Page 50 of Agency

“Oh,” I said. “Maybe? We did, right?”

“Only in theater. I think Bond’s applied everywhere, which is why it was supposed to make him so cool.”

“True.” I furrowed my brow as he closed the door behind, and we stood there in the hallway for a second before I spoke again: “You think he had to go to the DMV for that? Or could Money Penny just print one right up for him? Shit, do the British even have DMVs?”

“Huh? Uh, no. Remember those SAS guys we got shit-housed with in the Green Zone? They said they’ve got a…” Trailing off as we began to walk down towards the elevators, he stuck a hand out to me before resuming in one of the worst English accents I’d ever heard: “Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. And it’d be Q printing his license to kill, not Money Penny.”

“Oi,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Really need to work on that.”

“Work on what?”

“Top of the morning to you, guv,” I said, mimicking his bad accent back as I punched the elevator’s down button. “Spot o’ tea or crumpet? God save the queen!”

“Oh, fuck off,” he said. “It wasn’tthatbad.”

“No, you’re right,” I replied as the elevator chimed and the doors began to open. “It was worse.”

Chapter Fourteen

Ambyr

St. Louis’s downtown was a dream from up here, a pocket-sized city of lights. From the lit up Arch to my left, to Busch stadium dead ahead, to the car lights cruising by below… This city was almost a fantasy, even if that city was fifteen floors below.

And, hell, that’s precisely what I’d been living for the last two days. A fantasy. First, in the arms of Morgan. Then in the backseat of Andrew and Jericho’s SUV.

Sure, there’d been a touch of assassination in the middle of everything…

But just a touch, and even that had involved some dress up.

I stepped back from the hotel roof’s edge, turned to my tensionless anchor I’d set up around an AC compressor for rappelling down the side of the building. There was no way the mechanical unit would slip, but I tugged at the nylon rope anyways, and shimmied the looped length of rope down lower and lower. Physics dictated that having the ropes wrapped higher would increase the force on the unit by half of a magnitude per foot above the base, and I always figured better safe than sorry. Then, I checked the stopper knots, two double-hands with long tails. I yanked hard, checked my middle mark, then checked my friction hitch.

All good. All good…

Jesus fucking Christ, what was I doing? I could just walk away now, and not deal with this.

But, no. I couldn’t. Aunt Val had said I had a way out. A way for me to find some semblance of a normal life.

Fuck me, could I even survive that kind of existence? Killing people was one thing, but living in the suburbs and having a family? I wasn’t sure that would be any better.

I stepped into my harness like a pair of pants, pulling the waistband up over my black-clad legs and hips and making sure the band was above my hip bones. I tightened everything down, then adjusted my leg loops and made sure they were secure before fitting a hand through my waistband and making a fist and trying to pull back through. The harness pulled roughly at me as I tried to, but couldn’t, take away my hand.

Good.

Adjusting my fanny pack, I double-checked to make sure my burner phone was still in there, then took a deep breath as I glanced at the number typed in. Trust me, calling the wrong number would be a real shame.

“In and out,” I muttered as I stuffed my burner back away and zipped up, reminding myself of how this would go as I checked the holster on my Ruger. “In and out, in and out. Find Stella Beltran, put a bullet in Stella Beltran, off the balcony again to the alley, hit the getaway car on the street. Simple.”

But wetwork ops are never simple. And, so, I checked the rappelling setup for a third time, just to make sure my entrance and egress wouldn’t accidentally fast-drop me to the concrete some two-hundred feet below. At least, with the rope, I had control. Down there in the penthouse? Down there in the penthouse, too much would be left to chance.

Going to the ledge, I peered down into the depths below and dropped my egress rope so the length went down past the balconies, but stayed within arm’s length. Then, with the metaphorical clock chiming 22:45, I pulled on my mask and hopped up on the ledge. I clipped my harness’s carabiner onto the entrance rope I’d use to the balcony.

And then I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and prayed.

Almost.

I’d never been afraid of heights. Never. Put me in a helicopter, drop me from a jet, have me run lookout from a cliff, I had zero problem.

Zero.