It made him almost nostalgic. Poor old Grandfather.
No need to risk another shot. Each time the silencer was slightly less effective, and this poor old man would never be able to describe him. András tucked the gun into his jacket, leaned over the man’s bed and put his finger to his smiling lips.
“Shhh,” he murmured. “Not one word, eh? Our little secret.”
The man’s eyes and mouth kept stretching wider. A red mote in his eye began to grow and grow. His eyelid filled with blood. It welled over and trickled down his pale cheeks, like a miraculous blood-weeping statue of the Virgin. He was having another catastrophic stroke before András’s eyes.
András could not help but smile at the irony of it. It was one of those days. He was riding great cresting waves of death. Exhilarating.
Ah, yes. Which reminded him. Green Bathrobe. Details, details.
He slid into room 14. Green Bathrobe was asleep, as were his two roommates. András took a pillow from the unoccupied bed and pressed it over the man’s face, counting with slow, deadly patience while his mind churned, compiling a list of professionals in the Seattle area.
Someone who could locate and discreetly extract Tamar’s child. The boss would want her, the way a greedy brat wanted toys and chocolate.
Admittedly, he didn’t have much time left to play.
And András would be the one to deliver this treat. A turn of the knife to show the old man his error in having favored Georg over András as successor after Kurt’s death after years of loyal service.
Some silent moments later, the other inhabitants of the room still slept, and Green Bathrobe’s pulse was absent.
András slid back down the hall like a shadow again, his hand on the butt of his gun. Daring fate. Let someone come out of the nurse’s station and force him to shoot again and again. To leave a pile—no, a towering mountain of bleeding bodies in his wake.
Once he started riding that wave, he never wanted to stop.
Chapter 21
Harry Whelan was having a stressful day. Assistant managing the Huxley on a busy day with two weddings and a banquet made him brusque. When Nancy, one of the check-in clerks, asked him to deal with a cop who had questions about a guest, he was short with her.
“Tell him we don’t give out information about our guests,” he snapped. “It’s Huxley security policy. As you know.”
“I did, but he kept insisting—”
“Does he have a warrant? Tell him to get a warrant.”
“Please, Harry, I did, but he won’t listen to me. Will you come talk to him? He’ll listen to you.”
Harry groaned, but Nancy was so cute with big blue eyes and substantial breasts that strained her green uniform vest to the limit of what was professionally appropriate. He was actually contemplating breaking his no-dating-in-the-workplace rule and asking her out. He hustled down the hall to the front desk, puffing out his chest.
A burly man with a beard waited. He smiled at Harry, who did not smile back. Not when his time was being wasted. “Can I help you?”
The man held out his hand, and Harry shook it. “Raymond Clive, FBI,” he said. “Are you the manager, Mr. Whelan?”
His nametag read AM, which should be clear enough, Harry thought. “Assistant Manager,” he specified.
“May I speak with you in private?” Clive asked.
“I might as well tell you right now that it’s the Huxley’s security policy not to share information about our guests with any—”
“Please, Mr. Whelan. Can we speak privately?” The man leaned over the counter and pitched his voice lower. “It’s a delicate matter.”
Harry sighed. This delicate matter had to be today? With six rooms overbooked, a banquet chef gone missing, and an embarrassing sewer crisis in the back six units of the guest houses? “Come on,” he snapped.
In his office, he sat behind his desk and indicated for Clive to sit on the other side. The man grabbed another chair and dragged it around to Harry’s side of the desk. He scooted closer so that his knee touched Harry’s. Harry shrank back. “It’s a little tight back here,” he said stiffly. “Could you sit in the chair on the other side of the—”
“We have a problem, and time is of the essence, Mr. Whelan. A small child is in jeopardy. She’s been kidnapped,” Clive said. “In situations like these, a man can be excused for bending the rules—even the security rules of the Huxley.”
“Do you have a warrant? If you don’t, I just can’t—”
“I can get one, but I would waste precious time. In missing child cases, every minute counts,” Clive said.
