One of the valets steps in front of her, blocking the door.
They’re talking. He’s not moving out of her way—
When there’s a break in traffic, I dart across the street.
“Welcome back, ma’am,” says one of the valets, but I don’t even see him. My eyes are on Alex and the man in front of her.
“I’ll walk you up to the front desk,” he’s saying, his tone unfriendly, “so you can ask for a replacement key.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I say. “I have mine, and she’s with me.”
I reach for her arm and walk around the valet, into the cool air of the lobby.
He doesn’t follow. Doesn’t say a word.
“He was demanding to see my key,” Alex says, once the doors have closed behind us.
“Weird. He didn’t ask to see mine.”
“It’s not actually that weird,” she says. She looks angry.
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“Look at us, Jill. In his mind I don’t belong here. All that man saw was my skin color.”
That wasn’t something I even considered when I asked her to walk in. She had, though. She knew she’d have a more difficult time than I did. I should have known, too.
“Come on,” she says. “Let’s go.”
Thomas Worthington is still at the front desk. His head’s down, and he doesn’t notice us. We veer left and separate wordlessly. Alex walks down the hall and I head toward the door to the stairwell, just beside the elevator. Push it open, climb the stairs two at a time to the second floor, exit out into a crimson-colored hallway.
Rooms are to the left and right, six in each direction. The doors are painted black, and there are antique-looking plates mounted beside them, each with a room number. There’s a housekeeping cart in the middle of the hall to the right.
I head left first. There are Do Not Disturb signs hung on three door handles, fancy little metal plates hung with silver chains. To the right of the stairs, past the housekeeping cart, past a room that’s open, in the midst of being cleaned, there’s one with a sign. All the way at the far end of the hall.
My phone buzzes in my bag, just as I’m turning around. I pull it out.
Text from Alex. Two.
Much better. I wonder if the first floor is largely vacant.
Left or right of elevator? I reply.
Both left.
Even better.
Stand outside. Listen for a ring.
I’m back in the center of the hallway now, near the door to the stairwell, and the elevator. I use the browser on my phone to google the Fenwick-Coats, find the main phone number, and place the call.
It rings once. Twice—
“Good afternoon. You’ve reached the Fenwick-Coats Inn,” comes Thomas’s voice in my ear. “How may I assist you today?”
I speak with the hint of a Southern accent, a skill I haven’t used in years. “I’m trying to reach a friend of mine. Natalia Ivanova. Could you please connect me to her room?” I’m walking as I’m talking, back down to the left of the elevator, to the cluster of three rooms with Do Not Disturb signs.
“Certainly.”
There’s a brief pause, a click, and then the sound of ringing. I pull the phone away from my ear and listen to the rooms around me.
Silence.
I start walking quickly back toward the elevator, but the ringing cuts out, and the call disconnects.
Anything? I text Alex.
Nothing.
Keeping listening.
I dial the front desk again, hear the same greeting. “Well, hello again,” I say, “I seem to have been disconnected. Would you mind trying Natalia Ivanova’s room again?”
“She may have stepped out,” Thomas says.
“Maybe. Could you be a dear and connect me once more?” I make my way down the other side of the hall, past the housekeeping cart, loaded with sheets and towels and toiletries. Inside the open room, there’s a figure inside, her back to me, making one of the queen-size beds.
“Yes ma’am.”
There’s that click again, and then a ring—
There’s a ring on the other side of that door, the one at the end of the hall, the one with the Do Not Disturb sign. I wait for another ring just to be sure. I hear it through the phone, and through the door, almost in unison.
Bingo. We found the source’s room. The plate beside it reads 212.
I end the call, drop the phone back into my purse. Then I look at the door. Solid, tightly closed, outfitted with an electronic key card reader.
Down the hall I hear a noise, like the sound of something being dropped, maybe a bucket against a hard floor—
I head toward the sound, the open door. There’s a woman inside, in a housekeeping uniform. She’s short with close-cropped dark hair, a spray bottle in hand.
“Excuse me,” I say from the hall.
She looks up, meets my eye. Then walks over to me.
“Could I possibly have a couple of fresh towels? I didn’t want to trouble you with housekeeping today, but could use some towels if you don’t mind.”
“Of course.” She steps out into the hall, takes a stack of three thick folded white towels from the cart, hands them to me. “Would you like more?”
“This is perfect,” I say, taking them from her. “Thank you so much.”
“Not a problem. Have a nice day, ma’am.”
“You as well,” I say. I head back toward Natalia’s room. When I reach it, I turn. The hallway’s empty. I count to five in my mind, then walk down the hall again, back to the open room.
“Excuse me again,” I say, hovering just outside the doorway. “This is embarrassing. I was in such a hurry to catch you, I left the room without my key.”
The housekeeper smiles a tired smile. “Happens all the time.” She walks out into the hall.
