I Am Calico Jones

Funny how you start reviewing your life when you realize you're about to die. With drowning people it's almost become a cliché—your life flashing before your eyes and all that. But I've got time. I don't know when they'll come for me, but they'll likely let night fall first. So until then it's just me and my thoughts.

I am Calico Jones. I've been told I'm gorgeous: when I was in college I earned spare change by modeling diamond jewelry for the De Beers people, and Pierce Brosnan once hit on me in a bar in Monte Carlo, so you can judge that for yourself. I've been told I'm brainy: the college I went to was MIT, and my degree is in applied quantum physics. (I missed summa cum laude by one one-hundredth of a point, thanks to an ill-advised dalliance with the wrong TA in freshman year.) I've been told I'm brave: but that's only after I made the biggest anaconda in Borneo cry for its mommy, only after I shredded the butts of five murderous kidnappers just as they were about to chop into beef-jerky-sized tidbits the precious heiress I was hired to rescue. And so forth.

I don't need anybody to tell me I can shoot straight: my scores are good enough to regularly win gold in the World Combat Pistol Championship. Professional division. Moreover, when it comes to the real thing, I've never missed.

Finally, I've been told I'm a good lover: this by the aforementioned heiress, as well as the half-dozen Andean maidens I saved from a grisly sacrificial death in the deepest interior of Chile. Among others, if you must know. I guess they're right. You see, I have an anatomical variation that was considered a birth defect by the doctor who delivered me, but which has turned out to be a pleasant asset: I have a double-jointed tongue. I can hear you say, but the tongue is not a jointed organ! Let me assure you, mine is.

However, I'm not flattered when the Robb Report calls me the best private investigator in the world. What I do is so much more than investigation. I don't put on a trench coat and creep around dark buildings, okay? Although I did do that once, on a bet with Jodie Foster—but that's neither here nor there. I work with private citizens, parliaments, clubs, security firms, intelligence networks—whoever can convince me their crisis of the week is worthwhile.

I wish they hadn't tied me up. It's always better when they just lock you in a room, because even if you can't figure a way out, you can at least do pushups or practice your judo on the furniture. But this gang had heard of me—they'd heard I usually do figure a way out, so they decided not to take any chances. They used steel cable, the kind you lock motorcycles with, which unfortunately hasn't a bit of give. They tied one snug loop around my waist, twining it through the belt loops of my cargo pants and securing my hands to it. They wrapped my upper arms close to my sides for good measure, then ran the rope down to my ankles where, after removing my field boots, they tied the last knot. They must have used pliers to tighten those knots. They're good ones, by the looks of them tied by someone with Chinese Navy experience. I'm not going anywhere.

The floor is old oak and I'm lying on my back, in no distress except for being rather cold. It appears I'm in a wine cellar—I'd guess in the basement of the mansion I visited yesterday. It's up on the Hudson River in New York, two miles away from the remote control facility for the satellite shot that's scheduled for tomorrow morning in the Coral Sea. All I've got on is my Lycra t-shirt, cargo pants, and wool socks. The air is heavy and pleasantly musty with that fruity old fermentation smell that happens in every wine cellar, especially where someone has dropped a bottle. The wine soaks into the floor and stays there even after it's mopped away. The house is dead quiet. When I shift my body, I hear the rustle of my clothes. I hear my breath going in and out, in and out.

Fortunately I don't have to go to the bathroom—I've managed to never soil myself in a situation like this. My period's not due until next week. Thank God for small favors, right?

How do I know I'm going to die?

Because the junior thug who carried me in here clumsily knocked my blindfold off as he set me down.

"Shit," he muttered.

I blinked and looked around and saw three faces quite clearly: three greedy wrongheaded aggressive criminal mastermind faces.

"You imbecile," I said, knowing full well they couldn't let me live once I'd seen them.

Junior picked up the blindfold, but one of the others said, "Don't bother."

They all sighed, and the one who'd just spoken said, "We've gotta go, they're waiting. You'll have to come back later and—take care of this."

"But"— said Junior.

"I said let's go!"