Memories May Lie by Vanessa Muir

Author:Vanessa Muir [Muir, Vanessa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hidden Sphinx
Published: 2019-09-06T06:00:00+00:00

11

Charlie dropped Eli off at SSG HQ, then drove back to her apartment, taking the roads this time because, though it was slower with the traffic, it cut out the risk of having to watch her back for more of those “mysterious” figures.

She parked in the street, checked the rearview and side mirrors, then bolted out of the car and hightailed it to the apartment building. She keyed herself into the entrance area, then took the elevator up to her floor.

Questions burbled through her mind, a constant flow of them accompanied by a tide of excitement. There had to be something of use in the victim’s journals, or he’d never have hidden them.

Hopefully, it’s not all scientific jargon. That’s all I need. The elevator came to a halt on her floor, and the doors pinged open. Charlie stepped out into the hall, then froze.

The lights were off. All of them. The elevator doors closed behind her.

Blackness assaulted her senses, and she clutched the briefcase to her chest. She shut her eyes, took several deep breaths, and called on her training.

Calm. In every unknown situation employ serenity as the first weapon.

Then the senses.

She listened hard. The dull thump of something in one of the apartment’s nearby. The hiss of a kettle, and there – what was that?

A rustle of fabric, the gentle shift of weight from one foot to the other. Someone was in the hall with her.

Charlie opened her eyes and widened them. They adjusted. Slivers of light escaped from under her neighbors’ doors, but it wasn’t enough to see anything.

Regardless, she couldn’t stand there all night.

She slipped her shoes off, quietly, then picked them up and put them in her briefcase with the journals. The zipper made a noise, and she grimaced. Whoever it is already knows you’re here. They saw you in the elevator.

Charlie moved as quietly as she could and stuck to the right side of the hall, stepping over a sliver of light from the crack beneath one of her neighbor’s doors. She unclipped her gun from its holster and fumbled with the safety.

She shook her head, clicked it on again, then placed it back in the holster. She couldn’t fire a gun in close quarters, in the dark, with families and couples in the rooms adjacent.

Charlie halted and listened again. No noise.

She took three more steps, stopped, listened. Still silent.

“Agent Spade,” a voice curled through the dark, deep and soft, and she jerked, wobbled the case, almost dropped it.

The words had come from her doorway up ahead. The darkness moved, coalesced into a figure. Hooded. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Who are you?” she hissed.

“I’m disappointed,” he replied. “You don’t recognize my voice? Then again, the last time we spoke, you were drunk.”

Charlie did the mental gymnastics. The knot of tension in her chest released, at last. “Levi?”

“That’s correct.”

Her shoulders relaxed. The Black Mars agent was an enemy of the State, but not hers. He’d visited her once before, in her apartment, and would’ve had every opportunity to kill her.

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