Back from vacation! And I still don't own Frozen :(
Don't go against the flow of traffic during pursuit. You will only cause a ruckus and undue attention drawn to your person. Move with the crowd, it will eventually circle.
It was curious, Anna thought, hearing Hans's coaching voice in her head even as she followed him across the populous floor of the Caesar's Palace lobby. Gamblers and showgirls and revelers alike bottlenecked at the revolving doors near the casino floor entrance while the concierge and clerks directed the foot traffic, bored faces worn from the repetition of Criss Angel pop-up shows and boa constrictors actually used as boas. To the tourists, novelty. To the employees, workaday.
Different ways of seeing the same thing.
What is the environment? Blend in, and stay that way. What are you wearing? How are the crowds speaking, in what way are they moving? Are they urgent, are they relaxed? Mimicry is your weapon: wield it, and adapt.
She was a pretty girl, in a slough of other pretty girls. Other pretty girls, somewhat drunk, headed to the casino floor, breaking away from the massive throngs after they pregamed in their hotel rooms or decided upon early starts, neon lights too mesmerizing to be resisted despite the premature party hour.
Hans entered a crowded elevator, and Anna heard him request "Twenty-four, please," to the leggy brunette shoved against the panel of elevator-call buttons. Anna clambered into an equally tight elevator, mind flitting between market shares of Arabian oil futures, a genetics company, Hans and his supposed buddy Al, herself and her gorgeously fragile almost-lover, and the gentleman nestled awkwardly against her that reeked of a stinky Parisian fromage from a back-alley dairy she'd once ducked into after a thrilling escape from The Louvre.
Cheeses aside, Anna rode the elevator up and up, bypassing the twenty-fourth floor as the car emptied slowly but surely. The security camera at the upper right hand corner of the elevator car could prove detrimental, considering the scope of the camera covered the entire interior of the car. She glimpsed the buttoned panel, leisurely taking note of the emergency stop button as well as the mirrored back walls of the elevator. If she approached in front of the doors, her face would show very easily. She rubbed her chin in thought, and sauntered off at floor thirty-four, hammering every single call button for numbers thirty-three through twenty-five on her exit.
Once the car doors shut behind her and the camera eyes were no longer a worrisome presence, Anna chucked her heels and sprinted toward the stairwell, bumbling down floors and peeking into hallways until she came upon a house-keeping cart at floor twenty-six. She burst into the hallway and rummaged about, extracting a complimentary toothpaste and travel-sized hairspray from the toiletries drawer on the cart. She hiked it one floor below and pressed the call button for the elevator.
The doors dinged, and two twenty-something girls leaned against the back mirrored wall of the car.
"Oh, I'll just wait for the next one," Anna said lightly.
"That's silly, there's plenty of room," one bright-eyed guest said. "But it's stopping on every floor, for some reason."
"Well, after the accident in the shaft last week, and the maintenance crew here messing with this car all morning, I'll take my chances."
"What?" the meeker of the two squeaked.
"Dreadful affair," Anna said. "Lucky no one was in the car, but they had to shut down the whole elevator system on Tuesday to get them up and running. The cars were stopping at every floor then, too. Skimping on the safety requirements if you ask me."
The elevator doors dinged and started to close, but the taller of the two stuck an arm out.
"On second thought, I'll take the stairs," Anna lied. "I'm headed to the rooftop club on twenty-three anyway."
"Twenty-three has a rooftop club?"
"God, where have you two been?" Anna chided.
"April, let's go," the taller said. "We'll meet the guys later."
And the pair abandoned the elevator car, to Anna's amusement. She flung her arm around the side door and avoided the mirrored back wall, pressing the call button for floor twenty-four as she ducked into the corner, face shielded, and sprayed a goopey film of hairspray over the camera lens. She sidled fully into the car, and climbed barefooted on the gilded handrail to smear a layer of toothpaste over the lens, just for safe measures.
Blur the features, then erase them altogether.
Once at floor twenty-four with no other riders, Anna pressed the emergency stop button and took a page from Jane's book. The emergency lights came on and the car stilled, presumably to allow the riders to access the emergency phone located in the lower cabinet beneath the call buttons. Anna, however, turned the car into a veritable jungle-gym, monkey swinging from the edges to the center, searching for that one ceiling panel with more give than the rest.
Jane would be so proud. I hope she's—
No, best not think of Jane and focus on your own part of the job. You trusted her to get it done, so let her have it.
Dislodging the panel above her, Anna harrumphed to find there was no ventilation system leading to the elevator shaft. Despite her distaste for the tiny spaces, she had planned to crawl through, minor claustrophobia or no, to find Hans's room along the rows above floor twenty four. Now, she had a problem.
Okay, when plan A fails, don't completely scrap it, Hans would say. Think of another way to get to the end of plan A, because any decent plan has several steps. Don't go to plan B until you've exhausted all options for A, because A is invariably the best.
So, what do we know?
Hans is a smoker. He needs a smoking room.
