The afternoon stretched into evening with her no closer to her goal, and as the sun set, she left and retraced her route to the hospital. As she expected, the security around the building was substantial, and a few minutes of perusal confirmed that if she was going to have a shot at Leo, it was going to have to be at the yacht club. She returned to the marina under cover of darkness, parked the motorcycle on the sidewalk across the street from the club, and took up her watch from the bar at the hotel across the way where she could see the entrance from its picture window.
Limousines began arriving with the privileged who’d been invited to the event, many of them single males of a certain age and most in formal dress. The pistol at the small of her back, hidden by her lightweight jacket, seemed to grow heavier by the minute; and then her heart rate spiked when a white limo pulled to a stop and Leo disembarked, his polar white dress jacket and matching shirt and tie glowing in the yacht club’s lights.
Four women in skintight dresses walked into the bar in a cloud of perfume, their makeup and demeanors announcing them as paid company of the high-priced variety. They took the table next to Jet and ordered drinks, laughing and making off-color jokes about recent encounters of the disappointing kind. The waiter delivered their cocktails, and they toasted each other, knocked the drinks back, and ordered another round.
“Can you believe the bit about the security passes?” one of them asked, and Jet’s ears perked up.
“I know. Like, how many of us use our real names?”
“I was all, get real. The guy was, like, what’s your name and address, and I gave him my working name, no surname, and he flipped out.”
“But he eventually gave you the pass, right?”
“Of course. He was just trying to prove how big a man he is,” the girl said, holding her pinkie erect.
The table laughed and the second round arrived. More toasts, more conviviality, and another set of shots was ordered. The waiter brought the bill with the third round, and the women tossed money onto the table while teasing the man about taking his tip out in trade. They raised the shots in the air and downed them as one, and then one of the women, a beautiful brunette with a hard profile, stood and pointed to the rear of the bar. “I’m going to powder my nose. See you inside,” she said with a giggle.
“Don’t powder too much, Svetlana. Save some for when you really need it,” her companion said, and the rest laughed and waggled their fingers at her as she sashayed to the restroom on impossibly high heels, her gold sequined one-piece miniskirt leaving little to the imagination.
Jet waited a few moments and watched as the hookers crossed the street to the event, and then slid a few bills beneath her glass of mineral water and moved to the bathroom. When she entered, the escort was wiping white from a nostril. Jet smiled and walked to the sink beside her, and then without preamble delivered a strike to the side of the woman’s neck, dropping her with the blow.
Jet caught her before she hit the ground and pulled her into one of the stalls, and then cut off the oxygen supply to her brain with steady pressure on her carotid artery. When she was sure the woman was out cold and would remain that way for the duration, she quickly pulled her dress over her head and slipped her shoes off.
Two minutes later Jet stood in front of the mirror with the woman’s clutch purse, applying makeup, exaggerating the mascara and blush, the lipstick an appropriately garish red. When she was finished, she inspected the result – something off a high-budget porn shoot, she thought, which was the effect she was after. She slipped one of the items she’d confiscated from the Ukrainians into the clutch purse and dumped the remainder of the woman’s drugs onto the floor next to her, and then locked the stall from the inside and climbed over.
The shoes were a size too large but would work for her purposes. She practiced walking in them, the dress clinging to her like a second skin, and after tightening the ankle straps to limit the looseness, she strolled out of the bathroom, her clothes rolled up into a tight bundle, her pistol concealed within it.
Jet stashed the clothes and weapon in the motorcycle seat compartment and headed to the waterfront, where music was booming from the yacht club. Outside, guards with unreadable expressions stood around the perimeter of the grounds, stationed every five meters. She approached the entry and a hard-looking guard in a suit, his earbud cord hanging down his neck and disappearing under his jacket, eyed her security pass before nodding.
“Welcome to the party, Svetlana,” he said. Jet beamed a high-wattage smile at him and took the pass back.
“Why, thank you, young man,” she said with a playful lilt, and strode into the club, drawing appreciative stares from nearby males old enough to be her father and, in some cases, her grandfather. She affected a cool, detached expression, her hair gleaming in the lights from the chandelier, the hooker’s oversized earrings glinting with her every step as she began scanning the room for her target. The hooker whose clothes she’d borrowed would be out for forty-five minutes to an hour, so the clock was already ticking, and she needed to make every second count if she was going to be successful in her night’s work.
Chapter 50