by Jonas Saul
“I have pepper spray,” the driver said.
She pushed off the back seat and rested on his again. “How much?”
He seemed to be thinking about it. She looked at the meter. The ride was hitting eighty dollars.
“How about I pay you a hundred and fifty for the ride and you throw in the pepper spray. Deal?”
He nodded. “Deal. But I don’t give it to you until we’re parked and you have paid me.”
“No problem.”
She watched the lights of the Warner Bros. Studio as the car passed it on the right.
Now she was going in to room 224 with a weapon. That’s all she ever needed. A fighting chance.
Chance favored the prepared mind, but was she prepared?
Chapter 32
Detective Hirst drove his cruiser hard, taking corners recklessly, a single red light rotating on the dash, no siren. Things were moving fast. One of his tech guys was able to track the phone to Hollywood Boulevard but then lost the signal. Meanwhile, Hirst had an officer calling the cab companies who had cars in the Marina Del Ray area looking for a driver who picked up a lone girl matching Sarah’s description from the restaurant.
He was five minutes away from Hollywood and Vine when his phone rang again. He pressed the hands-free button.
“Hirst here. What have you got?”
“The cab.”
“Talk to me.”
“Yellow cab. Driver picked up a girl in front of the restaurant. Drove her to Hollywood Boulevard and then dropped her at a hotel in Burbank.”
Hirst slammed on his brakes and checked his mirrors in order to make a U-turn.
“What hotel?”
The last car in a row passed him. He spun the wheel, turned the other way and hit the gas, heading to the 101, Hollywood Freeway. A moment later he passed the two cruisers that had been following him. In the mirror, he watched as neither one did a U-turn to follow him.
“Driver said she asked him to stop two blocks away from the Safari Inn, but she might’ve been going to the Coast Hotel which is right beside it.”
“Anything else?”
“The guy said she bought his pepper spray. Said she needed a weapon.”
“Got it. That it?”
“Yup.”
He ended the call and whacked the steering wheel with his open hand.
“Dammit, Sarah, what are you up to?”
Then he speed-dialed Parkman, who answered on the second ring.
“I thought you’d be asleep,” Hirst said.
“Can’t. On the road. Heading south to you. What’s up?”
“Sarah’s in trouble.”
“I figured. How much trouble?”
“She took a cab to a hotel in Burbank and bought the driver’s pepper spray. She’s up to something. I’ve got officers en route. I’m heading there myself.”
“How far away are you?” Parkman asked.
“Ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”
“Who’s going to get there first? You or the LAPD?”
“Me.”
“Good.”
“Parkman, you better get down here. Something tells me Sarah’s going to need a friend.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Just hurry.” Hirst ended the call as he used the ramp to get on the 101.
Then he tried Roland’s cell number. If Sarah would answer, he could warn her. Talk her out of whatever it was she wanted to do.
When she didn’t answer, he pushed the car to over eighty miles an hour.
Then he hit the siren.
Chapter 33
When the bright sign of the Safari Inn came into view, Sarah told the cab driver to pull over two blocks short of the hotel. She paid the driver, took the pepper spray and exited the vehicle. As the door slammed, the driver’s phone rang, and she moved into the darkness along the side of the road. The cab pulled away slowly as the driver was on his phone. A moment later it disappeared around a corner and was gone.
Up one side of Olive Avenue was a McDonald’s, still open, vehicles lined up in the drive-through. The other way was only darkened windows in storefronts.
One man walked in the opposite direction with a dog on a leash.
She headed away from the hotel until she came to a street light. When the light changed, she crossed the street to the Safari Inn side, then turned toward it. Slowly, her hands wrapped around the small canister of pepper spray, she moved along the sidewalk until she was standing in front of the Coast Hotel doors, a small hotel half a block from the Safari Inn.
Roland’s phone rang. She jumped at the sound and pulled it out. Hirst was calling again. The phone wasn’t needed for where she was going. As best she could, she wiped the phone of prints, flipped it to vibrate and then tossed it in the bush beside the front doors of the Coast Hotel. If Hirst followed the phone’s signal he would end up at the wrong hotel.
Sarah continued up the street and walked purposely in front of the Safari Inn until she had passed it, staying on the sidewalk. She continued until bushes obscured her view of the hotel. At the next corner, she turned left so she could walk behind the building. The entire time, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. No car had occupants sitting, watching the hotel. The clerk had been playing solitaire on a computer behind the counter. One guest was unpacking the trunk of his car into a ground floor room as Sarah walked by. In front of another room, men stood around motorcycles, beers in hand.
At the back of the hotel, no doors offered access to the rear of the rooms. The only way in was the front. Room 224 was on the second floor. The Safari Inn was only two stories high and the second floor rooms were accessed by an outside stairwell and a walkway.
