Run Girl: Ingrid Skyberg FBI Thrillers Prequel Novella (12 page)

“I can’t dance.”

“What?”

“Not like that.”

“Just allow yourself to be led. I promise not to step on your precious feet.”

Before Ingrid had a chance to object, Angelis grabbed her around the waist and dragged her into the middle of the room.

“I’ll scan the tables while you distract them with your perfectly formed back.”

The tempo of the music slowed suddenly as the band switched from some Latin American rhythm to a sedate waltz. Angelis didn’t miss a beat. They’d made it half way around the circumference of the room when he said, “There she is, three o’clock, if the stage is midnight.”

Ingrid started to crane her neck around.

“Not now! I’ll turn you slowly so you can take a look.”

They gracefully rotated 180 degrees. Ingrid spotted Rachel Whitticker sitting at a table, clearly embarrassing the other diners by nuzzling Eugene Barclay’s neck. “If her grandmother could see her now,” Ingrid said and realized she sounded just like her old high school principal.

“Thankfully the Secretary of State has been spared the spectacle,” Angelis said. “The sooner we separate those two, the better.” He turned Ingrid again.

“We can’t exactly dance right over and snatch her.”

“No.” Angelis shifted his gaze from Rachel Whitticker’s table momentarily and stared into Ingrid’s eyes. He smiled. “Besides, I’m rather enjoying myself.”

Ingrid pushed his left hand from her waist and yanked away her hand from his right. “We’ll wait until she visits the restroom and I’ll make my move then.” She peered into her tiny silver purse. It was barely big enough for a cell phone and a credit card. Thankfully, she’d remembered to shove a lipstick in there too. She hurried off the dance floor, Angelis trailing in her wake. “Which table is ours? I feel far too conspicuous parading around like this.”

Angelis scooped up her hand and led her to a table next to the exit. They sat down.

“Good location,” Ingrid admitted.

“I do give these matters some consideration, you know.”

Ingrid eyed the basket piled high with artisan buns and tiny slices of seeded bread. She didn’t want to load up on carb, especially given the snugness of her dress, but she may not have time to wait for the first course to arrive. She poured herself a large glass of water and buttered a wholewheat bun. She sank her teeth into the bread and allowed herself a little relieved exhale. The intel Sir Hugh Hollingsworth’s secretary had given them had been accurate. They hadn’t been cavorting around a dance floor in fancy dress for nothing.

Thank God
.

“I ordered for us in advance,” Angelis said as he watched her devour the first half of the bread roll. “I went for fish, chicken and a cheese dessert, just to be on the safe side.”

“Nice idea—but I don’t think we’ll be eating.” Ingrid nodded toward Rachel Whitticker’s table.

The girl was on her feet, blowing Barclay extravagant kisses as if she were about to leave the country, rather than visit the bathroom. Ingrid stood up.

“I’ll wait in the corridor outside,” Angelis said, and pushed back his chair.

“We can’t both follow her to the ladies’ restroom. She’s not stupid.” Ingrid studied the girl’s gait for a moment. “Even though she might be a little drunk.” She shook her head. “Best place for you is the front entrance, just in case I lose her.”

“Shame we couldn’t discreetly attach a wire to you.”

“In this dress? There’s barely enough space for me. I have my phone.”

“You will call if you get into trouble?”

“She’s an eighteen-year-old math student. I think I can handle it. You must be getting me confused with some French security guard.”

The restroom was located down two flights of stairs and along a seemingly endless corridor. Ingrid stayed as far back as she dared, stopping and looking into her purse whenever she sensed Rachel Whitticker slowing down. The girl’s demeanor had changed dramatically. The unsteady walk had disappeared—she held her head high and strode forward purposefully. Ingrid figured the tipsy ingenue act was designed to appeal to Eugene Barclay. Left to her own devices, Rachel Whitticker seemed completely in control of all major motor functions.

Finally she arrived at the restroom and slipped inside. Ingrid waited a few seconds then followed her in. She was surprised to discover the brightly lit bathroom was empty. In a venue this grand she had expected an attendant waiting to hand a tiny towel to visitors after they’d washed their hands. Two of the stalls, however, were occupied. Ingrid went into the third, made sure she locked the door noisily, waited another couple of seconds, rattled the toilet tissue dispenser, and yanked the flush. From the stall next to hers there erupted an awful retching noise. It wasn’t yet eight-thirty. Someone had a pretty crappy night ahead of them.

