The next four hours passed in a blur, and, while Tabi understood a lot of what they were doing, she just didn’t understand how. The fact that they had access to the museum from inside and outside just blew her away. “Will we go there today?”
“Yes, once another hour has gone by,” Cain said. “To check out the site, set up more cameras, get a feel for the place.”
“Am I coming?” Both men hesitated; then she looked at them and said, “Interesting.”
“We don’t want to leave you alone here,” Cain said.
“Ah.” She nodded. “Then take me with you, if that makes sense.”
“Or not,” Ryland said. “It depends on the team.”
“Meaning, you need more men here, just to look after me.”
“In this case,” Ryland said gently, “I’d stay and look after you, but I’m not sending Cain out there alone.”
She gave him a brief smile. “Okay, that sounds better.” She didn’t want Ryland going out there either. But she also knew she’d insult him terribly if she said anything.
When an odd buzz sounded on Ryland’s phone, he looked down at it and said, “Hey, they’re here.”
Cain got up and said, “We’ll do twenty-minute check-ins.”
She looked at Cain and asked, “Are you coming back?”
“Of course,” he said. “In a few hours.” And, with that, he walked out.
She walked to Ryland, and, when he opened his arms, she stepped into them. Always mindful of his injuries, she held him close and whispered, “What if they’re killed?”
“Like you said, there’s absolutely no guarantee of tomorrow. But we’ll do our damnedest to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
She nodded and said, “All of this”—as she pointed to the blueprints covering the table—“how does he remember it all?”
“It’s what Cain does. He’s a numbers guy and has not quite a photographic memory, but, on things like this, and navigational themes, Cain’s gifts are turned on all the time.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” she said.
“Well, it’s definitely a cross to bear in some ways,” he said, “because we all get tired of his insufferable rightness.”
She burst out laughing. “Okay, so what are we supposed to do while they’re gone?”
“I’m actually running command central,” he said. “It’s not that I’m doing nothing, but I’ll just rearrange some of this.”
“Why don’t we put it up on the wall?” she said.
He looked at her, surprised, and said, “That’s a good idea, but I don’t think we have anything to put them up with.”
“Are you telling me that you can’t get tape?”
“Actually,” he said, “I probably have some tacks.”
She watched in amazement as he pulled out a small tin and opened it. “Why would you have those?”
“You never know what you might need.” With her help, they quickly put up the four blueprints. One for each of the four stories of the museum.
“Good,” she said. “Now the table is empty, and you can have it for your work.”
“And what will you do?”
“It’s been hours since we ate,” she said. “I’ll put this trolley outside for them to take away, then figure out what I want for dinner. That, obviously, is, well, you know, a fairly major job.”
He laughed. “You do that.”
She pushed the trolley carefully to the door and asked, “Is it okay to open it?”
He looked over, smiled, and said, “Yes. We have an extra guard or two on the building.”
She just shook her head at that, opened up the door, put the trolley outside, and took a good long look down the hallway. Dark burgundy carpet was on the floor, and the wall had an interesting shade of beige, with some pattern on the top one-third of the wall. A very classy look, not ornate or elaborate, just businesslike and subdued. She quite approved. She counted six doors that she saw. She contemplated that.
She slowly closed the door, turned, and looked at him. “Did you ever consider that he could be in one of these rooms?” she asked, as she motioned out into the hallway.
“There is no way to check that,” he said.
“What? Can’t you just hack into the hotel registration system?”
“No,” he said. “It’s one of the hotels that we actually worked with to upgrade their security system, so that, so far, it’s hack-free.”
“That wasn’t very smart of you.”
He gave a laugh. “Generally they’re on our good guys’ list.”
“But you already had one gunman here. Another instance where they’ll owe you.”
“Maybe,” he said, with a smile.
She asked, “Shouldn’t you ask them?”
“I was thinking about checking in a different way,” he said.
“And how does that work?”
“Sometimes it works well. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all.”
“I like it,” she said. “So give it a shot.” She waited, while he clicked away on the keyboard. “Well?”
“Well, nothing,” he said. “The photo that I sent them isn’t matching anybody.”
“Does that mean that he’s here or not here?”
“It means that the photo was never used to identify a current resident. Doesn’t mean that’s the photo they booked under either though.”
“You guys have to give facial ID?”
“Actually the only people who stay here are people they have files on.”
“Interesting, but pretty hard to run a business that way.”
“Yes, and no,” he said. “It’s one way.”
The evening passed slowly. She ordered in salmon and veggies for dinner, and they had a nice quiet meal, just the two of them, slowly getting to know each other.
“Did you mean it?” he asked.
“Mean what?” she asked, as she laid down her knife and fork and put her plate back on the trolley.
“About going sailing?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Of course I don’t have a boat yet.”
“Will you get another one? I thought you were wondering about it.”
“I think everybody wonders about not getting a new one, when something like this happens,” she said. “But it’s beyond me to not have another sailboat. Maybe I’ll get something different this time.”
“I’m sure we could look at it, after this is all over with.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Just in time for me to go back to work.” She winced at that.
“Well, maybe you can take a sabbatical, like a few months off?” She looked at him in surprise. He shrugged. “A couple weeks maybe?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “It’s always so busy at work.”
“Understood.” And he left it at that.
By the time it was bedtime, she was yawning again. “So where should I go to sleep, where I won’t disturb you?” she said.
“I would suggest you go back to the bed you took your nap on.”
She thought about it and said, “I’d rather be out here, you know, with you.”
“Then take that bed,” he said.
She nodded and said, “Is it okay to take a shower?”
“Go for it.”
As she headed into the bathroom, she called back, “Still no word?”