The only good thing about still being assistant manager was that he could pass the buck. His boss would not appreciate being bothered, but they did not pay Harry enough to take on this kind of responsibility. “I’ll talk to my supervisor,” Harry said. He reached for the intercom. “Did you guys issue an Amber Alert? Doesn’t that come first—”
To his alarm, Clive reached out and grabbed Harry’s hand. Tightly. So tightly, in fact, that the bones of his fingers felt like they were grinding against each other. “Wait, Mr. Whelan,” he said. “Just wait.”
Harry yanked, and the man’s big, hairy fingers tightened further. Harry gasped. “Uh, please. That, uh . . . hurts.”
“Of course.” A tug, and Harry’s chair shot forward. He bumped into Clive’s knees. To his horror, the other man was gripping his crotch. With a brutal, powerful hand. It was a level of pain Harry had never imagined. His balls had to be ruptured.
“Don’t make a sound or I will twist them off.” The man’s teeth flashed in his dark beard. “Keep your hands out where I can see them.”
A knife appeared in his hand, a wicked-looking black thing with a serrated portion near the handle. A razor sharp tip.
“Listen carefully, Mr. Whelan,” Clive said softly. “If your attitude does not change quickly, I will open your pants with this knife and castrate you as you sit, right here. A neat incision in your scrotum, I detach your testicles with surgical precision, flick, flick, and voilà, there they’ll be, on the floor, with a minimum of bloodshed. I hate mess.”
“No,” Harry gasped. “No, no, no.”
“No? All right, then. We do have alternatives, fortunately. Let’s discuss the security policy of the Huxley once again.”
Harry stared at him, wheezing for breath. The pain was making him faint. “You’re not FBI,” he gasped.
“It’s none of your concern what I am. Not a sound, Mr. Whelan. Be brave.” The knife dug into the side of Harry’s testicles. A strangled sound issued from his throat, like the whine of a balloon letting out air. “A three-year-old girl with curly dark hair spent time in this building the day before yesterday,” Clive went on. “Find out who she left with.”
Harry tried to breathe. His lungs would not expand. His ribs were frozen. His hands clutched the desk, as if he were drowning. “I—I—”
“Think, Mr. Whelan,” Clive encouraged him. “Think.”
“D-d-day before yesterday, there was an afternoon wedding,” he forced out. “Big party, lots of overnight guests.”
“Well, then. The guest list would be an excellent place to start. Turn to the computer screen, put your hand on the mouse. Show me who checked in that afternoon. Show me a list of all the rooms that had notations regarding infants or small children.”
Harry pulled them up. The man leaned forward to peer at the screen, jabbing the knife deeper in the process. He tried not to shriek.
“Shut up, Mr. Whelan,” Clive said absently. “Hmm. Four single women with children, six couples. Did you see any of them?”
“N-n-no,” Harry gasped. “I wasn’t out on the front desk. I don’t work the desk. I work back here.”
“Oh. How unfortunate for you.” The knife dug deeper. “Perhaps one of your colleagues? If I took this knife away for a moment, you could consult with one of them. Could you behave, if I did that, Mr. Whelan? Would you be a good boy? Can I count on you?”
Harry nodded, vio
lently.
“Because if you give me any trouble, you will regret it. And so will your colleague. Is this clear?”
“Yes,” Harry gasped. “Yes, please. I’ll call one of them. Please.”
Clive removed the crushing pressure of his fingers. Tears of relief streamed down Harry’s face, clogging his nose. He wiped them on his sleeve, and tried to remember who had been on the desk that day. Nancy, for sure. He stabbed her button. “Nancy? Could you come back here for a minute?” His voice was watery and high.
“Sure, Harry. Just a sec, got to finish up this guest.”
She was there in two interminable minutes, eyes big and puzzled. Harry made a huge effort to control his face, his voice, his bowels. Clive’s knife hovered in front of his crotch, beneath the desk, menacing him. “Nancy, do you remember that wedding party two days ago?”
“Sure,” she said. “Becca Cattrell and Nick Ward. Harry? Are you OK? You look kind of strange.” She looked curiously at the bearded man.
