Next to me, Domina fiddles with the top button on her white blouse. The dark red skirt and blazer mold to her body, and it was hard as hell to make it out the door without taking her again. Especially after securing a GPS tracker to the band of her bra. But we’re on the clock now.
“The press conference in starts half an hour.” I check my phone, despite having looked at it only three minutes ago. “If he didn’t do his part and get us clearance, we’re fucked.”
Domina straightens. “Manuel will take care of our access. In six years, he has never broken a promise to me or anyone else on his staff.”
“My face says otherwise,” I mutter.
“He did not know we were in trouble.” Taking my hands, she squeezes gently. “You don’t know him as I do. When we spoke to him last night, his regret was genuine. He was convinced you pointed your gun at him.”
I hold her gaze. She’s so earnest, so utterly certain Manuel Cortez is exactly who he says he is, that I believe it too. For almost ninety minutes after we hung up with the man, she closed herself in my bedroom with her tablet to draft his speech. Even after everything Domina’s been through this week, she’s still so devoted to her job that she insisted we let her work while we went over our infil and exfil plans.
“We’re reviewing everything again.” From the driver’s seat, Austin checks the rearview mirror. “Domina, you donotleave Leo’s side. I’ll be no more than twenty feet behind you both the whole time. You remember how the comms units work?”
“Tap once to turn it on before we go through security. If I need to turn it off, tap twice. Do not touch it unless absolutely necessary.”
He nods. “Leo? Exfil route.”
“Through the kitchen, into the service elevator. Down one floor to the laundry. Follow the dryers to the fire exit. Disable the alarm, and the door leads to a back alley. You do know what I used to do for a living?”
He coasts to a stop at a light and turns. “Youdoknow whatIused to do for a living?”
“Like you’d let me forget, Stars and Bars.”
“Stars and Bars?” Domina asks.
Austin shakes his head. “Ryker—he runs Hidden Agenda K&R out in Seattle—started calling me that in Venezuela. It wasn’t supposed to stick.”
She peers up at me, confusion in her eyes, and I lean over to plant a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Austin has more medals than…well…just about anyone alive. When he came down to Venezuela, he was a four-star general.”
“And then he got shit-canned for leaving his post,” Trev says.
Austin snorts. “You say that like I didn’t have a damn good reason, Superman.”
The back-and-forth banter makes me feel like I’m part of a team. Like I’m not the damaged has-been who can’t do a damn thing but chase after cheating husbands and petty thieves. I’ll never go back to the CIA. But working alone for the rest of my life? Is that really what I want?
Silence fills the SUV. Trevor checks his weapon another five times before Austin pulls into a parking space half a mile from the hotel. Domina leans against me, and I steal as much closeness as I can before we have to walk through fire.
“Stay close, baby,” I say when the hotel comes into view. More than a hundred people gather outside, and even from here, I can see the lobby is packed. “Cortez should have kept this quiet, not broadcast it to the entire fucking world.”
“He had to.” Domina tightens her grip on my right hand. “If he did not, Muñoz would have given his own press conference and called Manuel a coward. Unfit to lead. You do not understand how easily the public can be swayed in the days before an election.”
“Oh, I’ve seen it happen.” I brush my lips to her cheek. “When we’re safe in bed tonight, I’ll tell you all about what happened in Venezuela.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Domina
Manuel’s speechis happening in one of the hotel’s many conference rooms on the second floor, but as we expected, we can go no further than the lobby.
Suited IPS agents, their gazes stern and postures ramrod straight, are stationed around the room, and the hotel brought in half a dozen TVs to broadcast his words to the throngs of people filling the space.
Leo tightens his fingers on mine. Every few minutes, we’re jostled from one side or the other. Tension rolls off of him in waves. My heart races as one of the IPS agents points in our general direction.
The local news issued a retraction this morning, publicly stating that I was no longer a suspect, but more than one person has seen my face and quickly moved away from us.
I lost track of Austin not long after we passed through the metal detector, but every few minutes he calls out a clock time over the tiny comms unit in my ear, prompting Leo to steer us in one direction or another to observe.
“I have to ask you to leave,” a suited agent says as he blocks us from moving through the crowd.
