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Blondie nodded, her shoulders relaxing in relief. Rhett studied her face for a long moment, then decided she would probably hold up under Kaiser’s questioning—if Benson even made good on his threat to get Kaiser involved.
But either way, Rhett knew he couldn’t use her anymore, not even to send a damn email message. Even the smallest bit of evidence that Blondie was involved in the O’Donnell setup would immediately implicate Rhett—or at least make it look sketchy enough that Robinson would scratchRhett Rodgersoff the short-list for the next Director.
He snatched up his jacket, slung it over his shoulder, forced himself to kiss Blondie one more time to make sure she kept those lips sealed. Then he was out the door, taking the stairs to the back exit, stepping out in the afternoon sunshine.
Rhett glanced at his watch, realized he was due at the Hoover Building for a meeting with some FBI clowns. He pulled up his phone and ordered a ride. He didn’t need to worry about hiding his current location.
After all, he was never coming back here.
Blondie was history.
He’d keep fucking her until Kaiser went down, then string her along for a while longer, until he was secure in his spot in the corner office.
And then he’d make sure she disappeared.
Because loose ends didn’t just tie themselves up.
They stuck around like ticking time-bombs.
Just like that eternally ticking time-bomb from thirty years ago.
When John Benson had caught Rhett making his first kill.
A kill that still haunted Rhett, even though he knew it shouldn’t.
After all, that bastard child was barely a few days old when Rhett smothered her like an unwanted kitten.
Yeah, just a few days old, not even a real person yet.
Hell, the kid didn’t even have a name.
18
SCARLET.
India O’Donnell. What a silly name, thought the woman codenamed Scarlet.
The name of the new target which had come through on her CIA-issued phone had immediately struck Scarlet as rather comical. It sounded completely made-up, something an enthusiastic CIA intern might come up with while crafting an NOC profile.
Not that Scarlet put too much stock in names. She’d had so many over the past thirty years that her “real” name was barely a memory in the mists of her mind.
“Mind your head,” called a uniformed busboy as Scarlet ducked beneath the plastic-wrapped garments whirring about on an automated turnstile that wound like a multi-colored anaconda through the laundry room tucked deep in the windowless bowels of Mumbai's Raj Palace Hotel.
Scarlet offered the busboy a tight-lipped smile, avoiding eye contact so she wouldn’t be memorable. She waited until he swept past her, then she ducked again, this time staying crouched and quickly moving beneath the clothes-train to the open space behind it. She glanced left and right down the lines of humming washers and spinning dryers, then pulled her raven-black hair into a ponytail neat enough to look professional and nondescript enough to be forgettable.
She walked past the laundry machines, past the dry-cleaning room, scanning the laundry workers busy at their washing and drying and pressing and folding stations. They didn’t even glance in her direction. Scarlet had already dressed her lithe fifty-something-year-old body in the Raj Palace’s standard brown uniform, and now she snatched up a name-tag from a plastic basket near a mesh-bag stuffed with soiled hotel uniforms.
It was a man’s name tag. Scarlet didn’t think anyone would notice, but she was a perfectionist and so she tossed it back into the basket and rummaged through until she found something that suited her gauntly feminine face and dark sunken eyes and worry-lines that had been building for thirty years, deepening every time that unmarked CIA-issued encrypted phone buzzed with a new assignment, a new mission.
A new target.
“Why do they want to kill you, India O’Donnell,” Scarlet whispered in the sing-song voice which helped her calm down before she turned out the lights for another human soul. The ritual was somewhat new—most of her career in the shadows Scarlet hadn’t needed to “calm herself down” before a kill.
Because the kill itself was what made her calm.
Gave her a purpose.
Gave her an outlet.