Foreign Éclairs by Julie Hyzy Page B

“Cameras? Do you think there are cameras in our apartment?”
    He pulled me close. “We will find out. I promise you.”
    Now I glanced around, fearful that we were being watched. Certain that we were.
    “What do we do?”
    “For now, we head back to the apartment.”
    “And rip out every single listening and watching device they put there.”
    “Unfortunately not,” he said. He pulled me closer. “Yablonski is calling in a few favors, and he’s making arrangements as we speak. You and I need to go home and wait for him to contact us. Until we get further instructions, we have to pretend as though we have no idea we’re being watched or listened to.”
    “You’ve got to be kidding.”
    “I’m sorry. You’re going to have to trust me on this one.”
    “You know I do.”
    I hung my head and closed my eyes. Except for the traffic and the wind shushing through the trees, the evening was silent. My stomach growled.
    Gav patted my knee. “Let’s get something to eat while we’re out. The less time we spend in the apartment, the better.”

CHAPTER 12

    We started back for our apartment after having devoured far more food than was good for us. Our favorite Mexican place specialized in takeout but provided two small Formica tables and four wobbly aluminum chairs for those rare patrons who chose to dine in. We’d occupied one of the tables for more than an hour, consuming tacos, burritos, chips, salsa, and guacamole, little of which I actually tasted.
    Agent Romero met us outside the elevator when we alighted at our floor. “One of us will be out here all night if you need anything,” she assured us. “You can both sleep soundly knowing we have agents stationed around the building. No one who shouldn’t be here is getting in.”
    We thanked her and let ourselves into the apartment the same way we always did. And yet, the clank of our keys into the ceramic bowl on the table inside the door sounded different. The very air smelled different. Breathing felt different.
    Talking, however, was the absolute worst. The pressure to behave normally—to pretend we had no inkling we were being observed while every nerve in my body twisted with tension—made forming casual conversation virtually impossible.
    Gav had expressed his strong belief that whoever had established surveillance had placed only a handful of listening devices around the apartment and would not have had the time to set up cameras.
    Still, to be safe, we agreed to keep our actions as benign as possible. That meant no pantomiming messages. No writing notes. If the bad guys
were
watching, they needed to be convinced that we didn’t suspect a thing.
    We hung up our coats in silence and moved toward the kitchen, bumping into each other when we both started through the doorway at once.
    “You first,” Gav said.
    “No, after you.”
    He tried to smile, but it was as forced as my gesture signaling him to go ahead.
    Gav walked through the kitchen into the living room, where he turned on the television. I opened the refrigerator and stared in, seeing nothing.
    Updates screamed from the TV. Our eavesdroppers had to have realized by now that we’d escaped being blown to bits. I kept my fingers crossed they wouldn’t try to redouble their efforts tonight.
    “I hope Jason has good insurance,” Gav said.
    Okay, here we go.
    Gav’s comment about insurance at Suzette’s signaled the start to our agreed-upon script—the one we’d worked out over dinner because we had no choice: We
had
to discuss the bombing. Avoiding the topic would have only raised suspicion.
    I poured two glasses of water from the carafe in the fridge and handed one to Gav as I joined him in the living room. No wine for us tonight. We needed to stay alert.
    Every television news station cheerfully reported that no diners had been seated at the front table at the time of the explosion and that no one had been killed in the “gas explosion.” On-camera experts theorized that if anyone had