by Fiona Quinn
“Yes, ma’am.” T-Rex looked into the rearview mirror and his gaze caught on Remi’s. Held. There was merriment twinkling and warming his brown eyes that Remi hadn’t seen there before—or imagined as possible in such a gruff bear of a guy.
It was a moment. Something happened in that moment. Remi would be hard-pressed, even with her gulf of words and phrases, to explain it. It was like…
Like they’d aligned. Hmm, no, not the right words. And now that the moment had passed, it was too ephemeral for her to latch on to and mull.
T-Rex pressed his fingers into his tie. “Echo Actual.”
He paused. Remi assumed someone was in his ear, though she didn’t see the normal tell-tale wire running down his neck into his suit jacket. Usually, to Remi’s way of thinking, an athletic physique dressed in a suit was a strange look. But this tactical suit did amazing things for the man.
“We’re pulling into the loading zone now,” T-Rex informed whoever was in his ear.
“Loading zone? What?” Blankenship released her safety belt and wriggled to the edge of her seat. “I’m not scampering in the back door like a thief.”
“This is part of our protocol, ma’am.” He pulled in next to the cargo elevator. A security guard was standing to the side with a clipboard in his hand.
Havoc had pulled in alongside. The two operators stood outside of the car conferring, then Havoc opened the door for Blankenship and held out his hand.
Blankenship swatted his hand none too gently.
Anger ranged across her face, and Remi was paying close attention. Here was a new side of Blankenship. Remi pulled out her phone and pressed the video record button, sliding it into the breast pocket on her tunic that was precisely the right depth to hold just the aperture securely above the fabric. Remi checked that the video was functioning then lightly adjusted her scarf to obfuscate it. If she wanted to catch people acting naturally, they needed to forget her role. This video wasn’t going to be the quality she’d need for a news feed, but it would provide her with research information and correct quotes.
“Ma’am,” Havoc said, reaching out again. “We’re tasked with your safety. Protocol includes—”
“Drive me around front where I can be seen entering the building like a lady. I’m not some tramp that you bring in and out the back door.”
Diamond’s eyebrow’s shot straight up in surprise.
So not a typical display.
“Ma’am,” T-Rex’s voice was soothing, “we don’t have parking access on the street at the front door. It’s quite a ways away. Because of the weather, we were offered these two parking spaces to bring you into the building in comfort. As soon as you’re settled, our team needs to move the vehicles back outside onto the street, where they’ll remain until your departure.”
Blankenship—her face red, her lips drawn down in an obstinate frown—sat back in her seat, crossing her arms over her chest. “I don’t like the idea of sneaking into a building like a common thief. I want to walk in and out of the front door where I can see folks, and they can get a picture with me. It’s about diplomacy.”
T-Rex didn’t budge from his directives. “Protocol, ma’am.”
“Four syllables,” Remi muttered.
“It’s too far to walk in the drizzling rain. We don’t want your signature hat to be ruined on your way in,” T-Rex said.
“My hat?” She reached up and adjusted the brim. “Well, now, that’s something altogether different. It’s drizzling?” She sent her gaze toward the exit.
Diamond exchanged a worried glance with Havoc as Blankenship shifted herself out of the car.
They’d driven with the windshield wipers on the whole way. How did Blankenship not notice the light rain?
“Alrighty then, mount up and let’s ride on,” Blankenship said, whirring a hand through the air and shooting a grin from Havoc to T-Rex.
It seemed to Remi that Blankenship had had a crack in her otherwise “Aw-shucks, let’s be neighborly” demeanor, and maybe she’d just seen the true Blankenship peek out for a moment. But that moment had come and gone.
Havoc positioned in front of the senator, T-Rex slightly behind and to the side. They walked toward the guard at the elevator.
Remi had had her eye on that guard. He’d had his head down and was slyly watching them from under his lashes. And the thing that Remi observed was that he had an air about him of expectation. Gleeful expectation. He was a small man with a pronounced beer belly and weak-looking arms. Remi put these two things together—he was going to challenge the Delta operators, and he would win.
