Prescription: Makeover Read Free Page A

allowed herself.
    “Over here,” a male voice said unexpectedly from below.
    Ike froze. Too late she heard the sound of footsteps on wet pavement.
    Pressing herself against the building, heart hammering, she held her breath and tried to become one with the rough bricks.
    Don’t look up,
she thought.
Please don’t look up.
    “You got the stuff?” a second male voice asked, higher and a little nasal.
    “You got the cash?”
    She relaxed slightly at the sound of crinkling paper and plastic. It was just a drug buy, she thought, then quirked her lips at the
just.
Under other circumstances, she might’ve waded in and tried to scare some sense into the idiots. As it was, she’d wait them out.
    She was after a bigger score.
    Once their business was concluded, the men moved off. One headed out across the golf course on foot, past the pro shop where Ike had hidden her Jeep. The other disappeared around the corner. Moments later, a car door slammed and an engine started, revved and then faded with distance.
    After a minute, Ike started breathing again, though her pulse stayed high at the near miss. She resumed her careful journey, crabbing sideways on the narrow ledge until she reached the shadows near the half-open window. Then she paused and listened.
    In the room beyond, low-voiced conversation was punctuated by the clink of glasses. The quiet, civilized sounds suggested the meeting hadn’t started yet. Perfect.
    Unperturbed by the height, Ike leaned back in the vee formed by the connecting stone walls and braced her feet on the molding. Once she was relatively stable, she spun her black leather fanny pack around to her front and dug out the palm-size telescoping mirror she used at work to look at hard-to-reach computer connections.
    Praying she wasn’t about to bounce a reflected beam of light into the room, she edged the mirror past the frosted glass windowpane, to the open spot where heated indoor air hit the damp, cool outdoors and created a faint mist.
    The mirror fogged momentarily, then cleared, showing her an expensively furnished room, all wood paneling, burgundy leather and a huge Oriental carpet she thought might be Heriz, based on a childhood spent haunting the antique shops of Vermont with her mother and father, before —
    She cut off the memory before it could form and focused on the job at hand, angling the mirror and fighting to keep her hand steady as she located three gray-haired men seated at a large table set for six more.
    All three were white guys in their late fifties, maybe early sixties, well-groomed and wearing expensive suits in shades of blue or gray. They exuded a homogeneity, a sameness she would have found vaguely creepy under other circumstances. As it was, all Ike felt was a burn of hatred. An ache for revenge. For justice.
    The bastards had killed Zed with a bullet meant for her, and she planned to make them pay.
    W ILLIAM REACHED THE Coach House a few minutes late for the meeting, thanks to Max and his “favor,” along with the Friday night traffic between NYC and western Connecticut.
    He parked his ride — an ice-blue BMW convertible he’d borrowed from a friend of a friend and disguised with fake tags that matched equally fake DMV records in the name of Emmett Grant. The cover was solid.
It’d better be,
William thought with a grimace.
I paid enough for it.
    The free cover stories were one of the few things he missed about working for the feds, but the money had been well spent. All but the most in depth background check would show that Emmett Grant was a slightly shady entrepreneur who’d cashed out just before the Internet bubble burst and was now looking to reinvest in the pharmaceutical market. William had the car and ID to match the image and he was dressed for the part in a custom suit — also borrowed — and the good watch his father had given him when he’d left for the Marines. High-quality fake facial hair and a touch of silver at his temples completed the