License Invoked by Robert Asprin Read Free Book Online Page A

like a container-load of baggage. Elizabeth hadn't properly appreciated how much of an entourage or how much equipment a musical group needed on tour. She suddenly realized that every luggage cart on the pavement belonged to Fionna's group. The manager snapped his fingers, and the porters started loading the parcels and cases into the boots of the limousines. With little shooing motions, he steered each person toward his or her assigned car.
    Elizabeth had much to think about as the limos arrived, each stretching on and on like a clown car at the circus. My heaven, but American cars are BIG, she thought. With the hall-monitor training foremost, she managed to help shift everyone in the parties into the cars, got Fionna, her bodyguard, the manager, the publicist, and herself into the first, and away they went. As soon as the car was moving, Fionna slumped into the corner of the plushy seat, and reached out a languid hand. Lloyd Preston automatically dug into his jacket pocket and brought out a cigarette and a fancy gold lighter.
    “Thanks, dearie,” Fionna said. Elizabeth studied her.
    Well, well, Fee Kendale. She and Elizabeth hadn't seen much of one another since coming down from St. Hilda's College, Oxford. They'd been friends then, but had lost touch immediately after graduation. Her family said she had gone abroad. How interesting that it had turned out to be true, although she wasn't as far away as her father had made it sound. What's more, it easily explained what must look to an outsider like a coincidence. Lord Kendale knew Elizabeth was in the Secret Service; he even knew which branch. She ran into him occasionally in the corridors of power, and he always remembered to have his secretary send her a card on Christmas and her birthday. She only hoped that he hadn't exaggerated the nature of the threat just to get an agent on the case whom he knew he could trust. And he'd known perfectly well where Phoebe had been all these years she was supposed to have been “abroad.” Elizabeth wondered how many of Fionna's entourage knew that their rebel star was really a British debutante of the most drearily respectable antecedents. Well, mostly respectable. They had been up at St. Hilda's. Elizabeth grinned.
    Phoebe had been intractable even as a child, always going her own way no matter how much her father pleaded with her. It was going to be hellish keeping Fee from slipping away from scrutiny when it became onerous, but now Elizabeth had a weapon she might be able to use over her to keep her in order: her deeply dark, secret past.
    As the airport disappeared from view, Elizabeth realized with a shock that she had forgotten to look for her U.S. counterpart. After the Phoebe/Fionna bombshell, it was small wonder, but the omission was devastatingly unprofessional of her. Still, no one had attempted to contact her. Oh, well, too late to go back now. Her connection would have to catch up with them at the hotel.
     
     

Time Scount 5 - License Invoked
    Chapter 5
    “Will you stay off me bleedin' heels?” said the slim, green-haired woman, rounding drunkenly on the blonde woman in the crumpled suit behind her.
    A big, dark-haired man wearing a white linen sports jacket over an immaculate T-shirt and jeans cut between the two of them and put an arm around the tall woman, who was recognizable anywhere as Fionna Kenmare, the acid folk rock star. The blonde woman, shorter by several inches, had a good, strong chin and steady, gray eyes. She looked as if she could put up a good fight but was choosing not to.
    Beauray Boudreau watched them make their way from the file of limousines that had pulled into the underground garage of the Royal Sonesta Hotel on Bourbon Street. Fionna Kenmare staggered over the threshold into the hotel, and the large man steadied her. Behind her, the woman in the suit maintained a calm expression, but her eyes sparked to show that she was fuming mad. Boudreau followed them inside, past the uniformed doorman,