Secret Agent Minister by Lenora Worth Page A

watching after he left the note?
    “Come with me,” he said over her head to Dev.
    “I don’t think—”
    “You’d better listen,” the man told Dev. “Come with me now. I just got a message from the Lady at the Well. She was afraid to call your line.”
    Dev nodded. “Lydia, can you walk?”
    “I think so.” She wanted to sit back down and rub this fire off her skin. “Hot. Fire.”
    Dev spoke into her ear. “Just hang on, honey. You’re having some sort of reaction. We’ll take care of you, but we have to be very discreet.”
    Lydia knew the drill. He didn’t want to bring any more attention to them. Even in her frenzied state of mind, she could sense his anxiety. So she managed a smile. “Let me go,” she whispered to both of the men. “I can get through that side door over there around the corner. No one will notice.”
    Dev shot a glance toward the back of the wraparound veranda, where a French door stood open. “She’s right. No one is looking at us and no one is roaming back there. If we take her through the front, everyone will notice.”
    The gray-haired man nodded, his eyes calm and sure through the slits of his mask. “I agree. Okay, let’s smile and laugh, just in case.”
    Lydia did laugh. She laughed because her skin felt as if a million fire ants were crawling over her. She laughed because she knew she was in serious trouble and that something had gone terribly wrong somewhere between the limo ride and the lemonade. She even laughed at the note in the potted plant. Another good one for her journal.
    Then she stopped laughing, the heat of the big, bright blue bedroom they’d stumbled into causing her to want to throw up. “Did I do something wrong?” she asked Pastor Dev, her eyes brimming with frustrated tears. “I did something wrong.” She tugged her mask off and threw it on the floor.
    He sat her down in a blue brocade wing chair, his hand touching on the pulse at her wrist. “No, sweetheart, you did everything just right.”
    She gulped back a sob. “You called me sweetheart.”
    He tossed his mask down next to hers. “Yes, I sure did.”
    She lifted her gaze to his face, but he was staring over at the other man. “Her pulse is erratic. What did Kissie report?”
    Distinguished Gentleman shook his head, which made him look like a gargoyle with that creepy mask shimmering in gray and silver. “It seems we’ve been compromised. She wouldn’t tell me. You need to call her.”
    “I’ll secure the line.” Pastor Dev got out his trusty phone, punching codes while his gaze and one hand stayed on Lydia. “Hold on, honey.”
    He was being awfully sweet, Lydia thought, her hands scraping at her burning skin. “I need…I’m hot, so hot.” She tried to speak, but her throat seemed to be closing up.
    “Kissie?”
    Pastor Dev listened, then hissed a breath. “I’m on it.” He hung up, stared across at the other man. “I need a bathroom.”
    Lydia started giggling. “Me, too, come to think of it. Too much lemonade.”
    “It’s not the lemonade,” Dev said. “It’s the perfume. She’s wearing lily of the valley.” He was speaking to Distinguished Gentleman, Lydia noted, but she heard him loud and clear. “Amy poisoned the perfume—Kissie thinks it was pesticide. We have to get her washed down.”
    Lydia’s head came up. “Me? You have to wash me down?”
    Pastor Dev helped her up as the other man motioned toward a bathroom just off the bedroom, then headed off in that direction. “Yes, Lydia. You’ve absorbed some sort of bug spray through your perfume—pesticides. That’s what’s making you sick.”
    She registered that, then added, “Amy? But Amy was the nice one. She was so sweet.”
    “Not that sweet,” Pastor Dev said through gritted teeth. “She’s high now. She traded information for drugs, apparently. Then she agreed to poison you, probably for even more drugs. But Kissie managed to get the truth out of her.”
    “Oh, no. The VEPs got to Amy.