The Infected 3: Cast Iron by P. S. Power

their rooms I suppose. At least the ones that don’t want unauthorized sex tapes showing up on the internet. This is why I didn’t want to come in the first place. We have no clue who planted these. It could literally be anyone.” It was actually a bit frustrating for her, since she hadn’t had time to even read the note in her pocket. That was important, but if someone was watching her, she didn’t want to waive the thing around in front of a camera.
    When she got back to her room, she checked it again, in case anyone had come in while she was gone. Bridget and Warren stood holding towels and had swimsuits on already, though neither looked impatient yet. He had a pair of blue Speedo’s on and a body that, while a little thin, kind of let him pull the look off. Bridget was wearing something that actually covered more flesh than Marcia thought she’d go for, a black one piece that hugged her body. It didn’t leave a lot to the imagination, but there wasn’t a whole lot to see, so it kind of worked.
    Speaking in a normal tone, Penny’s voice entered her right ear.
    “Get changed then. We can play security agents for everyone else when we get back in. Most of the rooms don’t even have anyone in them yet. They’ll have to let us in to check them out. The hotel might do it, because we can pull rank, but I don’t think we should, if we can help it. Best to just make the offer and let people take it if they want or not. Some people might want the cameras watching them. I can’t think of why that would be, but then I’m not famous either.” There was a push that came from behind, it wasn’t hard, but it sent Marcia rocking forward anyway.
    It was like the world had bucked under her feet or something. A kind of movement that just shouldn’t have happened, the force vector not existing until she was in motion. The hand on her back wasn’t recognizable to her, even though that was probably what had happened. It was one of the reasons Penny creeped her out. The girl was there, but even knowing that, Marcia couldn’t keep the idea in her head most of the time. She had to though, since they were teammates for the week.
    “On that. I think I packed a bathing suit at least.” She knew she had. If there was beach work to be done, she needed it as potential camouflage. It was a blood red bikini that didn’t take up a lot of space in the luggage. It showed almost everything, but she didn’t need to hide a weapon on her, so that worked well enough. Besides, changing meant she could go into the bathroom alone for a few minutes which would give her a chance to read what was on the paper in her pocket.
    She changed first, and then pulled the message, if that’s what it was, to find that it wasn’t a full length letter at all, but just three words with the code phrase written under it. Blue Boat: midnight.
    It was a basic set up for a meeting. Now she just had to find the blue boat. It probably wouldn’t be something hard to find. Not given the fact that she didn’t know the area. A lot of people seemed to think that spy work involved a bunch of cryptic puzzles to solve, but that was almost never the case. When you passed a message to someone, the point was to be understood. Almost always. The cryptic part came into things only occasionally, when you knew someone well, had similar training, or time to plan, you could arrange things in a way that meant the individual getting the message would understand what was being said when no one else would. That made it seem like a special code and really could be hard to crack, but it was more about shorthand between colleagues than ciphers.
    In this case though it was probably simpler than that even. Morris wanted to meet with her and the secrecy was probably just habit, so it was most likely going to be something easy to find. An actual blue boat on the beach or something. Grabbing a towel from the rack to lie out on, she moved to go with the others. They had more than one