I’m very tempted to follow Jason to his mysterious five o’clock in the morning errand. But I’m also glad he’s gone, so I can run an errand of my own before rendezvousing at his office.
Keeping secrets is messy at the best of times, and this is not the best of times.
“There’s a safe deposit box with your name on it.”
To any eavesdropping observer, that would probably suggest Caroline had a box at a bank, and put my name on it as a backup.
But that’s not what she meant.
And I know she’s not dead, but the way this situation is escalating quickly, I may not get another chance alone to go and see what she secreted away in her locker at the gym.
I pull out the box of wigs I keep under my bed and grab a long-haired blonde one that will allow me to approximate Caroline for the gym staff. An oversized pair of sunglasses and her gym access card from her wallet, which I kept, is all I need.
Heading downstairs, I get my motorbike out of the storage unit, tighten my sling bag so it’s snug against my body, and start the ignition.
It’s a short drive to the gym. I pop ear buds in and crank music so nobody will try to talk to me. Then I swipe Caroline’s card through the reader, push through the gate, and head straight to the change room.
Her card also opens her locker. Inside is a gym bag, which I rifle through, but it contains nothing of interest. Workout clothes, shoes, hair elastics, condoms.
I feel around the sides of the locker, but it doesn’t look like she modified it in any way. No false ceiling, nothing gives way.
Maybe I misunderstood the hint. Maybe she really does have a safety—
My brain skips back over the items I had just seen.
Condoms.
They’re regular latex condoms, and Caroline is allergic to latex. I grab the box and pull the condoms out. It’s a full box, and the first few packs are exactly as I’d expect to find them. But the last strip is firmer to the touch—almost as if there’s something inside them. My bet is memory cards.
I don’t bother confirming that hunch right now. I put everything back, shove the altered condom strip in my sling bag, and head back to my bike.
But as soon as I’m back on the street, I get a bad feeling—like I’m being watched. I’m two miles from Jason’s office. It’s early still, traffic is light. I make a judgement call, trust my skills on the road. I can make it.
Sure enough, as I zip into the flow of cars, I see a black sedan pull out behind me. They keep pace, not closing the gap.
There’s a chance this is the good guys, so to speak—federal agents keeping an eye on me from a distance.
I don’t like that, but I don’t hate it.
It’s preferable to the alternative, which is that the sedan is full of baddies with guns, and I’m riding high on my bike with zero bulletproof glass around me.
Slowly, I pick up speed. Getting pulled over for riding a crotch rocket too fast right now would be a complication I don’t need.
There’s a stale green light ahead, and I really don’t want to get caught at a red, so I zoom forward. The sedan follows, closing the gap now, and just as we reach the intersection, a truck turns right off the cross street, directly into my lane.
That’s no coincidence, not the way the sedan is jamming up behind me. I don’t want to get boxed in, either. I take a split-second look in the mirror, swing to the right and grab the front brake, using the momentum of my body to shuffle the bike in a 180 turn so now I’m facing the surprised driver of the sedan previously behind me.
There’s someone in the passenger seat, too.
Two men. Beefy. Ex-military. Not in suits, nothing says FBI about them.
Mercenaries is my bet, and holy fuck, no thank you.
So long, assholes.
I accelerate and take off the wrong way through traffic.
Barely stopping at the next block, I take a hard right and cut a terrifying path through oncoming traffic before sliding into a stream of cars going the right direction. I need to get underground and fast.
My apartment is closer than Jason’s office, so I zoom home. Pulse racing, I swipe my fob that opens the garage door.
The seconds it takes to lift feel like hours.
I race down the ramp, taking the curve faster than is safe, and skid to a stop in front of my storage unit. I don’t know if the bike has been tagged by the people following me, so I might have no time at all here before I’ve got company again.
Taking the stairs, I bolt upstairs and dump my sling bag into a larger backpack. I add my laptop to it and a couple of important pieces from the safe—including my passport.
I don’t know if it’s safer to try to hop on transit, or catch a cab, or go out my back window and take my chances crossing the grounds of the Naval Observatory.
I decide to head outside and get on a bus or in a cab, whichever comes along first—but when I get to the ground floor, I see one of the goons from the car prowling around the lobby.
He’s gotta be six feet, nine inches and three hundred pounds. I’m a good fighter, but against this guy it’s like a two-against-one match.
Reversing course, I sprint back up to the second floor and take the back stairs instead, bursting out into the side alley—and headlong into a solid wall of muscle.
Before I can scream, a hand clamps over my mouth and I’m wrenched around, my backpack giving whoever has grabbed me a good wallop as they drag me backwards.
The next thing I see is Jason’s stony face, scowling at me as he shoves me into the passenger seat of his car.