I’m the first to the Residence Inn’s polished front desk, I think, and I’m prepared with a suitable pretext. I hesitate, glancing out at the passing headlights, like my quarry’s going to swoop in on me any second. Finally the right clerk’s available — the one who checked our guy in this afternoon. “Hi,” I say to her. “I’m looking for my boyfriend’s room?”
“Sorry, I’ll need his name, and your photo ID,” Elizabeth, the clerk, says with an apologetic frown. She’s young enough — and hip enough — that she probably assumes the worst. (But seriously, how many prostitutes cruise around in tweed pencil skirts?)
I sigh. “He’s super security conscious — had his identity stolen last year — so he uses fake names at hotels and things. I can never be sure what name he’s checked in under.” I giggle, like that’s the most charming thing in the world. Charming, no. But clever? Yes.
Thanks to the CIA’s facial modeling and photo manipulating software, I’m happy to hand over a picture of me (with the fake freckles, nose and highlighted blond hair I’m wearing now) and this dude enjoying a sunset cruise in some place I’ve never been. “This is the shirt he’s wearing today.”
I know, you’d think if we could do all that from the security footage, we could get a hit on facial recognition software. Actually, that wasn’t the problem. We got a hit. We got hundreds. This guy really does have one of those faces.
“I’m sorry, I don’t recognize him. We have many clerks here.” Elizabeth fakes a sympathetic tone.
He must’ve slipped right out of her mind, too. “Please,” I say again. “It’s his birthday, and he had everything planned for us to celebrate, but then he got called here on business at the last minute.” I lean over the desk to add, “I think he was planning to propose.”
A sappy grin overtakes her features . . . aaand Elizabeth is hooked. “Well, I’ll see if anyone else remembers him. May I take this?” She nods at the photo.
“Sure.”
Elizabeth makes the rounds of the other clerks working the desk. Of course, since she was the one to check him in, the others all shake their heads, but my clerk is undeterred. She casts me a reassuring smile, then disappears into the back office. I stand there, trying not to let my nerves show in a tapping foot, and wait patiently for ten minutes that feel like thirty.
At last, Elizabeth returns, triumphant, with a middle-aged Asian maid at her side. “Miss Lee says she saw your boyfriend today, but it seems like he’s out now.”
“Oh, do you think I could go wait in his room? It’d be such a great surprise for his birthday. And maybe I’ll be the one getting the ‘big surprise,’” I gush.
Elizabeth giggles, still fully onboard with my story. (Girls. Too easy.) (And yes, I’m being cynical. I don’t put much stock in love or marriage or any of that stuff, especially not for me. But that’s another story.)
“Oh,” I say, like I’m suddenly remembering something. “Here you go.” I pass her my photo ID. Except, of course, that it claims my name is Annika and it reflects my cover’s freckles, nose and blond highlights.
Elizabeth barely glimpses at the card before she turns her monitor an inch in my direction. “Room 408.”
“Thank you!” The monitor gives me the guy’s name: Duncan Bridger.
It may not be a girlfriend on his business trip, but Duncan will definitely be getting a surprise.
“Here,” Elizabeth continues. “Let me make you a key.” She runs a card through the machine then hands it across the counter.
“Thank you so much — you’re making his birthday unforgettable!” I walk to the elevators, glancing over my shoulder to beam at Elizabeth until I lose sight of her. I maintain my I’m-so-excited cover while waiting, checking the lobby for an incoming Bridger, bouncing on the balls of my feet to work off a little extra excitement.
So far, so good. Sucks to be you, Elliott. I take the elevator up to the fourth floor and reach Bridger’s room in record time.
The maid said he was out, but she’s not his social secretary. I wait until the hallways are clear of guests before I knock at the door. “Sir?” I call. “Housekeeping?” Not everyone would respond to a call like that (even though housekeeping is going to come in if you stay silent), but he’ll definitely want to answer with this next bit. “We are so sorry — our records were wrong, and we neglected to change your towels after the last guest. Can we offer you fresh towels and soap?”
