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other hand, I’m not sure it’s relevant. You need to bring her in. She’s still the last one who spoke with Lyeta. She still has information we don’t.”
And she’s still in danger.
“We need to bring her in,” Bear repeated. “If she’s after something we don’t know about, we need to learn about it—and get it ourselves. I don’t suppose somewhere between honking up breakfast at various Cape Town locations, apprehending her, having a nice snuggly bike ride, and scuffling with the CIA, you picked up any idea where she ran off to?”
Jason thought of the brochure that had caught her attention in the lobby. Blue Crane Winery. He thought of the home entertainment store where he’d found her. Blue Crane Nest Entertainment. A perfect pattern of two. He said, “As a matter of fact…” and let the sentence trail away a moment. Then he looked in Bear’s craggy features via the jerky image interface of the video phone and smiled. “I believe I have a date at a wine tasting.”
With any luck, I’ll get there before the CIA. She might have been one of them once, but he had the distinct feeling she was better off with the British side of the force. The question was…were they after her because they thought she’d killed Lyeta…or because they knew she hadn’t?
Beth slipped into the theater, avoided the loud discussion in front of the stage—producer and choreographer, ifshe interpreted the various levels of indignation correctly—and eased down the backstage stairs to the storage rooms below. She had a room all picked out. It was one in which several mattresses were stored, and was just across the hall from contemporary costume storage. If she recalled her briefing materials correctly, this theater had recently staged an avant garde play populated by The Beautiful People; one of the reviews had specifically commented on the quality of the designer knock-off clothing.
With luck, she’d find just the thing for a wine tasting.
She squeezed into the room she’d chosen, past the massive disassembled bed frame that blocked most of the door. A selection of mattresses leaned against one wall of the small room; the bed frames leaned against the other. A few other pieces of bedroom furniture filled in the corners, with chairs upturned on top and dusty mirrors behind them. A rope-and-pulley arrangement above the mattresses held several old-fashioned bicycles.
Beth threw her sling pack over the handlebars of one of those head-level bikes and pulled the mattress from the outside of the stack to land on the old brown patterned linoleum with a whump.
Then she flopped down on it herself, covering her nose and mouth with one hand when she saw the dust she’d raised. She let her body go limp, every single muscle. She ran a mental inventory, checking bruises and sore spots, making sure she hadn’t missed anything that might fail her under stress later in the evening.
This day had started in the middle of the night, but she still had most of it to go.
She allowed herself a fifteen-minute doze—precious time, but the respite would make all the difference in the world—possibly in her life. Upon rousing, she forced herself to lie there another few moments, reconnecting with the details of the mission.
What few details she knew.
The mole was on her tail, all right, and appeared to be taking advantage of company resources. Either that or he’d gone completely rogue and was using Egorov’s people; she hadn’t let them get close enough to find out.
Jason Chandler had been close enough. She felt a moment’s guilt in leaving him to take care of the trio at the hotel, but then again…he seemed quite capable of taking care of himself. A slow smile crossed her face as she reconsidered the quick glimpse she’d gotten of him in the lobby, the nondescripts arranged in various attitudes of physical defeat in a circle around him. They’d made their exit quickly enough after that.
But no doubt the nondescripts were
And she’s still in danger.
“We need to bring her in,” Bear repeated. “If she’s after something we don’t know about, we need to learn about it—and get it ourselves. I don’t suppose somewhere between honking up breakfast at various Cape Town locations, apprehending her, having a nice snuggly bike ride, and scuffling with the CIA, you picked up any idea where she ran off to?”
Jason thought of the brochure that had caught her attention in the lobby. Blue Crane Winery. He thought of the home entertainment store where he’d found her. Blue Crane Nest Entertainment. A perfect pattern of two. He said, “As a matter of fact…” and let the sentence trail away a moment. Then he looked in Bear’s craggy features via the jerky image interface of the video phone and smiled. “I believe I have a date at a wine tasting.”
With any luck, I’ll get there before the CIA. She might have been one of them once, but he had the distinct feeling she was better off with the British side of the force. The question was…were they after her because they thought she’d killed Lyeta…or because they knew she hadn’t?
Beth slipped into the theater, avoided the loud discussion in front of the stage—producer and choreographer, ifshe interpreted the various levels of indignation correctly—and eased down the backstage stairs to the storage rooms below. She had a room all picked out. It was one in which several mattresses were stored, and was just across the hall from contemporary costume storage. If she recalled her briefing materials correctly, this theater had recently staged an avant garde play populated by The Beautiful People; one of the reviews had specifically commented on the quality of the designer knock-off clothing.
With luck, she’d find just the thing for a wine tasting.
She squeezed into the room she’d chosen, past the massive disassembled bed frame that blocked most of the door. A selection of mattresses leaned against one wall of the small room; the bed frames leaned against the other. A few other pieces of bedroom furniture filled in the corners, with chairs upturned on top and dusty mirrors behind them. A rope-and-pulley arrangement above the mattresses held several old-fashioned bicycles.
Beth threw her sling pack over the handlebars of one of those head-level bikes and pulled the mattress from the outside of the stack to land on the old brown patterned linoleum with a whump.
Then she flopped down on it herself, covering her nose and mouth with one hand when she saw the dust she’d raised. She let her body go limp, every single muscle. She ran a mental inventory, checking bruises and sore spots, making sure she hadn’t missed anything that might fail her under stress later in the evening.
This day had started in the middle of the night, but she still had most of it to go.
She allowed herself a fifteen-minute doze—precious time, but the respite would make all the difference in the world—possibly in her life. Upon rousing, she forced herself to lie there another few moments, reconnecting with the details of the mission.
What few details she knew.
The mole was on her tail, all right, and appeared to be taking advantage of company resources. Either that or he’d gone completely rogue and was using Egorov’s people; she hadn’t let them get close enough to find out.
Jason Chandler had been close enough. She felt a moment’s guilt in leaving him to take care of the trio at the hotel, but then again…he seemed quite capable of taking care of himself. A slow smile crossed her face as she reconsidered the quick glimpse she’d gotten of him in the lobby, the nondescripts arranged in various attitudes of physical defeat in a circle around him. They’d made their exit quickly enough after that.
But no doubt the nondescripts were
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