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The attendant laughed. “I hear you. Just a moment, please. I’ll be right back.” The man disappeared through a door behind the desk.

Two minutes, Jack thought, half imagining the attendant already on the phone with the police. Any more than that and he’d leave.

The attendant reappeared. He handed back Möller’s passport along with a new key card. “Here you go. Let me know if you need directions or a map.”

“Thank you very much.”

Jack started to walk away, then turned a short circle as though trying to get his bearings. “My room is…”

“One twenty-five. Out through the door you came in, then left down the side of the building.”

Jack thanked him again and left.

* * *

He parked his car four stalls down from Möller’s room and shut off the engine.

The room’s window curtain was parted about an inch. Through the gap Jack saw a faint yellow light. He checked his watch. Forty-five minutes had elapsed since Möller had fled the preserve’s parking lot. If he’d had an accomplice waiting at the preserve he could already be back in his room. Otherwise, his options were to hitchhike or call a taxi. He wouldn’t risk the former, Jack decided. Taxi, then. Which meant he was probably ahead of Möller; if he was coming back here, Jack’s lead was very slim.

Jack’s question from earlier popped back into his mind: Did he snatch up Möller, or try to track him? He reached the same conclusion. Track him. Jack had to assume that unless Möller was working for himself he’d already reported the incident up his chain of command, regardless of whether he’d recognized Jack at the preserve.

With Möller wounded and on the run, he would be hypervigilant for any sign of pursuit. Jack thought it unlikely he could maintain a one-man surveillance of Möller without being spotted. That left him with one option: Track the man remotely, passively.

So many ifs and maybes. Too many.

Without giving himself a chance to come up with more of them, Jack got out of the car, strode toward Möller’s door. It was late afternoon, heading toward twilight, and the rain was still falling. Jack glanced around. No one was about. He stopped at Möller’s door, drew his Glock, and held it tight against his leg. He took a breath, let it out. He swiped the key card, pushed open the door, stepped inside, then used his heel to force the door shut. He raised the Glock.

To his right in the corner the floor lamp was on.

Jack reached back over his shoulder with his free hand and eased closed the door’s cross-latch lock.

“Hello? Manager, Mr. Möller,” Jack called. “Are you here? Hello… manager…”

Jack moved now, quickly clearing the front room, then the bathroom and closet.

As he’d done in Weber’s room, Jack searched the room, taking care to leave everything as he found it. Like Weber’s, Möller’s clothes were nondescript, either tagless or bought locally at a Target or Walmart. No identification, no airline boarding passes, no scribbled notes or credit card receipts.

He turned his attention to the less obvious hiding spots — inside the chair’s zippered cushion or the cover of the ironing board, taped to the underside of a drawer, or down the back of the toilet tank. Nothing.

He lifted the shower-curtain rod free of its wall bracket, gave it a shake, then tilted it downward. From inside the plastic tube came a scraping sound. Jack pulled off the rod’s cap and out slid a screw-top aluminum cylinder. He caught it in his palm, then laid down the curtain rod, unscrewed the top, and checked the interior.

Bullets.

He turned to the sink, closed the drain plug, and dumped out the rounds.

They were .22-caliber short bullets, but the tips were coated black. It took Jack a moment to realize what he was seeing. These were Glaser Safety Slugs, frangible bullets designed to blow rat holes in whatever they struck. The black coating was a polymer cap; beneath this, the bullet’s hollowed-out core was packed with No. 12 birdshot. Glasers had devastating stopping capacity but poor penetrative power. This could have been the reason Möller had chosen to shoot Hahn in the eye rather than in the skull.

Jack picked up one of the bullets. It felt light in his hand. He put it next to his ear and shook it. Not Glasers. In fact, most Glasers came with a blue polymer cap, not black. Here was the answer to the unaccountably soft report of Möller’s pistol. These frangibles were subsonic, containing less propellant than it took to accelerate the round past the sound barrier. Without the sonic crack, all that remained was the explosion of the propellant’s gas, and judging by the feel of the one Jack was holding, there wasn’t much powder inside the casing. Past thirty or thirty-five feet the bullet’s trajectory probably dropped like a mortar round — which made Möller’s snap shot at Jack all the more impressive.

So this was a custom-made frangible. Whether there was a booming business for this kind of ammunition or it came from a niche market Jack didn’t know, but it was worth a check. He pocketed the round. He hoped Möller wouldn’t notice the discrepancy.

After taking a picture of the loose bullets, Jack wiped them down with a piece of toilet paper, returned them to the cylinder, and slid that back into the curtain rod.

He continued his search and struck pay dirt again a few minutes later.

Slipped into the folds of the wrapper of a bar of soap, he found a credit card in Möller’s name. He photographed it, front and back, then returned it to its hiding place.

No second passport. If Möller had one, he either was carrying it or had stashed it elsewhere. If this was the case, the chances were good Möller’s exit plan involved air travel and Jack would lose him. If not, Möller would be looking for an alternative route out of the country and would, Jack hoped, use this credit card to make it happen.

Time to go, Jack.

He gave the room one last quick inspection, saw nothing out of place, then left.

* * *

Once back in his car, Jack drove a few blocks away, pulled to the curb, and used his phone to log in to The Campus’s Enquestor Services portal. He entered Möller’s credit card information and toggled the real-time alerts slider beside the entry. He scanned for previous hits on the credit card but found none; it had never been used.

He got back on the Richmond Highway, headed north for five minutes, then turned left onto Duke Street. Effrem’s hotel, the Embassy Suites, sat across the street from John Carlyle Square Park. Jack found a parking spot on a nearby side street and walked the remaining distance. The rain was coming more heavily now, blown diagonally by a cold wind.

He ducked under the hotel’s awning, then through the lobby doors. He took off his jacket and shook the rain from it, using the time to consider his next step. Whoever Effrem Likkel was and whatever his reason for following Möller, the man was a lead Jack couldn’t afford to ignore. The downside was he’d be entangling himself with an unknown commodity, which would bring up questions Jack would prefer not to answer. He’d have to deal with them as they arose.

Jack walked to the elevators and took one up to the fourth floor. When he got there he took the right-hand hallway, found room 412, then walked back to the elevators. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Effrem’s number, and Effrem answered on the first ring. Jack said, “It’s me.”

“The man from—”

“Yes. Are you in your room?”

“Yes.”

“Come down to the lobby.”

Jack disconnected. He drew his Glock, stuffed it into his jacket’s side pocket, and left his hand there.

Thirty seconds later he heard a room door click shut down the hallway.