Flee (5 page)

I
frisked her, locating a bulge that contained an extra clip for her weapon. I
also found something else. Something both intriguing and disturbing. In her
right shoulder strap, sewn into the seam, was a fifty dollar bill. In her left
strap, two pieces of wire that felt like lock picks.

Questions
bombarded my mind. Questions I didn't have time to address. I removed the towel
to look at her face, intending to memorize it.

I
wouldn't have to.

Staring
at her was like staring at my own reflection. The jaw, the haircut, the
cheekbones, the nose, even the eyes were mine.

This
woman looked so much like me she could have been my clone.

"After a lethal encounter, clean up is your first priority,"
The Instructor said. "If the area is still hot, leave immediately. But if
you can take a few seconds to hide the body, that will buy you a few minutes or
hours down the line. If there's time to search the body, do so. However,
distinguish between gathering intel and processing it. You can think about what
you found after you're safe. Dwelling on things while you're still in danger
will slow you down and get you killed."

My
breath caught, and I spent five useless seconds just gaping at her.
At me.
This was impossible.

Wasn't
it?

I
touched her hairline, looking for plastic surgery scars. Found none. No contact
lenses either. I tugged down her suit, exposed her left breast. There, below
the nipple, was a small round mole.

My
mole.

I
felt dizzy, as if my thoughts were whirling around me. I was looking at myself,
staring at my own face, my own body, dead.  This couldn't be happening. I
wasted three more seconds attempting to process what I was seeing, and then a
bell went off in my head reminding me I had to get out of here.

Tugging
out my phone, I took a quick, full body picture of the dead woman. Then I
pressed her thumb to the phone's screen and took a second pic of her
fingerprint.

After
placing the bloody towel back over her face, I dragged her into the closest
toilet. Hoisting her onto the seat brought the stars back, but I managed to get
her balanced. Then I tore off the top portion of her bathing suit and tied it
to the water pipe behind her so she'd stay in the sitting position. I locked
the stall door, shimmied underneath it, and grabbed a fresh towel.

A
quick walk around revealed the locker room was empty. I located locker 352. My
fingers were shaking, my whole body was shaking, and it took me twice as long
as my normal eight seconds to pick the padlock. After grabbing the duffle bag
inside, I toweled off, stuck the suppressed .22 into my khakis against the
small of my back, and forced myself to focus on my next move. The hitwoman must
have a locker, but there were hundreds here. I had no time to break into them
all. Whoever was after me could send someone else, or someone might already be in
place.

I
needed to get to a safe house. Someplace I could absorb this, recover, plan my
next move. I checked the clock on my encrypted cell. Only an hour and thirty-six
minutes until my meeting with Cory.

It
was also ten minutes past the time Jacob said he'd call.

The
tremor that had claimed my muscles delved deeper, centering in my chest.  Jacob
never missed a call. For the first time in almost a decade, I was on my own.
With everything that had happened in the past hour, that made me feel the most
off-balance.

I
relocked my locker, shouldered my duffle, and left the locker room, getting my
breathing under control. The Pilates class was still going on. The woman at the
front desk still had her nose in her magazine, and didn't bother glancing up
when I approached.

"It's
me again, Darla Thompson. Can you tell me when I first came in this morning?"

Her
sigh was slight but intended to be heard.

"Last
four digits of your Social."

"Seven
seven eight eight."

Another
sigh. "You checked in at nine thirty, and again at ten twenty-six."

She
looked at me now, raising an eyebrow at my wet shirt and pants.

"Thanks,"
I said, turning on my heels.

At
least now I understood her earlier "It's been a while" comment. She
was being sarcastic. The hitwoman—my double—had checked in as me, fifty-six
minutes before I checked in myself. So she must have been on her way here
before Jacob called me at the apartment. As a back-up, in case the op failed?
And how had she even known about this place?

I
stepped out onto the street. The wind was still up, raising gooseflesh all over
my body, the wet clothes intensifying the chill. I headed west. Normally, after
being ordered to go to ground, I would be on a bus out of town after picking up
my duffle bag. But I had to meet with Cory and rescue Kaufmann, which meant I
had to stay local.

In
the bag I had ID and credit cards for Carmen Sawyer, and for Betty Richards.
But if the people after me knew about Darla Thompson, Betty might also be
compromised. Betty was surely compromised if the people chasing me had gotten
to Jacob.

I
needed someplace private, with Internet access, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a bed.
Someplace that didn't require any sort of identification, or interaction with
strangers. And I thought I knew a place.

I
hailed a cab, gave the driver the address. He was white, overweight, and his
hack smelled like BO and onion breath. I dug through the duffle bag, made sure
he wasn't looking, and opened the med kit. I filled a syringe with Demerol and discreetly
injected my bad shoulder. Blessed numbness seeped into the area, and I had the
urge to slump back in the seat and heave a long sigh. But I couldn't let my
guard down, not yet. Instead I slipped on a silver Casio diver's watch from my
bag, and synced it to the time on my phone. Then I put two zip ties and my lock
picks into my front pocket and stared out the rear window, checking for tails.

Twelve
minutes later the cab spit me out on Roosevelt. I paid with a fifty, got my
change, and walked the last three blocks. There was a cool autumn breeze, but my
hair was almost dry, my damp clothes warming up from the cab ride and my
physical activity. I smelled car exhaust, sewage from a nearby drain, and cinnamon
from a bakery up the street. The sky was overcast, but I sensed the barometric
pressure, and it didn't feel like rain. My hearing had almost returned to
normal, with only a faint ringing. I kept my bad arm against my side as I
walked. The pain was gone, but I had no idea of the damage, didn't want to make
it worse.

