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Needless to say, getting away from the twins and their “Noah Is Hot” propaganda wasn’t the only reason I was glad that I was going on this mission instead of staying behind.
“We’re going to try to keep this as simple as possible,” Chloe said, looking at me, Lucy, and Tara in turn. “We’re all going in armed, but weapons are a last resort. Ideally, we’d be able to pull this off without engaging the enemy at all. The goal is to get whatever information Peyton has given him. It might be a CD, a portable hard drive, possibly even something similar to the digi-disks we use. Whatever it is, we need it. That’s where you come in, Tara.”
I arched one eyebrow at my partner in an open-ended question, and she gave me an impish look.
“I may or may not have some skill at picking pockets,” she said delicately.
“Don’t let her fool you,” Lucy told me. “She’s the best!”
“If Tara can’t get the data unnoticed, no one can,” Chloe concurred. “In which case, we move on to Plan B.”
I couldn’t help but hope that Plan B involved kicking some international playboy booty. Was that really so much to ask?
“If Tara isn’t successful, we’re going to move on to a Flirt and Flick,” Chloe said.
“A Flirt and Flick?” I was nothing if not skeptical.
“We can’t afford to actually physically engage a Peyton client within a two-block radius of the firm,” Chloe said.
“Peyton has surveillance of its own, and the last thing we need is for them to ID one of us. So if Tara can’t steal the data, we’re going to have to find a way to get Heath Shannon a suitable distance away from Peyton before we try anything else. Since we can’t risk him handing off or transferring the data before we intercept it, one of us is going to have to stay with him at all times. Hence the Flirt and Flick.”
As much as I hated to admit it, the flirting logistics of this equation made perfect sense to me. That said…
“What’s a flick?” I asked.
“Female Liason Indemnifying Against the Possibility of Contact,” Chloe said.
That sounded like a FLIAPC to me, but I wasn’t about to argue the point, because Chloe’s answer still hadn’t cleared things up in my mind. “Translation?” I asked. “Preferably in English.”
I sensed the eye roll coming before I saw it.
“Basically, one of us goes in and interacts with Heath Shannon in a way that makes it impossible for him to immediately contact someone else,” Chloe said. “In this case, it means following him back to his car and convincing him that he wants to take me for a ride more than he wants to transfer the data.”
“You’re going to get into a car with this guy?” I asked. What was next, taking candy from strangers? Running with scissors?
“Worried about me?” Chloe asked.
Was I?
“I’m touched. Really.”
Okay, I most definitely was not worried about her—especially now.
“So what’s Plan C?” Tara interjected, coming in between the two of us.
I latched onto her question. “Plan A is Tara doing the pickpocket thing, Plan B involves you doing a Flirt and FLIAPC….” I changed the acronym just to get under her skin. “If he won’t take you with him, what’s Plan C?”
“Plan C involves the fact that Heath Shannon’s smart enough to know that working with Peyton is dangerous, which means that he won’t be using their parking garage, which means that we stand a slight chance of being able to take advantage of the one weak spot in Peyton’s security coverage of the area.”
Lucy smiled broadly. “Yay! That’s next to the tanning place, right?”
Chloe nodded. “If you can disable him and get him into SunTanz without moving outside the four-foot radius of Peyton’s blind spot, we can drop him off in one of the tanning booths, and the Big Guys will send someone to pick him up later.”
“And we’re supposed to carry an unconscious and internationally infamous playboy into a tanning salon without anyone noticing how?” I asked.
“What? No questions about how to disarm him and knock him out?”
I gave her a look.
“Trust me, Toby,” Chloe said, “if you can take him out, Lucy can handle the rest.”
Lucy smiled serenely, which, given the circumstances, was just a wee bit creepy.
“And there’s a slight chance that we may have some contacts inside the tanning salon. Hopefully, though, it won’t come to that. Like I said before, physically engaging the enemy is a last resort, as are weapons.”
Lucy sighed then, as if it would pain her greatly to holster her weapon of choice. That made me wonder what exactly the weapon of choice was, so I voiced the question.
“We just want to disable him,” Lucy said. “We don’t want to hurt him, so we should probably each take a Taser and some knockout patches. If things get sticky, one of us should have a gun.”
Lucy and Chloe looked at Tara, who inclined her head slightly. I, for one, was grateful that if any varsity cheerleader was going to be packing, it was Tara. Despite Lucy’s expertise, she was just bouncy enough that the idea of her holding a firearm was a little bit scary, and needless to say, I wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of giving Chloe any literal ammunition. As for me, I didn’t want a gun. I’d never been a fan of weapons—I preferred to fight hand to hand.
“Are the Tasers in the guidepost?” Chloe asked Lucy.
Lucy nodded. “They look like those teeny-tiny iPods,” she said, “but if you use the scrolling function, the pointy things will pop out, and all you have to do to activate the charge is press the central button once the pointy things, you know, puncture the skin and stuff.”
Lucy smiled again, and I found myself thinking about how right Zee had been. There was something oddly endearing about Lucy’s earnest sweetness—and about the fact that she’d designed faux iPods that doubled as Tasers, “pointy things” and all.
“We’ll take two cars,” Chloe said. “Park them at least four blocks away from Peyton, preferably in separate directions. We’ll rendezvous back here once the mission is over. Lucy, would I be correct in assuming that the Tasers have built-in communication devices?”
Lucy nodded. “In the headphones,” she said. “That’s why I picked the little iPod design—that and the fact that they come in colors.”
