Fractured

Poking the Bear

"Raven?" I called out from the slight opening in the zipper of the bag. No answer.

"Ravenstahl?" Nothing.

"Big, bad, scary professional Russian that can't hear me over the sound of his own driving?" I tried.

Still no response. I had one last trick left, but I knew he wouldn't like me using it. Honestly, it was a dirty trick and I really didn't feel right about it, but I needed to know if the coast was clear and I could get out of this damn bag.

"Yevgeny!" It was a good thing I was already hidden behind the back seats of his jeep. The string of expletives he let out at my use of his first name would have been enough to send me into hiding. "Can I get out of this bag now? I know I make it look easy, but being folded up in here isn't really something I should be doing for a long period of time and I'm starting to cramp."

I could hear his grip tightening on the steering wheel. "Don't use that name! Da, you can get out of the bag, but stay hidden in the back there. I can't see any tails, but that doesn't mean they aren't trying to find us. Oh, by the way, call me that again and we are going to have serious problems. Now tell me where we are going so I can stop driving random patterns through the city blocks."

"Turn on the GPS! I punched the address in before we got to the event in case we ended up in this situation." I told him while I unzipped the bag the rest of the way and sprawled out as best I could in the cargo area of his jeep, waiting for him to arrive at the hotel I had set the GP to lead us to. It had permanent residence apartments on the top floors and the rest of the hotel was used by tourists.

It was another 15 minutes before he pulled into the parking garage. Phil and I both owned apartments in a number of various upmarket holiday accommodation areas across the state. They were purchased in case of an event like this, or in case someone needed emergency accommodation while getting out of a difficult situation or any other number of possible situation that would result in a person needing to be able to lay low. Knowing that a number of the apartments were currently being leased out - there was no point letting them sit empty, I had chosen one of the apartments that belonged to Phil, on the opposite side of town to the Sergeant Jasper, wanting to make sure they couldn't easily trace any of us back to the apartments the guys lived in.

Raven reversed into a park near the stairwell, before coming to the back of the Jeep and opening it up for me to hop out.

"What do we do about people inside the lobby?" He asked, as he offered me his hand to get out of the Jeep.

"The only person that should be in there is the receptionist. She was briefed earlier that there may be an unexpected visitor. She was told if she heard the word Seahorse from anyone, she was to make herself scarce for 5 minutes so that they could enter without her seeing them, ensuring that if someone came asking about me, she could honestly say she hadn't seen me."

"And how do we get her this codeword without her seeing either of us?" He asked.

I just raised an eyebrow at him and eyed the phone in his hand. "You call her. Then, as was agreed, you go dark. There will be emergency burn phones in the room that we can use in their place until we find out more on what is happening and determine it is safe to go back."

Raven stopped at the door that would lead us to the foyer to make the call. Once we heard the receptionist, who had identified herself as Jenny when Raven called, leave the front area, we made our way across to the elevators and quickly entered, making our way to the top floor. We walked to the apartment at the far end of the floor before Raven suddenly looked concerned.

"How do we get in? We don't have a key!" I laughed at the fact that he was only now realising there was no key with us to open the door.

Smiling at Raven, wrapped my hand around the door handle, making sure my thumb wrapped over the edge of the handle. About 3 seconds later there was a faint ping and the sound of the door unlocking. Opening the door, I smiled as I ushered Raven inside.