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Chapter Twenty-Three

Red

After Elena's dance partner bowed to kiss her hand. " Enchanté," the murmured word came over the earbud in Red's ear. The man had been counting steps under his breath the whole time—one, two, three. One, two, three. There had been no chatter. Red had learned nothing new about Elena.

As Elena rose from her curtsy, her dance partner lost himself in the crowd. Dancers shifted, some moving off the floor like Elena, others moving into place as a violinist drew her bow along the string, testing a C note.

And now Elena stopped, facing the wall in front of a woman wearing a dress constructed from an enormous cloud of white feathers that seemed improbably difficult—and hot—to dance in. That woman was both the chicken and the egg.

Elena wasn't speaking to cloud woman. Instead, she focused over the woman's shoulder into the surface of a gilded mirror, using the reflection to adjust her dress strap and then a tendril of hair curling down her cheek to the delicate bones of her clavicle, softening the austerity of her French chignon.

With a tilt of her chin, Elena scanned the entirety of the room.

Suddenly, she visibly braced. Red would swear Elena had stopped breathing. Her brows drew upward, and she held her eyes wide and unblinking. It was a survival reaction.

Elena had transformed into a mouse by the chair leg as a cat slunk through the room.

She was terrified.

Red decided to take the risk of moving her focus off Elena to scan the room and see if she couldn't find the person who had elicited this reaction.

Ah, not one, four.

Here were the men that Red had been aware of all evening—the ones that Red had thought were probably on Elena's team, possibly the ones she had alluded to in her chat with Joel Brighton.

But now that a benign understanding of the situation was off the table, Red had questions.

Tonight's ball was tightly secured. The event security team had blocked the road in front of the venue.

Car keys were handed off to valets and guests had to approach on foot.

The tickets were sold out on the first night they were offered, and availability was a year in advance. It had taken a phone call from the United States Secretary of State to the ambassador to pry the tickets that Red and Grey were using from covetous fingers.

Elena was Joel's plus-one.

Who was chasing after Elena if this wasn't her security team?

And how did they have the wherewithal to get in?

By the time these thoughts passed through Red's mind, she'd captured all four of their images both on her earring cams and in her memory and swung her focus back toward the mirror.

But Elena was gone.

Red took three backward steps up the staircase, out of the press of the crowd, to gain height and possibly a better view.

Elena's tiara bobbed as she quickly wove through the crowd, a viper amongst the weeds.

And there was that Pied Piper guy, tall enough that he was easy to spot, moving in the same direction as Elena, looking nonchalant. But there was purpose to his movement. He was caught by a crowd that formed in front of him, and there was no easy way for him to continue to follow without seeming extremely rude. He backtracked to find a different route.

Elena made it to the staircase, brushing past Red without a second glance. And behind her came the group of men. They had fanned out in the room, but now they drew together like a net capturing prey.

Red watched as Elena turned into the hallway, not to the left toward the ladies' room but to the right, where the caterers staged the trays of hors d'oeuvres and drinks for the waitstaff to circulate. Beyond that was the kitchen.

Elena could probably find a way to escape out into the back alley.

Red was momentarily unsure what to do.

There was hidden security here at the ball. There had to be. These were the elite of the elite. Royalty, for Heaven's sake. But that security blended into the evening so everyone could simply enjoy. It was one of the ball's calling cards. Freedom from their ubiquitous security detail was much coveted.

So, were these men part of the ball-sanctioned security?

No, Elena wouldn't recognize them as a threat.

Possibly Interpol?

After all, Elena wasn't just involved in selling conflict relics, but she'd been on the scene of five men's deaths when they were sniped in Munich. Had someone besides Color Code and their CIA assets figured that out?

It would be unlikely that Interpol would send anyone that Elena might recognize.

If Red were to insert herself into a security scenario, the very least that would happen would be a blown cover.

What if the waitstaff were all members of elite forces? Could happen. Why not?

