The Hit by David Baldacci Read Free Book Online Page B

After that, no one bothered to keep score anymore.
    You just got eulogized. Maybe.
    She debated whether to send Robie another message. But she decided that would be overplaying her hand. She didn’t underestimate anyone. And though her cell was presumably untraceable, the agency might buck those odds, track her back through communication channels and find her.
    And what more was there left to say anyway? Robie had his assignment. He would do his best to carry it out.
    Reel would do her best to make sure he failed. One or both ofthem might end up dead. That was the nature of the beast. There was nothing fair about it. It was just the way it was.
    Reel slipped on a robe, crossed the room, and pulled her phone from her jacket hanging on the door. She began hitting keys. It truly was amazing what these devices could do. Trace your every step. Tell you exactly how to get to somewhere else. With a flick of a key Reel could get the most esoteric information in a matter of seconds.
    But there was a flip side to all this freedom.
    People had trillions of eyes now with which to watch you. And it wasn’t just the government. Or big business. It could be the man on the street with the latest gadgetry and a modicum of technical savvy.
    That made Reel’s job harder. But it was hard to begin with.
    She digested the information that had come up on the screen. She put it away, slipped into the bathroom, and took off her robe. The hot water in the shower felt good. She was tired, her muscles weary from a workout that had pushed her harder than ever.
    There had been a couple of young guys in the gym doing one-armed curls while preening in the mirror. Another had put in twenty moderately active minutes on the elliptical and obviously thought that qualified him as a stud. She had gone into an adjoining room and begun her exercise. She had sensed two of them watching her after a few minutes. It wasn’t the way she was dressed. She didn’t wear tight-fitting spandex. Loose, baggy clothing that covered her completely was her thing. She was there to sweat, not find a husband or a one-night stand.
    She sensed they weren’t a threat. They were simply astonished at what she was doing with her body. Thirty minutes later, when she was barely a third of the way through her routine, they turned and left, shaking their heads. She knew what they were thinking:
    I couldn’t last five minutes at that pace.
    And they would be right.
    She turned off the shower, dried off, and put her robe back on, her hair wrapped in a towel. She scanned the room service menu and selected a salad and indulged herself with a glass of a California zinfandel.
    When the young, good-looking man brought the tray in she caught his reflection in the mirror. He was checking her out.
    Reel had slept with men on several different continents. All had been in connection with a job. A means to an end. If she could use sex to get her where she needed to go, so be it. She assumed that was one reason the agency had employed her. And they had encouraged her to use that weapon in her arsenal, with the caveat that she was never to become personally involved with any of them. Which translated into never feeling anything for them at all. She was a machine and they were simply convenient for the mission.
    In that regard men were decidedly the weaker sex. Women could get them to do anything with a promise of action under the sheets, up against a wall, or on their knees, as the case might be.
    She signed the bill and gave him a generous tip.
    His eyes asked her for more.
    She denied the request simply by turning away.
    Once the door closed behind her she took off her robe, freed her hair, and put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. She pushed a table against the door, sat down to her meal, and slowly sipped her wine as the rain pounded away outside.
    She would soon have somewhere to go. It was always important to keep going. Stationary objects tended to get run over.
    At some point soon Will Robie