elena took her outrageous daring back into the fray, leaving her briefcase under the bed and rinsing her teacup so as to leave as few signs as possible that she’d been here. She found a service elevator and tucked herself against the front wall beside the door. When the old doors clunked open on the first floor, she eased a hand over the open door button and held it there, giving any curious terrorist passing by plenty of time to check out the conveyance.
But no one approached. No one so much as grunted out a demanding question. Selena edged around the opening to find an empty hallway with a decidedly more utilitarian look than the other areas of the capitol she’d seen so far. The painted walls needed a new coat of their flat eggshell color, and the carpets needed cleaning—or better yet, replacement. A rolling cloth laundry bin sat at a haphazard angle against the wall, and the thick, steamy smell of food permeated the air. Roast lamb overlaid by all the spices of baharat—cloves and cinnamon and cumin and the sting of curry powder.
She held her breath, waiting to see how her stomach might react to the invasion of odors, but either the tea had done the trick or she’d gotten the problem out of her system. It was undoubtedly coincidence that as she held her coat closed with one hand, it rested low over her flat belly. Flat for now?
Stop that.
She stepped out into the hallway, moving swiftly to the first inset door to consider what she’d seen along the way. A door at the end of the hall with a mop and bucket sitting outside it. Double swinging doors not far from her current position, which seemed to be—she peeked inside to be sure—a linen closet, full of napkins and silky-fine linen tablecloths. Not of any particular interest. The maintenance closet and the kitchen, on the other hand…
She listened, heard nothing but the ping of a water pipe, and headed for the swinging doors, quickly scanning the interior through the small windows before she invited herself in.
Fancy. Lots of gleaming stainless steel, a bank of gas stoves against the wall, a column of ovens butted up against them. Cutlery, pots and pans and obscure devices whose purpose Selena could only guess.
Bullets riddled it all. Blood smeared the floor, thick trails leading to a walk-in freezer. Food sat half-prepared, congealing over cold burners.
Selena raised a critical eyebrow. If she were going to stage a government takeover, she’d want to make sure her people had food available—not to mention a place to prepare it. As it was, she hoped the Kemenis had brought MREs along, because otherwise everyone would get pretty hungry before this incident was over. And a hungry terrorist was a cranky terrorist.
Still, no assumptions. Perhaps whoever ran this show wasn’t all that stupid after all, but had merely encountered a minor rebellion he’d had no choice but to quell.
Selena walked the kitchen, stepping over the blood trails…walking through them would only betray her presence here when someone inevitably came back to see just what could be done about the food situation. She helped herself to a lovely little paring knife, something she could stick through her belt without worrying about inadvertent stab wounds. By all means, no inadvertent stab wounds.
Ice pick. Oh yeah. No easy place to put it; with regret Selena jabbed it through the bottom of her coat pocket, leaving the knobby handle within easy reach. Corkscrew? Too bulky. For now.
Besides, she could always come back. A good iron frying pan upside the head did as much harm to a terrorist as to anyone.
A scuffle of sound alerted her, sending her up against the wall beside the double doors. When it came again she pinpointed it to the freezer, and immediately realized that not everyone thrown in that convenient storage had been as dead as assumed. She opened the door with much caution, ready for any survivors who might assume she was Kemeni.
In the glare of a naked lightbulb, a man stood tottering on his feet, his whites splashed with the blood of others and liberally soaked with his own. The impressive fillet knife he clutched wouldn’t have done him much good against Kemeni rifles, but he held it with much determination regardless. The equally determined look on his face faded to confusion as he took in the sight of Selena in the doorway, all her borrowed weaponry in concealment, an American woman in informal clothing who should be screaming at the sight of the grotesquely piled dead before her. Men in kitchen whites, men in green jackets.
Selena didn’t scream. She said in Berzhaani, “You’d best sit before you fall. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“The Kemenis have already done that,” the man said. Short, stout enough to fill out his whites without slopping over the edges, he carried a cynical air and a nose generous enough to have provided for two men. He eyed her, taking hold of a shelf to steady himself. Before him, the pile of dead; around him, shelves of the highest quality food products, arranged in meticulous sections. “Are you a crazy woman, coming here? If they don’t have you, why don’t you run?”
“They know of me,” she said, letting her voice take on an absent tone. “They just don’t know where I am. I’d rather they not find out—just as I’m sure you’d rather they not know you still survive.”
He made an emphatic gesture with his free hand. “I do believe we are allies, whoever you are—the enemy of my enemy.”
“That last part’s accurate enough,” she murmured. “Are you badly hurt? There’s not much I can do for you…tablecloths, maybe.”
“I know only that I’m not dead.” He glanced at the others from the kitchen, and sorrow flickered across his features, settling in at the flare of his substantial nostrils and the press of his lips. “I have been shot in the arm, which does not work very well. Otherwise, I am only cold.”
“Tablecloths should help with that. We could raise the temperature—”
“And sit here in the middle of rotting food and the decomposing bodies of my friends?” He shook his head, sharply. “They brought their weapons in through the kitchen, you know. Mutaa turned out to be one of them. They came running in here and he handed out rifles like kitchen treats. And who are you again?”
“Someone who wants to get us out of this mess.” Selena knew he wouldn’t quite be able to understand, and he didn’t. She left him with a baffled and wary expression. “I’ll be right back.”
Retrieving a pile of tablecloths from the linen closet took only moments. She brought him as many as she could carry, and used several to cover the dead. The others she draped carefully over the man’s shoulders, and then she found a plastic crate full of cabbage and flipped it upside down, disregarding the rolling cabbages. “Here. Sit.” And as he complied, looking more bemused than ever, she asked, “Have they been here since they did this? Have you heard them checking out this area at all? Did you overhear them say anything about their purpose?”
He raised a hand, along with both eyebrows. “Ai, ai,” he said, the Berzhaani equivalent of hold your horses. “They came, they killed, they left. I’ve been in here with the others since then. I’ve heard nothing. And they did not take the time to explain themselves before they killed.”
Selena tucked her lower lip in her teeth for a thoughtful chew. Not helpful. Not helpful at all. She’d gained a few useful little defensive weapons here, but no information to speak of. She knew from Cole that the Kemenis were demanding Razidae’s resignation, but she still had no idea what the terrorists truly wanted. Oftentimes the public demand and the private intent didn’t match very neatly…and until she knew the Kemenis’ true goals, she couldn’t assess the situation properly. Act on it properly.
She found