Still silent. I swipe my keycard and open the door. One modern-styled bedside lamp is still on, but nobody’s in the room.
A chance to look around. He’s probably not stupid enough to leave something important sitting out, but it’d be even stupider for me to not hunt. I rummage through the drawers of the dresser/TV stand. Empty. The nightstand and the bathroom are also empty.
All he had on the van today was a messenger bag, and he could easily have that with him.
Still, I found him first, and that’s got to count for something.
A rustle sneaks from the closet. My heart vaults into my throat and my senses whip to full alert.
Could something be settling there? I hold my breath and slink back a step, two. My brain races even faster than my pulse, listing all the possibilities. The ironing board is loose. The iron cord finally succumbed to gravity. A coat slipped off a hanger.
A person is in there. Hiding.
I scan the room for a weapon. No, I’m not carrying a gun. That’s more likely to get me into trouble than out of it here. Besides, the mentality that guns are the only thing that qualify as a weapon is likelier to get you killed than a bullet.
I check the dark wood desk: the hotel pen. (What? It’s mightier than the sword. Okay, at least it’s pointy. You’d be surprised how many ways I can hurt someone with it.) I creep to the door, fighting down the energy running through my system.
I reach the closet and steel every muscle, slowly wrapping my fingers around the knob. One. Two. Three — I snatch the door open.
A man jumps out at me. I lurch backward, wrenching the doorknob. It gives way too easily. The man’s hands fly up to cover my mouth.
The blood freezes in my veins until the scream strangles in my throat. I recognize this guy, though I wish I didn’t. I jerk out of his reach. “Elliott!” I whisper-shout, wagging the — oh, crap. The doorknob is in my hand.
My thin disguise isn’t enough to throw him for a second. “Oh, good, for a minute there I thought we might get away with this,” he snarks, his eyes on the broken knob.
I snap back to him. “Well, if you hadn’t jumped out at me — what are you doing here? And not undercover?”
“Same thing as you, obviously, Miss ‘Housekeeping.’” His pitch jumps up two octaves and he rolls his eyes.
“Hey, I’m not the one hiding in a closet and giving himself away, moving around. Amateur.”
“Excuse me?”
Before Elliott can argue back more, a card slides into the reader on the door. Elliott and I turn to one another, frozen in terror for a split second.
Then he rips the doorknob from my fingers and jams it into the hole in the door. I scoop up the other half of the knob, like I can use it on the inside. Elliott seizes my wrist and yanks me into the closet, and I grab the handle stem poking through the door, pulling it shut behind us.
Trapped.
Between being clutched in Elliott’s arms and hiding in this totally cliché spot that Bridger’s guaranteed to search, for some reason I’m finding it hard to breathe.
No, wait, I know the exact reason: the footsteps padding through the hotel room outside this hollow-core door.
And unless Elliott magically got a whole lot better at holding still, there’s a darn good chance Bridger will be getting a surprise in his room tonight after all.
Options, options — we can’t take him out. (We’re spies, not assassins.) We might be able to convince him we’re Iranian counter-counterintelligence. (Right.) We’re here on a dare. (And he won’t recognize Elliott from the van earlier?)
My clammy fingers slip a centimeter on the doorknob stem. I silently adjust my grip, praying I won’t move enough to make a sound. Once I’m stable again, Elliott releases my wrist, and a bluish light fills the closet. I only dare to move my eyes. His free hand holds a cell phone, and he’s texting with one thumb. What’s he doing, ordering a pizza?
The closet doorknob shakes — Bridger’s coming in. My heart jumps once, twice, then freezes.
And then the phone rings. My rib cage spasms. Elliott’s phone? He clicks a button, plunging us into the dark.
Another ring — not Elliott’s. The room phone. The knob rattles again, like Bridger’s letting go of it this time, and the footsteps in the room pad farther away. “Hello?” he answers. “For . . . are you sure?” Pause. “I’ll be right down.” He replaces the receiver with a weary sigh. He’ll have to pass by the closet to get out, but then we’re free. The footsteps come closer, closer. My lungs forget how to do their job. My clammy fingers squeeze tighter around the doorknob stem.