Red could be wrong about her interpretation of the unfolding scene, but she had over a decade of fieldwork under her belt. And she read people very well.

Reading Elena—she was afraid she would be killed, slowly, painfully, while giving up every piece of information she knew or made up just to make the pain stop. The fear Red saw wasn't worry about a quick bullet to the brainstem. Uh-uh. No. It just wasn't. She'd seen enough people in enough of these scenarios—there was a reactionary difference. When the person knew they lived in a dangerous world and played a dangerous game, death was often met with a sense of inevitability and resignation.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

It was torture that turned someone into a wild animal.

And the men?

Their faces weren't set with determination to meet the moment and finish a mission.

Those were the expressions of men who wanted to exact vengeance.

If Red was forced to define those four men and make a call on what was happening, she'd stake her reputation that they were part of the treasure-hunting group that had successfully found the Fire of the Desert and taken it to Dr. Klien for identification. Five of them should have been sufficient to maintain control of the ring. Any more, and it would have gone negative in terms of attention and pressure on Klein.

Yes, Red believed these were the four that were left behind.

Their teammates dead, their work vanished, they wanted the ring, and they wanted retribution.

If they had the skill to find the ring, they had the skill to find Elena. In doing so, they'd probably come to the same conclusion as Color Code: that the ball was a public opportunity. Otherwise, she'd go to ground and finding her would be all but impossible.

This team was singularly focused.

And so was Red.

They just had very different needs.

Red needed to know the plan for the forty million euros.

Where was their target?

What was their message, and what would have been their gain if the terrorist event had been successful?

Red would get none of that if anyone hurt a hair on Elena's beautifully coiffed head.

Reaching for the front of her dress, lifting it, and moving her hands to the rear of her hips, she tried to free herself of the cumbersome lawn of skirt. The ridiculousness and look-at-me red of this gown impeded Red's ability to function.

What was she going to do?

Red had no idea. Just getting in the same space was the goal at this moment.

Once there, she could see what options presented themselves. Screaming at the top of her lungs, for example, would pull every eye and every resource forward.

But as she screamed, Elena could use that opportunity to slip into the night.

That might not be a bad choice, Elena's escaping since Red knew what flight she was taking to Marrakech, and Red had full access to Elena's phone.

It made more sense for Elena to refuse to make this silly trip to Morocco that Joel Brighton proposed. Reaching out privately, Elena could explain that she wasn't playing games, that there was money for the ring, or the ring would disappear again. She had leverage.

Scenarios presented, were processed at lightning speed, and set aside as Red made her way through the revelers with a pointy elbow held up like the bow of a ship, forcing the tide of glitterati to shift out of her way.

Damned stupid time for Grey to have had to go to the bathroom.

Red wanted to pull out her phone and tap the button to let him know this was an emergency, zip up his pants, and get here. Now! But the time and distraction of looking down was a price that Red wouldn't pay.

This event wasn't supposed to turn kinetic. Red and Grey hadn't come with comms taped to their sternums lest their voices be picked up on security radios or seen on scanning machines at the front door.

Maybe it was a mistake to come ill-prepared for things turning FUBAR.

And if— if —Red couldn't help her, and Elena didn't get away from this team, Color Code could track her via phone and a GPS Grey had placed on Elena's dress.

But surely these men knew enough to toss the phone and force Elena to change clothes.

And then what? And then what?

Red's mission was to keep Elena in play. Anything less would be a failure. I don't do failure, she growled in her mind as she reached the last man on the team with enough time to grab an empty party tray. Using the swing toward the man's carotid, dragging the long edge of the rim slowly down his artery, depriving his brain of blood flow, he dropped into a heap, unconscious.

Three instead of four, that would be a short-lived reprieve. The man would quickly revive.

Red, of course, carried no weapons, or she wouldn't have made it through the X-ray machine. Here, the kitchen was filled with possibilities, but that worked both ways; a knife in her hand was a cleaver in theirs.

Bursting through the doors, Red found a kidnapping underway.