The knife dug into Harry’s balls again. Harry sucked air, and forced a weak smile onto his face. “I’m fine. Little headache. Do you remember a three-year-old girl in that wedding reception? Dark curly hair?”
Nancy’s big eyes rolled. “Oh, my God, yes. That kid screamed the place down the morning after, in the dining room. I’ve never heard anything like it in my life, and I heard some doozies when I worked day care. Talk about living birth control.”
“Do you remember her parents’ names?”
Nancy frowned thoughtfully. “She was with her mom, I remember that. A glamourpuss type, like a top model. I didn’t check her in. Charlie did, but she’s out sick today. The glamourpuss left with the gorgeous foreign guy. That was why the kid flipped out, because her mom had to go somewhere without her.”
“What guy? What was his name?” Harry begged.
Nancy shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think he had his own room booked. One of us would’ve remembered. The guy was, like, movie star good-looking. It was unreal, the two of them together.”
Harry could not think straight enough to form a response to that, trying as he was not to vomit from the white-hot pressure of the knife tip.
Clive asked, “And who did the child leave with?”
Her face cleared. “That’s easy. It was with one of those McCloud guys. I remember the name because there were three of them, and all the girls at the desk were checking them out. Drop dead gorgeous, all three of them. Brothers, I guess. Like, be still my heart.”
“Which one?” Harry burst out. “Just tell me which one it was!”
Nancy blinked at his tone, startled. “One of the ones with a baby,” she offered timidly. “Two of them had babies. Cute as can be. I don’t remember which one, though. Look, do you want some Advil or Tylenol? Or at least some coffee? You do not look good at all.”
“No. I’m fine,” Harry said.
Clive drew the knife away, and it was all Harry could do not to collapse into sobs. “Is that enough?” He turned imploring eyes on Clive.
The man smiled genially and nodded. “That’s fine.”
“Thanks for your help, Nancy,” Harry said. “You can go.”
Nancy left, throwing a worried glance back over her shoulder. “You let me know if you change your mind about that Advil,” she said.
The door clicked closed. Harry began to sob silently.
“Don’t fall apart yet, Mr. Whelan,” Clive chided him. “I need printouts of the credit cards you billed for those two rooms, please.”
Somehow Harry managed to perform that task. Clive tucked the sheets into his pocket, and spun the knife, a twinkling show of dexterity, like a baton twirler. “Thank you, Mr. Whelan. You’ve been very helpful. And in case you’re tempted to discuss what just happened with anyone . . . your supervisor, for instance, or the police, or the McClouds—”
“I won’t,” Harry assured him, his voice breaking. “I promise.”
“Or your mother,” Clive continued. “Or even that pretty colleague, the one who’s so worried about you. My associates and I informed ourselves before I came here. Your address, for instance. Where you live with your mother in that Victorian home in Tacoma. Pretty, but those old houses are firetraps. It would be tragic to come home from work and find that your mother had been burned to death in a house fire, hmm? Batteries run down in the smoke alarms. Tsk tsk. Terrible shame.”
“I promise, I—”
“And then there is Nancy, that lovely girl who wants to play nurse. Isn’t that sweet of her. She lives in that apartment complex on the other side of the park, all alone with her cat, in unit 8D. Violent things can happen at night to young women all alone. Just terrible. You wouldn’t want to be responsible for something like that, would you?”
Harry shook his head, and realized to his dismay that he could not stop shaking it. It just kept on twisting, back and forth. No. No. No.
Clive smiled and grabbed the top of Harry’s head, forcing it to stop turning. “Excellent, then. We understand each other.” He held out his hand, as if they had just conducted a normal business meeting.
Harry was horrified to realize that his slavish obedience to the other man actually extended to automatically holding out his trembling hand to shake. Clive shook it and gave it one last, agonizingly painful squeeze. Harry cringed and squealed like a whipped dog.
“Have a great day, Mr. Whelan. Thanks again for all your help.”
The door closed. Harry collapsed on his desk. His throat felt like it would implode. His groin throbbed. He felt raped, torn. Bleeding inside. He hadn’t known how easy it would be to be mortally hurt.
