Titan glanced quickly down the hall. No sign of John. The old lady trembled beneath his gaze. She clutched a small white purse in her liver-spotted hands. '!here were senior citizens' groups staying at the Luxor all the time. No doubt the group this poor old woman had been with had neglected to check to see if all of their party were together. Maybe this lady wanted to call a church member on their cell phone. If so, too fucking bad. "Sorry," he said. "'IYy the room next door."
"Please!" The woman began to cry, and Than had almost shut the door on her when he paused. You can break this woman in half by breathing on her. What the fuck is she gonna do?
Feeling like a shithead for slamming a door in the face of an old lady, he opened the door. The old woman stood in the hallway, looking lost and in tears. "Come on in, but be quick," he said, already hating himself for letting a crying little old lady get to him.
The old woman sniffled back tears and hobbled in, her gait wavering. Titan closed the door and followed her into the room and then bumped into her as she suddenly stopped and whirled around toward him. He felt her face brush his chest as he tried to stop the forward momentum of his stride, hoping he hadn't hurt her, and that was when he felt the pain in his abdomen.
He looked down at his belly, his mind trying to figure out how a knife had been thrust into his stomach. The hands holding the handle were small, birdlike, skin wrapping bones. They jerked upward, opening him up, and Titan gasped, looking in wide-eyed horror at the old lady, who now wore a different expression. Gone was the look of elderly confusion and meekness and tears; it had been replaced by a look Titan had seen before only on people much younger than she-namely, male street criminals. Her blue eyes reflected a sense of malice as she grinned. "Fooled you, didn't 1?" She pulled the knife out of his gut, and Titan felt the lower part of his body grow numb and wet. His belly exploded with sharp pain.
He staggered back, eyes still on the old woman, than looked down at the blood spattering on the carpeted floor. He could feel the blood soaking into his jeans. He looked back up at the woman, still trying to comprehend why she had stabbed him when she lashed out again with expert precision. He saw the blade flash below his field of vision in a delicate swoop, felt a line of pain blaze across his throat, and then a sudden sense of warm wetness as his shirt was soaked. He opened his mouth to scream, but his vocal cords refused to take the commands. "That's what I like best about being elderly," the old woman said, her voice still possessing that same brittle tone but now strong with conviction and purpose. "You can catch so many of your victims off guard."
Titan made an attempt to lunge at her, to try to get the knife away from her grasp, just as his body went completely numb. He collapsed to the floor on his knees, his belly a pit of fire, his throat singing with pain, the scent of his own blood filling his nostrils, chasing him into darkness.
Mabel Schneider didn't waste time. She wiped the bloody knife blade on the comforter, then approached the door, peering through the eyeglass.
She knew another man was due any minute now with the room-service tray. The plans they had made earlier this morning had been hasty, but they were working beautifully. The best part of it all was they were actually going to let her take a souvenir! "One of her eyes," she'd told Rick Shectman over the phone yesterday when he'd spoken to her about coming out to assist in the abduction of a snuff-film victim. "If that animal you use in those films doesn't pop them when he sticks his dick in her eye sockets, I want one of them. Maybe both of them if they're unruptured. I haven't had boiled eyeballs in a while."
Shectman had agreed, only on the condition she prepare her meal on this coast. "I can't risk airport security finding body parts when you board your plane on Friday," he'd said. "If I can't get you the eyes, I'll arrange somebody to get you a kid. How's that sound?"
"I can get my own children," she'd spat out at him. "That's easy. Children flock to me because I remind them of their grandmother. If I can't get her eyes, I'll think of something else. Maybe you can convince that beast of yours to fuck me in the ass or something.'
"I'll do what I can," Shectman had said.
Mabel replaced the knife in her handbag, leaving it open enough so that she could retrieve it quickly for the next one. She examined herself quickly in the mirror. She hadn't gotten any of the big man's blood on her, which was good. She glanced back at him, her eyes lighting on his chest. It was still. He was deader than shit.
With that, she turned back to the task at hand. She opened the door slowly, peered out to make sure the corridor was deserted, then slipped out, dosing the door behind her.
Then she waited.
When John Panozzo rounded the curve in the corridor he saw an old woman wandering the hall, glancing at the numbers on the doors as if she were searching for something. He dismissed her from his mind as quickly as he had taken her in, and pushed the room-service tray ahead of him, the scent of fresh pancakes and coffee creating his own pangs of hunger. I didn't realize how fucking hungry I was until I smelled this shit. Man, that smells good!
John pushed the tray to Brad and Lisa Miller's room and knocked on the door. He was wearing the official uniform of the Luxor room-service employees. John had thought it was a good idea to have his team dressed as hotel employees to avoid suspicion. If somebody was out to get Brad and Lisa Miller, they wouldn't have a due they were being watched by hotel security as well as the best private security team in Las Vegas. They would be lulled into a false sense of security. Of course, that wouldn't work if-
"Excuse me. Sir?"
It was the old woman. She had noticed him and approached him tentatively. John glanced at her. She looked lost. He turned to the door as he heard footsteps approach.
"Sir?" Her voice was more persistent, wavering on brittleness and tears,
He turned back to her just as he heard the deadbolt being thrown open. "Just a minute, okay?"
He turned back to the door as Brad Miller opened it. "Room service," John said, pushing the cart past Brad.
"Hey." he heard Brad exclaim. John pushed the tray to the center of the room, taking only quick notice that the TV was on and Lisa Miller was still in bed, lying on her right side, her back away from the door. He turned around and was surprised to see that the old woman had followed him into the room.
"Uh, can I help you, miss?" John said, stepping toward the old woman.
"I'm lost," she said, her voice sounding as brittle as dead leaves. "My church group lost me on the way to the elevator. Do you have a phone I could use?"
Brad was still standing by the open door, obviously stunned that the old woman had blundered past him into his room. John took a step toward the old lady, his training taking over. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"Please!" she screeched, and then she started crying. She clutched her purse in her brittle-looking hands, and John reached her just as Brad closed the door. "Let her use the phone, John. She's not gonna hurt anything."
John was just turning to answer Brad when he felt the knife punch into his throat.
The first thing Brad saw when he came back into the room after closing the door was John was clutching his neck trying to stop the geyser of blood that was gushing out of him like a fountain. A knife with a seven-inch blade was sticking out of his throat where his Adam's apple should be. His eyes bugged in his face, his skin turned white as he grabbed for the knife unsuccessfully. The image hit Brad like a sledgehammer, shocking him with the brutal intensity of it. He felt frozen as the old woman reached for the knife handle and wrapped her brittle fingers around it. She tugged, and Brad could see the tendons along her upper arm tense as she pulled the blade out of John's throat. When the blade slid free, blood shot out of his neck with a sudden ferocity; it was like turning on a garden hose in the summer at full blast. It spattered the floor and the bed, some of it hitting Lisa.