Page 8 of Anchor
“Gray Tie tapped a cue,” the comm breathed into Reid’s ear. “Two fingers, high table.”
Then there was clean silence. No fuzz and no jam. Someone turned off the line.
Reid’s jaw clicked once. He pivoted off the wall and became a tux moving through tuxes, shoulders turned just so, a body that could be any man in a suit if that man had eyes that counted exits like rosary beads and had hands that wanted to be busy.
The third man slipped away, leaving no gap at all, cleanly erasing his presence. That took practice and training.
Reid watched Claire Bowman, Senator Bowman’s daughter, change directions. She threaded through the knots of donors as if she’d drawn the map herself, intercepting Reid’s path at the one point where the angles worked.
“Dr. Bowman,” he said, voice calm like a winter river. “Step back.”
“I saw them.” She wasn’t argumentative, but simply passing information.
“You need to disengage,” he said. “This isn’t your lane.”
“You’re about to be told where the lane ends,” she said. “One’s passing a signal.” Her eyes pivoted like a camera. “Your people aren’t covering you.” Her tone remained even. “They’renot where they should be. A third man peeled wide. I lost him near the gallery.”
He searched her face and hands for the microtremors, and there were none. His comm stayed dead. This wasn’t a breakdown. It was cut.
Without betraying the situation, he said, “Stay tight. No freelancing.” He drew her with him, though the words she’d dropped earlier stuck like a burr. She was too exact, too knowing. It needled him. Was she trained, or already inside the game?
Her mouth tilted, not with a smile but with decision. She moved evenly to his flank. Both of them aligned on the same corridor.
UNKNOWN LOCATION – SAME TIME
Somewhere behind the image of the ballroom, a different screen vibrated in a room that smelled like cold coffee and old paint. A watcher adjusted a feed two millimeters and smiled like he’d seen this angle once before.
FOUR
NORTH WING – 2010 HOURS
The men slipped from the party into a corridor meant to be off-limits. A door, left slightly ajar, beckoned where no door should. As they passed through, the gala’s hum fell silent, swallowed by the buffer of security space. The air beyond was colder, untouched by bodies or chatter.
“Evening, gentlemen,” Reid said, his voice friendly enough to buy a pause. “Gallery’s this way.” He pointed toward the ballroom.
Gray Tie smiled the way men smile when their training manual leaves a blank. “Appreciate it.”
Red Cufflinks twitched two fingers against the back of his hand. It was a tactile cue, not a habit.
Reid closed the distance and took his wrist out of the equation. The phone in his inside jacket pocket was a warm burner employing flimsy security. It didn’t take much more than a forceful command to bring Red Cufflinks to his knees. He zip-tied him without commentary.
Claire’s shoulders shifted by degrees, guiding Gray Tie a step off his preferred line without making space for offense. The move had an elegance that reminded Reid of the way medics in the worst tents make trauma pretend it’s less than it is.
Gray Tie knelt. His phone was also a cheap burner. A zip tie secured his wrists.
“Wire,” Reid keyed out of habit to the silent bud, “two packages needing immediate pick-up.”
“Back online,” Wire’s voice said, clipped. “Be advised, a quiet alert is in progress. Elevators are frozen. Stairwells are caged. I can see your position in the north corridor. Help is en route. Should be to you in ninety seconds.”
Reid made sure their weapons were cleared quietly. Clips were dropped and the bullet in each chamber ejected onto the carpeted floor. The men knelt with the kind of collected stillness that belonged to people who’d practiced everything but losing.
Claire spoke only after the guns were empty and the men were secured. “They won’t come back for these guys.”
“No,” Reid agreed. “Third’s still active.”
At the sight of two uniformed Chase Security operators, he turned his head just enough to see the glint of her eyes in the corridor’s dull light. The sound of a closing door caught his attention. “Don’t move from my left.”
He still wasn’t sure if she was a help or a hinderance. But he wasn’t going to screw this up with a senator’s daughter.
