Shadows of the safehouse

The heavy oak door of the hotel room thudded shut, the sound echoing with a finality that seemed to vibrate through the floorboards and into my marrow. Bob let out a long, ragged exhale—the kind of breath a man draws when he realizes he’s still alive, if only for the moment. He dropped his duffel bag near the entryway of the small foyer with a heavy thud.

I felt the vibration in my pocket a second before the chime cut through the silence. I pulled the burner phone out, the screen’s cold, clinical blue glow illuminating the raw, cracked skin across my knuckles—reminders of a morning I’d rather forget. It was a message from Sera.

“I know you’re out of the safehouse, Marie. It goes up in flames within a few hours. Consider it a thank you for saving my life more than once.”

I stared at the text, the words burning into my retinas for a beat too long. Then, I pocketed the phone without a word and looked at Bob.

“Bad news?” he asked, his eyes scanning my face with the practiced intensity of a man who lived by reading reactions.

“Sera says the safehouse is slated to burn within a few hours,” I said, crossing the room toward the window. I pulled the curtain back just enough to scan the street-level perimeter from our eighth-floor vantage point. “She knows exactly where we are.”

Bob paused, his hand white-knuckled around the strap of his bag. He watched me with that slow, deliberate scrutiny that usually preceded a hard truth. “You going to respond?”

“No,” I replied, my voice flat. I ignored the phantom weight of the device in my pocket.

Bob stood up straight, crossing his arms over his chest. “She’s the only tether we have left to the inner circle, Marie. Why the radio silence?”

I turned away from the window, leaning my weight against the frame. “Because she’s already in deep shit with the wife due to the history between her and I. If Elena finds out Sera is even breathing in our direction right now, the politics of this job become the least of my worries. In this business, there are lines you don't cross twice.”

Bob raised a salt-and-pepper eyebrow, a silent, stubborn demand for the part of the story I was holding back. I met his gaze, the weight of a decade of regret pressing into my chest.

“Sera was the love of my life,” I stated, the admission feeling like a jagged stone in my throat. “When you spend years working for different governments, thrust together into the same dark corners, you tend to fall in love with the person you shouldn’t. We were supposed to get married before I started working for you. She was hospitalized for months after a difficult assignment, and she fell for her doctor. They were married six months later.”

Bob gave a slow, somber nod, the skepticism in his eyes finally giving way to a grim understanding of the stakes. “The casualties we don't bury,” he muttered. “I get it.”

I cleared my throat, the air in the room suddenly too thick with the past. “Come on. Let me show you around the suite.”

I gave him a tour, moving through the suite with the mechanical efficiency of someone who had already mapped every exit and blind spot. “The bedroom is through there. We’ve got a small kitchenette with a stocked mini-fridge if you need to eat, the pull-out couch, the secondary living room area, and the full bathroom.”

Bob walked to the center of the living area, spinning in a slow circle as he took in the dimensions. He let out a low, appreciative whistle. “This is three times the size of any hotel room back home,” he said, his voice echoing slightly in the sterile quiet of the suite.

“It is,” I said, already moving back to the door to double-check the secondary deadbolts I’d reinforced. “But those rooms aren’t as secure, and they sure as hell aren’t as safe.”

Bob walked over to the window, peering out at the cold glitter of the city lights before turning back to me. “So, what now?” he asked, his voice dropping to a low rasp. “What’s the move?”

I checked the time on my watch, watching the second hand sweep with agonizing, rhythmic precision. “Now, we sit and wait,” I told him firmly. “We don't move too far from the hotel, we don't signal Sera as she always has eyes on me and we don't make contact with Santi until Boris arrives.”

Bob ran a hand along the wall, his expression skeptical. "And how secure is this suite, really? It looks like every other overpriced tourist trap in the city."

"Looks are the point," I replied, tapping the surface of the wall near the doorframe. The sound wasn't the hollow thud of drywall; it was the dull, heavy ring of industrial plating. "The walls and the door are all reinforced metal, hidden under those wooden panels. It’s designed to withstand more than just a common breach team."

I looked around the nondescript space, the shadows lengthening as the sun dipped below the skyline. To Bob, it was a nice room. To me, it was a fortress.

“This is the only place I felt safe when people were trying to kill me,” I explained, my voice barely above a whisper. “When the world was falling apart, this was the only corner of it where I could actually breathe.”