Carlota had chosen to take it easy tonight. She would stay at the hotel for a nice dinner and then return to her room with music and maybe a good vid.
Twice, she’d gotten lucky on her infrequent jaunts out, first winning all that money with Armand’s help before allowing the man to consummate his seduction. Then stumbling across Erika at a black box theater.
If she had believed that she was going to survive all this, Carlota might even seek out the woman again. However, Carlota knew now that her days were numbered and decreasing rapidly.
They would find her eventually. Statistics favored them, not her. All she could do was stretch the game out long enough that her victory would eventually become a case study for the various intelligence agencies out there and how to deal with older agents.
Hopefully, not by kidnapping them and exiling them to some island where they could never escape, given the things they knew. She’d read fantastical stories with such a setting, prisoners who spent the entire series trying to get off the island and reclaim their real identity, rather than just being a number for the rest of their lives.
All she had to do was survive long enough that she won.
It was an intoxicating thought, as she checked herself in the mirror. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin. Normal enough to pass in the general population of Borlait without standing out. Tonight, she’d put on a long dress in a burnished gold that seemed to dance like flames around her.
Sometimes, the image in the mirror looked like she was being burned at the stake, but tonight, she felt like a phoenix, descending into ashes in order to be reborn. It was a hopeless wish, but she would achieve some measure of immortality from it all.
And her revenge on Grendel Montague. Never lose sight of that worthy goal.
He might think he’d won when she was dead, but if she could just stretch that out far enough, the truth would come out. Chapter Twelve would burn him personally.
Carlota touched up her makeup and checked her roots. Probably need to do them up again in a few days, but not yet. She had pills that mostly kept them dark enough that it didn’t come in underneath like a white helmet.
She slipped a stun pistol into her clutch like usual and made her way to the door, pausing to look around once.
After all, every time she walked out that door, there was a growing chance that she would never come back.
Tonight, she was feeling especially morbid. Vulnerable, perhaps. Almost enough to try her luck and see if there was another Armand or Erika out there. Maybe even Erika herself, though Carlota had no idea how she might track the woman down short of walking up to her door and knocking.
And stepping out into the lights of the city to go hunting opened her up to all the hunters out there.
Not worth it. Tonight.
As she closed the door behind her, Carlota knew that tomorrow might make her desperate enough to change her mind.