The footsteps pass. We hear the room door open and then latch shut. I strain to listen to the silence. Yep, Bridger’s out.
I puff out a breath, allowing my pulse to decelerate. I ready the other half of the door handle to attempt reassembly and get us out of here. But when I let go of the doorknob stem for a second, the knob clops to the floor. In the room. In the tiny circle of light spilling into the closet, I look down at the other half of the knob, still clutched alongside the hotel pen in my hand. The handle has no way to attach to the mechanism without the other half.
And we’re trapped again.
“Nice move,” Elliott mutters.
“Well, crap.” I try to pull away from Elliott to get a better view, but he doesn’t let go.
“Not the usual reaction when I hold a woman.”
“Who do you think you are? Han Solo? Or do you get locked in closets with women often?”
His expression turns into a dead-on impression of Harrison Ford. “All the time.”
“Whatever, dude. Like you were playing Seven Minutes in Heaven last week.”
“Oh, is that what we’re doing in here?” Elliott’s cell phone doubles the light in this tiny closet. It’s not just the angle of that glow that makes his smirk more of a leer.
My heart clenches all over again, but that isn’t an eager reciprocal response. A memory kick-starts in my brain. Being this close to another flirty coworker. Him closing in. The heady spike of adrenaline, but not from anticipation then, either. From fear. From danger.
I knew at that moment I shouldn’t let that guy kiss me — and I was sadly very, very right. He put the “burn” in “crash and burn.”
Today is no different.
Whether it’s my memory or imagination or reality, Elliott leans in. The hot zing of adrenaline peaks in my system again. But tonight I will not be paralyzed by fear. I will act.
I drop the door handle and ram the flat end of the pen against Elliott’s sternum. “Back. Off,” I grit out.
Elliott tries to squirm away from the pain. I shove his chest with my free hand, forcing him into the closet wall and pinning him there, the pen still pressed against the bone.
“Got it?”
“Geez,” Elliott gasps. “I got it.”
(Yeah, right. Even violence doesn’t get through to a guy like this. Didn’t last time, either.) I give him a miniscule jab before I move the pen from him. “Light,” I command.
Elliott obeys. I attack the flat end of the ballpoint with my fingernails, wedging them under the cap holding the pen together. Once I’ve worked a big enough gap in there, I switch to my teeth, yanking off the tiny piece of plastic.
The effort takes long enough that we fall into half-darkness again. Elliott hits the button to reactivate his cell’s screen, and I search the space for the next thing I need, something hard and flat. Behind Elliott’s head: the metal bracket that holds the iron and the ironing board.
“Watch it.” I stab the pen point against the metal inches from Elliott’s face. He doesn’t flinch, but stares at me with wide eyes. The impact snaps the ink cartridge free of the pen casing. The thin plastic tube is narrow enough to fit into the latch assembly and tug the latch free of the jamb.
I practically trip into the room, sucking in the cool, sweet air of freedom. I pocket the pieces of the pen. The room is empty, and this is our chance to get away. Elliott starts straight for the door — but I grab a fistful of his plaid flannel sleeve. (Oh, wait, was his disguise to be a Canadian?)
“If we don’t fix this,” I say, “he’ll know someone’s been in here.”
Elliott watches me half a second, then turns to the closet again. “Great job.” He pulls out a multitool and unfolds a screwdriver. But first, he looks around for the missing screws in the closet.
We do not have time to rely on this guy’s skills. I shoulder for position to peer inside, but I don’t spot the screws first. Because there’s Bridger’s blue messenger bag. We were practically standing on it the whole time.
Without a word, Elliott and I set about our work. He fits the knobs back into the mechanism, and I start riffling through the contents of the bag, laying out the goods on the bedspread. When Elliott finishes, he opens the camera app on his phone. I hold up each item from the bag for him to photograph. Nothing incriminating — boarding passes from today, in-flight magazine, SkyMall. But the contents of the bag read like so much pocket litter: the little details you keep to make a cover believable. Ticket stubs for movies you didn’t see. Receipts from stores you didn’t shop. Matchbooks from clubs you didn’t visit.
