The door flies open.
I see the shadow of a person rush past me.
I wait a split second for the rest, but no one else is coming.
This was only one person.
I can handle one person.
“Freeze!” I shout as I draw out my gun and point it at the person in front of me.
I immediately notice it’s a woman. Long legs, perfectly shaped, a round ass, and long dark hair braided into a high ponytail.
She turns.
And I realize who she is.
“Hand in the air, Avery,” I say warningly.
She smirks at me, brings two fingers to her temple, points them at the sky, and then lunges out of my shooting line.
I run after her, jump around the corner into an aisle, and shoot after her.
She is so fast that it takes all my power to go after her. And then, she is gone.
It is a split-second decision. Follow her, or wait for her at the one spot she needs to go back to to escape.
So I walk back to the elevators, carefully, glancing into every box office and aisle.
I spin left and right, but she is nowhere. Not to be seen, not to be heard. Like the ghost she is.
I don’t expose myself by standing in front of the elevator, but by waiting in the aisle to the left, which lets me monitor the entire corridor. She ran left; she must come from the left.
Only she doesn’t.
I know I made a mistake when I feel her behind me, but it is too late. She grabs me in a headlock, pushes me forcefully into the glass wall, the gun drops from my hand, and I feel something dig into my chest from the side. Something that feels awfully like a gun muzzle.
I try to get a hold of her leg with mine, but she knows what she is doing.
She kicks away my gun.
“Careful, Special Agent Shaw,” she whispers in my ear from behind. A wave of flowery and yet rich perfume washes over me, accompanied by the scent of alcohol.
Alcohol. On a job like this?
“Or what?” I ask, defiantly.
“Or you might get yourself burned.”
“You broke into the FBI headquarters,” I say, “The only one who gets burned is you.”
“I don’t think so,” she chuckles. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Almost like meeting…a groupie.”
Anger surfaces in me.
She is such an arrogant and entitled woman that it makes the hair on my neck stand up.
“You will let me walk away,” she says, silently.
