“I do. I also want me to take this one.”
“Then why the hell did we rent two rooms when you said you’re almost out of money?”
“I told you,” she said. “Security.”
Shane stared at her. “You really are worried about those guys.”
“I wouldn’t say worried, exactly, but let’s just say I like to maintain a healthy awareness of possibilities at all times. It’s what keeps me alive.”
30
The room was more or less what Tracie had expected — small and cramped, with outdated furnishings and a bed with a mattress that was probably as old as she was, covered by an off-white set of threadbare blankets and a fading blue bedspread. She had stayed in a hundred similar rooms all over the world — and many that were much, much worse. This one was clean at least, more or less.
Shane bounced on the bed like a little kid, grinning. “Wanna take it for a spin?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx, and she burst out laughing.
“As tempting as you make it sound,” she said, “I have work to do. I really need to call my handler. In fact, this phone call is way overdue. I should have gotten in touch with him last night, but I was down and out, and then today we’ve been too busy trying not to get killed. Before we do that, though, we need to set up the room across the way.”
Shane looked at her quizzically. “Set it up?”
She nodded. “Yep. You can put all that excess energy to good use, although maybe not the way you intended. We’re going to haul all the pillows over there, and any extra blankets you can find, too.”
“What for?”
“Bait.”
Shane picked the two lumpy pillows up off the bed while Tracie investigated the tiny closet. Inside was a small ironing board, an ancient iron, and an extra set of bedding: two sheets and two blankets. She grabbed the blankets and sheets, wondering if anyone frequenting this run-down piece-of-shit motel had ever had occasion to iron an article of clothing, or if the iron even still worked.
“Take the blankets and bedspread off this bed,” she told Shane. “We can use those across the way as well. We’ll leave the sheets, though. I don’t think I’d want to even sit on this bed without something covering it.” She wrinkled her nose.
“Take this bedding? What about you? What are you going to sleep on? I figured I could sleep on the floor in my clothes and you could have the bed, but without blankets it won’t be very comfy.”
Tracie smiled. He was being a perfect gentleman, despite his half-joking proposition of a moment ago. “We’re going to trade off sleeping,” she said. “Nobody will have to sleep on the floor, because one of us is going to stay awake all night, watching the room across the way. Even when you’re sleeping you’ll have to stay in your clothes, anyway, because if we have to move we’ll need to be able to do it quickly.”
“What will we be watching for?”
Tracie chewed on her lower lip, a reaction to stress she had been trying unsuccessfully to break for as long as she could remember. “Hopefully nothing,” she said in a tone that didn’t even convince herself.
Shane stared at her for a long moment. She thought he was going to reply but he didn’t. Then he stripped the covers off the bed, rolled them up into a ball, and hugged the pillows and bedding to his chest. He opened the door and they trooped across the parking lot to their second room. Tracie examined the lot as they crossed, pleased with her choice of motels. The sight line between the two rooms was perfect, the lighting in the parking lot was abysmal, and only a couple of the other rooms appeared occupied, both far off in the distance, close to the road and next to the office.
They entered the second room and found a mirror image of the one they had just left, right down to the faded coloring in the decades-old bedspread. She pulled the spread to the foot of the bed and then did the same thing with the blankets and top sheet. She placed her blankets on the right side of the bed and then told Shane, “Hand me yours.” When he passed them over, she placed them lengthwise on top of hers, folded the whole pile back on top of itself, and then scrunched everything up into the rough approximation of a sleeping body.
She stepped back and examined her handiwork with a critical eye. “Hmph. Guess it’ll have to do,” she muttered. “Good thing it’s dark out there.”
She walked around the bed, darting past Shane with the grace of a dancer. “Toss me the pillows,” she said, and when he did, she arranged them lengthwise along that side of the bed, creating a second sleeping body. Then she pulled the original blankets back over her creation, covering the two lumps.
She took one more look and shrugged. “What do you think? Does it look like two sleeping people?”
“Maybe to Ray Charles,” Shane said and she punched his arm.
“Wise ass,” she said. “It only has to fool them for a couple of seconds.”
“Then what happens?” he asked.
“Then they get interrogated.”
“By you?”
“That’s right.”
“But this is all for nothing, because nobody’s coming.”
“Hope so.”
“You and me both,” Shane said, concern in his voice.
She winked at him and walked to the bathroom, flipping on the light. Then she pulled the door almost all the way closed. A thin shaft of dirty yellow light slashed across the main room, illuminating just enough of the bed, she hoped, to convince any interested observers that two people were actually sleeping in it.
“That’s going to have to do,” she said.
“Now what?” Shane asked.
She pulled her dwindling supply of cash out of her pocket and studied it. “You said you had a little money, right?” she asked hopefully.
Shane said, “Yeah, I’ve got about twenty bucks.”
“Good,” she answered, tossing him the car keys. “Take the Granada and find a hardware store that’s still open. We need duct tape.”
“Duct tape. What do we need duct tape for?”
Tracie grinned and waggled her eyebrows as he had done when they entered the first motel room. “Use your imagination.”
Back in the original room, Tracie picked up the phone and dialed a complex series of numbers from memory, waited for an accompanying series of beeps, then dialed more numbers. After a thirty-second silence the earpiece buzzed, indicating the line was ringing.
The call was answered almost immediately. “Green twenty-seven,” a voice said.
“Red eighteen,” Tracie answered.
“Thank God you’re okay,” Winston Andrews said. “When I didn’t hear from you last night I started to think maybe you had crawled off into the woods somewhere and gotten yourself eaten by a bear.” He seemed to be enunciating carefully, like he was trying not to slur his words.
“Nope, I’m still kicking. So far.”
“Do you have the cargo?”
“I have it.”
“Any damage?”
“No, it’s like me: a little beat-up but otherwise okay.”
“How close are you?”
“Still a few hours out. We’re going to hole up in a cheap motel for the night and come into D.C. tomorrow.”
“We?”
“I have a civilian with me. It’s the guy who rescued me from the burning B-52. The media got wind of his name and plastered it all over the news. He’s got a target on his back now and will until this thing is over. I thought it best to keep him close.”
“That’s a serious breach of mission protocol.”
“I know that. I’ll deal with the consequences later.”
Andrews sighed heavily. Through the phone’s earpiece the sound was like a strong wind. Tracie had worked with her handler a long time, and she was convinced he had been drinking.