Page 59 of Agency

That last part I’d said about being worried about the Agency was certainly true, though. If the Agency had lied to me, did that mean my own flesh and blood had as well? Or was Management the source of the lies? Or just our client, and Management had been sloppy?

Not that I didn’t care what happened to Morgan, Andrew, and Jericho. Of course I cared. They weren’t bad men, far as I could tell. And I certainly liked all three of them…

But, in this kind of situation, every woman had to look out for herself.

We were already headed for the hall when Andrew and Jericho both came in, their bulky forms filling the open doorway behind the glare of their flashlights. They barely said a word to me as they tossed a windbreaker over my cuffs and shuffled me off to the fire exit.

“Andrew is going to be on point while we head down to the parking garage and proceed to the alley where you say your getaway car is parked,” Jericho said as he pulled open the door. “Morgan will be pulling up the rear, and I’ll be right behind you. If you make a break for it, or if you try anything, I will have my weapon trained on you already.” He fixed his eyes on me, and they glittered darkly in the flashlight’s LED glow.

“Do you understand?” he asked.

I nodded. He hadn’t said what would happen next, but I didn’t need to be a rocket surgeon to make an educated guess.

Half-an-hour, at least, had passed since I’d blown the power, and the emergency-lit stairwell was peppered along the way with people making their way down to the lobby to find out the outage’s cause. Andrew, nearly a full flight of stairs ahead of us, would hold up a fist whenever we would get too close to another group, immediately grinding us to a halt.

I was more annoyed than anything.

After all, I actually wasn’t going to try to make a break. Not yet, at least. If anything, I’d try when we were down in the parking garage and heading for my stolen car in the alley.

Soon enough, that opportunity arrived. Finally, we arrived on the ground floor. The hotel guests turned towards the lobby, and our little quartet headed for the parking garage. Andrew turned left as soon as we were through the fire exit, though, and I drew up short.

The parking garage was deathly quiet–far quieter than a garage that size should have been at this time of night. I was sure that the power outage in the building had something to do with that, primarily because the hotel had probably had to pause accepting new guests for the moment.

But still, the silence was unnerving.

“Keep moving,” Jericho said, his voice the harsh, echoing whisper of a tree branch scratching against the window of an abandoned house.

“My car’s that way,” I said, nodding towards the street exit and gesturing with my windbreaker-draped, cuffed hands. “Just outside to the right, in the second alley down.”

“And ours is this way,” he said, grasping my elbow in his vice of a hand. “You still remember what it looked like, right?”

“Ouch, Jericho. I’m stung.”

But still, I went along with him, down past the cars parked like a military unit on parade. So many local ones, too. Missouri, Missouri, Missouri. Oh look, an Illinois license plate–a nice, pearlescent Audi Q8 reversed into its parking spot, in fact, with its driver still hunched behind the wheel. Then, Missouri, Missouri, Missouri, Missouri, Missouri, Ohio.

Their Tahoe was reversed into their parking spot like the Audi had been, and they unlocked the rear driver’s side door of the Tahoe and piled me in with Morgan on one side and Andrew on the other. Jericho got back behind the wheel and started the engine.

I couldn’t help but glance to the stony-faced Andrew as I thought back to the much more pleasant memories from the night before. Was he thinking back to last night, also? Or was I the only one reminiscing?

I looked to Morgan, to see if his expression had changed, to see if he held against me the fact that I’d gone home with his friends, rather than empty-handed.

He too might as well have been a forefather on Mount Rushmore, though.

“Too lazy to walk to my car?” I asked.

“It’s on the way, is all,” Jericho replied. He shifted into drive and headed out. As we went down to the exit, a flash of movement on my left caught my eye, and I jerked my head in that direction.

Nothing more dangerous than the Audi pulling out. Probably couldn’t check into his room because of the power outage.

“Take a right,” I said as we approached the garage’s exit. “First left after that. You’ll see my car parked ten meters down the alley.”

“Keys?” Morgan asked as we pulled into the relatively wide alley. Up ahead, my older Ford Taurus was parked all the way off to the side, giving ample enough room for anyone else to pass.

After all, having my getaway car towed for obstructing traffic while I was inside would have kinda defeated the purpose.

“No keys. Car’s stolen.”

Andrew looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Seriously?”