“I feel like such an idiot,” I say, yammering away, filling the air with chatter. “I didn’t want to trouble you, and now here I am asking you to stop what you’re doing to help me.”
“It’s really not a problem, ma’am. Which room is yours?”
“The one down at the end, 212.”
I wait for her to ask my name, to ask for some sort of identification. She reaches for a key card that’s clipped on to her uniform, hanging by her side, holds it up to the reader. The lock disengages, and the light flashes green.
“Here you go,” she says, pushing open the door, holding it open for me.
“Thank you so much,” I say, walking past her into the darkened room. “Promise it won’t happen again.”
I flip the light switch, let the door close slowly behind me.
That was easier than I thought. I figured I’d have to do more bluffing, more pretending. As soon as I hear the automatic lock engage, I reach for my phone.
Room 212, I type to Alex. I’m in. Come on up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Jill
It’s quiet inside the room. Cold, too; the air-conditioning is set low. The switch by the door illuminated a desk light, but it’s dim, and the room still feels dark. The curtains are tightly drawn.
It’s a small suite, with a bedroom and bathroom off to the right, a living area to the left. I walk quietly into the room, glance into the darkened bathroom first. Toothbrush and toothpaste on the counter, a makeup bag, a hairbrush.
Bedroom next. A king-size bed, loosely made but clearly slept in. A dresser, empty on top, except for a lamp. A medium-size black rolling suitcase propped up on a luggage rack. Two bedside tables with lamps. A cellphone charger on one of them, and a framed photograph—
I walk closer. It’s small, a four-by-six picture I think, in a silver frame. Two boys, around kindergarten age, give or take. One’s blond and skinny, the other dark haired and solidly built. Diffe
rent as can be, just like Owen and Mia.
They’re outside in the sun, and their arms are around each other, heads close, big smiles on their faces. The kind of picture I treasure of my own kids, the ones I use as the background on my phone, or put in a frame on the mantel.
It’s in color, but it’s that sort of muted color that I recognize from pictures of my own childhood. And the way the boys are dressed, the hairstyles, it reminds me of the way my brothers looked in photos from the same era.
These boys are probably my age now. I’d be willing to bet these are Natalia’s kids.
Strange that it’s here, that she’s brought such an old photo with her to a hotel, propped it up next to her bed—
My phone vibrates. I reach for it, pull it out of my bag. Incoming call, through Stronghold. Drew.
I answer, “What’s the latest?” I’m almost afraid to hear what he’s about to say, but desperate to hear it, at the same time.
“We have a lead.”
A lead. Thank God. “What is it?”
“The hotel’s CCTV. A man took the kids from the hotel room. He was carrying Mia, holding Owen’s hand—” A sob escapes, a deep guttural sob. “He got into a car with them.”
“Can the police track the car?”
“They did.”
“And? Where did it go?”
“To an airport. A small private one.”
An airport? Oh my God.
“Footage there shows them getting out of the car and into a plane.”
They’re alive. At least they’re alive. If there’s footage of them boarding a plane—
“They’re working on figuring out where the plane went.” His voice breaks.
“This is good news, Drew.”
“It’s not enough.”
“No, but it’s something,” I say. As terrified as I am, I need to project some sort of calm. One of us needs to be strong right now.
“What are we going to do?”
I hate hearing him like this. Scared, hopeless. “You stay in touch with the police. I’m working on things on my end.”
“Yeah?” The hope in his voice is unmistakable.
“Yeah.” There’s a light rap at the door. I start walking toward it. “I gotta go. Let’s chat as soon as either of us hears something. Drew, I will find them.”
Then I drop the phone back into my bag and look through the peephole. It’s Alex. I open the door and she steps inside, closes it behind herself.
“How’d you get in?” she asks quietly, looking around the room.
“Housekeeping.” I turn and head to the living room. I need to see what else is here.
There’s a couch, the kind that’s probably a pullout, with a coffee table in front of it, a television mounted on the wall. A desk against one wall, a rolling chair pushed in under it, a corded hotel phone on top, some papers beside it, held down with a paperweight.
I walk over to the desk. The paperweight is clear, with an inscription engraved on top. Cyrillic writing. Words I don’t recognize.
I pull out my phone again, swipe until I reach the screen with my favorite translation app, the one I always suggest my students download. I pick up the paperweight and snap a picture of the inscription, wait for the translation—
“What does it say?” Alex asks, reaching for the papers underneath.
I wait for the words to appear on my screen. “ ‘What is right is not always easy, and what is easy is not always right.’ ”
“Deep,” Alex says with a roll of her eyes.
I wish it were something else. Something clearer, something that gets me closer to finding my kids. My desperation is growing, and it’s taking everything I’ve got, every ounce of my CIA training, to focus on the mission at hand.
