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And now, through mechanisms Scarlet didn’t fully understand but recognized as the serendipity that had forged her path for decades, she had a chance to do this cleaner than she could have ever hoped. Without the deadbolt she might be able to sneak into that room undetected. At the very least she could crack the door and get a lay of the land, see if fate had indeed cleared her path all the way to the end.
So with a quick scan of the empty hallway Scarlet strode out from behind the stairwell door. She walked past Wagner’s room with professional briskness, using her peripheral vision to check if the spyhole was darkened by someone peering out from inside.
All clear.
Scarlet turned on her heel and hurried back to the door. Then in one swift movement she slid her keycard out, pressed it against the electronic reader, held her breath as it beeped green and clicked open.
She waited a breath, listening for movement on the other side of the door. Nothing, so Scarlet pressed down on the brass doorhandle and gently pushed the door open a crack.
The fresh scent of shampooed hair and soaped skin came through to Scarlet, along with muffled voices from deep inside the suite. Scarlet cracked the door open a little more, peered inside cautiously. She was prepared to react quickly with an apology and an explanation if she got made. It would be easy enough to explain she’d made a mistake, had been informed that this room had just been vacated and needed to be checked before sending the cleaners in.
But the living room was empty. The muffled voices were coming from behind the closed bedroom door. No change in tone or velocity at Scarlet’s entrance.
She hadn’t been made.
She was still a ghost.
Scarlet stepped all the way inside now. She closed the door soundlessly, stood stock-still and scanned her surroundings.
Immediately she saw the remains of a shattered cell phone, along with an unsheathed military-style K-Bar knife whose steel-knobbed hilt might have been the murder weapon used on that poor phone.
Scarlet’s brows twitched. What had happened in here? Was it good or bad that one of them—probably Wagner—had smashed a phone? Were they on the run from the CIA or some other agency? Was the broken phone Wagner’s attempt to destroy any tracking devices? If so, why?
Shooting a quick glance at the bedroom door, Scarlet examined the broken phone. Black and unbranded, it looked suspiciously like something CIA might issue an off-the-books operative.
And since O’Donnell was very muchonthe CIA books, it meant Wagner was working for the spooks.
He wouldn’t be an NOC asset—you couldn’t really put a former Delta guy into that sort of deep cover. He was already in the Department of Defense system and besides, those Special Forces guys were too obviously ex-military—a cover wouldn’t fool anyone. Which meant Wagner was part of a black-ops outfit. Probably a private military contractor. There were so many of those popping up, now that both DOD and CIA liked to outsource their dirty work. It also gave them ready-madeplausible deniability, that nifty little term coined back in 1948, after the end of World War II, when the Cold War was just warming up.
Scarlet left the broken phone where it was, glanced at the knife, then decided she was better off using her own blade when the time came. It was difficult to match knife-wounds to a specific blade, and it was by no means definitive like a ballistics-match on a bullet. Besides, Scarlet wasn’t going to be able to use the knife so long as they were both in that bedroom together. The blade would only work in a reasonably open space, where Scarlet could brush past and do the deed relatively undetected with a quick exit.
Sure, Wagner would almost certainly not be at his Delta-warrior best right now, but she wasn’t storming in there armed with nothing but a knife—no matter how off his rocker the guy might be.
So Scarlet turned her attention to figuring that part out: How far gone were those two?
After all, there was no telling how a psychotropic drug like LSD would manifest itself.
It all depended on what raw materials the drug had to work with.
What demons lived inside Wagner and O’Donnell?
And how soon would they claw their way out?
Now a muffled sob came through from the other side of that bedroom door. Scarlet frowned and crept closer to listen, that earlier curiosity bubbling up again. She generally avoided getting to know her targets any more than was necessary to make the kill, but this mission still felt a bit too close to home for Scarlet to resist. Yes, she’d managed to stifle that completely impossible thought of who O’Donnell really was, but the aftereffects still lingered.
She crept past the sofa, was almost to the bedroom door when she noticed a black duffel bag off to the side. It was packed and ready, like maybe they’d been preparing to leave the room, disappear without checking out to slow down anyone who might be tracking their movements via Wagner’s alias.
Scarlet crouched down beside the duffel, unzipped it slow and silent, pulled open the top, peered inside. It was Wagner’s stuff—folded black tee shirts and black boxer-briefs and black combat-pants and black socks. Dude took the whole “black ops” thing way too literally.
Scarlet quickly checked the side compartments of the duffel, her attention pulling towards the bedroom door. She wanted to listen, hear what was going on inside, get a feel for when she’d have a chance to do something.
It wouldn’t be easy in the room. She had to leave Wagner alive, which limited her options because she didn’t have the physical skills to overpower the guy. As fortuitous as it seemed to get access to their room undetected, Scarlet knew she might need to reassess, learn what she could about their state of mind, then backtrack and wait it out. The LSD wouldn’t even hit its peak for another couple of hours. There was a long way to go. No need to rush it.
The duffel’s side pockets yielded a roll of duct-tape, sticks of spearmint chewing gum, and not much else. But just as she was about to zip the bag closed and move to the bedroom door, Scarlet felt something hard and metallic along the duffel’s side, stuffed within the bag’s synthetic lining.
A secret compartment. Scarlet’s heart quickened. She slid her gloved fingers along the lining, found the recessed zip, slid it open, reached inside.
And pulled out a dismantled Sig Sauer 9mm handgun.