Wouldn’t that just stroke the man’s ego?
The elevator guard ducked his head and rolled his lips in, trying to hide a smile.
Havoc walked up to the elevator and reached out to press the button.
“This elevator isn’t available to the public.”
“Thank you. United States Senator Blankenship is a guest and was told to come in through this entry,” Havoc said evenly.
The guard looked over his roster. He took an exaggerated amount of time. His countenance shifted slightly, now he was nervous. Whatever had been in his mind, he was about to play it out. Here we go, Remi thought, directing the camera in his direction. Her press credentials hung around her neck.
“Press isn’t the senator.” A smug wobble to his lips, almost a sneer.
“That’s fine. I can find my way up from the front.” Remi stepped back. By making this a non-issue, she stole some of the energy from his power play.
“She’s not the senator.” The guard pointed his chin at Diamond.
“She’s my right-hand gal.” Blankenship reached back and grabbed Diamond’s arm, and dragged her forward. “No need for folderol. We’ll just wing on up and give the lecture.”
“You may use the elevator, Senator.”
“The senator will go nowhere without her security team,” T-Rex said evenly. “If there’s a problem with that, I’ll have the embassy reach out to Oxford’s chancellor and have it cleared up. Your name, please?”
“The senator and her security may use the elevator.”
Remi turned toward the bay door. “See you in a moment,” she said, glad that she was wearing flats. This was going to be a hike.
Diamond, on the other hand, balanced on needly heels with pointy toes that squeezed Diamond’s foot into the shape of a pizza slice.
Remi pulled out her phone, put her Google maps on “walking,” swiped, and adjusted until she had a mental picture of where she was heading. With the phone back on video mode, Remi slid it back into her breast pocket.
“Petty. That is a man who feels powerless,” Diamond said loudly enough that her words would easily carry through the echoing garage.
Though Remi had shortened and slowed her gait to accommodate the senator’s aid, Diamond was already out of breath as they turned onto the sidewalk.
Walking together toward the end of the block, around the corner, they now started their trek toward a door. As they walked, Remi reviewed the exchange. Something about that trade of words hit her wrong.
A familiar feeling settled in her gut. Heads up. Pay attention. On autopilot, Remi reached to the side of her backpack and pulled out the hand braces made to support her wrists after long writing spells.
One of Remi’s best and most used make-do weapons-at-the-ready were these wrist braces. They covered her hands from fingers to mid-arm, Velcroing shut, a metal bar helped hold Remi’s wrists in a neutral position. If she needed to strike someone, she did it with the inside of her wrist, where the bar was solid and protective. She could also deliver a wicked palm strike that would easily break a nose or teeth. It wasn’t much when faced with a bomb or a gun, but it gave her a little bit of comfort.
But something in her subconscious had dragged them from her pack.
Head on a swivel, it was a military caution, but she’d made it her own.
Remi picked up her pace a tad, hoping Diamond would do the same. Using the wi
ndows of the cars and the building to search the area, Remi tried to assess based on her many years around situations that were tinder looking for a spark.
How could that be true here in Oxford?
Was anything amiss?
Remi simply didn’t have a good read on the area—what might be expected, what would be concerning.
A fair number of people loitered in the greenspaces without holding conversation, without really anything visibly giving them a reason to simply stand dotted around the mist-moistened sidewalks, the drizzle having stopped for the moment.
Everyone was about the same age, say mid-twenties. Remi might have chalked that up to this being a university. What made her question the scene was the uniformity of their male gender and their clothing choice of long sleeves that seemed too warm for the day.
Remi’s clothing was certainly too hot for her, though it was in the mid-seventies.
Why hoodies in August? Was this paranoia?
Too little sleep for worry about Marie-Claude and Éloïse?
Something was making her body respond with adrenaline. Heat began as a point just below her ribs, radiating out until she felt engulfed.