“Look at this,” Alex says, holding out a sheet of paper. I take it from her. It’s a medical record from the Hart-Schofield Memorial Hospital. Vitals, lab work. The patient name is listed as Redacted, followed by an ID number.
“Right here,” Alex says, looking up from the paper she’s reading, pointing to a spot about three-quarters of the way down on the page in front of me.
Clinical Diagnosis: Acute Anthrax Poisoning.
“Oh my God,” I murmur.
“It’s on this one, too,” she says, holding up the sheet of paper she was just reading.
I take that one from her, too. Another redacted patient name, an ID number just one off sequentially from the last.
Two people dead from anthrax.
Was this the accident Natalia mentioned? Was there an anthrax attack at the Farm? How could—
A sound, at the entrance to the room.
The scrape of a key card, the click of a lock disengaging—
I look up, my heart beginning to pound—
And Natalia Ivanova opens the door.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Alex
Natalia locks eyes with me. She’s frozen in the doorway. Her gaze shifts to Jill, holds there. Then she steps forward, lets the door close behind her. Reaches for the deadbolt, locks it, all the while looking directly at us.
Shit is an understatement.
I should have turned the deadbolt. But Jill was so sure she wouldn’t come back. I was, too. Certainly not so soon.
“Alex Charles,” she says. “You found me.”
She has the hint of an accent, but just barely.
And she looks calm. Too calm.
The fact that she walked in, locked the door—it’s wrong. She should have left. Escaped. Turned us in.
Instead, she entered. Locked herself in a room with us.
Why?
This is dangerous.
It’s not like I’ve never had a dangerous source meet before. I’ve had tons. Especially abroad. The kinds of sources Beau then went on to recruit—militants, opposition leaders, members of shadow governments.
But this is different.
She wanted to remain anonymous. She didn’t want to meet. And we just broke into her hotel room.
She looks at Jill, then down at the papers in Jill’s hands. “And you’re the one who was following me. What are you, CIA? FBI?”
“Neither,” Jill says, laying the papers carefully back on the table.
Natalia scoffs.
“Look, we need to know who’s behind this,” Jill says.
She ignores Jill and focuses on me again. “I made a mistake coming to you.”
The words sound bitter. And they sting. I’ve always prided myself on protecting my sources. I’ve never had anyone regret coming to me. Never had a source targeted, either, until Jill’s kids were nabbed. Everything’s falling apart.
“I was trying to do the right thing,” she says, her gaze still locked on me. “I thought you’d find the truth.”
“I was looking for it,” I say. I was. I was trying my damn best to get to the bottom of this.
“You got the government involved.” Her eyes flash toward Jill. “I did not want the government involved.”
“I’m not the government,” Jill says. “I’m here because they have my kids.”
Natalia focuses on Jill. She looks impassive. She’s hard to read.
Well, she’s a spy, isn’t she?
“Owen’s four. Mia’s three,” Jill says. “They’re my whole life.”
Natalia is still wearing that same stone-faced look, but I swear right now I see a flicker of emotion.
“I’m just trying to find my kids.”
Natalia’s lips are set in a thin line.
“You said this was coming from within the CIA,” Jill says.
“Yes.”
“I need names.”
“What you need to do is publish this story,” she says, turning toward me.
“I can’t,” I say. “Not without�
�”
“You said you needed to know who I am. What my access is.” She throws up her arms. “You know now.”
She’s right.
“Uphold your end of the bargain,” she says. “Publish this story.”
“Why?”
“Because it’ll put an end to this.”
“To what?”
Her gaze shifts to the papers on the desk. The ones from the hospital. “Did you see those?”
She already knows I did, so I nod. I saw them. I just don’t know what the hell they mean.
I wait for her to say something else, but she’s silent.
“Was that the accident?” I ask. “The one at the Farm?”
“What do you think?”
I think it was. Again, I just don’t have a damn clue what it means.
“Who was behind it?” Jill asks.
Natalia turns toward her. “Who do you think?”
“If the reporting’s to be believed, Syria.”
“And is the reporting to be believed?” Natalia asks.
“You’ve been pretty clear that the answer’s no,” Jill says.
Natalia is silent. Expressionless.
“If the U.S. is making up the intel,” I say, “is it our anthrax?”
Natalia faces me. “Yes.”
I’m stunned. I wasn’t expecting a straight answer. “But that’s…impossible.”
It can’t be ours. We destroyed our stockpiles of anthrax ages ago. If we do have any, it’s in a lab somewhere. For researching antidotes, or something like that. We don’t use anthrax as a weapon.
“You don’t want to find the truth, do you?” she asks.
Of course I do. But it makes no sense—
Or does it?
We can’t go to war over unverified intel. Over a source saying Syria has a weaponized strain of anthrax.
We need proof.
“You need to leave,” she says. “Both of you.”
There’s an awkward pause. No one moves, no one speaks.
“Natalia, do you have kids?” Jill asks.
“That matters why?”
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