Then it flashed in his mind, like a pop-up banner on the computer. An appalling thought.
What a man like that might do to a three-year-old girl.
He shoved the thought away as if it electrocuted him. Too much. He couldn’t deal with that too. That little girl was not his responsibility. This was not his fault. He had not caused this.
There was a timid knock on the door. He scrambled for a fast food napkin to wipe his eyes and nose. “What is it?” he snapped.
Nancy peeked in the door. “Harry? I just, um, saw that guy go out. I thought I’d check on you. I was wondering . . . what the eff?”
For one crazy instant, he was tempted to tell her everything. What a sweet relief it would be, to let someone else carry some of the weight of the horribleness of the ten minutes that had just passed. Then he thought about her all alone at night with her cat in unit 8D.
No. Don’t.
He blew his nose again. “That was a tricky situation,” he said, hating the phlegm-clogged, officious tone in his own voice. “Sometimes in this business, you just have to make a judgment call.”
“Ah,” she said. “Um. OK. Harry, are you sure you’re—”
“Yes! I’m fine! It’s just this sinus thing I get sometimes. Allergies. It’s no big deal. Don’t worry about me.”
“OK.” Her face reddened. The door started to close.
“Nancy?” His voice had a wobbly, pleading tone. He took a deep breath to steady it as she opened the door and peeked back in. “Uh . . . don’t mention this to anyone else, OK?” he begged. “I mean, no one.”
She looked almost scared. “Whatever,” she said softly.
The door closed. There was a strange finality to the sound. As if the door was closing on the person he had fantasized about becoming.
He’d been cut down, trimmed into something that would always be smaller now. Someone who would never get rid of that pot belly and train to run in the local 10K. Never ask Nancy Ware out to the Blues In The Park concert series. Never get his own place and move out of his mother’s house. Someone who would never make general manager.
He grabbed the wastebasket, vomited into it until bitter snot hung from his face over the plastic sack. He mopped it off, touched his balls, wondered if they were irreparably damaged.
Wondered if it would be a relief to run his car off the road into the river to
night when he got off work. Just to make this awful feeling stop.
“Push with your legs,” Sveti encouraged her. “Up and down. That way you can go higher all by yourself.”
Rachel tried valiantly, but she didn’t really have much luck coordinating the frantic movement of her skinny little legs with the rhythm of the swing. Still, she put all her effort into it, flopping like a freshly caught fish in the bucket-style kiddie swing, giggling madly.
It was getting very dark, and the gray sky was fading to night on one side. It was also extremely cold, but they were having so much fun in the park playground, neither wanted to leave quite yet. After all, they could see the lit-up windows of Connor and Erin’s house right on the other side of the park, like a beacon of safety. After days of shrieking for Mamma, Rachel was finally calming down. She was not really eating yet and when she talked at all, she stuttered, but things were looking up. Right now she was laughing and smiling. Sveti was grateful to see it. Reluctant to let go of the moment.
The whole afternoon had gone relatively well so far. Rachel seemed to enjoy the story circle at the kids’ room in the local library, and the level of English had been perfect for Sveti’s comprehension level, too. In fact, she’d used Erin’s library card to check out a whole tote bag full of children’s books to study. She had to hurry up and learn.
Not just for Josh, either, she told herself sternly. Forget stupid Josh. She wasn’t thinking about his green eyes, his big grin.
This was for her. Just her. She wanted to study here, go to college here. Something to do with small children. Teaching, childhood development, psychology, and someday maybe even medical school and pediatrics.
It made her so happy to see how Rachel had grown, how much better she walked. To see that rosy red blush in her cheeks. She glowed like a Christmas light in her puffy red ski jacket and red sparkling cap. No one would ever call her chubby, but she looked so much better than back in the bad old days, when she’d seemed like a wizened little troll.
It all seemed so improbable to Sveti sometimes. The strange flip-flop of reality. Sometimes her life seemed like a dream of heaven. Being free, seeing the sky, the trees, the flowers. Seeing Rachel happy with someone who loved her. Having her own mother again.
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