Page 89 of Sinner's Salvation

“Yes, ma’am.” He hung up.

Anna punched in the cell number for Mason. She had arrangements to make with her embassy and the State Department.

***

About two hours later, Anna was dressed like a CEO, but with one addition. Magnus was something of an artist. His medium wasn’t paint and canvas, however. He’d become an expert makeup artist, specific to wounds and injuries. Her hairstyle now included a realistic looking and feeling stitched head wound. It was covered in the kind of bandage normally used in hospitals.

Anna had even cut her thumb and dribbled some of her blood on her bandage and transferred some to the fake wound. If anyone tried to test the bandage, they’d find her blood on it.

It itched, and she had to consciously work to keep her hand from scratching the area.

She sat on a couch in Yvgeny’s apartment waiting for Mason to come up on the elevator. As soon as the people from the State Department arrived, he would bring them up. They would then escort her to the Slovenian embassy.

Her phone beeped with a text.

She looked at it.

It was from Mason.Black Ops coming up the elevat—.

The message cut off.

She looked at the elevator. Someone had managed to get here before the State Department and her embassy. It couldn’t be Ledger. The man was still in FBI custody.

Well, she’d wanted to poke the anthill to see what came out, and she’d gotten her wish.

She turned the phone off, but didn’t leave it. Even if she disabled it, some tech person could get the information off it. She stuck in her bra.

“I am never going to tease Yvgeny about his penchant for safe rooms and hidden exits again,” she muttered to herself, as she opened the wall panel entrance next to the elevator for the secret staircase and slipped inside.

She closed the panel, set the now useless phone in the corner, and listened.

About ten seconds later, the elevator dinged and opened. The elevator carriage jiggled a bit, indicating that something heavy moved out of it. Or several someones.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on listening.

The slight squeak of a shoe on Yvgeny’s tiled floor. A couple of heavy breathers. The sighs of fabric as whoever got off the elevator moved around.

She waited another ten seconds. Fifteen.

“Clear,” a male voice said, sounding to her like he was closer to the kitchen area than the elevator.

The noise of several people moving became much clearer. They’d relaxed a bit.

“Sir, there’s no one in the apartment.”

She couldn’t hear the reply.

“We have a team on the stairs, so far no contact.”

It sounded like the speaker was moving closer to the elevator.

A tinny voice said, “Leave two men there, the rest of you, come down. We need to have people in place on schedule.”

Close enough for her to hear the person on the phone directing the men in the apartment.

“Yes, sir.”

The underling sounded like he was standing right in front of the elevator.

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