Page 19 of Desperate Creed

What was she going to do? Could she stay here until they called her flight? He wouldn’t be able to follow her on board. Or would he convince the airline attendants that he had some sort of authority? He’d obviously convinced Angela.

The fact that he was here—that he even knew she was here—dispelled any chance this man only wanted to talk to her. That he only wanted to give her information about Tyler. And being in a public place didn’t seem to discourage him. She could still see his eyes looking at her through the screen of her phone, eyes filled with anger when he realized there was an unexpected witness to his crime.

She needed to think. She needed to focus. Be creative. Come up with a solution. She got paid to play out scenarios all the time. What was important to one demographic didn’t matter to another. It was her job to make people see and believe exactly what the advertising campaign wanted them to see and believe.

The man on the phone had gotten a look at her face, but her hair had been up in a towel. Who was she fooling? Tyler probably had a photo of her in his contacts alongside her phone number. Still, he had no idea how tall she was, how she walked or what she was wearing.

She looked down at her clothes. What if she’d been followed from her apartment? Had there been someone on the train platform with her? Is that how they knew she was at the airport? But how would they know what airline? And even the gate number? Was there someone else tracking her that she hadn’t noticed?

Almost immediately, she took off her jacket and started peeling off her clothes, hanging them on the hook on the back of the door. Out of her backpack, she pulled out jeans and a black T-shirt. She exchanged her leather flats for running shoes. At the bottom of the bag her fingers found a hairband. She tied her hair in a ponytail and weaved it through the back opening of a black baseball cap. She folded and rolled her clothes and shoved them into the bag as she silently prayed, “Please let it still be there. Please let it still be there.”

Several deep breaths later and she exited the safety of the bathroom stall. She took time to wash her hands and seeing the slight tremor almost unnerved her. She met her eyes in the mirror and pulled the bill of the cap down low while she took an extra minute to listen. A couple of the stalls were occupied, but no one else was using the sinks. She would have seconds, not minutes to pull this off.

As she rounded the corner she almost gasped with relief.

Thank God!

The janitor cart was still there. She dropped her bags into the yellow vinyl trash container, not paying attention to the garbage they landed on top of. She grasped the handholds and backed the cart out of the entrance. The mop and bucket rattled. The castors squealed, and she kept from wincing at the noise they made all the way from the tile of the bathroom entrance until they hit the industrial carpet.

Frankie pulled the bill of her cap even lower. She curved her shoulders inward as if she did this everyday and off she went. She didn’t dare look around.

14

“She’s here. She’s in this terminal.”

“I don’t see her.”

They talked using earbuds, a small white button with an inch long stem that was hardly noticeable. It was almost identical to the one Tyler Gates was using. If August Braxton had noticed that one small detail, they wouldn’t be in this mess.

Usually technological advancements made his job easier. He probably should care how they all worked. Years ago, he might have cared. But now? He was getting too old for this crap. He left the technical stuff to the experts. He counted that as one of his strengths, that he depended on people smarter than him. Smarter in certain things. No one had better instincts than him. That’s why he was still on the payroll.

Ironic. All the technological advances and artificial intelligence that money could buy, and they still needed his old world, old school instincts.

Braxton brought up the woman’s photo again on his cell phone screen. His fingers pinched and pulled it larger. It was a headshot that didn’t look anything like Francine Russo’s driver’s license photo. In this one, she wore full makeup. In the other, her face was scrubbed clean and she wore her hair a bit short. She looked years younger.

His eyes scanned the crowded area. More and more passengers flooded the gates as boarding calls were made. He rubbed his jaw trying to brush away the exhaustion.

So which image are you today, Francine Russo?

Braxton swiped away her photo and replaced it with the map. Was it possible he missed something? And yet, there was the red light, beating like a heart, stationary as if she was sitting somewhere close by. Somewhere within reach.

The system wasn’t advanced enough to show him the exact location. Just the area. Any movement came in tiny increments, jerky and delayed by a second or two. Maybe if HQ’s experts were in Chicago instead of the District, the surveillance equipment would run smoother. Yet, they were able to direct him to Gate 2. They even gave him the airline, flight number, departure time, and seat number. He didn’t ask how they managed to accomplish all that. He supposed they’d gotten the information the same way they’d gotten the information that Deacon Kaye had hacked into a corporate server.

Talk about irony. He couldn’t help but smile. The same company that depended on Braxton’s boss to hack into computers and tell him exactly where Russo was and where she was headed—that same company had been surprised and offended to find their own system so easily exploited. And by two guys barely out of college. The corporation, along with Braxton’s boss, had gotten too big, too ballsy. They all thought they were infallible. Just like the Titanic.

He smiled to himself. He liked reading historical books. The Titanic was his latest fascination. Not just the event, but the ramifications the sinking of the unsinkable had on an entire era. The ripple effect.

His stomach growled reminding him that coffee and a protein bar had been too many hours ago. Hunger pangs only added to his frustration. Maybe this job would be his last. He had enough stashed away to take a long vacation. A cabin in the mountains. He could hike, read, fix himself gourmet meals and sip some of the expensive wines he’d collected.

He glanced across the noisy, bustling crowd. Rex’s head and eyes continued to pivot on massive shoulders. Everyone discounted the man as a dim-witted brute. That caveman forehead didn’t help. But those beady eyes missed very little. He reminded Braxton of a huge lizard of dinosaur proportions. He’d never tell the man to his face how he’d come up with the nickname. Rex, short for T-Rex. Although, he suspected Rex might actually appreciate the dinosaur comparison. Maybe not the lizard.

Bottom line, the man followed orders and was loyal to a fault. In this business those two traits were invaluable and had saved him more times than he liked to admit.

On his phone’s screen the red dot pulsed, moving but very little. She was still here...somewhere. He stretched his neck to see above and in between the crowd. He needed to quiet his stomach.

He tapped the earbud and told Rex, “I’m gonna grab a quick sandwich. You want anything?”

“I’m good.”