To stand outside the room would be dangerous. To knock on the door having no idea what was behind it was also dangerous. But she had to admit, hunting Cole had been dangerous from the start. Nothing had really gone well for her, but here she was, without any idea what she would find in room 224 and no other option but to move forward.
She turned back for the front of the hotel. The only way to do this was to knock on the door as Roland’s messenger. If someone was in the room, the story would be that she works for Roland and he felt it was safer for her to come than him. She was to pick up whatever Cole left behind. Cole had no idea that Roland was languishing in the ocean hours away. The only danger to Sarah was if Cole had decided Roland and Frank were to be killed, which meant room 224 was a trap.
But she had no other choice.
Before taking the stairs, she stopped to watch as a pickup truck backed up to the open door of a room on the first floor. The driver expertly maneuvered between two Harley Davidson motorcycles. He cut the engine, got out, yanked the tailgate down, grabbed a case of beer and walked in the open door of the room. She was close enough to hear him tell the others in the room that he would go back out for more beer shortly.
None of these people had anything to do with her. This was looking more and more like Cole had sincerely dropped a payment off for his hired cops.
She started up the stairs cautiously. On the second floor, she leaned over the railing and looked out at the pool, taking it all in, watching for movement. Traffic on Olive Avenue was light at this hour. Another Harley pulled in, cruised the lot and then the rider pulled up to the other bikes, and walked it backwards to park beside the pickup truck. He cut the engine, dismounted and pulled off his helmet, leaving it on the seat of his bike. She missed her bike. The days of riding for hours, no messages, no notes. And no Cole Lincoln. The noise in the room grew when the new rider entered, then simmered down until it was a dull din.
Satisfied that no one watched her, she nonchalantly strolled along the second floor. She passed 228, then 226, paying close attention to the blinds in the little windows. Then she came up to 224 and without slowing, passed it, too. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. No noise, no movement, nothing. It was as if she was lost and simply looking for her hotel room. She kept going until she reached another stairwell.
; “This is maddening,” she whispered under her breath. “Am I walking into a trap?” she asked Vivian.
No answer came. Silence accompanied her thoughts. Vivian’s new internal voice remained quiet.
The time to stake out the place was over. Detective Hirst was probably on his way here—as well as half of the LAPD. She had used Roland’s phone. Hirst wanted answers. Answers she didn’t want to supply, or wouldn’t right now. Time was not just running out, it was gone.
She strode up to room 224, flipped the safety off the lip of the pepper spray, and knocked on the door keeping her body to the left. In the parking lot below, nothing moved. While she waited, breathing slowly to remain calm, she listened for any movement behind the door. All she heard was the dim sound of revelers below. No one answered the door. She knocked again, harder. Then she tried the door. It was unlocked. On the count of three, she turned the knob all the way and pushed the door open with force. Before the door swung back and closed on its own, she caught a glimpse of a briefcase on one of the double beds of an otherwise empty room.
With her back to the wall beside the door, she breathed in deep, scanned the area below the walkway once more, and decided to enter.
The door opened with ease. She slipped inside and placed her back against the wall while she waited for the door to close.
She lowered to the carpeted floor and looked under the beds. It was clear to the far wall. In this small hotel room, the only place left to hide was the bathroom or the armoire.
If someone was in the room, they would know someone else had entered the room by now. Since no one had jumped out when she opened the door, and she still heard nothing, Sarah began to think she was alone and that this wasn’t a trap. Unless Cole had the room wired to blow.
As soon as that thought hit her, a chill made her shiver. That was Cole’s style. He had figured out a way to burn down the mental hospital by starting the fire in her room and make it look like she did it. Cole had been intimately involved with fire in the past—his facial scarring carried the evidence. He had probably ordered the cabin burned down. Everything regarding Cole had been about burning things, so it would make sense if this room was set to blow. He hadn’t rigged it to the door opening. So how? Maybe when the briefcase was opened. Or moved. But wouldn’t Vivian have warned her?
Quickly, she cleared the wardrobe cabinet and then, holding the pepper spray canister out front, she examined the restroom, pulling the shower curtain back.
The hotel room was empty.
It could simply be a drop after all. Would Cole even take the risk of terminating LAPD officers? But if it was only a payment drop, then Cole was gone. When would she ever catch up to him again?
She sat on the bed closest to the bathroom and stared at the briefcase. This fight seemed to be out of her hands the whole time. When would it end? When would Cole be at her mercy instead of the other way around? He may have his friends and his favors, but she had Vivian. No one was a match to Vivian. But her sister had gone through a quiet period again, leaving Sarah on her own. What was that all about? She needed a way out of this. The LAPD were missing two members. Sarah was going to be suspect number one. And how unfortunate for her that she was the one who killed them. There was no easy way out of this. No obvious solution.