A man on either side of Elena gripped her arms above her wrists, dragging her toward the back door held wide by the third tango. The man at the door pointed a gun at the kitchen staff, who were cowering together in the back corner in confusion and fright.

He wouldn't aim or fire at Red. First, even with his silencer, it would make noise and pull attention. Second, he'd have to be a damned good shot because his teammates and Elena were grappling between them. A hand clamped around her mouth, muffling her screams.

The gasps from the kitchen workers dragged the gunman's attention their way, allowing Red to grab a cloth and wrap it around the handle of a cast iron skillet. Lifting it high, food flying out, Red brought the pan squarely down on the head of the goon holding Elena's left arm. Red failed to knock the guy out cold. Dazed, he sprawled on the floor, but his grip hadn't loosened.

As he fell, Red set up for her next swing.

To protect Elena from being hit, Red spun, gripping the handle like a tennis racket, the heat from the cast iron now burning her palms.

While the standing man maintained his grip on Elena, he threw up a middle block to protect his own head.

The cracking noise was nauseating. She did some damage to his forearm. Maybe even broke it.

But the men didn't let go of their quarry. The man on the ground dragged Elena toward the floor. The standing man held Elena upright. She was like a tug toy in the jaws of two alpha dogs.

Red tried to spin again to take another swing at the standing man.

But the guy on the ground had been gathering the cloth of Red's gown, and when she spun, she effectively trussed herself in the fabric.

The swing still landed. But it lost its oomph. Red fell, taking Elena and the standing man down with her.

The gunman kept his gun on the kitchen staff. There were too many of them for him to lose control because of a woman with a skillet.

The man that Red had taken out with the tray was back on the scene. He grabbed Elena under the arms, bodily lifted her into the air, and went out the back door.

The man on her left clawed up a fistful of Red's hair as he stood and dragged her out the back door.

There, a catering truck stood with yawning doors. A plastic tarp lined the floor. Above was a pipe. Someone had developed this catering van as a mobile interrogation site.

With the light from the alley shining into the van, Red focused on a pile of four bodies, naked but for their undershorts, heaped at the back. And now Red knew a few things.

She knew how this team had thwarted security—dressing as catering staff, coming in with boxes or bags with their evening wear, and changing surreptitiously.

She knew they were deadly, brutal, and mad as hell.

Red knew Grey had no idea she was no longer in the ballroom, waiting for him by the stairs.

And she knew that if something wildly improbable didn't happen, Red would be subjected to whatever was coming Elena's way.

The man whose arm dangled at an improbable angle— yup, broken. Shit. Held a gun on her.

If Red thought they'd take a kill shot, she might opt to go that route.

But no. The gun, with the silencer, was aimed at her leg. They'd just add shooting her until she looked like Swiss cheese to one of their questioning techniques.

Miracles happened. Red tried to reassure herself as the men first attached Elena and then moved on to attach Red to the overhead pipe. The thick riot-style zip ties ratcheted tightly and wouldn't be easy to thwart.

Before losing the ability, Red took every opportunity to snap pictures with her earring, knowing they would flow to Color Code computers. Her team would have pictures of these faces, the van, and the circumstances.

Someone could avenge her.

The man from the door, the only one Red hadn't hit, took Elena's purse from her. They patted her over and found nothing more.

Red was next, her pockets emptied of comb and hairspray, lipstick and phone. She watched the fake Fire of the Desert fall to the ground unheeded.

The doors slammed.

Elena and Red were alone in the back of the windowless van.

Surely, the kitchen staff were raising the alarm. When they did, the police would swarm.

Surely, Grey was done in the damned bathroom. As he came down the hallway, he'd see the stunned and confused catering staff racing out of the kitchen. He'd check his app and see the phones in the alley where Red imagined the team had tossed them. It wouldn't help Grey to find her, but it would let him know to look. And Langley had systems for that.

Miracles happened.

She just needed to survive and keep Elena alive until they did.

In the darkness, Red heard Elena whisper, "Who are you?"

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