Not much help, considering they usually put all the smoking rooms on the same floor.
Hans always books suites, no matter where he stays.
Okay, suites tend to be in the middle of the hall.
Hans dislikes elevators, which will narrow us down to about…eight rooms on this floor, four on each side. He's also an ostentatious prick, which would make him want the better view, strip-side, not courtyard.
Which left Anna with four possible room choices. She feared stepping onto the floor proper, should Hans come bursting out of his room in a fury and catch her. She didn't have her taser, and she wouldn't put it past Hans to get physical with her. He'd given her enough slaps for missteps in her younger days, and after screwing her over on St. John? If he had ever had feeling for her it was no longer. She didn't see another way around properly setting foot on the floor, so Anna puffed her cheeks in a determined breath and manually pried to the emergency-stopped doors open with her spiked heel. The maintenance crew would probably be coming to look at any emergency alert anyway, so she popped the red button once again and sent the car rolling back down, pacing impatiently in the lonely elevator dock.
There was a clomping noise as the housekeeping cart rumbled off of the other elevator car, the maid checking on the trash bags near the ice machine and vending area. Anna was surveying the hallways for ducts, when…
Like a lightening bolt, it struck. There was access to the ducts through a vent in her own suite, why not in the suites on the lower floors? She snatched a white towel from the cart and a paper from the trash while the maid with earbuds blaring Motown went about her duties, returning to the elevator while Anna discreetly investigated a swath of four doors in the hallway.
She knocked on one.
"Yeah?" a feminine voice called.
Wrong one.
Anna darted into an enclave and waited until the bewildered woman shut the door again. She then approached the next one, and knocked.
"Yes? Who is it?"
Hans.
Anna retreated again, but this time moved all the way to the stairwell for good measure, knowing Hans would at least step out of the room and check a few corners. Check a few corners he did, looking angry yet haggard, as if the whole affair had aged him in some inexplicable way. Anna waited three more minutes, then tiptoed three rooms down from Hans, but still remained on his side of the hallway. She knocked, but there was no answer.
"'ousekeeping," she chanced, lowering the pitch of her voice, and knocked again. She waited, to no avail, and then knocked loudly, excessively, a third time, to ensure the vacancy of the room. She dropped to her knees to peek under the slit at the bottom of the door. Dark as pitch.
Perfect.
She pulled her phone out and set to work.
"Room service?" Anna asked. "Hi, I'm in room… 2416. What's the quickest thing the kitchen can whip up, I'm running late for a party…. BLT sounds great… yes, bill to 2416, with some chips and a Diet Coke, please…. About how long…? Ten minutes is perfect, thank you!"
Nine minutes and forty-seven seconds later, the elevator dinged and a chubby-faced blonde boy stepped out with a service tray, Diet Coke fizzing around squared ice cubes and bacon scent pouring out of the elevator.
"Oooops!" Anna said, stumbling forward, paper in hand, and… clad in naught but a towel.
The boy's face slacked and he choked, admirably hefting the tray above his head as he coughed in surprise. His eyes practically shot our of his head à la the aroused Looney Tunes characters.
"Oh, my dinner— could you, shoot, would you believe it?" Anna drawled, Texas accent this time. "I just stepped out to get the evening subscription before my shower and I plumb locked my key in the room," Anna chirped, updo forgone and hair tumbling over her freckled shoulders. Her sparkly gold dress was a puddle of shed fabric, nestled before the hidden threshold of room 2420.
"Please, tell me you've got a universal pass key on you?" Anna begged.
The boy sputtered again and the tray he held began shaking, the Diet Coke in very real danger of toppling onto a fancy plate and turning crispy chips soggy. "We're not really supposed to let people into the rooms—"
"You're going to leave me out here like this?!" Anna asked, appalled. "I'm 2416, that's my dinner right there!" she continued, protesting. "BLT with chips and a Diet Coke, right?"
"T-T-That's right, miss."
"And how do you expect to deliver it without me in the room to get it?" Anna flailed, waving the paper in hand. "And sure enough, someone else is going to come off that elevator and— whoops," she said, and the towel fell to the floor.
Ketchup had nothing on the crimson of the blonde boy's face as Anna coyly bit her lower lip and deftly opened the paper in hand to shield her girly bits from young, innocent eyes.
"I'llopenitforyou!" The blonde boy yelped.
"Oh, thank you so much!" Anna purred, casting surreptitious glances down the hall toward Hans's room, hoping he hadn't heard the increasing volume of her conversation. The sandy-blondish boy fiddled the key card into the slot with shaky hands, the room service tray teetering in his grasp. He was so embarrassed he didn't question the lack of light in the room, or why there was no shower water running.
"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" Anna effused, flicking switches and skipping toward her bathroom. "I don't have any cash on me, but if your shift ends before I go out at ten you can come back and I'll… give you a tip," she smirked, and watched as the room service boy turned tail and skedattled back to the elevator.
