Chapter 4
Yelena sleeps through the more than eight hour drive to the hotel a state an a half away.
James stops twice at hotels along the way. He buys a room and checks them in before getting right back into the truck and driving away again.
Sam's not sure how James manages to keep driving for so long after taking three bullets.
Eventually, James stops the truck and tells everyone to get out. Yelena’s still sleeping soundly, Sam carry's her into the motel once he realized James planned to attempt to lift her, bullet wounds be damned.
At the service desk James books a room with two queen sized beds for two nights. He brushes some of Yelena’s hair out of Sam’s face as he talks to the worker. It’s early morning by then and Natalia finds a few pieces of fruit and and bagels at the counter offering complementary breakfast.
Yelena starts to squirm, so Sam sets her on her feet and she’s quick to find her sister among the food.
”Give me just a minute, I’ll get you some key cards,” the lady at the desk clicks at her computer.
“Take this to Dad,” Natalia tells the younger girl, much louder than Sam has come to expect from her. Lena offers up a tiny styrofoam cup of coffee to her father and then Nat holds another out to Sam. “Here, Sam.”
It takes a minute to click in Sam’s brain, why (forget how) Natalia is acting so calmly and slightly out of character.
Then he sees, from the corner of his eye, the receptionist’s shoulders relax slightly. Nat had found a way to let the woman know that both of these young girls know and are comfortable with the men they’ve come in with.
He doesn’t think he wants to know how Nat knew to do something like that, though.
Natalia goes back to make herself a small cup of coffee, Lena reaches for it as soon as Nat joins them. They’re huddled near the desk still, off to the side so James can hand off one of the key cards to Sam and gather up the bag he’d set down earlier.
Sam thinks they probably look rather normal.
“You won’t like it,” Nat says but hands over the cup anyways.
Yelena, predictably, makes a ‘yuck’ face. Nat snatches the cup back and it’s almost like the past eight (+) hours never happened and they’re back to arguing in the living room over Disney movies.
James, having shouldered their one bag, which Sam has no clue of the contents, grabs his cup off of the counter and passes it down to the youngest girl who takes it and skips happily to the elevator.
Yelena is the only child Sam’s ever know to drink and actually like black coffee.
It's early morning when they arrive at their room. Sam wants to sink into one of the two queen beds and drift off into a deep sleep. A part of him thinks he will wake up in his own bedroom to find that this has all been some kind of crazy dream.
He finally manages a few hours of sleep, his body completely giving out on him, probably the shock and adrenaline finally wearing off, but when he wakes, it's only nine in the morning.
Yelena is spread out across the other bed, nearly crowding her sister off the side, fast asleep. James is slumped over in an uncomfortable looking desk chair a few feet away, Sam would bet he'd fallen asleep trying to watch over his children during the night.
"He's not actually my dad, you know,"
Sam's eyes cut quickly back to the bed where Natalia is hanging off of the edge. She's sat up, legs off of the bed, she plays a piece of Yelena's blonde hair around her finger.
"I don't know if he's hers." Natalia turns to look at James slumped in his chair. "I was pulled from a training program four years ago and placed with him and Melina in Ohio. Yelena was already there. We were their cover. About a year in, something happened, he just switched, just like that, and we've been running ever since."
"Training program?" Sam questions.
"Mhm," Nat nods, matter of factly, "They called it the 'Red Room', the worlds youngest assassins, trained from birth."
"Assassins," Sam breathes so low its almost inaudible.
"He was the best of them," Natalia informs, "This is the closest they've ever gotten and it's your fault."
Sam startles, "My fault?"
If it had been another young kid spinning this tale to him, he'd have called it an over active imaginaton. Given the circumstances, Sam probably can't write it off as a hazing.
"He likes you too much, you're a distraction and distractions are dangerous."