Tugging at her scarf to loosen it around her neck as she climbed the marble steps, Remi reached for the handle at the front door. Dragging it open, she let Diamond walk through as Remi sent one last glance around. Her instincts told her to call T-Rex, and yet what would she say, “I’m hot? My lips are buzzing from adrenaline, no clue why?”
She’d been out with the military before when she’d heard soldiers over the radio sharing their gut impression. They’d communicate something like: “The little hairs on the back of my neck are saying something’s off.” It was an acceptable and important piece of information.
But Remi hadn’t forged a relationship with T-Rex—the kind where they knew they had each other’s backs.
When she thought that, Remi noticed a tiny voice from the back of her mind whispering, “I’d really like that.” Trust between them. Support between them. Remembering back to last night’s fantasy in her bath, Remi acknowledged, yeah, she’d like to take her acquaintance with T-Rex Landry a step further from fellow professionals to...what would she call it? Soothing her curiosity?
“Unfortunately, that’s not what we have between us,” Remi muttered. I’ll just have to navigate this scene on my own.
Maybe once the team was together again, Remi could show T-Rex the video she’d recorded on her walk to the front.
T-Rex could draw his own conclusions.
When Remi passed through the double doors, she felt relief. Remi’s prickles subsided.
She stopped at the map on the wall and found the elevator.
“Are you okay, Diamond?” Remi asked, watching Diamond yank at her skirt and smooth her jacket.
“Is there a ladies’ room on the way?” she asked, peering at the map.
Remi pointed at the level of the lecture hall, traced her finger from the elevator halfway down the corridor, tapped, then traced further to show the entrance where they’d surely find the rest of their group.
“Good, just between us girls, something got me spooked out there. And now I have to go!”
Chapter Fifteen
Remi
Thursday, Oxford, England
Remi stood another moment at the map. The guard down at the garage was still bugging her. Was it about power the way Remi and Diamond had read the interaction? Or was it something else?
Was the guy trying to split the team? Did that make sense? Not really. But Remi had learned to trust her instincts, and she was rattled.
Play it out, she thought. If the guard split the forces, the senator was still guarded by two Delta Force operators, and upstairs there was a third one with a K9, though what Rory was trained to do hadn’t been spelled out for Remi. And wouldn’t be, she well knew.
The best practices in a case where she felt vulnerable was to do the unexpected. Take the circuitous route.
But as she studied the building map, Remi realized that the only way to get to the lecture hall was via an elevator.
Yes, there were two sets of stairs, but it would be a long slog to get up to the sixth floor. While Remi could do it, she knew it would be hard to convince Diamond to hike the stairs in those high heels and pencil skirt unless she gave her a really good reason.
Remi wanted to make an alliance with Diamond in the hopes that with a little trust and friendly vibes, Diamond might give Remi better insight into the senator, like what was up with the Jekyll and Hyde show down in the garage?
Remi pointed in the right direction for the elevator bank.
A janitor stood behind a bucket with a mop, another man with a rag stood beside him. As the two women rounded the corner, the shorter one slid his phone into his pocket and punched the “Up” button.
Diamond focused on her tablet and her to-do list.
Remi stopped at a distance. She hoped that he’d called the elevator as a courtesy. Four people and a mop bucket in a small space… Remi thoroughly disliked elevators. Again, she just had to suck it up and move through the discomfort. This was part and parcel of being out in the world collecting stories.
The bell dinged. The door slid open. The men didn’t move. Good.
Remi and Diamond stepped on.
Diamond pressed the sixth-floor button, and the doors were sliding shut when the janitor stuck his hand in, stopping them from closing. When he crowded in, his buddy followed.
The door slid closed.
Immediately, the janitor on the left thrust a flier into the women’s hands. Diamond stepped back, focusing down on what he’d handed to her.
Without looking at it, Remi shoved her copy into a pocket of her bag. The smell of bleach filled the air and made her blink and cough.