Ingrid slipped out of her cubicle and was already standing at the sink, staring at her reflection in the unforgiving mirror, when Rachel Whitticker emerged from the other cubicle. The vomiting woman in the remaining stall stayed where she was. Rachel Whitticker washed her hands, careful not to look at either Ingrid or her reflection. Ingrid busied herself reapplying her lipstick.

After a long few moments of hand drying, the girl finally looked up and stared into Ingrid’s eyes, via the mirror. “Is that particular shade of lipstick popular with the secret service this season?”

21

Ingrid decided to play dumb as a first line of defense. She would have felt more comfortable if the vomiting woman had left the bathroom. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” she said innocently.

“I knew you weren’t an English cop, I just knew it!” There was a definite trill of excitement in Whitticker’s tone: obviously thoroughly pleased with herself to have spotted an employee of the US government. “So, how long have you been working in the Diplomatic Security Service? This your first posting? I’m guessing not. Not many officers get a plum London job straight out the gate. Where were you before? Bratislava? Zagreb?”

Ingrid smiled at her indulgently. “I really do think you’re mistaking me for somebody else.”

“How the hell did you find me so fast?”

Ingrid merely shrugged at her.

“Look, I’m having a really nice time with my boyfriend. Can’t you at least let me stay until dessert? I swear I was going back to Paris tonight. My grandmother need never even know I was gone.”

The woman in the cubicle retched again.

“You OK in there?” Rachel asked. “Want me to get some help?”

“It’s all right,” came the feeble reply, “better out than in.”

Rachel shuffled closer to Ingrid, she dropped her voice to a whisper. “Please don’t get me in trouble with Grandma. She’ll be so pissed at me. I’ve betrayed her trust. I don’t know how much research you’ve done, but believe it or not, that’s never actually happened before.”

Ingrid decided to dispense with her unconvincing innocent act. “Maybe you should have thought about that before you embarked on your little adventure.”

“You
are
secret service.”

“Not exactly.”

“Diplomatic Security? Please tell me Grandma doesn’t know already.”

“FBI.” Ingrid shouldn’t have told her. But her instinctive loyalty to the Bureau kicked in before she could do anything about it.

“Does that mean she
doesn’t
know?”

“You need to come with me now, to the embassy.”

“No way. I’ll go back to Paris, I promise. Just as soon as the ball is over. Come on—let me spend a little more time with Eugene. I’ve come all this way, after all.”

“That can’t happen. Everything’s arranged.”

“OK—you win, I’m busted. But at least let me say goodbye to him.”

“You can call him just as soon as we arrive at the embassy.”

The woman in the cubicle retched again, more violently this time, and Ingrid glanced toward the toilet door. The moment her attention was distracted, the girl ducked around her and scooted toward the restroom door. She yanked it open, but Ingrid was on her before she’d managed to take a step outside. She laid a restraining hand on her upper arm.

“Nice try. But like you said, you’re busted.”

“But I have it all under control. A few hours here, back on the Eurostar to Paris, and my grandmother need never know I went away. Please… where’s the harm in a little white lie?”

“I have my orders.” If Rachel Whitticker really thought she stood a chance of persuading Ingrid to let her go, she was less smart than they’d all supposed.

“Now you just sound like the rest of them. Have a heart.”

Ingrid squeezed the girl’s arm a little tighter.

“Ow! You’re hurting me!”

Shouts and yells sounded from the other end of the corridor. Ingrid peered outside from her position, half in, half out the restroom, to see a gang of what she supposed were highly privileged young Conservatives heading toward them. Their ties were askew and their shirts
 
were stained with red wine. For some reason they’d decided to visit the men’s restroom en masse.

Ingrid tugged on Rachel Whitticker’s arm. Better to get her safely back into the ladies’ until the drunken gang had passed by. The girl pulled against her. Ingrid tugged on her arm again.

Then she took a deep breath and screamed at the top of her lungs.

“Help me!” she cried, directing her plea toward the gang of drunken men. “This woman’s trying to steal my purse.”

Immediately the group of young men reared up as one, stared from Rachel Whitticker to Ingrid, couldn’t quite process what was going on, then looked helplessly at one another.