She huffed and shoved a handful of chips in her face, taking care to put the door stop in before dashing back into the hallway to retrieve her clothes. Five minutes later and dressed, she had located the square or so foot of space that signified the vent, and had stacked room chairs atop a desk to remove the grate.
"Ugh, the things I do for that woman…" Anna said, and pulled herself and her twenty-five hundred dollar dress into a cobweb infested air pocket.
Okay, left is hallway.
Which is where she went, and then took a right, bypassing the first few open turns because she was several rooms down from Hans, not right beside him.
Thank God. He would have recognized that towel routine in a blink. He thought that one up, the bastard.
Another right, and Anna slowed her lumbering crawls, hoping instead for that stealthy grace Jane possessed while maneuvering through cramped spaces. Anna fumbled in her cleavage and extracted her iPhone. The tracking Hans and floor-hopping and room-infiltrating had taken a good forty-five minutes, enough time for Jane to either fail ridiculously at poker or monumentally piss someone off. Anna crept forward, her legs splayed frog-like behind her, arms bent and elbows bearing the brunt of her weight. Her sequins scratched against the metal beneath her, and she tried to picture Jane's ass in front of her to keep from feeling like the walls were closing in.
Light eventually filtered through a grating, like the industrial silhouettes across the bars of a prison cell. She didn't really want to think about prison, not with Hans and all of his villainous connections so close at hand. She smelled cigarette smoke and crept closer and closer toward the grate, unsure just what she was hoping to see in his room that would help her figure out what the hell was going on… to figure out why Jane was sequestered downstairs in a tiny room with a dying CEO, a member of the Saudi royal family, and a handful of other nefarious characters.
She heard the phone ring, and saw a shirtless Hans slog toward the edge of his bed, cigarette dangling from his lips.
"The papers came through?" he clipped. His entire being seemed to sigh and sink, a hand rubbing through auburn hair so that it stood unkempt, out-of-the-ordinary for the man she'd learned everything from, from the guy she'd once imagined a life with.
A life with, a lifetime ago.
"And the lawyers say everything is good on our end? What about in Riyadh?"
…
…
…
"What do you mean he wants a progress report?"
…
"On-site review? Shit," Hans said, smoke exiting his nostrils in two columns of silvery steam. "There's no fucking site to review. Is legal really pressing this? I mean, he mentioned it to me a few times, but I've kept him off the trail. Now the lawyers are insisting?"
…
"But you're sure the paper work is done, right? Iron clad, legally. Can't go back?"
…
"If it's set, then I can take care of things on this end. No need for an on-site review of the fleet. Especially a non-existent fleet."
Hans inhaled again on the cigarette, puffing with urgency. Like if that nicotine didn't get to the proper nerve receptors quickly enough, he would certainly explode.
"And that… problem, with the break-in security? You took care of them like I asked, didn't you?"
He took another massive drag on the cigarette, eyes bloodshot and cracked like drying riverbed mud.
"Good. So let's use their fate as a warning for anybody else intent on getting trigger happy with the targets. We don't want them hurt, remember? If they're dead, this whole thing is over."
He stood to look out over the lighted skyline.
"I know we're not ready. That's why we haven't even started tracking them. They keep coming to us, remember? I told Herr Doktor that from the start, but he still only gave me one dart."
Anna furrowed her brow and tried not to press her face to the grate as Hans walked toward a desk on the far side of the room. He flipped through an open binder carelessly, then withdrew two black cases. Anna swallowed a gasp when she saw him screw a silencer over the short barrel of his Baretta.
"I know, but they're here, and he's spooked them, so we've got to do something about him. Especially if his team keeps requesting visual progress of B4."
He shoved a magazine into the hand grip and racked the slide at the top of the device to chamber the first round. His thieving hands slid smoothly along the handgun like lotion over skin, arming the weapon with a ratcheting click.
"And I'm in no mood to play Vegas escort if the deal is done. When the shit hits the fan, I don't want him causing us any legal troubles. I'd rather scare any fight out of him now and go after the girls."
Anna's eyes narrowed.
"I'm don't intend to kill him if I don't absolutely have to, even if legal says we have full control over the futures now," Hans said. "It'll be too messy. And have you found a local security service like I asked? I imagine they're a dime a dozen in Vegas… alright, eleven o'clock? That's the earliest a team can get here?"
Anna checked her phone, covering the dim light in the air shaft with her clammy palm. It was just after nine thirty.
"And remember, tell them no guns! Stunners if they must, for the redhead. Give them decent descriptions to work with."
…
…
"I don't care if it's not ready, they're here, and who knows the next time we'll have them this close? They're onto us and the Doc knows it. A's beach house was full to the brim with information. None of the important stuff, but it's only a matter of time."
Anna was startled by a heavy beating at the door. Luckily, so was Hans.
Back from vacation relaxed and a shade or so tanner, so I spat out a double update. Maybe we'll get some questions answered here! Review if you feel so inclined, guys.