The
apartment building was typical of the area, five stories, red brick, built with
the design acumen of a three year old playing with blocks. From the outside I
judged there were forty units, eight per floor.

I
circled the building, didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. Then I slipped
into a neighboring building's doorway and waited three minutes just to make
sure no one was following, doing the isometric calf exercises I'd been taught
to keep my muscles loose.

I
was clear.

The
front security door was cake, six seconds with my pick and tension wrench. No
lobby, just a hall leading to the apartments on that floor, the elevator, and
the stairwell. I smelled traces of mildew, roach poison, and fresh paint.
Someone had cooked pancakes for breakfast. Voices and a jangle of music came
from a TV on one of the upper floors. I took the stairs to apartment 304,
listened at the door, then knocked. No one should have been home, so when I
heard movement coming from inside I stepped to the left of the doorway and
tugged the .22 from my waistband.

Victor
opened the door, looked around, and then saw me. He smiled in recognition, then
confusion took over. "Carmen?"

I
brought the gun up in a smooth arc.  It caught him under the jaw even as he was
flinching away. He backpedaled, and I followed him into the apartment. I cocked
back my right leg and fired it into his gut.

Victor
crumpled to the floor on all fours. I closed the door behind me and jammed the
gun into his ear.

"On
your face, arms out, palms up."

"Carmen?"
His voice had a quaver in it. "What the hell—"

"If
you make me ask again I'll shoot you."

He
eased himself down and splayed out his arms. He was wearing jeans, a blue polo
shirt. I noted he'd shaved since I'd seen him on my computer monitor, and I could
smell cologne.
Claiborne For Men
. I put my knee on the back of his neck,
pinning his face to the carpeting, and frisked him. Wallet in his back pocket.
Cell phone in his front. I took both.

"I
have some cash," he said, the fear still in his timbre. "In a box in
my closet. A few hundred dollars."

"Why
aren't you at work?"

"What?"

"Work.
You said you were on call."

"Last
minute thing. A buddy phoned, wanted to trade shifts."  He gave a
strangled laugh.  "Is this what you do, meet guys online then break into
their homes when you think they're at work?"

He
seemed genuine. But all operatives took acting lessons. I could go from
laughter to tears in an eyeblink, just like Meryl Streep. But I doubted Meryl
could kill a man eighteen ways using just her thumb.

"Hands
behind your back. Cross them at the wrists."

I
increased the pressure on his neck, digging a zip tie out of my pocket. It was
a white plastic strip, eighteen inches long, made for bundling cable. In a
quick motion I stuck the .22 under my armpit and encircled his hands with the
tie, snugging it tight.

"I
didn't think I even gave you my address," he said.

"You
didn't."

He
made a sucking sound. "I think you knocked one of my teeth loose. This is
a pretty awful first date, if I may say."

I
took note of his attempt at humor but didn't acknowledge it. Nerves talking? Or
cool under pressure? At this stage I couldn't tell. "Ankles together, then
bend your knees so I can reach your feet."

He
obeyed, and I cinched another zip tie around his feet, noting he had on socks
with a White Sox logo.

"Now
what? You kill me?"

"That
depends on you, Victor. I'd like to trust you, but some things are happening in
my life that make me incapable of that."

"If
you'd like to talk about some of those things, I'm a captive audience."

The
normal me might have smirked. The normal me liked this guy. But I couldn't
afford to let the normal me do the thinking now. I unslung my duffle and fished
out the med kit. It took a few seconds to find the vial of amobarbital. I
judged his weight to be a hundred ninety, filled the syringe with an
appropriate dose, and shoved it into his biceps as I pressed the plunger.

Victor
bucked, throwing me onto my ass, but I'd managed to give him the full dose. He
twisted to face me, the needle still sticking out of his arm.

"What
did you do?"

"It's
a sedative. You'll sleep for a few hours."

He
blinked, his eyelids already getting heavy. "W…why?"

"I
need your apartment for a little while. If you've been telling me the truth,
when you wake up I'll be gone. If I discover you've been lying to me, about
anything at all, you won't wake up."

"L…
lousy first date."

Then
his eyes fluttered shut and his head hit the carpet.

My
to-do list was growing exponentially. I needed to toss Victor's place to see if
he was just an unlucky civilian or somehow part of this whole mess. I also had
to tend to my injuries, find a shoulder bag like Cory had specified, figure out
who that hit woman was, access the DoD database, try to contact Jacob, learn
the extent of my frame-up, and form a plan to handle Cory and get Kaufmann back
unharmed—a plan that was already way behind because my duffle bag only
contained 10k and not the 30k Cory had demanded.

I
prioritized, doing a quick tour of the apartment to make sure it was empty. It
was, except for an incredibly obese calico who meowed when she saw me.

"Hello,
Mozart." I tickled her chin and she purred.

I
found the bathroom, shedding my clothes and checking out the medicine cabinet.
It was stocked full of bandages, first-aid supplies, and various professional
equipment. Exactly what would be expected from a paramedic, which is what
Victor supposedly was. I stripped off my bra, brushing away the remnants of the
damp pills I'd stuffed inside earlier, and checked my injuries in the mirror
over the sink.

I
was a mess, cut up and bruised and swollen over much of my body. The worst was
my shoulder, bright pink and puffy. I didn't have time to properly clean or
tape any of my wounds, so I slathered on a whole tube of antibiotic ointment,
gave myself a booster shot of Demerol, and swallowed four aspirin and some
amphetamine salts from my kit. Then I shoved my clothing and gym shoes into the
dryer in the closet near the kitchen.