He wakes up and, for a moment, thinks he might still be asleep.
But no—there she is, sitting in the moth-eaten armchair in the corner, staring at him with a hard expression on her face. He pulls his Smith & Wesson out from under his pillow but by the time it's out she's armed herself, too. They stare at each other over the barrels of their guns.
"I don't know if anyone's ever notified you, but watching someone sleep is not generally socially acceptable behavior," he says. She smirks.
"I don't know if anyone's ever notified you, but you snore."
He's struck momentarily with the full weight of how much he doesn't understand her. He's never bothered to try. She's always been upper management to him, Oliver's right hand—Alicia's best friend, sure, but he's never had enough one on one time with her to figure out why. Seeing her now, however, in his dingy motel room in her usual beat-up attire, gun in hand, smirking, he can sort of see it. Why Alicia likes to keep her around. Why Lee's so into her. He's never noticed how, well, striking she is. He thinks it must be the adrenaline. He knows the jig is up.
"Well?" he says warily. "What's the game? Where's the rest of them?"
"Two cities over," she replies. "They're being put up by someone in the private sector. They'll be on you in a few hours. Five, at most."
"So they sent you ahead? To detain me?" She doesn't answer, so he nods toward the gun in his hand. "Messy plan. Not of your caliber, I gotta say. You should have disarmed me." Still nothing. He feels too vulnerable—naked, almost, but maybe that's because he's been sleeping in his boxers. "I'll run," he blurts out. "I've been running. I've got a gun on you. I'll just run faster."
"Not fast enough," she says, and sets her gun down on the little coffee table next to her chair.
This he was not expecting. They stare at each other a little longer and something starts to dawn on him. He blinks. "Just before they cut the lights in the embassy," he says slowly, "Fred told me that if you caught up with me he wanted me to give you a message." She keeps staring, but her blank expression starts to look a little forced, so he presses on, gun still trained on her forehead. "Not to Lee, or to Oliver, but to you specifically. Do you know what he wanted me to say to you?"
It's a shot in the dark and it clearly catches her off-guard. After a long pause, she speaks. "I might have an idea." She pauses again, but cuts him off when he starts to reply. "Don't tell me." This is different—her voice seems smaller, somehow. Her composure is slipping. He doesn't understand why and decides not to press it—but she's not done. "I don't want to know." Suddenly her gaze shifts; she won't meet his eye.
"He didn't get a chance to say anything, so you're in luck," he says grimly. He decides to press this small advantage, to test these small cracks in her usually unruffled facade. He goes with his gut. "Angelina, does Wood know you're here?"
"Orders are to hunt Fred's killer," she says bluntly, blankly, as if this is the most obvious, mundane thing in the world. "You're hunting Fred's killer, Wood's hunting you. I decided to skip the middleman."
He stares. This situation is proving to be extremely difficult to process. "How do I know I can trust you?"
"You don't," she says, "but considering I could have arrested you six ways from Sunday by now and am instead offering to stick with your sorry ass, that could be a start." She sounds like she's talking to a child. He supposes this should rankle him, but he just finds himself excessively amused. "Besides, I found you within three days of arriving in this country. You're not going to make it much farther without me."
He pauses and considers his options. She has a point. He lowers his gun.
"Good," she says. "Now put your pants on and tell me everything you know so far."
He laughs as he scrambles out of bed and hops around looking for his jeans. "Angelina Johnson, going rogue for little old me. Don't I feel like the belle of the ball."