Page 23 of Locked and Loaded

Lennox quickly hopped into the shower. Her pulse ticked up as she thought about what Yasmina had said. A problem with her credit card. Not her card, Donna Abbington’s card. Since Donna Abbington didn’t exist, there should be no problem with the card.

Lennox went over all the steps she’d taken with that identity. Nothing should have sounded any alarms. That was the thing about being a financial forensic investigator; she knew how to find the money. It had also taught her how to hide money and how to create false identities.

People always assumed she was just a glorified accountant. She snorted. When she’d worked at the Department of Justice, she’d worked alongside FBI agents, prosecutors, organized crime task forces, intelligence analysts, and human trafficking investigators. She’d had no idea at the time how important all that experience would be. She understood surveillance, witness handling, source development, and a host of other law enforcement skills.

Toweling herself off, she ran through the other identities she had created. There were three more. She could switch to one of those if she needed, but she’d rather be sure this one was burned first. Creating everything had been painstaking work. She didn’t want to waste any of her alter-identities.

If someone had told her when she worked for the DOJ that one day she’d be on the other side of things, she would have laughed them out of the office. Now she was profoundly grateful she’d seen the writing on the wall and had gotten out of the DOJ before it all fell apart.

Working at Cooper and Laith, a multinational conglomerate, was an eye-opening experience. She’d found out very quickly that she had the necessary financial skills to track the money anywhere, to assess a company and all the players when it came to their finances, but had a ton to learn when it came to dealing with criminals and people in general. She shuddered at the memory of almost getting caught trying to get into a rival company’s offices. Turns out she wasn’t as field-ready as she had thought.

Pulling a lovely sundress out of the closet, she quickly dressed. She’d seen it in a shop window when she’d been particularly depressed about her sister, so she grabbed it under the guise of retail therapy. It hadn’t been that expensive, and the blue color brought out the blue in her eyes. The white appliqué flowers made her smile.

She did her makeup and put her hair up in a loose bun. Checking her look in the mirror, she realized that the dress and her hairstyle needed earrings. She started digging around for them.

It had been the earrings that had almost gotten her caught. She’d dropped one in an office she wasn’t supposed to be in, and she’d had to go back for it. She’d been about to be discovered when Jack Mercer appeared out of nowhere and created a distraction so she could escape. She didn’t think he’d even known what she was up to, but Jack had been way ahead of her as per usual.

As the head of security for C&L, Jack knew everything about everyone, all the time. He was a former spook of some kind, she guessed, although he would neither confirm nor deny it. He’d saved her ass and then given her the dressing down of a lifetime. She’d put herself and C&L at risk by jumping the gun, going in on her own. “You're the smartest investigator in this building, but someday that won't matter because you'll walk right into an ambush you never saw coming.” That had been the turning point. He’d trained her in all sorts of things after that. He became the father she’d lost.

The day she took leave to find her sister, he’d offered her his help. She only had to reach out, and he’d offered to do everything he could to support her. She’d thanked him and promised to call if she needed him.

The dark circles under her eyes came through the carefully applied makeup, as did the worry lines and tightness around her mouth. She was doing the best she could, she reminded herself.

She took a deep breath and let it out. She would have loved to reach out to Jack a million times over the last months for his help, or just someone to listen, but Jack had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, and he needed to focus his energy elsewhere.

Squaring her shoulders, Lennox took a last look in the mirror and then grabbed her crossbody bag and headed out of her room. Time to find out what the bitchy Yasmina needed from her.

Lennox made her way around the central open space and down the stairs to the main riad. The evening air was cool against her skin, and the burble of the fountain in the center courtyard grew louder as she approached. She spotted Yasmina behind the concierge desk speaking to a fellow employee, her dark hair pulled back in a severe bun, her uniform crisp and unwrinkled.

Yasmina looked up as Lennox approached and gave her that same cold smile. "Ms. Abbington. Thank you for coming down."

"You said there was a problem with my card." Lennox kept her voice pleasant. "I'm sure it's just a mix-up."

Yasmina's fingers clicked across the keyboard. "I'm afraid it's not a mix-up. The address you gave us doesn't exist."

Lennox raised an eyebrow as she tried to keep the fear off her face. She knew for a fact that the addresses for all of her fake identities did exist. They weren’t necessarily apartments, but the addresses were most certainly real. "That's odd. I've lived at that address for years."

"I've checked it twice." Yasmina turned the screen so Lennox could see. "There is no 4817 Willow Road in Alexandria, Virginia. The postal code doesn't match, and the street doesn't exist in that zip code."

Lennox leaned forward and studied the screen. It took her about three seconds to spot the problem. "You typed Willow Road."

"Yes. That's what's on your reservation,” Yasmina confirmed.

"No," Lennox said, letting a small smile play at the corner of her mouth, pleased that her false identity was still secure. "My reservation says Willow Street. Not Road. You typed it in wrong."

Yasmina's eyes flicked to the screen, then back to Lennox. "I'm quite certain I typed what was on file." Her glare remained coldly confident.

"And I'm quite certain you didn't." Lennox folded her arms. She wasn’t going to give this bitch the satisfaction of showing her anger. "Why don't you try again? Willow Street. S-T-R-E-E-T."

Yasmina's jaw tightened. She made no move toward the keyboard. “Perhaps you need to produce the credit card and some official identification that has that address on it.”

At that moment, a woman in a more tailored version of the hotel uniform stepped out from the back office. Her name tag read Fatima, and her title was Head Concierge. She had kind eyes and the sort of posture that suggested she'd been doing this job for a very long time.

"Is there a problem here?" she asked, clearly sensing the tension between the other two women.

Yasmina spoke first. "Ms. Abbington's credit card information doesn't appear to be valid. I was explaining that the address⁠—"

"Let me see." Fatima moved behind the desk and glanced at the screen. "Yasmina, you've entered Willow Road. The reservation clearly says Willow Street." She tapped several keys, hit enter, and nodded. "The address is valid. The card is fine."