I snort and move to the other side of the room to place another camera on a bookshelf among the various knickknacks, facing the only external window in her apartment. This has a good sideways view of the couch and into the kitchen.
“Shall I draw you a map to the point or will you get there on your own?” I ask as I move to place the final camera in her bedroom, concealed atop a corner bookshelf and angled to capture her desk.
“Well, I called to check in. It sounds like you’ve got things handled, if you’re bugging the place. But I also called because someone—not me—got himself locked out of the shared drive and didn’t want to call you to reset his password.”
Sometimes I feel like bloody IT support. I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Dimitri told me he wrote it down.”
Dimitri’s low voice is faint on the other end, like he’s listening through Mac’s phone.“I lost the Post-it.”
“I told you not to put it on aPost-it,” I grit out. “Make it memorable or there’s no point in having one at all.”
Distantly, there’s some Russian muttering.“He says he’s sorry and he’ll never do it again,”Mac says. I can hear the smile.
“He did not,” I snort as Dimitri scoffs,“I did not.”
A loud banging noise out in the hallway startles me. I recognize the sound from my own entry and know it was the front door of the building. It reminds me of the ever-present risk of discovery. Time to go.
With my blood pounding in my ears, I move into the main room just in time to hear the grinding of a key in the deadbolt.
“Fuck,” I curse softly.
“What happened?”All teasing is gone, and Mac is suddenly alert.
“She’s coming back!” I whisper, darting forward to grab my clipboard off the entrance table.
“Hide!”
I don’t bother to voice my sarcastic remark—fuckingobviously—as I whirl around, assessing. There aren’t many hiding spots for a bloke my size in a place this small. She might immediately need to use the loo, and the shower curtain is transparent, so that’s out. Her kitchen is completely open. Her bed frame is open with no skirt, so she might see me… closet it is.
The deliberation feels like it takes ages, but by the time I get her closet door almost entirely closed—leaving it open a hair so I don’t have to fuss with the knob in case I need to move quickly—she’s just stepping inside her flat. I hearthe metallic clinking of keys hitting a bowl and a few soft thuds that I imagine are her shoes getting tossed into the pile by the door.
“Hey SB, how you livin’?” she says. Her voice is muffled through the layers of wood and plaster, and nearly drowned out by the loud, rapid beating of my own heart. Adrenaline tends to sharpen the senses.
A loud, demanding trill follows her question.
“I know, I know, you can see the bottom of your bowl. Customer service is processing your complaints, and someone will be right with you,” she grumbles.
I fight the grin. Damn it. She’s funny. I didn’t need another reason not to want to kill her.
“How’s it going, Wes? You good?”Mac asks.
Instead of responding audibly, I send him a thumbs-up emoji in our group chat.
“We should not have allowed him into the field. It has been too long since he got up from his desk,”Dimitri admonishes in the background.
“Yeah, Short Round. Getting caught with your pants down? Rookie mistake.”Mac chuckles, clearly convinced I’m in no real danger.“In her file she looked pretty small, though. If she finds you, I bet you could take her.”
Dimitri snorts.“You say this because you have not seen the footage of his combat with that drug dealer last month. He threw away his weapon. He is lucky it was not his last mistake.”
“Gasp,”Mac replies instead of actually gasping.
Anger boils up at their good-natured ribbing. I reckon I understand now how Dimitri feels when we’re in his ear during missions, going back and forth. It’s even more frustrating because I have to be quiet now and can’t offer up the brilliant retort on the tip of my tongue. After all, it’s only because I was on the phone with Mac that I missed the notification that her car was moving.
The only course available to me is to end the call, so that’s what I do. I can get myself out of this one.
The bathroom door faces her room’s door, so I know I can’t sneak out when she uses the toilet. I can hear the water running too clearly for the door to be closed. I’m forced to listen as she moves through her space, grabbing a snack andtalking to her cat as if he’ll respond in that way pet owners always seem to. She moves into her bedroom, and I go stock-still, barely daring to breathe.
I hear a squeak of chair casters and some loud keyboard noises.
