Karen rejoined me, a little flushed, and then the two guys. We began to play again, but I couldn’t concentrate. It wasn’t my fault, but that didn’t matter. There was no way I’d get another field assignment after this.
Part of me was glad. This whole thing had been terrifying enough. Crawling back to the support staff sounded pretty good, in some ways.
But I remembered how Adam had smiled at me, how he’d believed in me. He’d pushed for me to be given a chance and now I was going to disappoint him.
I saw Luka a few more times, talking intently to people, shaking hands and sometimes embracing people in firm, back-slapping hugs. There was no self-consciousness to him at all, no...doubt. I thought of myself at a party, standing nervously in the corner and waiting for someone to talk to me. He was the polar opposite.
There were women at the party, all of them in their mid-twenties and all of them, from what I could tell, Russian. They were classily dressed and model-beautiful, mostly blonde—exactly how I’d imagined Luka’s girlfriends, when I’d listened to his calls with them. All of them—every one—latched onto him at some point, grabbing his arm and looking up at him with big eyes. And he gave them a smile.
And then ignored them.
When our second set came to a close, Karen let out a little sigh of satisfaction. “Thank you,” she told me. “You really came through for us.”
I smiled, but inside I was dying. The whole op had been a complete washout. I sat there numbly, watching Karen putting away her cello. She paused for a moment to check her phone and then smiled adorably as she read a text from her boyfriend.
My chest ached as I watched her. Why couldn’t I have that? Why was I so wrapped up in spying on other people’s lives, instead of living my own? We’d both just done the same gig at the same party, but she was going home in the warm glow of a job well done, home to the arms of her boyfriend. I had four hours in the SUV with Adam as we drove back to Virginia, while he tried to be polite about how it had turned out and I beat myself up, over and over—
I grabbed my stuff and headed out into the hallway. With four of us all trying to get out at the same time, especially with Karen’s cello case, it was chaos. Then one of the guys from the quartet came back in out of the snow, complaining that he couldn’t get a cab to stop, and—
The bodyguard who was guarding the stairs hurried down and out of the door to help and—
Just for a moment, the way upstairs was open.
Roberta must have seen my expression because I heard her catch her breath in my earpiece. “No!”
The bodyguard was still outside, his back to us, whistling for a cab. The hallway was empty aside from Karen. “I can do it,” I murmured under my breath.
“No!” hissed Roberta. “Abort! Get out of there!”
Adam said nothing at all for a second. Then: “You really think you can do it?”
The hope in his voice made up my mind. I grabbed Karen’s shoulder. “I just have to find a bathroom,” I told her. “You get the cab. My dad’ll pick me up.”
Karen was trying to maneuver her cello case out of the door. “What? Oh. You’re sure? Okay. I’ll PayPal you your share. Thanks!” And she bustled out. In the street, I saw a cab finally pull up. Any second now, the bodyguard would turn around.
Heart thumping in my chest, I raced up the stairs.