Play It Safe (The Safe House Series Book 2) by Leslie North

your brain. Fuck . He couldn’t argue there.
    “The success of this hangs on how well this agent can pull off Angela. I wasn’t about to leave her brother’s life to chance.”
    “Her brother’s life is not your concern,” snapped Rockwell. “If you’re not back at the safe house by nightfall, Doctor McAllister in tow, you can bend over and kiss your career as a security agent goodbye.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    The line went dead.
    Samson wanted to unleash a punch hard enough to kick his own ass. Order received. He was grabbing Angela’s hand and they were getting out of there, asap.
    He turned to the swarm of dark-suited agents and impressive bank of computer screens and equipment. His eyes locked in on Angela’s dowdy beige dress and frizzy hair. A swell of relief warred with a lurch of something else, a chill that rode up his shoulder blades and turned his body ice-cold.
    Angela’s dowdy beige dress was Agent Sikes.
    Then where the hell was Angela?
    He scanned the sea of agents once more, asked after her whereabouts to everyone unfortunate enough to cross his search path, and damned-near shook a startled Agent Sikes out of her wig. He didn’t have to check the restrooms or the surveillance van or the grainy images lining the wall.
    Angela had hustled him. Again.
     
    ***
     
    Angela glanced up at the zenith of the black and white striped art. The flagpole-like feature was as tall as the decades-old palm fronds. Vertigo made her stomach lurch more than the thought of being bait.
    Samson had been so on her since they left the safe house that he might as well have crawled up inside her womb. She had lost heart that it was possible to give him the slip, so when the opportunity presented, she took it without precognition. No calculations, no pills, no plan—nothing but the singular focus of getting to the spot and saving Mike. But the longer she stood there, the moving crowd like a noisy beast with unpredictable tentacles, enduring the unshakeable feeling that she was not only being watched but assessed and critiqued and studied like a specimen in a petri dish, the more her kneecaps tremored and challenged her ability to stand.
    Her breath scratched against her windpipe. God, no…not now . She focused on how irate Samson would be so that she wouldn’t focus on the very real possibility that today might be the final day she drew that imperfect breath. Somehow, the thought of Samson with his hands all over her lessened the burden on her lungs.
    A bald guy with a severe-set mouth and a cleft chin made a tangential cross to the place where she stood. He was too dressed for a southern California day.
    Angela’s heart nearly walloped right out of her rib cage.
    “Nice to see you showed.”
    His two-pack-a-day voice grated her eardrum. She catalogued him like a species: pock-marks on his cheeks; fleshy, veined nose; light green eyes that would be captivating had he not been her entry portal into a terrorist underworld. He chewed something, his flat-tire lips closed. She pictured human flesh in his molars.
    “Shall we?” he asked, as if he were inviting her to a macabre dance.
    “Not until I speak to Mike.”
    He chewed a bit longer then reached into his pocket and withdrew a cell phone. The feed was already cued. Grainy, streaked images whizzed by the screen. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but a vacant, indoor seating area in the middle of a third-world country wasn’t it. The image jostled and settled diagonally on her brother’s face.
    Alive.
    Dizziness grabbed hold. She curled her toes inside her sensible shoes so her body would remain grounded.
    Mike spoke, but the noise of the marketplace devoured his words.
    “I can’t hear him,” she pleaded to Julian’s goon.
    The guy removed a set of ear buds from his jacket and slid the connector into the phone. He put one end in his ear and handed her the other end. She wiggled the audio piece in place.
    “Mike? Mike? Can you hear me? Can you see