“No, wait.” Kacie reached out her hand and Anika aimed her laser right between the girl’s eyes. “Okay.” She dropped her hand and her shoulders slumped. “Now I’ll never get to Kansas City.”
Anika was curious, despite herself. “What’s in Kansas City?”
“My best friend. From Leavenworth West,” Kacie said, citing the infamous Midwestern prison for violent pre-adults. “She’s getting married, but my trainer says zeros don’t get offsite privileges.”
Anika studied the girl’s dejected stance. Sighing inside, she asked, “Do you know about the trick for shutting down your chip?”
Kacie nodded, keeping her eyes downcast. “I tried it once. Missed. Burned a hole in the dorm wall.”
Anika bit down on her lip to keep from smiling. “I can do it for you.”
“That would be so cool-hot.” Kacie’s features animated, her eyes lifting to meet Anika’s. The diamond stud embedded in her front tooth sparkled in the moonlight.
God, you’re young.
“You have to take a hit, anyway. Otherwise, they’ll wonder how I got away.”
“Oh, right,” Kacie exclaimed. “Good thinking.”
Anika mentally shook her head. She suspected Kacie could be dead before the end of her training. “As soon as the numbness wears off, you get going, all right? Report back to your U.N.I.T. before the twenty hours is up. Your chip may still be shut down, but don’t push your luck.” Kacie’s eyes, wide as saucers, didn’t blink. “Stay off the main roads. And lose the dazzler in your tooth.”
“Why?” Kacie’s scowl returned. “My trainer tells me that all the time.”
“It makes you stand out. You want to blend in. Unless you’re on a sweetheart mission.”
“What kind of mission?” Kacie’s eyes narrowed to skeptical slits. “I haven’t heard of it.”
“If you’re lucky, you won’t,” Anika said.
They stood for a moment, staring at each other.
Then Kacie reached into her mouth and removed the stud. “How’s that?” She bared her teeth and looked as threatening as a baby cub.
“Better. Okay, turn around. Lower your collar. Stand up straight.”
Kacie followed the commands without a murmur.
“One, two … ” Anika fired. The slight figure crumpled to the ground. “Three.”
“Thanks again for the lift.” Anika gingerly swung her left leg over the back end of the bike and stood in front of an Internet café on Main Street in Miami Beach. She handed the burly guy straddling the seat Grey’s — or was it Wilson’s? — jacket. The material strained over his broad shoulders. “You’ll take care of the bike?”
“Don’t worry,
querida
. Your ex-
novio
will never see this bike again. Although if he lives around here, he may see some of its parts.” The man grinned at his little joke, then revved the engine and drove off, fist raised in mock salute.
Anika adjusted her sunshades, grateful for the dark lenses that kept the late afternoon sunlight from singeing her eyes. She flexed and released her fingers to try to dispel the jangly sensations from the WideAwake strip. The drug’s side effects were a small price to pay for staying awake during the long drive to Miami.
School kids and day laborers crowded the noisy café while music pulsed from the sound system and monitors played news, sports, comedy, and promo channels. Anika bought a Mediterranean wrap, citrus water, and single-use card, then headed to a private booth. She took a seat, inserted the card into the computer payment slot and tapped the keys to access Gianni’s regular channel.
After the incident in the safehouse, using his private line seemed pointless. She estimated she had forty seconds before U.N.I.T. traced her message. She prayed Gianni would understand what she was trying to tell him before then.
As soon as the channel was open, she identified herself. Then, “Are you there?”
Six seconds passed. “Yes.”
Thank God.
“Survived solo. No thanks to you, you SOB.” Her fingers flew across the keys.
Thirteen seconds.
“I’ll see you — and St. Jude — in hell. With the rest of U.N.I.T.” She punched the transmit key then fisted her hands in her lap while she waited for his reply.
Please, please, please.
“I can explain,” he wrote back. “Give me four hours. For our sake. For what we shared our first night together.”
Anika’s mind blanked.
What do you mean?
Then it clicked.
Three seconds left.
“Last chance.” She punched the send key and closed the channel.
