Minotaur

2

The front door was opened for him by a servant who didn’t even make eye contact. Chapel stepped inside to a grand foyer dominated by a massive crystal chandelier. His cheap shoes squeaked on the marble floor. Before him a wide staircase led up to the second floor.

He caught a glimpse of motion out of the corner of his eye and his combat reflexes kicked in—he swiveled around to look up at the source of the motion, one hand already reaching for the gun in his jacket. Except he wasn’t carrying it today. He’d assumed he would be frisked at the door, so he’d just left it at home.

“I know she’s hot, but stay frosty there, cowboy,” Angel said in his ear.

Chapel forced himself to calm down. The woman coming down the stairs wasn’t an enemy combatant. She was Fiona Favorov, the former British supermodel who had married Favorov back in 2003. She was, in fact, quite attractive—a vision in a lemon yellow dress with waves of dark hair cascading around her shoulders. She was perhaps thirty-five years old but her skin was still flawless except for some tasteful crow’s-feet around her eyes that crinkled endearingly when she smiled, as she did when she came close enough to hold out her hands and welcome Chapel to her house.

“Is it Captain, or Mister Chapel?” she asked.

Chapel’s brain froze as he tried to understand what she was asking. Her face didn’t change at all as she waited for him to puzzle it out.

“Just—Jim,” he said. “Just call me Jim.” He lifted his hands to take hers.

That did get a reaction out of her, though not the one he’d expected. As she felt how cold his left hand was she didn’t recoil or even blink in surprise. Instead she took his left hand in both of hers and turned it over, studying the artificial skin that covered his robotic fingers.

Chapel opened his mouth to explain but she shook her head to forestall him.

“You should know that in this house we support the troops,” she said. Her smile transformed into a look of resolute patriotism.

Chapel felt like he was about three steps behind in the conversation, and not sure how to catch up.

In his ear Angel told him, “Careful. This one’s not just a pretty face. She’s doing a job right now, and one she’s very competent at. She’s been trained and she’ll know how to handle you. Either to put you at your ease or throw you off your guard.”

Or both at once, Chapel thought.

In Afghanistan he had lost his left arm. When he came home the Army was good enough to give him a new one, but it wasn’t perfect. The silicone skin on top of the bionic arm was airbrushed to match his own skin tone and it even had convincing hair on the knuckles, but it wouldn’t fool anyone who touched it—it didn’t share his body temperature, and they could feel the metal bones underneath. He was used to people being unnerved by it, even freaked out. Fiona Favorov seemed to have figured all of that out in the time it took to shake his hand. She wanted him to know she wasn’t put off by the arm.

But more than that. By saying she supported the troops, she implied they were her troops, and her husband Favorov’s. Both of them were naturalized American citizens, Chapel knew—and their children were American by birth. It would be easy to peg Fiona and Favorov as foreign nationals and therefore a security risk, but here she had insisted she was every bit as American as Chapel, in a way he couldn’t think of contradicting. This woman was very, very sharp, he decided, and Angel was right—he did need to be careful. She was playing him. Maybe that was just standard practice for her—maybe she played this game with every visitor to her house. Or maybe she’d been given instructions to do this, maybe it was part of a bigger plan.

“We’re going to have dinner in just a little bit, in the small dining room,” Fiona said. “It’s through there. But first Ygor would like to sit and have a drink so he can unwind from the day’s business. We’d love to have you join us.”

“Sure,” Chapel said, feeling almost exactly as he had on his first date, back when he was sixteen. Like he was a heavy object that could barely move, much less form a coherent thought.

“Tell her she has a lovely home,” Angel said.

“You have a lovely home,” Chapel said.

Fiona gave him a smile so bright it would have made flowers turn to meet it.