The snappily dressed and frighteningly perky young woman behind the counter tapped computer keys, jotted a note to herself, then gave him a radiant smile and chirped, “Thank you. sir, we’ll have the flowers sent right up.”
Damn. Hawk muttered, “Right…thanks,” and turned away. What else could he do? Hotel security these days was a pain in the butt.
He dawdled toward the main entrance, thinking hard and pretending to browse through the rack of brochures near the concierge’s station while he kept an eye on the front desk and his expensive and futile bouquet.
It must have been a slow night, because it was only a few minutes before he saw a bellman approach the desk. The perky clerk handed him the handwritten note, after which the bellman picked up the flowers and headed for the elevators at a brisk clip. Hawk made a show of looking at his wristwatch as if he’d suddenly changed his mind about an appointment, and followed.
The bellman was lucky; an elevator opened right up for him. He stepped on and the doors whooshed shut just as Hawk, timing it perfectly, arrived to punch the Up button. While he waited for the next elevator, Hawk watched the floor indicators above the one the bellman had taken light up in slow and steady sequence… two, three, four, five, six…seven. Seven it was, then, unless-but no, the numbers were lighting up in reverse now. A few moments later, there was a ding, and those same doors opened invitingly for him.
Hawk rode to the seventh floor in a tense, anticipatory calm, cocooned in a cottony silence. Everything seemed to be moving much too slowly, though he knew mere seconds had ticked by before the elevator doors whisked open at last on an elegantly furnished foyer, lit by wall sconces and decorated with fresh flowers.
He spotted his flowers sitting on the floor in front of a door about halfway down the long, softly lit corridor to his right. There was no sign of the bellman, or anyone else.
Hawk glanced at his watch. Incredible as it seemed, no more than ten minutes had passed since he’d left Mrs. Carlysle perusing the racks of romance novels in the hotel gift shop. How many more minutes did he have? He didn’t need many-with the small device he carried in his pocket, he’d have the security lock open in a matter of seconds. Seconds more to nip inside, grab the painting and get back out again, then pray she didn’t catch him hightailing it down the hall toward the stairs. Piece of cake.
Please, God, he thought, just let her give me two more minutes.
Under the circumstances, he didn’t think it unreasonable to assume that in this case, at least, God might be on his side.
At first it seemed his assumption might be correct; his nifty little electronic decoder worked exactly the way it was supposed to, unlocking the door without a hitch. Soundlessly, he eased it open, slipped inside and pulled it shut after him.
He barely had time to register the fact that the room was in total darkness, and that it was odd, because in his experience, women almost always left a light on when they exited a hotel room they expected to return to alone. That insight only took a split second. But by then he already knew the reason for it.
He wasn’t the only person in the room.
His sixth sense told him first, before the faint stirrings in the air currents, before the furtive but unmistakable rustlings of a body diving into cover. Grateful now for the total darkness, Hawk felt for the opening that would be the bathroom doorway, found it on his right, as he’d guessed, slipped into it and crouched low, listening with held breath for the whisper of other respirations. Silently cursing his own thundering pulse as he tried to tune his radar to another heartbeat.
The sound he heard instead was deafening by contrast: the swish and click of a plastic key card going into, then out of the lock.
He hardly had time to swing the bathroom door to and flatten himself behind it before the outer door opened. He heard a soft gasp, then a thud and a rustle.
What now? No choice-he had to risk a look through the crack he’d left in the bathroom door. What he saw nearly stopped his heart; he had to bite down on his lip to keep from groaning. There was Mrs. Carlysle, dead center in the damn doorway, bathed in light from the corridor, a perfect target. And in her two outstretched hands, what was astoundingly and unmistakably a handgun.
Two thoughts flashed into Hawk’s mind, following each other with the speed and clarity of electronic pulses. The first, with a surge of gladness he didn’t wonder about until much later, was, Thank God! She has to be an innocent-no professional would be so stupid.
The second thought was, if the other person in that hotel room was the same one who’d put a bullet between Loizeau’s eyes, Jane Carlysle was a dead woman.
Chapter 4
Jane told herself it was because she’d been distracted by the flowers. She’d been so busy asking herself, “Who on earth would send me flowers? And why?”
But even so, the instant the door opened, she knew that something was not as it should be. Something was different. Something was missing.
For a moment-just a moment-she even thought she must be in the wrong room. At least that would have explained the flowers.
But she couldn’t possibly be in the wrong room. This was her room, number 722, the very same one she’d left not half an hour ago to go down to the garage with Connie.
And…well, of course! Now she knew exactly what was missing. It was the Washington Monument. She’d been looking at it before, and it was the last thing she’d seen as she’d pulled the door closed behind her. But now the curtains were drawn, the room in darkness. And she’d left the desk light on…
All that realizing took place in the space of time it took her to utter one small exclamation of surprise and alarm. What she did next required even less time and no thought at all, and she couldn’t for the life of her account for the impulse.
She let go of her purse, reached into the plastic bag that held her Roy Rogers six-shooter and pulled it out. It slid smoothly from its holster, nestled nicely in the palm of her hand. And the next thing she knew, she was holding it the way she’d seen policemen do in the movies, with both hands and at arm’s length, and was aiming the toy pistol at the dark wall of draperies right where the Washington Monument was supposed to be.
And what then? Up until that moment, her mind had been operating on autopilot, or like a computer purring smoothly through its set-up program. Now it waited with a blank screen, cursor patiently blinking, for further instructions. And she had none whatsoever to give it! She thought…nothing. No review of the course of action chosen, no consideration of better alternatives. no what-ifs or should-haves. Stranger still, she felt nothing, not even fear.
Perhaps there just wasn’t time. Because that curious blankness could have lasted no more than the span of a heartbeat or two, and just as she was beginning to get a glimmer of an idea that maybe, just maybe, it was a very stupid thing she’d done, the blankness exploded into violence and total confusion.
Something struck her-from the side, she believed, although for some reason she fell forward, suddenly and hard, so that the wind was knocked out of her. As she lay gasping and retching on the scratchy hotel carpet, she felt a tremendous weight come down between her shoulder blades, as if someone had knelt there, on one knee.
She knew a second or two of absolute terror as hands touched her…fingers searched along the side of her neck… There was a ghastly pressure. Panic-stricken, unable to struggle or even draw a single breath, she wanted to scream, to cry out. But no sound came from her mouth. And then darkness drifted down around her, almost gently, as if someone had thrown a blanket over her head…