thinking about him, every little detail that remained in her mind over the years, like pulling an old photo album off the shelf.
* * *
• • •
William Fields reclined in his chair, his feet on his desk and his eyes on the wall of screens in front of him.
Or to be more precise, he monitored just one screen. Camera twelve, the device positioned in the upper corner of the holding room at the end of the hall.
He’d spent the last half hour watching Zoya lie in bed through the infrared vision built into the camera, her chest slowly rising and falling, her hands clasped in front of her while her five-foot-seven-inch frame lay still.
Watching Anthem nearly constantly through the night hours wasn’t his mandate . . . He saw it rather as a perk of his job.
He had just taken a sip of Diet Coke when Zoya’s eyes opened suddenly, glowing in the infrared. He’d thought her to be asleep, but now he watched with the can close to his mouth as she stared at the ceiling. He zoomed in on her face. Her eyes seemed to narrow, as if she were deep in thought.
She did not move for a minute more, and neither did the man studying her, but just as William started to take another sip of his soda she sat up, kicked her feet out of the covers, and rolled out of the twin bed.
She rose and walked towards the door to the room in her stocking feet. She pressed the call button on the wall by the overhead light switch, and instantly a tone sounded in the monitoring room. He watched her as she stood there, looking out the small viewing window at the well-lit hallway in front of her.
William kept his eyes on the screen as he tapped the microphone on his desk. “You rang?”
A hesitation, and then, “Yeah. Can you come here a second?”
Protocol dictated that the man in the monitoring room radio one of the men on the main floor to check on the guest, but William liked being alone down here, and he didn’t think much of protocol anyway.
“Just a sec,” he said, then grabbed his keys and headed out into the hallway.
* * *
• • •
Zoya peered through the window. Just across from her was a door to a small supply closet, and on her right were more holding rooms and then, down at the end of the hall, the monitoring room. The last door—this led to the stairs and the main house—was just beyond.
William appeared and began walking her way. He stopped on the other side of the window and looked in at her.
“What’s the matter, hot stuff? Did you have a bad dream and wet the bed?”
Zoya glanced down nervously. “Uh . . . were you serious about the wine?”
William broke into a little grin. “I guess you’re gonna have to call my bluff to find out.”
She smiled coquettishly now. “I don’t suppose one little drink is going to hurt anything.”
He held a finger up. “The cameras first. Give me a sec.” He started to walk away, then spun back. “And the vino. I’ll grab the vino.” William took off up the hall, not quite at a jog but close, and Zoya stepped back into the center of the room and took off her socks, rolling them into a ball and tossing them on the floor next to her. She pulled off her sweatshirt, revealing a white Lycra sports bra, then untied the drawstring in her sweatpants and pulled them down to the floor. Kicking them off, she stood there a moment, facing the door, taking slow, calming breaths, and waiting for her guard’s return.
* * *
• • •
One hundred twenty yards away from the basement holding cell, a dozen men moved up a wooded hillside through a heavy downpour towards the lights of the building in the distance. When they arrived at the winding two-lane road in front of the big house, still much higher up the tree-covered slope, they broke up into four groups of three. One group stayed right there, taking up positions in the wet foliage, and the others moved off to the east and west.
They’d been ordered to close on the house from different directions to maximize their effectiveness.
All twelve men were sicarios of the Sinaloa cartel who lived and operated in Baltimore. Most of them had worked together before; most had killed in their duties, though none had ever done anything like this.