Locked and Loaded by Alexis Grant Page A

New Orleans. I’ll be at the Ritz Carlton on Lincoln tonight, and maybe tomorrow as well. But I’m being watched.”
    Again, there was a hesitation and she could hear silence crackle on the line.
    “Were you injured before the target left Miami?”
    “No,” she said quietly. “I never had to deal with that, and it looks like I’ll have a few days to heal. Security will be watching me while he’s out of town, so I cannot deploy to New Orleans—again, Hank will fill you in. Do you understand?”
    “Affirmative. I’ll be in touch, one way or another. Copy?”
    “I copy,” she said, holding the telephone more tightly. “But I have to go.”
    She disconnected the call when she heard her manicurist calling for her.
    “Ms. Rodriguez? I’m ready for you whenever you are ready. I just wanted to let you know … but please take your time.”
    “Coming in a moment,” Sage called out in a forced, upbeat tone and then flushed the toilet. She let the water run a bit in the sink and washed her hands, slathering on soap, then lotion for complete authenticity. Reversing her earlier actions, she returned the encrypted cell phone to her locker and then went to meet Chen Lee.
    The moment the young woman appraised her cheek with sad, worried eyes, Sage sighed.
    “You know what … can you ask Julie if they have some kind of organic facial and maybe light massage treatments that can heal bruises? Or maybe just an ice pack?”
    “We do,” Chen Lee said in a graciously quiet murmur. “That, plus soothing treatments, and the hot and cold pools, along with other water treatments will help.”
    *   *   *
     
    The call to Sage Wagner ended, but the impact of hearing her voice and knowing that at the moment she was all right, lingered. The urge to go to her, to see with his own eyes that she was really okay, was an irrational impulse that he had to wrestle. The muscles in his biceps twitched with the need to move, to thrust himself into action, as he pushed the remains of his lunch away and looked around the small restaurant.
    There was no justifiable reason he’d stayed in South Beach, other than the fact that he’d wanted to be nearby … just in case he got an SOS call from Sage—which was ridiculous, now that he’d actually heard from her.
    Despite all the beautiful people parading around South Beach, that wasn’t why he’d stayed. He could give a damn about bikini-clad coeds or vacuous celebs spending crazy amounts of money in chichi shops and eateries when he had a mission to focus on.
    He’d stayed to check on Sage. That was the undeniable truth. But that, in and of itself, was insane and off mission. He wasn’t her body guard. She was a trained agent, able to take care of herself. He had to get his head together.
    Rather than dwell on the two and a half hours he’d wasted riding around the area, supposedly familiarizing himself with the terrain—which, if he was honest, really amounted to little more than stalling for time and eating lunch while he hoped to figure out the impossible—he called Hank Wilson like Sage instructed. He got Hank on the second ring. The intel that Sage had been able to gather in a couple of hours blew Anthony’s mind.
    Her intel from the ground, and from her position inside, was so much more effective than what he was getting at a distant, ten-thousand-foot aerial view. Although a lot of it was still laced with speculation, he trusted her gut hunches. They were logical possibilities coming from one tough, savvy, sexy woman on the inside.
    He listened to Hank relay the update and could corroborate a lot of it from his side as well. According to MI, the targets weren’t making a lot of the usual mistakes, like sloppy cell phone chatter, e-mails, and other common leaks. It took one well-positioned agent on the inside to get what they needed. Therefore, to his way of viewing the world, Sage Wagner had to live long enough to be decorated for that kind of heroism.
    “Agent Alvarez