Game of Secrets and Shadows (Book One in the Covert Operations series)

Seventeen

There's something so terrifyingly freeing about being on your own.

You know that you have no backup. You know that there's no one out there watching over you. You know that there's no possible way for you to get help. It's the worst feeling you can imagine. Helpless, alone, weak, scared. All of those things.

And yet, the moment I hung up the phone, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders. This was my mission now and mine alone. It would be done on my terms. No one else would be able to tell me what I should and shouldn't do. They couldn't tell me what was best for me or my brother. They didn't have any input. They wouldn't be having their lives in danger just by having me around.

I was terrified.

I was free.

I was also extremely out in the open.

The crowd in the street around me had thinned in some areas while thickened in others. A large mass had encircled Club Saphir, watching as the paramedics closed up the back of the rig and prepared to speed away. Just as the ambulance pulled away from the curb, more sirens appeared in the distance and, a moment later, a police car pulled up to the scene. Two officers, one man and one woman, jumped out of the car. The woman moved towards the bar as the man began crowd control, blocking the area off with yellow tape.

I hardly watched any of this. I was already gone, half-a-block away and moving quickly, though not so quickly as to draw attention to myself. My gait was strong and steady, not quite hurried nor was it forcefully relaxed. No one looked at me oddly or curiously as I passed. No one really looked at me at all. I was just another face in the crowd.

That was why it was easy to toss my cellphone into a garbage can unnoticed. I just slipped it in as I passed by and no one stopped to question why a young woman might throw a flashy new smart phone into the trash on a whim. But no one seemed to care about what I was doing. Their attention was all too focused on the commotion happening up the street.

Without any eyes on me, I slipped into the nearest clothing store to me—a quaint little boutique with a logo written in swirly blue writing. The door chimed as I entered and a slim young woman with red hair stood up from behind the back counter.

"Bonjour!" she called out merrily. Her eyes grew wide when she took stock of me and I took that to mean that I probably looked less than ideal.

I returned her greeting anyways and then moved through the racks of clothing, careful not to touch them too much for fear of getting blood on them. I pulled free a navy blue t-shirt and a black leather jacket to replace the one I was currently wearing. Then, I maneuvered my way over towards the pants section where I grabbed a pair of black jeans—almost identical to the ones I was currently wearing but without all the blood on them—and then walked towards the counter. Up near where the woman was waiting behind her cash register, there was a rack of scarves. I grabbed the first one I saw—a beige scarf with a design of red, blue, green, and gold flowers adorning it.

The woman rang me up, staring at me curiously the entire time, and I paid using the cash I'd stolen from Lauer's wallet. She handed me my bag, smiling tightly, and bade me goodbye as I ducked out of the store.

The street had gotten even busier in the five minutes that I'd been inside of the boutique. More police cars had arrived and the general public was being kept at bay with an ever expanding range of crime scene tape. I walked the other way, deliberately avoiding the area I'd just come from. I paused momentarily to change clothes in the back corner of a dark alleyway between two stores, making sure to stuff the note Scorpion left me about a meeting time in my pocket. I left my discarded clothes in a trash can, wrapped the scarf around my head, hiding my tangled hair, and then rejoined the crowds on the street.