“You’re a journalist, yes?” the taller janitor asked from behind the bucket.
Remi reached out and pressed the button for the next floor. Yup, getting off.
“You have a press bag.” He pointed to the cross strap on her backpack. “Press” was clearly written in block letter patches that ran up and down the strap as well as across the back, clearly demarcated as a non-combatant. Her press pass hung from a lanyard around her neck.
She was clearly the press.
The elevator slowed to stop on the next floor.
Thank goodness.
The guy who had handed out the flier reached over, thrusting a key into the control panel and turning it to the right where it was marked “Off.”
The elevator car stopped between floors with a thud.
Shit.
Remi’s claustrophobia wrapped around her like a heavy weight, making breathing a task. Or maybe it was the thick bleach solution.
“Journalism is a lot like what they do at the CIA, I think.”
This was similar to Jean Baptiste. His captors accused him of being with the CIA.
She shook her head, trying to force herself to the cogent thoughts part of her brain because right now, all she had was mush and fear.
“Are you CIA?” The bucket man reached down and lifted a bottle of ammonia.
Bleach and ammonia, when combined, created chloramine gas. In small quantities, it was an irritant. High gas concentrations in confined areas with little air circulation—oh, like an elevator—could lead to coma or even death.
“I’m not CIA, I assure you.” She mustered while lifting her credentials, making sure that the camera took in the men’s faces. If she was going down, she wanted to make sure that the authorities knew how.
The guy raised a brow. “You’re here with the oil drilling queen.”
“What?” Remi asked.
“Blankenship is from Texas oil. Big oil money bought her place in the U.S. Senate, and oil will sustain her there as she helps destroy the world we live in.”
“I’m here to report on the girls’ robotic team from London. I have no connection to a story on oil.”
The guy was unscrewing the cap on the ammonia.
Okay. Was that the plan? Gas the journo?
Remi was clawing through her memory, searching for a way out of this mess. Her gaze slid down their bodies, looking for weapons’ bulges, but she saw none. Guns weren’t easily accessed in the UK, but knife deaths were problematic. If he had a knife and Remi could get to it—
Talk. Just talk. As long as that cap stays on the bottle, you have time.
“Look, the CIA and others in the spy business have to behave ethically. They can’t pose as medical workers, relief workers, or press. Why? It would endanger all of those helpers rushing in. The people setting up tents and supplying food and latrines, they’d be captured, tortured…”
“There were two CIA that were posing as journalists, and ISIS caught them.”
Ah, see? If no other correlate existed in the two scenarios, this man had at least seen the news broadcast.
“Éloïse and Marie-Claude? Yes. They’re colleagues of mine. They’re journalists, that’s it. Can you please turn the elevator back on and let us out? I’m glad to keep the conversation going outside in the hall.” Her adrenaline was making her angry. Combative. But what she needed here was calm. And slow breathing to minimize the chemical irritants in her lungs.
Panic kills.
“Here is fine,” the tall guy said.
“I’m a reporter. Is there something that you would like to say? If we get out, I’m glad to take notes and write up a report.”
“You’re a vulture, you know that?” the short guy snarled.
Was this a reference to the bird attack in Washington? No way they’d know about that here.
“You go in where people are suffering, and you take their pictures and exploit their pain. Blood money,” the short guy snarled.
The bucket guy ran his tongue over his teeth and squinted his eyes at her.
“Look.” Remi was having trouble breathing. The air was thick with the scent of bleach. Top that with her confined-space anxiety, she was battling through both to get out of this mess. “As a reporter, I think of myself as a first responder. Unlike your brave soldiers, I may not have a finger on the trigger, or an eye focused on a sight. I may not have the fire hose in my hands, but I am there with bullets whizzing over my head. I’m there with road rash from explosions, with other peoples’ blood soaking into my shoes. I’m there as the real vultures are crouched in the sand, waiting for the death rattle to stop and the child to die.”
