Guiltless

Chapter 5

The trip wire is activated and burns itself, also burning the wires and connections, therefore plunging the entire place in darkness. As screams and shouts fill the place, I move down the stairs as fast as I can without raising any attention, I mentally 'see' what is going on upstairs. The spiked drink would force the target to head to the men's room which is located to the right of the right entrance of the basement.

The small area between the two staircases is patrolled by two guards but thanks to the alarm, everyone on this level has run to the guard who got tasered while activating the tripwire. As I reach the bottom of the stairs, I see an unforeseen complication, though.

Only one of the guards left and the other remained. He heard my running down the stairs and is now looking at me suspiciously. "Help! There was a call for a guard upstairs, please help!" I play the role of the terrified waiter perfectly and the guard, unable to see my face, tries to lean in to see me. More shouts from upstairs stop him before he can get close enough and also, I duck as if in fear to hide myself. Only when I hear him burst through the doors above, I resume my walking through the doors to the basement kitchen and through the storage rooms for the exit vent.

By now, the target would have reached the bathroom thanks to the undetectable laxative. The water I had spilled within would not be noticeable in the dark and he would slip on the floor where I had spread some small pieces of sharp glass. The target would think nothing of these glasses in his hurry and later, the forensic tests would have the glass to come up to be containing champagne and his fingerprints that I had previously lifted off of an older glass. Undoubtedly, the Resistance would pull the strings to have the alcohol content in the target's blood to come up way more than normal to make it all seem like the perfect accident.

Making sure that the coast was clear outside, I got out of the vent and made my way to the exit. The sole traceable act could be the whole shenanigan of the trip wire but even that was taken care of since the fire would spread fast enough without any accelerant that no evidence can be gathered. The small hole I made on the water pipe on the other side of wall of the trip wire, as anticipated, would have used the guard's foot to quickly paint the leaking pipe as the culprit for the entire basement fiasco.

This much I had anticipated. What I had clearly not planned for was to find the pianist standing on the outer side of the very door I had used as my entry and exit. "You play a nice game but you forget details." She spoke in a clear French accent. "We are both unarmed and I am not looking to start a fight so don't tense up. I can easily take you down, though."

"What do you think you are doing?" I ask her in perfect Russian, unwilling to give even a small hint of my identity. Cathy is surprisingly quiet at the moment.

"Still keeping up charade, are we?" The girl remarks with an amused tone. "Alright then, my name is Natalya and I was sent here to do what you almost failed in. Belikov didn't hit the glasses hard enough. Thank to me though, he didn't have a chance to raise an alarm. Also, my presence would now effectively cloak yours." I don't even bother remembering the name. It's obviously a false one.

Dropping all pretense, I ask her plainly in Russian. "And I suspect there's a reason for us to be wasting time here like this. What would you require of me?"

"A lady always has infinite needs, dear boy. Remember that. For now, consider this a favour owed." And with that, she walks away from. I'm tempted to follow this pianist, who looks barely five years older than me. But since we both were in makeup to make ourselves look older, how old she really is or how she looks like cannot be estimated. Nor do I have the time to do so.

"Assassin, get back here right this moment and I might not execute you for this slip." Cathy seethes and I quickly make me way to her, knowing better than to provoke when I only hold pieces of a plan to stand up to them. The door has barely opened to the safehouse before she's getting in my face. "Who the hell was she? What did she want? Where did she come from?"

At least your response shows me that she ain't one of yours. "I know just as much as you do. What is true however that an alarm would be raised any moment now and we should really get moving." Neither of us is happy with how things went down but at least this time I have a mystery face to add to the growing players in this business of cloak and daggers. For hiding in the shadows, this world does have a lot of people in it.

It is a long and silent boat ride, at least in terms of conversation. We do not move far, stopping on the outskirts of the next city by the water. The plan is to lay low for two days and then move out of the country for a successful exit.

And all this time, I am wondering, is she the one who has been a step ahead of me?

*****

"Ah, so she played her cards perfectly." I comment to myself as I see the surveillance videos of their interaction. He has grown a lot over these past few years but he has never been able to lose himself in the crowd ever again, at least not to him. A lesser man would consider it a mistake to have him and the others alerted about his presence but the perfect plan for everything was just brewing.

All that was needed now was time. And soon, everything would play off just as planned.

"Execute the girl. She's worthless to me now." He barked out on a radio as one last command to wrap up yet another housecleaning mission.

A/N: Even I forgot it has been two years since I last updated this story. Well, here's the next chapter. No idea when the next comes up but now that I have started this story again, I ain't gonna just abandon it.