Page 63 of Knot Guilty

“I don’t like this,” he says.

The uplink light flashes green. Done. “I don’t either. It’s dark enough now. Let’s go take a look. Birdie, map us to that alley and get back to watching the hotel. It’s possible that we just missed him.”

Maxen seems satisfied that we’re finally going on the hunt. He adjusts my head covering, and the two of us inspect our immediate area before stepping out onto the street. “Here, this way,” Maxen urges.

I walk close to his side in consideration of local customs, though I shouldn’t have worried. Maxen parked in an area with virtually no traffic. We’re at the rear mouth of the alley in minutes.

From this end, we can’t see through to the other side. Lights from the public end only reach about twenty feet under the canopy. Without our night vision goggles, we wait and listen for movement until our eyes adjust enough to see that no one is waiting to ambush us. When no one does, Maxen pulls out a flashlight to inspect the area.

He first checks the walls on either side of the narrow alley, finding no doors to the adjacent buildings. Maxen passes a look my way, one that I take to mean I think Birdie must have just missed our guy.

While it’s possible, I have a little more faith in her abilities, which means something much more sinister is happening here.

I urge Maxen to step deeper into the darkness and scan the ground. The length of the alley is littered with empty tables, crates, and a few garbage bins. In the daytime, this alley must serve as a marketplace. It’s completely abandoned after dark.

Halfway to the front, Maxen freezes with his beam on a large stack of wooden crates. “Shit.”

We just found our guy… with a big-ass hole in his gut.

“Well, all I can say is that I hope that guy’s phone is a fucking gold mine.”

Maxen turns on his heel, leaving me to check the guy for a wallet or anything else that might be useful. The guy has nothing on him except local currency. “Birdie, we found our guy. Somebody else got to him first, though.”

“I’m sorry, Sadie.”

“Don’t be. He probably wouldn’t have told us anything, and we would have wasted hours trying. I believed it before, and I still do, that his phone is our best chance at good intel.”

“I’ll get right on it. You two, go find a place to rest for the night.”

Birdie disconnects, and I call up the fingerprint scanner on my phone, documenting the dead man’s right and left prints. I use the camera to get a shot of his face and then collect a hair sample. With nothing more I can do here, I clear the area before someone happens by.

Maxen is leaning against the wall around the corner when I step out of the alley. His frustration at losing a mark is written all over his face. I don’t know if I expect an I told you so moment or what, but for now, he’s keeping his thoughts to himself.

Despite his disapproval of how things turned out, I don’t engage. I made the best call I could based on the manpower and intel available to me, and I won’t apologize for it.

At the same time, I know I’m not infallible. If history shows my decision to be a mistake, I’ll own up to it. I only hope my choices don’t end up hurting Aaron’s chances.

Maxen pushes off the wall as I approach, and we walk back to the vehicle in silence. It isn’t until we’re inside that someone finally speaks. Maxen’s voice is tight when he suggests, “We should go back and get our guy’s shit from his room, get some food, and then find a place to sleep.”

“There’s one more hotel in town, and any of these cafes will work,” I reply softly.

After retrieving the dead man’s bag, we drive to the hotel on the other side of the city, and Maxen goes inside to check in. He returns to the truck minutes later with one key. We get settled in a single room and agree it would be better if I weren’t seen outside for the rest of the night. Female military types tend to stand out.

Maxen doesn’t have any jokes for me about going to pick up food for us, another sign that he’s not happy about losing our target. And that’s what you get for mixing business with pleasure.

Once Maxen leaves, I take my bag into the bathroom for a shower. The hot water washes away the sand and dirt but fails to rid me of a pervading sense of wrongness weighing me down.

The feeling is still with me as I braid my damp hair and pull on an oversized Marines t-shirt. In a battlefield situation, I’d stop and evaluate my surroundings, targets, and supposed innocuous persons for anything I might have missed or for the enemy hiding in plain sight.

My current situation is not so simple. I’m living in a house of cards. One wrong move, by either of us, would be enough to bring the whole thing crashing down, Aaron right along with it. I won’t ignore my intuition, but I will remain focused like any good Marine.

I glance down at my shirt, the Marine insignia bringing Aaron to mind. I’m worried. For as long as we’ve worked together, his logic and confidence have always served to temper my concern. That I haven’t spoken to him in two days is not normal. Not only am I worried about his future should I fuck up, I miss my friend.

Grabbing my phone, I turn out all the lights and step out onto the balcony. My first message is to Knot.

I’m afraid I fucked up today.

It’s early in Virginia, but I don’t wait long for his reply. You put your trust in your team and made a call. If you’d had more people, you would have sent a team after the target while you secured the phone. No one could have known this guy had a second target on his back. Stop second-guessing yourself.

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