“Unless you’ve got something up your sleeve, sis?” she whispered.
Get behind the bed. Up against the wall.
Vivian’s thought rang through Sarah’s head like the distant echo in a mountain range. Those eight words reverberated over and over, dimming in volume as they went.
Sarah reacted instantly. She twisted to the side and dropped behind the bed as instructed. She wiggled around until she had eyes on the base of the door, the canister in her hand held tight.
A car screeched to a halt outside. A door slammed shut. She waited. Voices outside. A man shouted something about a door.
What’s that all about? The biker’s party?
Someone ran by the room. Footsteps stopped in front of the door. Someone knocked. She waited, her heart pounding in her chest. Breathing through her mouth helped regulate her heightened alertness as her palms moistened.
The knob turned. The door opened. A set of black shiny dress shoes entered the room and stopped, the room’s door propped open.
“Sarah?” Detective Hirst said.
She recognized his voice after having worked closely with him recently, but she stayed where she was. If he wasn’t a threat, Vivian wouldn’t have told her to hide.
“Sarah? I know you’re in here. What’s the briefcase for? Runaway money?” There was a moment of silence. “You didn’t turn the phone off. I found it in the bushes next door. The cab driver told me he dropped you off two blocks away, but you told him the Safari Inn in Burbank. He knew where you were going. The front desk clerk looked away from her computer game long enough to tell me she saw you enter this room. Room 224. So come on out and talk to me.”
She breathed through her mouth, waiting. The music from the room below increased in volume. Someone shouted a rowdy salute.
She could probably trust Hirst, but trust went out the window when a cop thought you had something to do with the death of one of theirs. She was putting all her money on Vivian and it was Vivian who had told her to hide.
“Sarah, c’mon, I can help. Tell me what happened to Roland and Frank. Let’s put this behind us. People will understand. You’ve done a lot of good. If it was self-defense, not only will we get this monkey off your back, I’ll personally get involved. I’ll get you a good lawyer.” He stepped farther into the room. “Parkman and I will be with you every step of the way.”
The noise below increased another notch.
Any other pearls of wisdom, Vivian?
To see if Hirst held a weapon, she would expose her position. But he was bound to find her soon enough anyway.
He stepped closer again. Another step. Hirst stopped at the briefcase. A loud metallic click signaled the undoing of one of the clasps on the case.
“Sarah? What are we doing here? Come out of the bathroom. Show me what’s in the case.”
Another click.
Then someone in running shoes stepped into the doorway. This person moved quiet and fast. They pulled on the door and let it shut.
Hirst’s shoes twisted on the carpet as he pivoted to look at who had entered behind him.
Sarah couldn’t suppress her startled short yell as a gun fired in rapid succession. It felt like it went on forever, but when it stopped, she counted at least six shell casings on the floor by the man in the running shoes. Small puffs of drywall dust floated down and landed on and around her.
Hirst made a weird sound, a gurgling. The bed she hid behind shook with his weight. Then he slipped off and hit the floor, his eyes wide in terror and pain. Blood spilled from his leg and his stomach. Their eyes met. In that glance, she saw him warn her to stay hidden. More blood covered his chest, but it took her a second to see it came from an arm wound.
She now knew why Vivian got her to hide and stay hidden.
Hirst grunted as he was pulled onto his back. The man wearing running shoes stood over him.
“You stupid idiot,” Cole said.
Sarah’s jaw clenched and she let air out through a small hole she formed with her lips as she listened to that voice, one she would never forget. A feeling, part fear, part elation, came over her. Cole Lincoln was here. No more hunting him, hoping to catch up. He was here. He was hers. But she was still at a disadvantage. She had brought a canister of spray to a gun fight.
“You almost opened the briefcase,” Cole said. “Do you realize the damage you would’ve caused? I can’t have Sarah killed that way. Isn’t that right, Sarah? You were meant to die in the fire at the Amy Greg Hospital, but you escaped.” He stepped toward the other bed. “I’m still shaking my head as to how you did that. Ingenious, really. But how you escaped Roland and Frank is beyond me. They were supposed to bury you at sea.” He picked something up off the other bed
. The noise from downstairs grew louder still. “The bomb in that briefcase would’ve blown Roland and Frank apart. I didn’t need them anymore. My time on the force is long over. The favor they owed me has been paid in full.” He was standing over Hirst again. “But I don’t understand why you’re not dead yet, Sarah. How could you get out of that room in the hospital? How did you get back to L.A. on Roland’s boat? How did you, a little girl, overpower two armed police officers?”
A pillow landed on Hirst’s chest. He was breathing in fits and starts as he bled out on the carpet. She had to do something or he would die in room 224 of the Safari Inn.