Flash Point (Jason Trapp Book 3) by Jack Slater

Author:Jack Slater [Slater, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

30

The Agency safehouse was in the Barrikadnaya area northwest of central Moscow, not far from the American Embassy, and just out of the Garden Ring around the city. It was more of a safe apartment, Trapp thought as he climbed the steep flight of stairs that led up to it.

“I don’t like it,” he muttered.

Ikeda didn’t say a word until they were inside, and the door bolted and triple-locked behind them. It was thicker than it looked, and Trapp suspected that it would stop most anything short of a breaching charge.

“We shouldn’t be here long,” she said. “And it’s a city of apartments. It’s all they have here.”

“I still don’t like it,” he grumbled. “People will see us coming and going.”

Ikeda squinted at him. “And?”

“You don’t think it’s a risk? This city has eyes.”

She dumped her travel bag onto the floor and walked toward a small but well-appointed kitchen. She flung open a head-height cabinet, pulled out two tall glasses, and said over her shoulder, “No, Jason. I don’t think it’s a risk. When was the last time you took a vacation?”

The question threw him off balance, and it took his gray matter a few seconds to fire back up. “Um, last week?” he ventured.

Ikeda turned and shot him an acid look. “It was a rhetorical question, dumb ass.” She grinned.

“How was I supposed to know?” he protested. “Anyway, what’s your point?”

“My point,” she said over the sound of the water tap turning on, and the drumbeat of liquid pounding against the metal sink, “was that if you’d actually taken a vacation at any point over the past ten years except the one we just cut short, you’d have known that this is how things work these days. People rent out their apartments on the Internet. In a neighborhood like this, the residents will be used to people coming and going.”

Trapp supposed that he had vaguely heard of it. But Ikeda had unerringly homed in on a deeper truth, too – before her, he hadn’t had a reason to take a proper vacation in years, and the Agency booking him a safe house certainly didn’t count.

“You’re sure?” he grunted, not sounding entirely convinced.

“About as sure as I can be,” she replied, walking over to him, kissing him on the cheek, and pressing a glass of water into his hands. A few drops spilled over and splashed against his shirt.

“Whoops,” she giggled, a vivacious delight spreading across her cheeks.

Trapp shook his head, and as he sipped, wondered whether her arrival into his life had been a blessing or a curse. It was mostly the former, he decided as the cooling liquid soothed his travel-parched tongue.

Mostly.

After all, before Ikeda shouldered her way into his life, there were few people who would have risked making fun of him the way she did so lightly. Those of his colleagues in the Agency who knew his reputation knew enough not to mess with him, and those who didn’t looked at his scarred neck, broad shoulders and squashed nose and invariably decided to pick on an easier target.

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