She stepped out into the room, glanced at the bed. Arnold hadn’t moved.
At the door, she flipped back the inner lock, turned the handle as slowly as she could manage. The click of the retracting deadbolt sounded deafening. She eased the door back and stepped across the threshold.
# # #
She sat in the lobby, now noisy and crowded with the onset of cocktail hour. In her chair by the fireplace, she stared into the flames that roasted twelve-foot logs, the BlackBerry in her right hand, finger poised to press talk.
She couldn’t make the call. She’d rehearsed it three times, but it didn’t feel right. Hell, she didn’t even know Daphne’s last name or where the woman lived. Her story would require a leap of faith on the part of the investigating lawman, and when it came to credibility, she held a pair of twos. She couldn’t use her real name, and meeting face-to-face with a detective could never happen. Letty had been convicted three times. Six years of cumulative incarceration. Her fourth felony offense, she’d be labeled an habitual criminal offender and entitled to commiserate sentencing guidelines at four times the max. She’d die in a federal prison.
So seriously, all things considered, what did she care if some rich bitch got her ticket punched? If Letty hadn’t hit room 5212 when she did, she’d already be at the diner, flirting for the big tips and still glowing from the afternoon’s score. She tossed the BlackBerry back into her duffle. She should just leave. Pretend she’d never heard that conversation. She stole from people, innocent strangers, every chance she got. It never kept her up nights. Never put this torque in her gut. She’d get out of there, call in sick to work, buy two bottles of merlot, and head back to her miserable apartment. Maybe read a few chapters of that book she’d found at the thrift store—Self-Defeating Behaviors: Free Yourself from the Habits, Compulsions, Feelings, and Attitudes That Hold You Back. Pass out on the sofa again.
And you’ll wake up tomorrow morning with a headache, a sour stomach, a rotten taste in your mouth, and you’ll look at yourself in that cracked mirror and hate what you see even more.
She cursed loud enough to attract the attention of an older man who’d dolled himself up for the evening, his eyes glaring at her over the top of the Asheville Citizen-Times. She slashed him with a sardonic smile and got up, enraged at herself over this swell of weakness. She took two steps. Everything changed. The anger melted. Exhilaration flooding in to take its place. In the emotion and fear of the moment, it had completely escaped her.
Room 5212 contained the manila folder with Daphne’s photograph and address, but also a briefcase holding $25,000 in cash. Steal the money. Steal the folder. Save a life.
Even as she scrounged her purse for the master keycard, she knew she wouldn’t find it. In those first ten seconds of entry into Arnold’s room, she’d set it on the dresser, where she imagined, it still sat. She could feel the heat spreading through her face. The barkeep and the bellhop, her only contacts at the hotel, were already off-shift. There’d be no replacement keycard.
She started through the lobby, wanting to run, punch through a sheetrock wall, do something to expend the mounting rage.
She’d stopped to calm herself, leaning against one of the timber columns, her head swimming, when thirty feet away, a bell rang, two brass doors spread apart, and the man named Arnold strode off the elevator, looking casual in blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a sports jacket. She followed his progress, watching him thread his way through the crowd, finally arriving at the entrance to the Sunset Terrace. He spoke with the hostess at the podium, and without even thinking about it, Letty found herself moving toward him, wishing she’d honed her pickpocket skills during one of her stints in prison. She’d known a woman at Fluvanna who had it down so cold she’d once lifted fifty wallets during a single day in Disney World. Arnold’s back pockets were hidden under his navy jacket, no bulge visible, but people with sense didn’t keep their wallet there. Inner pocket of his jacket more likely, and she knew enough to know it took scary talent to snatch it from that location. You had to practically collide with the mark, your hands moving at light speed and with utter precision. She didn’t have the chops.
Arnold stepped away from the hostess podium, and she watched him walk across the lobby into the Great Hall Bar, where he slid onto a barstool and waited to be served.
4
Letty cut in front of a striking couple and elbowed her way to the bar. The stool to Arnold’s left sat unoccupied and she climbed onto it, let the duffle bag drop to her feet. She recognized the scent of his cologne, but she didn’t look at him. Watched the barkeep instead, his back to her, mixing what appeared to be a Long Island Iced Tea, pouring shots from four different liquor bottles at once into a pint glass filled with ice.
Arnold drank from a long-necked bottle of Coors Light, picking at the label between sips. Something about his hands fascinated Letty, and she kept staring at them out of the corner of her eye.
When after two minutes the barkeep hadn’t come over to take her drink order, she let slip an audible sigh, though in reality she sympathized. The lounge was crowded and she could tell the guy was doing the best he could.
She glanced over at Arnold, back at the bar, thinking he hadn’t noticed her predicament. Like everyone else, exclusively engaged in his own world.
So it startled her when he spoke.
“Bartender.”
And though the word hadn’t been shouted, something in its tone implied a command that ought not be ignored. Clearly the barkeep picked up on it, too, because he was standing in front of Arnold almost instantaneously, like he’d been summoned.
“Get you another Coors?”
“Why don’t you ask the lady what she wants?”
“Sorry, I didn’t know she was with you.”
“She’s not. Still deserves a drink before the icecaps melt, don’t you think?”
The barkeep emanated a distinct don’t-fuck-with-me vibe that gave Letty the feeling he’d probably killed a number in medium security. A hardness in the eyes she recognized. But those eyes deferred to the customer seated to her right, flashing toward her with a kind of disbelief, like they’d grazed something harder than themselves and come away scratched.
“What would you like?”
“Grey Goose martini, little dirty, with a free range olive.”
“You got it.”
Now or never. She turned toward Arnold who’d already turned toward her, anticipating the attention, the tips of her ears on fire again, and got her first good look at him. Forty years old, she would have guessed. Smoothshaven. Black hair, conservatively cropped. His collar just failing to hide the end of a tat, what might have been an erotic finger strangling his neck. Green eyes that exuded not so much hardness as an altogether otherworldly quality. She didn’t know if it was Arnold’s confidence or arrogance, but under different circumstances (and perhaps even these) she might have felt a strong attraction to the man.
“You’re a lifesaver,” she said.
He broke a slight smile. “Do what I can.”
She fell back on her break-in-case-of-emergency smile, the one that had disarmed a cop or two, that she’d used to talk her way out of a hotel room in Vegas.
“I’m Letty.”
“Arnie.”
She shook his hand.
“So’s Letty short for—”
“Letisha. I know, it’s awful.”
“No, I like it. Nothing you hear every day.”
The barkeep placed a martini in front of Letty, slid a fresh beer to Arnold.
“I got these,” Letty said, going for her purse.
“Get out of here.” Arnold reaching into his jacket.
“Actually,” the barkeep said, “these are on me. Sorry about the wait, guys.”
Letty raised her martini by the stem, clinked her glass against the neck of Arnie’s bottle.
“Cheers.”
“New friends.”
They drank.
“So where you from?” Arnie asked.
“Recently moved here.”