then plonked his duffel down on a long wooden bench which appeared to be the extent of the tea-shop’s seating options.
“No,” Indy whispered, touching her hair and shaking her head. “Never met Rhett Rodgers. Don’t even know what he looks like.” She shrugged nervously, glanced self-consciously at the curiously staring tea-man, then smiled wide when he handed them two paper cups of steaming hot tea. She sipped hers and smacked her lips. “Why would he set me up? It can’t be personal, I don’t think. It’s probably just opportunistic. Right person, right place, right time.” She took another sip, then shrugged. “Or wrong person, right place, right time. Something like that. You know what I mean.” She shrugged again. “Anyway, Scarlet is a codename. And Rhett is a real name. Both are pretty common American names. Especially in the South. Just a coincidence that the names line up that way.”
“Except maybe it’s not a damn coincidence.” Ice blew on his tea, muttered out the names again, sipped the sweet tea which was hot and milky and damn good. “Benson has this weird OCD-type thing with lining up names.”
“What do you mean? Like how?”
Ice shrugged, took another sip, glanced off into the distance as it occurred to him thatIceandIndymatched up well, lined up great, fed Benson’s coyote compulsions perfectly. Ice had noticed it earlier, dismissed it with the same scoffing carelessness with which he’d always dismissed Mom and Dad’s hippie-hugging nonsense. But dammit, right now with his brain running sideways through psychedelia, those connections seemed irritatingly meaningful.
“Never mind,” he said gruffly, draining his teacup and tossing it into a blue plastic receptacle near the bench. He dragged his duffel closer, patted the sidepockets, found the right one, unzipped it and pulled out a plastic-wrapped flip phone. “Let’s hope Benson doesn’t have a bead on my backup burner.”
Ice unwrapped the package, slid the SIM card into the phone, snapped the battery into place, then took a breath and turned it on. Indy’s CIA-issued phone was in his duffel too—dismantled, of course—but using that was even riskier because Rhett Rodgers would be able to track that along with Benson and Kaiser and every other spook with access to the system. Very unlikely Benson knew about this phone—not unless he really did have X-ray spectacles and a mind-reading brain-implant.
“Checking your Social feeds?” Indy snuggled against his arm, playfully peeking at the little screen where Ice had pulled up the clunky old-fashioned browser. “How many likes did you get for your cookie recipe?”
Ice almost choked on his tongue to stop himself from exploding into violent laughter. Indy buried her face into his arm, snickering wildly into him.
“Your lame jokes are more dangerous than any CIA assassin,” he grumbled. “I think I just had a mini-stroke.”
Indy grinned up at him. “You sure it wasn’t just a brain-fart?”
“Are you regressing back to childhood?” Ice almost bit his tongue to stop the very unwise crack. He felt Indy stiffen momentarily, but then she was peering at his phone screen inquisitively again. Clearly she was understanding how to control this weapon of a drug.
And that sparked an idea—which Ice quickly dismissed as far too dangerous. Besides, they needed to get moving. They were too conspicuous in their current condition to hang out at sidewalk cafes and made dangerously bad jokes.
“Flight schedules?” Indy frowned. “We can’t get on an international flight in this condition. Besides, I don’t have my passport on me. And both of us might get stopped at the airport anyway—your alias is compromised, and my name could get flagged the moment the Mumbai police find my prints in that hotel room.”
She stiffened again against Ice’s arm. He looked up from the phone long enough to cast a reassuring glance into her shaded eyes. She nodded quickly, mouthedI’m OKsilently, then stuck her tongue out at him and wiggled it about.
Ice grinned, then got back to his annoyingly slow web-browsing. “The DO NOT DISTURB sign is still on the door. We haven’t checked out yet. Nobody’s going in there for a while, so we’re probably safe from the Mumbai Police for a few hours at least.” He grunted when a list of international flights popped up on the tiny screen. “Local authorities won’t have our passports flagged yet, but both Benson and Rhett will be watching flight manifests for our names. I’d bet my ballsack on that.”
Indy giggled wickedly. “I’ll take that bet,” she whispered. “And raise you a . . . wait, what’s the female equivalent of a ballsack?” She furrowed her brow, then shrugged. “I’ll raise you two ovaries, I guess.”
Ice raised his left eyebrow, then shook his head. “I’ll pass.”
Indy gasped. “Ohmygod, you don’t want my ovaries?”
Ice gave her a stern look. “I warned you about weaponizing the lameness of your jokes.”
“Oh, and your ballsack isn’t a weapon?” Indy glared at him. “I seem to remember being assaulted by aforementioned ballsack earlier today.”
“That was yesterday,” Ice corrected. “Get your facts about my ballsack straight, woman. Besides, I referred to your joke—not your ovaries—as the weapon.” He grinned. “I’m sure your ovaries are very peaceful. And pretty.”
“That’s nice of you to say, but don’t expect me to call your ballsack pretty. Because I’ve seen it.”
“Ah, so youwerelooking.” Ice chuckled as Indy turned bright red and dug her fingernails into his arm.
“Shut up,” Indy purr-snickered into his thick arm. Then she looked up and sighed impatiently as Ice thumbed through the list of flights. “OK, so if we can’t get on a civilian flight, why bother scrolling through the schedules?”
“I said we can’t get on a civilian flightmanifest.” Ice’s thumb stopped on an Air India flight listing. He glanced at his watch, then grunted and snapped the flip-phone closed. “But we’re still getting on a flight. We’ve got three hours to get to the airport. Plenty of time, even with Mumbai traffic.”