“I’m really scared she’s going to hurt me,” Rachel Whitticker whined. “Help me.”

All eyes then trained on Ingrid. This was not what she needed.

“Hey, move along guys. I’m an FBI agent.”

“Oh yeah, sure… of course you bloody are. Get your filthy thieving hands off her,” the tallest and widest of the group threatened. He looked her up and down. “How the hell did you get in here anyway?”

Ingrid glanced at her tiny purse, preparing to grab her ID, when she realized that she had jettisoned her badge in favor of her cell phone, some cash and a credit card. At the same time she must have unconsciously loosened her grip on the girl’s shoulder, because a moment later Rachel Whitticker shrugged away from her and ran into the crowd of drunken, and now mildly angry, men and weaved her way through. Ingrid tried to follow, but the men closed in around her.

Holy crap
.

“Hey—let me pass.” Through the gaps between their heads she saw Rachel had almost reached the end of the corridor. “I mean it! Get the hell out of my way!”

The crush of bodies squeezed tighter. But not tight enough.

Ingrid had space enough to pull back her elbow and jab the guy nearest to her in the throat. As he staggered back, she kneed the guy next to him in the groin, and quickly brought a spear-like stiletto down as hard as she could into the next man’s ankle. The other men blocking her path threw up their hands and quickly pressed themselves against the wall to allow her to pass.

Ingrid ran as fast as she could down the corridor, but the narrowness of her dress and the height of her heels made it almost impossible to pick up any speed. She stopped, kicked off the shoes and tore long rips into the sides of the dress. She picked up the shoes—they were too good a weapon to discard—and sprinted down the corridor. At the end she bundled through the door.

There was no sign of Rachel Whitticker on the other side. But there was a hell of a lot of noise. Banging and crashing and hollering. Swiftly followed by the shattering of glass. Twenty yards ahead of her, a man stumbled through a set of swing doors, struggling hard to stay on his feet, a tray of entrées held high above his head.

Ingrid ran toward him, then burst through the swing doors into a steamy, cramped kitchen. Through the clouds of steam she saw Rachel Whitticker’s red dress disappear through another door. She started to follow, but a meaty, hairy arm blocked her path.

“FBI! Let me pass!”

The arm belonged to a six foot tall, two-hundred and fifty pound man, who was looking down at her stockinged feet. “There’s broken glass all over this floor,” he told her.

Goddammit
.

Just as Ingrid started to force her feet back into the silver stilettos, she was lifted clean off the ground, carried across the kitchen, and deposited at the rear exit on the far side.

“Thank you,” she hollered over her shoulder as she scrambled up a flight of concrete steps leading to the street.

She stood on the sidewalk and glanced right. From her sketchy knowledge of London, she was pretty sure she was looking in the direction of Trafalgar Square. In the distance to her left were the Houses of Parliament. There was no sign of Rachel Whitticker in either direction. Ingrid thumped a fist against her thigh. How could she have been so lax? She should never have allowed the girl to reach the door of the ladies’ room. It was her job to bring her in and she had screwed it up.

She couldn’t let the whole mission fail just because of a stupid rookie mistake.

22

Again Ingrid glanced toward the Houses of Parliament. She stared hard, hoping to make out movement of a bright red object in the distance. Mercifully, a second or so later, she was rewarded with exactly that.

Sixty yards up the street she caught a glimpse of Rachel Whitticker disappearing into a black taxi. The cab turned one-eighty degrees and started heading in Ingrid’s direction, north toward Trafalgar Square. The taxi picked up speed.

Ingrid stepped into the street. Directly into its path.

She saw the driver’s eyes widen to form big white circles as he stared straight at her. She stuck out both her arms. The driver tried swerving to his left to avoid her, but the inside lane was blocked by a slow moving pedal-powered rickshaw.

The driver’s mouth fell open.

Only a dozen or so yards from Ingrid, he stamped on his brake. She saw him close his eyes. The tires screeched along the blacktop as the cab hurtled toward her. There just wasn’t enough space for it to stop in time.

Ingrid sprang upwards and sideways, launching herself toward the sidewalk. She landed awkwardly in a half-somersault and rolled over. She gasped for air, gulping down shallow breaths as she tried to right herself into a crouch.