I replace the last item and feel around the back of the bag — and then I find it: the crumpled up cigarette carton. Green geometric pattern and all. Sealed in a plastic bag.
He’s saving it, preserving it. Like evidence.
“That could mean anything, right?” I barely breathe.
“Yeah, right.” Elliott snaps a quick photograph.
I carefully slip the carton into the corner of the bag where I discovered it. The point of all this sneaking around is to convince Bridger someone hasn’t been in his room, not prove to him that someone has. Elliott, meanwhile, draws a slender piece of metal from his pocket. I’d complain that this tool would’ve been a lot better to open the door, but I know exactly what that is: a bug. He opens the nightstand drawer and pulls out the Gideons Bible. The bug fits perfectly, tucked between the binding and the spine’s hard cover.
I stuff the bag in place at the back of the closet. With that door shut, we’re ready to make our escape at last.
We’re two steps into the hallway when I hear Elliott’s phone vibrate. He checks the message. “Travis says we’ve got incoming,” he says under his breath. He glances at me, and I think there’s an apology written in his eyes.
But when he takes my hand and backs me against the nearest room door, I know that was all in my imagination.
He shoots me this little look I can’t interpret, but the urgency behind it is unmistakable. Whatever he’s doing, he needs me to play along. And I will. For three more seconds.
Elliott murmurs something indistinct. The only syllables I can make out are “Baby.”
“Giggle,” he whispers.
I silence a scoff and compel my face to shift from incredulous to I guess I’m going along with this. An uncertain . . . giggle follows.
I sense more than see the man on approach behind Elliott. Got to be Bridger. Elliott leans closer, and my expression goes from going along with this to going to murder you in your sleep, painfully.
Elliott’s lips press together, a flinch of impatience. He caresses my cheek.
My gut heaves and my ribs squeeze. Every minute of my training and experience pushes me to let him — but every instinct screams for me to stop him.
He leans closer.
Instinct wins. I hit him with a full-swing, flat-hand, hard slap.
Elliott jerks back, and there’s no way his
surprise is faked. It doesn’t have to be — he was not expecting that reaction.
“Is there a problem?”
We both turn to the man speaking: Bridger. We’ve got his attention. My pulse pauses.
Good thing I’m in disguise, and Bridger’s training a wary gaze on Elliott. As he should.
“No problem,” I manage. “I was just leaving.” I shoulder past Elliott and stride down the hall.
I wish I could say the tears fighting to the surface were all part of the cover.
I wait in front of the elevators, willing my emotions to settle. Deep breath. Silent prayer. Look at the ceiling and fast blink. The first car stops. The doors slide open, revealing half a dozen revelers out for a night on the town. (Girls, you are going to freeze dressed like that.) I need to be alone. I wave them off, still not quite able to find my voice.
After a long minute, the next car announces its arrival — empty. I step on, but before the doors slide shut, Elliott joins me. I don’t acknowledge him, and I don’t dare to hope my cheeks are less red than the handprint on his.
The elevator begins its descent. “You’ve got an arm on you,” Elliott says.
“So my brothers tell me.” I hug my elbows closer.
“Wasn’t exactly what I was planning, if you were wondering.”
“Nope.”
Silence falls over us.
“So he’s made you,” I point out. Unless Elliott’s got a brilliant plan to explain away the coincidence of seeing Bridger on the van earlier and in the hall now —
“I got off the shuttle here, same as him. He’s got to think I’m staying here too.”
Oh. Right. I hate him even more for being right, for being that good.
Elliott waits until we’re almost to the ground floor before he tries again. “We make an awesome pair.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
He smirks, and my stomach rebels against that all-too-familiar expression, a face that says you know you want me.
Spy Another Day Prequel Box Set: Spy Noon, Mr. Nice Spy, and Spy by Night in one volume (Spy Another Day Prequels clean romantic suspense trilogy) Page 3