She sat back and gripped the sides of the chair, her pulse racing as if she had just completed a fifty-meter sprint. After a moment, she peeled her fingers away from the plastic, reached for the water, and swallowed several gulps. The orange fizzy liquid tickled the back of her throat.
She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was. Hungry, too. She tore off the packaging and took a big bite of feta cheese, olives, and tomatoes.
Gianni had understood. Maybe it was the use of the open channel. Maybe it was the reference to St. Jude. He knew that she was trying to tell him she was alive, that she had made it to the truck stop, that she had found the medal and the knapsack. But that something had gone wrong. Something she couldn’t tell him on an unsecured channel.
The four hours he had asked for must be how long it would take to arrange another private channel. And the reference to their first night together had to be the numeric code for it. He had chosen a date only the two of them knew.
Anika thought back to that night. They had been assigned a mission as a husband-and-wife assassination team. Success required they play their roles as expert shots and devoted lovers to perfection. The weapons part was easy, but Anika had trouble with the rest of it. Despite detailed directions from the agency’s coaches during the prep sessions, she wasn’t convincing as Gianni’s wife of two years.
After an especially awkward session, Gianni had consulted with the coaches while Anika stood nearby and hugged the bed sheets around her naked body.
She had been ordered home. They would try again the next day.
That night, Gianni had come to her loft, suggesting they get a head start, out of sight of the coaches, the lights, the recorders. He uncorked one of the champagne bottles he had brought. At his urging, Anika drank most of the bottle by herself. The combination of nerves and an excellent year helped glass after glass of the bubbly liquid slide down.
Then Gianni took her hand, led her up the narrow circular staircase to her bedroom, and guided her through a flawless session that left her fully satisfied and craving more. Anika had expected his skill, but not his tenderness. Or her uninhibited response.
Three days later, the mission went off without a hitch.
A week after that, Gianni had shown up at her front door. She had studied him through the security monitor and debated whether to let him in. He looked so casual and harmless in faded jeans and worn boots, his hair hanging loose over the upturned collar of his leather jacket. He held a bottle of wine in one hand and a warming pouch in the other.
Pollo alla cacciatore
. His mother’s special recipe.
But he wasn’t just a guy who had shown up, uninvited, on her doorstep. He was a senior level operative in an agency that didn’t tolerate mistakes. Her finger hovered over the entrance button while the cautions of U.N.I.T.’s trainers circled in her mind. Not cautions against sex with a fellow operative. Sex was understood, even encouraged as a form of physical release. As long as it didn’t lead to an emotional attachment that could jeopardize mission proficiency.
She buzzed him in.
“Just dinner,” she said when he crossed the threshold.
The tomatoes and onion and garlic smelled sinfully delicious. Worth pushing aside some cautions. Even as the heat in Gianni’s eyes ratcheted up the volume of those cautions.
He pulled a single red rose out of the pouch and handed it to Anika.
“Nicer than a moodstick, don’t you think?”
Her throat suddenly dry, she nodded and punched the cautions farther away.
After a soul-satisfying meal, Gianni stood up to leave. She stretched out her hand. “I’m thinking … dessert.”
He brushed his lips across her fingers and set off tiny fireworks. His touch shoved the cautions into a box and slammed the lid shut.
Now, sitting here, Anika wondered what she would say to Gianni in four hours. She had to tell him the truth, but how much? At least, that the solo had been devised by Command to test his loyalty. A test he had failed by helping her. That his life was at risk. Because she had survived. Because she had lied. How could she explain why she had done it?
She hugged her arms to her chest and stared at the screen. Instead of seeing its dark square shape, she saw again the look of longing in Gianni’s eyes when he had stood in her kitchen and talked about how much family mattered.
How could she ever explain about the pregnancy?
Her fingers dug into her upper arms as she tried to push aside the guilt and second guesses. She blew out a quick breath, then punched in a new number, typed her message and waited for the reply.
“Never thought I’d hear from you again.”
“For the record, you haven’t,” she typed back. “I need to collect on that favor.”
• • •
One hour later, she had what she needed. She walked into the dingy lobby of Hotel Paradiso, past a sagging couch, two broken chairs and a dying plant, through a door marked “Private.”
