Sheldon Goldin was a trained assassin. Igor had set a trap for her. She should have picked up on it when he’d called. He’d acted strange on the phone. She wondered how he’d found her out.

And Lance. He’d screwed her too. She’d thrown caution to the wind, going to the meet even though she knew she was being tailed. She never would have done that if she’d known Lance wouldn’t be there.

And the female agent.

Tatyana wondered if she’d survived. She’d seen her go down. She’d done everything right. It was Tatyana’s blank bullets that screwed them.

Tatyana hadn’t had time to tell her much. If she was dead now she supposed it didn’t really matter.

Tatyana reached her locker and spun the combination dial. Inside was a backpack. She grabbed it and went back to the main concourse. There were clothing stores in the station but none of them were open. She’d have to wait for that.

There was a drugstore and she bought a pair of black socks, some tights, some toiletries, isopropyl, and a first aid kit. Then she went to the washroom, locked herself in one of the stalls, and examined the wound. It was beginning to change color. She doused it in alcohol and wrapped it in a clean bandage.

She cleaned her face and hands at the sink and fixed her makeup.

There was a hotel nearby that rented rooms by the hour and accepted cash. She went back outside and got another cab. It let her out at the hotel and she paid. She entered the hotel, passing drug addicts and prostitutes on the steps, and when she reached the guy at the counter, she emphasized her Russian accent.

“I need room.”

“How long?”

“All day.”

“That’s three hundred,” the man said.

It was the kind of place that didn’t ask questions. It let a woman rent a room, leave every hour, and return with a new man. There were some pimps hanging around in the back but you weren’t required to be with them.

She searched in her purse and pulled out most of the cash she had. “I have two-twenty,” she said.

“Price is three hundred.”

“I’ll go across street.”

The man sighed and pulled a key off its hook on the wall behind him. “Fine,” he said. “Two-twenty. No shooting up in there.”

“I know.”

“You shoot up in there, you’ll get the shit kicked out of you.”

“Okay.”

“Worse than you already got.”

44

Lance sat on a commuter train from DC to New York. The train passed endless rows of cookie-cutter houses, warehouses, big box retail stores. It looked like the world was becoming one big logistics solution.

He stretched out and made himself comfortable.

He had four seats to himself, the two he was sprawled across, the two facing, and the small formica table between them.