“Nothing beyond the regular check-ins,” he said. “It’s all about waiting.”
“And you didn’t find Green’s face anywhere, on any of the cameras in town?”
“Nobody’s reported back on it yet, and they’ll only report back when the searches are done or if they found him on a camera somewhere.”
“Great,” she muttered and headed for the shower. It would be a long damn night. The trouble was, she was wrong. By the time she came out after her shower, she walked to the bed and crashed. The last thing she remembered was whispering, “Good night.”
“Good night. Tomorrow’s a whole new day.”
“I hope so,” she said. “Let’s make it a good one.” She closed her eyes and immediately was out like a light.
*
Ryland, on the other hand, knew that he needed to get some sleep but couldn’t afford to be down too long. Just then Cain tagged him and said, “Grab some sleep. We’re all set up here, and I’m coming back.”
“I’ll wait up until you get here.”
“Walking down the hallway now.”
“Good.”
Cain arrived moments later, mentioning food.
“You didn’t get to eat?”
“No.” And he wasn’t alone.
Ryland smiled as Eton walked in. The two men gripped arms in silence, as they noticed that Tabi was sleeping.
“Get some sleep,” Eton said. “We’ll go to the other room. You’ve got four hours.”
When the two men silently moved to the other room, Ryland settled on the bed beside Tabi, wrapping an arm around her and holding her close. One of the hard lessons in this life was enjoying every moment, and he would enjoy just holding her. The soft scent of whatever shampoo was in the bathroom drifted up. Her hair was wet, and yet she smelled so fresh, so innocent.
That she’d been touched by all this violence was a shame. The work they did was something that 99 percent of the population didn’t even know existed. They didn’t want to know it existed either. It kept them safe and happy in their quiet little worlds. Before long he felt his fatigue dragging him under, but the pain kept poking at him. Barely shifting, he grabbed his pain pills, took two, and settled down to sleep.
Four hours later, when his shoulder was touched ever-so-lightly, he opened his eyes to see Cain standing there.
“I need four,” he said. “Are you up for that?”
Nodding, he got up and walked a bit to stretch, then looked to see Eton crashed on the far bed in the other room. He checked to see if the coffee was still hot, but it wasn’t. He wondered about ordering more and then decided to hold off. The more traffic up and down this hallway just said that somebody was awake right now.
Something about the question Tabi had asked earlier poked at him still. What if somebody else in this hotel was involved? And while he’d told her that he didn’t have a way to get into their fortified database, the truth of the matter was, they were all pretty high-end hackers. Himself included.
As he sat down to study the database and see what he could find, Ice contacted him. “She’s a single mom, two kids.”
“Shit,” he said.
“Ten thousand dollars appeared in her bank account two days ago.”
“Just to keep an eye on the apartment, I presume?”
“Yes.”
“Did you find any connection between them?”
“In a chat room for single moms, I found a private message, saying that he can help her out. That he was a goodwill kind of guy, and he just wanted to keep an eye on the apartment. He paid her ten grand to watch Tabi’s apartment for a week.”
“And, of course, she said yes.” He remembered the security system video of her scampering back across the hallway to her apartment. “So maybe it’s not of any value to contact her.”
“Chat line, bank deposit, all anonymous,” she said. “No reporting required, so that was the end of the conversation.”
“So another dead end.”
“But it also shows how much care he’s taking.”
“Right. I thought about checking into the hotel staff, to see if we have any other turncoats here.”
“Don’t bother,” she said. “Stone’s been swearing at that database for hours. He just got in a little bit ago.”
“Anything?”
“If there is, I’ll let you know.” And she hung up.
Just before the alarms went off at six, Eton and Cain were both up and came over just as the coffee rolled up outside the door. They moved the trolley into the room and came to sit beside Ryland. “Find out anything?”
“Stone hacked into the hotel database and couldn’t find any connection to us here. It looks like we might be safe.” He told them about the woman in the apartment across from Tabi’s.
“So,” Eton said, “a single mom just looking to make a little bit of money, probably scared, but, at the same time, hoping she has nothing more to do with them.”
“Stone’s still looking to see if they can find any other connections, but, so far, it looks like a dead end,” Cain added.
“I hope he doesn’t clean up after himself on that one,” Ryland said, not wanting the death of a single mom on his conscience.
“Let’s make sure he doesn’t,” Cain added thoughtfully, “by taking him down later today.”
They all sucked back their coffee, waiting for an alert from the rest of the team.
When it came in, Ryland looked at the message on his phone and read it aloud with satisfaction. “Everything in place.” He reached down, pulled the sim card from his phone, and snapped it in half. The other two men did the same. Then with the disposable phones that they had brought, they quickly synched up each other’s new numbers. He walked over and picked up Tabi’s phone, pulled the sim card from it, and gave her a burner phone too. He didn’t snap her sim; he just left it for her.
“You don’t want to break it?” Eton said.
“Not if I don’t have to,” he replied.
Eton nodded in understanding.
“Good luck keeping her calm and quiet today,” Cain added.
“Only until ten,” Ryland said. “Then we’ll see you at the museum.”
“You decided to go yourself?” Eton asked.
“I might as well,” Ryland said. “Who knows? We do these kind of security jobs all the time. Plus, I have a connection to Malcolm, who’ll be running the private security for the tour. We already have an established relationship.”
“Makes sense,” Eton said, and, with that, Cain and Eton quickly inhaled thick protein shakes, sucked back the last of the coffee, and said, “We’re out.”
Cain added before leaving, “Remember. We take them all alive.”
Ryland watched them both go, and, as soon as the door closed, Tabi rose from the bed.