The space behind the door was no bigger than a munitions hold. As soon as the lock clicked shut behind her, a security scanner cast a greenish glow on the floor and walls. Seconds later, the opposite door swung open.
A man, seated at a large gleaming wood desk, was speaking into a comm device wrapped around his ear. He gestured her inside.
As soon as Anika cleared the threshold, a dark shape rushed at her from the right. A grunt boomed in her ear and a nasty garlic-sweat smell invaded her nostrils. The bodyguard knocked her to the ground. Meaty hands groped her torso, found the gun and removed it. Then he hauled her back up and shoved her into a hard-backed chair, digging his hand into her right shoulder to keep her there.
She took it all without protest.
Amateur
.
The man at the desk set his jewel-studded ear comm in its holder, smoothed back his already perfect dark hair and rested his hands on the wooden surface.
“Welcome.” His dark eyes studied her. “I’m Jorge. And you are?”
“Whoever you tell me I am. That’s why I’m here,” she replied. “I would have handed over the weapon. All you had to do was ask.” She tried to keep the edge out of her voice, but fatigue dented her self-control.
“Ah, yes. My apologies.” Jorge spoke with no trace of regret and no trace of a Cuban accent. “Ramon is new and one can never be too careful.” He signaled the bodyguard to return to the corner of the room.
The richness of Jorge’s office contrasted with the shabbiness of the hotel lobby. The warm beauty of antique wood furniture and wall tapestries were juxtaposed with the cool efficiency of sophisticated surveillance and communications equipment. A bank of monitors along one wall flickered with changing views of hotel rooms, factories, and warehouses. His various businesses, no doubt.
“Lights, fifty percent,” he called out. The room softened to a golden glow. “Ah, much nicer, don’t you agree?”
“Do you have my documentation? And my transport?”
Jorge smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Americans.” He shook his head. “Always right down to business. Very well. You have brought an image?” Anika reached into her sack, pulled out a disc, and placed it in front of him.
Jorge slid the disc into his computer and studied the different images of her real face, full front, three-quarters, side profile. “You’ve managed a decent disguise,” he commented. “Let me guess. Facial tape, colored lenses, fake teeth?”
“When will the package be ready?”
Pursing his lips, Jorge continued, “I can do so much better. New retinas, new fingerprints. Even an entirely new face. One that would enhance your natural beauty rather than disguising it.”
“Just the documents,” she said. “And the transport. When does it leave?”
“I can promise you the newest techniques, the newest medications. The procedures and recovery will take a matter of days.” He leaned toward her and pressed home his point. “You would then be free to travel in much greater comfort than the transport I have otherwise arranged.”
“I’m sure the transport you’ve arranged will be fine. What is it?”
“At midnight,” Jorge said, sighing, “Ramon will drive you to the marina. The captain’s expecting you.” He keyed some information into his computer. Then he turned, blocking her view, and worked at the equipment on the credenza behind his desk. After a few minutes, he swung back and handed over an envelope. “How is Carlos these days?”
“What are these?” She held up the old-style paper passport and visa. “I expected discs.”
“My homeland prefers paper.” He spread out his hands in a gesture that attempted to both appease and dismiss. “I assure you they will satisfy the authorities.”
She studied the documents for Jane Brown, a public school art teacher from Toronto, Canada.
“How do you know Carlos?” Jorge asked.
“Friend of a friend.” Anika wasn’t about to reveal that she had first met Carlos in Arizona. That he had been on the wrong side of a mission, then turned informant, and was now under witness protection in the middle of nowhere U.S.A.
“Until he contacted me with your request,” Jorge said, “I hadn’t heard from him in months. Not since that unfortunate incident in Phoenix.”
“I hear he’s doing okay. Keeping out of trouble.” She looked up from the papers. “You’re sure these will get me through customs?”
“Not to worry.” Jorge moved his hand as if swatting away a mosquito.
She didn’t doubt him. Carlos had told her Jorge was the best. Her own check had revealed Jorge Fidel Alejandro López to be a man who mixed legitimate business activities with illegal ones. While he had some reach beyond Miami, he was still a big fish in a little pond. He wanted more. His ambition drove him to deliver what he promised. So that his reputation would grow and, one day, make him a big fish in a gigantic pond.