Fault Line

A silver-haired guy in a charcoal suit by reception waved to Alex. “Hey, Alex. Nice to see you here. Breakfast today?”

“Hey, Tracy, no, I'm staying with you this time. Some work being done on my house.”

The guy smiled. “Nice to have you with us.”

They kept moving.

Ben was incredulous. “Who the hell was that?” he said.

“Tracy Mercer. The manager.”

“You know the manager?”

“I do a lot of business meals here.”

Ben wondered how someone so smart could at the same time be so galactically stupid. “Didn't I tell you to stay someplace where no one would know you?”

“Well, yeah, but…”

Ben shook his head. “Forget it,” he said. Was Alex a moron? Did he have a death wish?

They went to Alex's room, and while Alex collected his gear, Ben looked out the window at the highway below and the massive sprawl of an Ikea shopping complex on the other side of it. None of this had been here when Ben was a kid. East Palo Alto had been a no-go zone then, unless you wanted to buy pot, and even then you wouldn't go at night. Times had changed. He was amazed that Alex could casually take advantage of something like this. This hotel had to be at least four hundred dollars a night, and Alex was using it as a safe house without giving a second thought to the bill. It was almost fu

They headed back down to the lobby. Sarah said, “I need to use the bathroom.”

An alarm went off in Ben's head. “No.”

She looked at him. “No?”

“Not now. We're not secure here. We need to keep moving. You'll have to hold it in.”

She cocked her head and her eyes bored into him. “For how long?”

He wanted to say, Until I fucking tell you you can let it out. Instead, he said, “Ten minutes. Can you manage that?”

She didn't answer, and he took that for a yes. Christ, he could almost see smoke coming out of her ears.

Well, tough shit. He was about to do another pass near Alex's car, and the last thing he needed was for her to duck into the restroom, borrow a cell phone, and warn someone what was up.

Alex checked out-no sign of the manager this time-and they went back to Ben's car, Ben sca

“You sure that's a good idea?” Alex asked.

“I doubt anyone's there,” Ben said. But sooner or later, he knew, someone would be. Either at Alex's car, or at the office, or back at his house. Or at the girl's car. Or at her house. And every one of these ambush points was therefore also a place for a counterambush.

Alex and Sarah drove off. Ben pulled the hat low and walked back into the hotel parking lot. He walked past the hotel entrance, his head swiveling, checking all the places he would have used himself.

He cut through the parking garage so he could come out closer to Alex's car. If anyone was there, the shortcut would give them less time to react. He turned the corner and bingo, there was a burly white guy with a shaved head leaning against the parking garage just ten feet past Alex's car. The guy was wearing shades and smoking a cigarette, and wore a black, waist-length leather jacket.

Although his mind grasped it all in a kind of instant shorthand rather than in conscious thoughts, Ben understood all the things that were wrong with this picture. This was the western side of the garage, and this early in the morning it was all in shadow, so no need for the shades. It was too early for an office worker to be taking a nicotine break, too, and anyway why would the guy walk all the way down here for a smoke? And the waist-length jacket would be perfect to conceal a shoulder, waist, or hip carry.

Ben walked casually toward him, his heart rate begi

“Excuse me,” Ben said as he approached. He pinched his thumb and forefinger together and cupped his hand as though he were holding a cigarette behind it. “Do you have a light?”

The bald guy looked at him but didn't respond. Ben was glad he'd gone through the garage and come in from below where Alex had parked. The fact that the guy was still leaning against the wall indicated he ‘d been surprised. An operator would never keep a posture like that in the face of a possible threat. Now, if the guy tried to attack, he'd first have to kick off from the wall. It would take him a long time. The rest of his life, in fact.

“Haven't seen you here before,” Ben said, stopping a couple of yards short of him. “And I know most of the smokers in the complex because in the People's Republic of Palo Alto you can't even smoke near a building entrance. Can you beat that?”

Still no answer. Maybe the guy didn't speak English. Maybe he did, and didn't want anyone to hear or remember an accent.

For a lot of reasons, noise and potential witnesses not the least of them, Ben didn't want gunplay. But just a little closer and he could drop the guy quietly with his hands.

“Is there a problem?” Ben said. “Do you not speak English?”

There was a pause, and then the guy said in a deep, gravelly voice, “I speak English.”

The accent was heavy. The accent was Russian.

The submerged part of Ben's mind that was in tactical mode served up a loud helping of Oh shit, not again.

They looked at each other for a long, suspended second. The world was suddenly silent, everything slipping away but the tension between them. Ben could feel himself decloaking, emerging from under the gauzy, i

Ben braced to rush in and at the same instant the guy kicked off from the wall, his right arm blurring toward the left side of his jacket. Ben leaped forward, simultaneously body-slamming the guy and jamming up his right arm. He groped for the guy's wrist and whipped his left elbow around into the guy's right temple. The shot co