Page 59 of Don't Look Back

Then again, it might be a good thing Andre had entered her hotel room. Now they had a gun. And a Russian spy.

He’d been gone all of twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes.

He finished tying up the unconscious man, then stepped back and admired the jagged cut and rising lump that disfigured one side of “Andre’s” face. He would imagine the blow to the nuts with the baseball bat looked just as bad, but he wasn’t about to check. “Nice work.”

“I might have broken a rib or two when I stomped on his stomach.”

Rand cupped a hand behind the back of her neck and tugged her toward him, then brushed his lips over her forehead. He wanted to aim for her lips, but wouldn’t make that move without permission. He held her gaze. “I’m amazed you had a baseball bat. I will never underestimate you again.”

She glanced down at her fake cousin. “He won’t either.”

She stepped back and crossed her arms as she nudged the unconscious man with the toe of her shoe. “What do we do with him?”

Rand grabbed his cell phone and dialed Freya, who answered immediately. “What did you find out?”

“I got you an apartment. It’s even got a view. You still have your car?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Okay, you have the kit I gave you at the airport?”

“Yes. I was grabbing it from the car when the guy came after Kira.”

“Gotcha. Okay, there’s an app on the phone in the kit. Use it to take photos of both his hands. A biometric software company gave us the beta on the next iteration of their product. We should get decent prints. Get his ears too. Then check his face for makeup and prosthetics. We haven’t been able to find this guy anywhere. He might have done some slight alterations.”

It took only a minute to power up the phone and set up his and Kira’s face recognition, then he took all the photos Freya requested using the app. Andre didn’t wear makeup or prosthetics, which made sense in Malta, where the heat meant sweat would cause the makeup to run.

He would forever wonder how it was so many movies were filmed here.

“Maybe he had a beard,” Kira suggested. “And a wig to hide the receding hairline.”

“We’ll run his face with variations on head and facial hair. Does his hair look dyed?”

“He doesn’t have much, but what he has is dark—almost black—and even,” Kira said. “No roots. I bet he colored it a few days ago.”

Rand cursed and said, “I’ll check.” He yanked down the man’s pants and reported his findings. “Pubic hair is gray and brownish red. And now I can’t unsee his junk, which the bat did a number on, thank you very much. It’s a dick pic no one wants. Ever.”

Freya laughed. “You really are a hero, Rand.”

“Hey! I’m the one who knocked him out.” Kira snickered, then said, “But yeah. I wasn’t gonna do that.”

“Grab your things and get out of there,” Freya said.

Again, Kira prodded the man with her toe. “We’re just going to leave him here? That’s…not very kind to housekeeping. I like the hotel staff.”

“I’ve got a CIA contact I’m going to reach out to. I’ll tell him that we’ve got a potential FSB agent trussed up like a turkey and have him pass it along to one of his contacts. The Russians can clean up their own mess.”

Rand knew what that meant. It was unlikely the man would see another dawn. But it was his own people who would do the dirty work.

“They might not need the tip. He was pretty scared when we met him at the garden earlier.”

“I was thinking the same thing. That’s why you need to get moving.”

Rand stuffed the items he’d set out to dry earlier back in his duffel as Kira cleaned out the dresser and bathroom vanity.

On their way out, Rand hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. Kira had the room for another week. The man would likely be collected in the next few hours, but it would be days before anyone checked the room. He’d try to come back and make sure the blood and wine were cleaned from the floor before housekeeping got a nasty surprise.

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