Dear god, I hope so.
There was no way to know for sure, however, because there was no way for her to accurately guess the time. She didn’t wear a wristwatch and her cell phone was still charging on her nightstand.
But she’d spent what surely hadto have been fifteen minutes in the little anteroom off what appeared to be another interrogation room pretending to talk to her “lawyer.” Her phone call to Cesar had only lasted sixty seconds, although she’d figured a real call to her attorney would’ve lasted far longer than that. And so she’d stayed standing with the phone pressed to her ear while she’d counted the seconds and listened to the dial tone.
Afterward, she’d gone about implementing step two in her plan to stall her booking.
“I, uh, need to use the facilities,”she’d told Mulder after exiting the privacy of the anteroom to find the fed waiting for her in the hallway.“Now.”She’d made sure her expression screamed the situation was dire before adding,“All this stress has loosened my b—”
Mulder had raised a hand.“Please spare me the details, Miss Blue.”
He’d shown her to the women’s restroom and there she’d stayed for what she’dhopedwas an additional fifteen minutes. Agent Mulder had checked on her once, pushing open the door and calling,“Look, Miss Blue. Let’s get this show on the road and—”
That’s all she’d allowed him to get out before she’d groaned from inside the stall like her bowels were being chewed on by a sewer rat while simultaneously dropping the wet wads of paper towels she’d taken from the hand dispenser near the sinks into toilet bowl so they madesploosh, sploosh, splooshnoises.
Mulder had quickly changed his tune“Uh…take your time. I’ll be waiting outside.”
She’d done exactly that. Taken her time. All the time she’d dared.
She hadn’t really been surprised to discover Sam hadn’t been able to pull strings to get her released. Given the mountain of evidence piled against her, even if he could’ve persuaded one of his government contacts to consider her case, one look at what she was accused of was all it would’ve taken for that contact to back away, shaking their head.
No one was stupid enough to put their reputation on the line to help an accused criminal conspirator. And self-serving political animals? They were theleastlikely group of folks to risk their necks.
Which left only Sam to aid in her escape.
Sam, whom she didn’t doubt for a second was either already waiting for her outside or busting his ass trying to get to her. Sam, who would believe her when she said she hadn’t done what they said she’d done. Sam, who would do everything in his power to help her clear her name.
He might not feel for her half of what she felt for him. But he was as steadfast and as loyal as they came. The kind of guy a gal could depend on no matter what. A real-life knight in shining…uh…biker boots.
She stared again at the exit sign. It beckoned like a beacon, and she tried to remember how many floors she’d have to race down before she reached the exit. Three? Four?
She couldn’t recall what number Agent Waller had pushed on the keypad when they’d been inside the elevator on the way up to the interrogation room. She’d been too focused on the cruel hand he’d kept on her wrist, squeezing the joint until she’d thought for sure he was trying to break her bones.
Waller really was a bastard. And she hoped like hell she didn’t run into him while making her escape. His hatred for her, and his confidence in her guilt, assured her he would be more than happy to shoot first and ask questions later.
The thought of justhowdangerous her plan was had her hesitating in the bathroom’s doorway a second longer.
Maybe this is a mistake. Maybe there’s another way for me to…
She stopped the doubt in its tracks.
If she wanted to save Texas, figure out what thehellwas going on with Red Square and Dominion Pipeline, and, you know, clear her name of treason, she neededout. Then she needed a laptop, a secure, untraceable internet connection, and about fifteen pots of regular coffee or one pot of the caffeinated swill they served at Black Knights Inc.
Girding her loins, she told herself,This is the only way. And it’s now or never.
As she slipped soundlessly from the bathroom, stomach acid burned the back of her throat, leaving an acrid coating on her tongue. Her blood pounded in her ears, reminding her of thewhirof an old solid-state hard drive. And fear had turned her legs into a couple of wet noodles.
How do spies and soldiers do this? How do they function when terror is a living thing with razor-sharp teeth gnawing on their amygdala?
Her initial shaky step backward had her watching Mulder with eagle-eyed focus. But he gave no indication he’d heard her silent footfalls. So she took another step. Then another.
The agent laughed and the sound cracked through the stillness of the hallway like thunder. It also afforded her enough acoustic cover to take three hasty steps closer to the stairwell door.
She would swear the hallway telescoped. No matter how much progress she made toward the exit, the door seemed to get farther and farther away. But just when she wanted to scream—the tension inside her pushing her to the breaking point—she found herself standing in front of her means of escape.
She should’ve been relieved.
She wasn’t.
