Not a good sign in a spy who had been trained to control her emotions.
I returned the cell phone to my ear and frowned, hoping my new handler could sense my attitude as it bounced off New York City’s cell towers.
“So where does this op take place, Jacob? A strip club?”
He laughed, the sound a slightly robotic, electronically disguised version of his real voice.
Not that I’d ever heard his real voice.
“If you want, I can call around, see if any of the area clubs have an amateur night.”
I couldn’t help but smile, at least a little. Jacob and I hadn’t worked together long—this was only our third operation together—and I was still trying to figure out if I trusted him. On the positive side, I was a sucker for humor.
But that didn’t mean I appreciated his fashion sense.
“I can’t conceal a weapon in this outfit. You realize that, right?”
Pushing my dark hair over one shoulder, I held the dress against my body with my free hand and peered into the Manhattan hotel room’s mirrored closet door.
Okay, so it was hot. Damn hot.
Maybe I could make due with a knife strapped to the inside of my thigh.
It would have to be a very short knife.
“You can’t be carrying. They’ll search you before they let you inside.”
“And my cell phone? Where am I supposed to stash that?” Jacob had just sent me a new encrypted cell, and I was under strict orders to keep it with me at all times, no exceptions. It was even waterproof, so I could take it into the shower.
“Did you notice the bag? Check the lining. Like the dress, it’s been prepared for you.”
I took another look in the box. A small, cross-body purse lay at the bottom, black sequins and tassels. I opened it, running my fingertips over the interior and feeling the familiar shapes of two rolled bills and two small wires. I had emergency cash and lock picks sewn into the hems of all my clothing. Being prepared wasn’t only for Boy Scouts.
“The strap has a steel wire in it,” Jacob continued. “It can be used as a garrote.”
I tugged on the strap, feeling the bite of the wire inside the leather. “Talk about a killer handbag.”
“So now that we have your wardrobe covered, care to hear what you’ll be doing?”
“Shoot.”
“That’s it, actually. You’ll be going to a photo shoot.”
“As in a modeling photo shoot?” Not a typical day in my line of work. “Explain.”
“The Bradford and Sims Modeling Agency is a front for—”
“Let me guess. Porn.”
“Too easy, but yes. And human trafficking. They promise stardom to young girls, then ship them overseas and sell them.”
“Sexual slavery. Nice.”
“We’re still gathering information on the group.”
Gathering information? In our first two ops, Jacob had been all about preparation. He’d known everything about everything. That he was sending me in before he really knew what I was facing made me uneasy.
“Is this a rush job?” I asked.
“Marked urgent, and we only have a small time window, so we’ll need to keep in close contact in case the situation changes.”
“These traffickers, you want me to read them bedtime stories?” Before I put them to sleep.
“They aren’t the important thing here. They’ve recruited the eighteen-year-old daughter of a VIP. You are to return her to her father unharmed. Not a scratch. The orders are specific about that. She cannot be harmed in any way, not even slightly. I’m sending her photo. She’s using the name Julianne James.”
A babysitting job. A first for me. I glanced at the phone, and a picture of a pretty blonde came up on the screen.
“Who’s her daddy?”
“I don’t have that information.”
It had to be someone important if they were sending me in. There weren’t very many agents in the world with my kind of training.
“Where is the shoot?”
“North of the Hamptons. Your contact is working as a driver for the modeling agency. Your exchange is E-B-P-D.”
“Got it.”
“He’ll introduce you as new recruit Claire Thomas.”
“Claire Thomas,” I repeated, trying on my new name. I used and discarded identities like Kleenex. The only constant was my codename: Chandler. My real name was nobody’s business.
“You’re twenty-five years old, an aspiring model from Brooklyn. Your contact will get you in. After you get the girl, text your location to this number, and he’ll pick you up.”
A number appeared on the screen.
“He’ll be at the curb in twenty minutes. And Chandler?”
“Yes.”
“The girl thinks she’s getting her big break. She might need some convincing before she’ll be willing to leave.”
“And if I can’t convince her?”
“Just get her out of there in one piece. Unharmed.” Jacob signed off.
I got dressed and did my best to channel my inner Max Factor while I sank into the role. I was a wannabe model. Several years younger than my actual age. Pretty. Spoiled. Used to getting my way, but still naive about men. I was looking for my big break. I would do whatever I could to get it.
I went heavy on the make-up, dark eyes and too much pink lip gloss. The dress fit as if it was designed for me, and the shoes made me feel like sex on a stick.
“I’m Claire Thomas,” I said into the mirror. And I believed it.
I slipped my phone into the purse, then headed down to meet my contact.
Human voices, background music, and the clack of heels on marble floors all rose to greet me before I reached the ground floor. The scent of coffee drifted from the resident Starbucks, and a woman passed me wearing enough perfume to enchant half of Times Square.
I personally disliked big anonymous hotels. But due to my frequent need to be anonymous, I stayed in them often. Sometimes the best place to hide was in a crowd. Even so, negotiating the revolving door and stepping out into summer’s hot chaos on the flashing neon streets of New York overloaded my senses. The smell of hot dogs on the street corner and falafel down the block warred with exhaust and teeming humanity. The jangle of car horns and voices and the thump of a bass guitar assaulted me from various angles. The late morning was warmer, stickier, than the hotel lobby, a bit of autumn cool threatening to make an appearance but chickening out.
I paused and forced myself to focus, cataloging each noise and smell and sight, becoming grounded in the now. At the same time, I shut off part of myself—the part that worried about applying makeup and got an ego boost from a good dress and sexy shoes—and I let the other part take over.
The part that had been trained to kill people for the government.
Dismissing the white noise and glitz and big city smells, I ignored what belonged there and singled out what didn’t.
Someone was watching me.
I glanced north to 46th Street.
A man stared at me, standing with his hands at his sides, on the curb next to a black Lincoln Town Car. He was in his mid-thirties, handsome in that GQ kind of way, dressed in a dark suit and sunglasses. It wasn’t his appearance or the car that raised my notice—in midtown Manhattan, the only type of vehicle more common than a black Town Car was a yellow taxi cab, and many of the chauffeurs dressed as if they were auditioning for a role in the Men In Black sequel. No, it was his air of calmness, of stillness, of total focus, that was strong enough to raise the hair on my arms.
And in that split-second assessment, I judged him to be a dangerous man.