AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Only after he’d closed the door behind him and she’d locked it, did she rub her arm where he’d bruised her flesh.
The words she’d heard the woman cry were hauntingly familiar; something about them tugged at her heart. The hurt she felt was one she thought she’d buried when she was still a child.
An hour later, she heard another knock on the door and waited. Wouldn’t whoever it was simply walk in like Topor always did? When she heard the second knock, Raketa walked over.
Alegria stood just outside the threshold and motioned with her head for Raketa to move closer.
“Dead zone,” she explained motioning to the ceiling just outside the threshold of the door. “We’re setting up an extraction, but there’s a complication,” she continued, keeping her voice low.
Raketa nodded with her heart in her throat, almost afraid to believe that K19 had found her so quickly or that they planned to get her out. She didn’t ask what the complication was; she assumed there were many.
“Another person. Not sure if she’s a hostage,” Alegria answered her unasked question.
“Who is she?”
The woman showed her a grainy image on her phone.
“Look familiar?” Alegria whispered.
Raketa shook her head. It could be anyone. There weren’t any features clear enough to discern.
Alegria handed her a plate of food, and Raketa reentered the apartment. As she closed the door behind her, she cursed herself for not asking who else was inside. There had to be at least two operatives, considering they’d found the areas where the cameras wouldn’t pick them up.
—:—
“Alegria is in. She’s seen Raketa,” Shiv told Gunner when he answered the MI6 agent’s call.
“Where is she?” he asked, incredulous that they’d found her before he had, given he didn’t think they’d spend time looking for her over Makar Petrov.
“They’ve got her locked up tight in a compound in the Old City.”
“What’s the plan for Petrov?”
“Gunner, we always protect our own first. You know this.”
He was confused. Under what circumstances would Raketa be part of either of their teams? She was a UR assassin regardless of whether she planned to defect or not.
“Gunner?”
“I heard you.”
“I’m waiting for instructions.”
“From who?”
Shiv laughed. “You, you bloody bastard.”
Normally the plan would be immediate. Get in, get your operative, get out.
“Let’s meet at thirteen hundred,” answered Gunner.
“Roger that.”
“I’ll come to you.”
“That’ll be easier since we don’t know your twenty.”
That was the way Gunner wanted it. He didn’t want anyone to know where he was or what he was doing. The meeting he’d requested would be to craft a plan for Petrov’s assassination, not Raketa’s extraction. He’d be handling that all on his own.
