Page 8 of Red Line

With her antennae pinging, she worked to form a practical plan of action. She couldn’t handle this basic meeting, let alone a complication, when she was doubled over. Maybe shecould run to the bathroom, get the purge over, hustle back, and assess the situation.

Surely, whatever her nervous system had picked up on was of local consequence and had nothing to do with Moussa. Right? He could sit quietly here at the corner table out of the way.

That man and his assessing gaze belonged to someone else’s circus and wasn’t one of the monkeys she was meant to manage.

As the cart moved on and he was fully visible again, Red tapped the button on her camera. Then she pinned her location with a CIA app that would place her at the center of a ring radiating out thirty-six inches. It still blew her mind that they had that level of precision. When she was back at her sleeping hotel, Red would send that image through the software to see if it couldn’t identify him.

Or maybe she’d do it tomorrow.

Or just pass it on to an analyst.

As she slipped the phone into her thigh pocket, Red accepted the menu from their server’s outstretched hand.

Once the server left, she dropped her hand to her bag and pulled it onto her lap. Untying the top, Red opened it wide, tipping a view of the contents toward Moussa. She’d offered him a mere glance, but it was enough for him to see what was inside. When his eyes grew round with surprise, Red tied the cords back together and pulled one of the straps over her shoulder.

“Read the menu and hide your face. When you’re ready to order, choose something for me. Anything will do. I’ll be back as quickly as I can. I need the ladies’ room.” She waved a hand through the air and said, “My stomach. This might take a while. Apologies.”

Moussa’s face stretched taut in horror. Whether he was frightened and feeling like he was being abandoned, or hewas simply disgusted that women had bodily functions that sometimes went awry, Red couldn’t tell. And she couldn’t care less. She was up, and as she sidestepped past the table, her hand slid into the breast pocket that Moussa had been tapping.

She pulled out a piece of folded printer paper and moved towards relief.

Chapter Three

Red

Bypassing the public restroom, Red reached the service elevator near the kitchen, positioned for quick room service deliveries.

She climbed on and waited as the car took her upward. She had a strange sense of disorientation that frightened her as she stepped out of the car. Where was she? Did any of this look recognizable? Why was she even here?

Standing in the middle of the hall with its patterned red carpeting, Red blinked at the elevator as the doors slid shut. She looked down the hall and had no idea where or why she was there.

She looked at the piece of white paper in her hand and the room key.

She noticed the number on the key was the room in front of her.

She shifted the bag off her shoulder and looked at the contents, cash.

This feeling was familiar to her. Red had experienced this in her training at The Farm when sleep was a game of finding odd moments to prop herself in a corner and shut her eyes, resting in small sips.

It seemed to work, but in reality, her brain glitched. At The Farm, she’d learned that if she just stood there and gave her mind a moment, it would all come back to her. The trick was not to panic.

A moment later, that technique proved true; Red’s mind cleared.

These were the back corner rooms she had rented when she first arrived in town, one beside the other. On both doors, she’d hung aDo Not Disturbsign and had monitored the rooms with a remote camera and alarm system to ensure those signs were respected.

Having the second room as a buffer meant no one could press a listening device to the wall and hear what she was about to say.

See? She was fine. She could do this.

Blowing a long breath through pursed lips, Red unlocked the door, went in, then quickly threw the latch back into place.

She stumbled into the pristine white bathroom, tugging her phone from her pocket to reach out to her colleagues, John Black and John Grey, so they could help her think and, if necessary, act.

Dialing over an encrypted channel, Red needed to lean her whole body against the wall for support as she entered her codes and biometrics for identification. Perspiration made her clothes humid as she unfolded the white paper she’d slipped from Moussa’s pocket and spread it on the counter with trembling hands.

While Grey’s and Black’s video feeds showed on her screen, Red chose to keep her camera off. “I’m sending you a picture of what my asset handed me just now,” she said with her phone on speaker. This page—typed in a small font with single spaces and no paragraph indentations—was way too long for Red to read coherently.

Clearly, she was not on her A-game.

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