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I walked carefully toward the body, taking note of every inch of the room as I did so. TJ, my boss at HEAT, would want a full accounting of everything I could remember. He and the rest of my team were staying at a HEAT facility a few miles outside of Chicago, preparing for a mission against the Carbonados Group, a counter-intelligence agency that was—along with its many other criminal pursuits—extorting some high-level government officials. The extortion operation had its base somewhere nearby, although we hadn’t yet pinpointed the location. It had seemed like fate when I’d received an invitation to sit on the panel at the medical conference in the city. Another coincidence and, as I was now realizing, also unlikely to be serendipity.
The soldier wore nice jeans and Doc Martins shoes, but he was shirtless. A white tee shirt and button-down, white-and-blue striped shirt were laid out on the neatly made bed like he was preparing for an evening out. His army-issue duffle bag was unzipped, but the contents were folded and stacked inside it. In other words, nothing was out of the ordinary except the dead body and the gun used to kill him.
I stood by the soldier’s feet, well out of the way of the blood and tissue evidence, and pondered his face. He wasn’t familiar, but that didn’t mean we’d never crossed paths. I scanned his throat, arms, torso, looking for signs of a struggle. Chad would do a thorough exam back at the morgue, but I wanted to know for myself. There were no defensive wounds, no indicators that he’d fought his assailant, so it had been either an ambush or a surprise attack by someone he knew.
I took a step back from the body, ready to turn away and make my exit from Chad’s crime scene, when a cluster of scars on the soldier’s rib cage caught my eye. I crouched down beside him. One of the M.E. assistants took a step toward me, but stopped when I was careful not to touch the body. I pulled out my phone and glanced at Chad. He frowned, but nodded. I snapped a picture of the scars, a ragged row of half-moon shaped pockmarks, souvenirs from an improvised explosive device, or IED. I knew because I’d seen such marks too often. Under the pockmarks, there were a series of straight lines. Healed incisions. I knew that because I’d made such cuts too many times when I was deployed in SWA, southwest Asia, to treat battlefield wounds.
I stood and pulled off my gloves with shaking hands. I nodded to Chad, who said he’d call me in the morning, and dropped my gloves and booties into the plastic bag beside the uniformed cop at the door. When I rounded the corner of the corridor and left the sight of the cop guarding the hotel room, I hit a button on my phone. I continued past the elevators and slipped into the stairwell.
The number I dialed rang only once before TJ answered. “Bond, I thought you were off the clock.”
I leaned out over the iron railing and glanced above and below me in the stairwell to ensure I was alone, then launched the bat signal. “I have a Code Scorpio.”
“Are you in imminent danger?”
“I...I don’t think so.” My fingers and toes were going numb. Shock was setting in. I took a few steadying breaths and shook out my limbs, staving off panic. “But something’s wrong.”
“Only Jensen and I are here at HQ,” TJ said, referring to our IT guru Jason Jensen. “He has your phone pinging at the Grand Plaza Hotel.”
“That’s right. I’m in a stairwell. I haven’t seen anyone suspicious, but I can’t be sure no one is here.”
I listened while TJ barked a series of orders at Jensen, then returned his attention to me. “Samantha, listen very carefully.” TJ using my first name was a sign he was very, very worried.
I repeated my series of deep breaths because TJ worrying was enough to send my parasympathetic nervous system back into panic mode, which could result in a fight, flight, or freeze response. Because I wasn’t a field operative, I’d been trained to flee, but I’d strode into this hotel without a backup team, an escape plan, or even an inkling that I could be walking into a trap.
“Fuck me,” I muttered. “I screwed up.”
“We’ll worry about that later,” TJ said. “Right now, I want you to proceed to the lobby of the hotel. Can you do that safely?”
“I think so.” I continued down the stairs, more relieved than I would have thought possible that I didn’t hear anyone’s footsteps or breathing except my own echoing off the walls.
“In the lobby, choose a spot where you can see everyone in the area, preferably without being seen.”
“Okay.” I exited through the door to the lobby, passed the bank of elevators, and arrived near the check-in desk. “I see a gold upholstered bench in the front corner, to the right of the revolving-door entrance but recessed enough to be discreet. I’ll wait for the team there.”
“Yes, wait there, but about the team.”
I tried to ignore the tension in TJ’s voice. I picked up my pace and slid onto the bench just as the first cop car with its blaring siren pulled up to the curb outside.
“Cops?” TJ said. “What’s going on?”
“You first,” I said. “The team.”
I heard him exhale. “Tactical Team doesn’t arrive in Chicago for a couple more days, and the others are doing recon on two potential Carbonados sites. The fastest I can round up and deploy a backup extraction team is close to an hour.”
I shook my head. Between potential bad guys and overzealous cops, it would be a toss-up who would find me first and what kind of shitshow would ensue. “That’s not going to work.”
“I know,” TJ said. “That’s why I have Jensen contacting an old army buddy of mine. He lives about ten minutes from where you are. He did covert ops. He’ll get you out of there.”
I blew out a long breath. I could probably last ten minutes.
“Your turn,” TJ said. “What’s up with the cops?”
“On their way to a homicide on the fourth floor,” I answered.
“You involved?”
Most people would be offended by that question, but in our line of work, it was totally fair.
