Out-Foxxed. Debra Webb

propped the door open and prepared to wheel her cart out of the room.

      “Please wait.”

      Sabrina hesitated, then turned to the woman who’d called out to her.

      She hurried to where Sabrina stood poised to get the hell out of there. “Thank you.” The tears rolling down her cheeks and the quiver of her lips told Sabrina that she wanted to say much more but wasn’t sure how.

      Sabrina smiled. “You’ll be fine now.”

      She had to get out of there.

      Pushing the cart with all her might, she hurried to the elevators and stabbed the call button. “Come on, come on,” she muttered.

      The control team in the rooms on either side of 1012 would stay put until hotel security had arrived and called the local authorities. Once the Federal Bureau of Investigation was on site to take charge, the control team would withdraw.

      No one would ever know that IT&PA had ever been there.

      That was the way it worked.

      Anticipation seared through her as she trekked the slow movement of the damned elevator on the digital readout above the closed doors. If security caught her up here, they would want to question her. She couldn’t let that happen. Abandoning the cart wasn’t doable since it was rigged. She had no choice but to ride this out.

      One of the two elevators stopped on her floor and she held her breath as she waited for the doors to slide open and reveal the occupants, if any, of the car.

      Empty.

      Her arms weak with relief, she shoved the cart into the empty elevator and selected floor six. No sooner had the doors started to close when a ding announced the arrival of the second elevator.

      Close. Too close.

      Even as her car started to descend, she heard running steps pounding in the corridor beyond the elevator alcove she’d just vacated.

      Hotel security had arrived.

      Director Marx wouldn’t be happy that she’d had to take out all four of the perpetrators, but there hadn’t been any other option.

      Those men would have killed her and the hostages had she not used deadly force. Wounding one of them in hopes of interrogating him later simply hadn’t been feasible.

      Outside 608, she had just reached for her passkey when the door opened.

      “He’s not happy,” Trainer said.

      Angie had already grabbed the other end of the cart and was helping Sabrina guide it into the room.

      “It was my call to make,” Sabrina countered, not the least bit intimidated or sorry she’d chosen the course of action she had. Stavi was alive. He surely knew what those men wanted with him. All the Bureau had to do was convince him to share the information. As far as Sabrina was concerned, that was their problem.

      She’d done her job. All four hostages were rescued.

      Angie, still sporting a maid’s uniform, rushed over to help Sabrina disrobe.

      Trainer turned his back and focused on unrigging the cart. Big Hugh jumped into the fray and helped get the job done.

      When all the equipment and disguises were packed in typical wheeled, upright luggage, each member of the recovery team left with at least one bag in tow.

      All but Sabrina, who carried only her briefcase as she took the elevator down to the lobby and stopped by the front desk. “I’m leaving very early in the morning,” she told the clerk. “Can you clear me without my having to bother checking out?”

      “Certainly, Miss Freeman. We’ll slip the final bill under your door by 3 a.m.”

      “Excellent.”

      Sabrina strode out of the hotel, her sneakers silent on the shiny marble floor. The same doorman who’d greeted her what felt like a lifetime ago, bid her a good evening. She gave him a smile of thanks and hurried off into the gloomy night.

      The rain was gone, leaving the city she loved with a crisp bite in the air and smelling pretty damned clean for a place that teemed with no less than eight million people.

      Once in a while, a taxi cruising for a fare rolled by on the street, the tires cutting through the water puddled there.

      She didn’t bother hailing one. She would walk, at least for a while, to give herself time to unwind and to let the cold air remind her that she was still alive. That was the great part about her work. She came so close to death at times…close enough to appreciate living one more day. Not everyone understood how that felt. It was the most satisfying feeling she’d ever known. Maybe that made her a freak, if so, that was okay.

      The scene back at the hotel would be one of chaos until the feds arrived to take control of the situation. The Stavi family would only know that a maid had saved their lives.

      Sabrina hadn’t touched anything in the room so there wouldn’t be any prints left behind, not that it mattered. She didn’t exist in any of the traditional spy world databases. IT&PA wasn’t known in any capacity whatsoever by its sibling agencies.

      All involved in the rescue would do exactly as Sabrina was doing now—disappear in the night…until next time.

CHAPTER THREE

      THE HOT WATER slowly but surely warmed the winter chill that had seeped deep into her bones, relaxing her tense muscles. Sabrina had ended up walking the entire twenty blocks home.

      Without the rain, it hadn’t been so bad. She’d needed the time to clear her head. To rid her lungs of the smell of death.

      She studied her arms and the new bruises there. So far her cheek hadn’t swollen. There would be some discoloration from the slaps she’d taken but, if her luck held out, no noticeable swelling. Bruises could be covered, swelling could not. She was damned lucky things hadn’t been a hell of a lot worse.

      Just part of the job. Pain and death were a constant in her line of work. She’d gotten used to it a long time ago.

      At least that was what she told herself. Occasionally she’d let the kill-or-be-killed reality get to her, but then she would remind herself that what she had done had saved a man and his family. That was what really counted.

      The only part that counted to Sabrina.

      The first time she’d killed a man, Marx had walked her through the aftereffects.

      Sabrina closed her eyes and tried to block the memory but it came anyway. The assignment had been in Ireland. The target had been an American traitor leading a terrorist cell who had recently obtained a military-grade nerve gas. Sabrina had gotten in, made the strike and gotten out in twenty-four hours. Eliminating that target had allowed local authorities to seize the highly lethal nerve gas before it could be used to take innocent lives.

      She’d been fine until she returned home.

      The reality of what she’d done had hit her then. Marx had known it would. He’d been waiting for her at her apartment door.

      During the verbal exchange about how she was fine, she’d fallen apart. He’d talked her through the turmoil, helped her to see the greater good she had accomplished. His wise and calm reasoning had done the trick.

      Sabrina blinked away the memory. Funny thing, she realized just then—her father had done that for her dozens of times growing up. He would talk her through a trying time. She supposed, in a way, Marx had stepped into his shoes.

      “Way too deep, Sabrina,” she mumbled. She needed to relax and put work behind her.

      She’d certainly created the right atmosphere for it. The candles flickered and glowed, filling the room with a cozy ambience. The scented ones oozed their subtle fragrance into