“It might be safer for you to stay dead,” Frost told her.
“I know, but I can’t do that. I won’t hide from these people anymore.” She brushed her hair from her face and then went on. “Besides, it’s too late. There’s no going back now.”
Frost looked at her sharply. “What do you mean by that?”
“I called Martin Filko. He knows I’m alive.”
“What? Fawn, why did you do that?”
Her mouth hardened into a scowl that was a defiant mix of guilt and pride. She knew she’d been foolish, but she didn’t care. “Don’t you get it? Trent’s dead! The man I loved is gone because of Martin Filko. I wanted him to know I was coming for him.”
“Did you actually talk to him? What did you say?”
“I asked if he was afraid of ghosts,” she said with a smirk, “and believe me, he was. It scared the crap out of him to hear my voice.”
Frost shook his head. The hotel had just become a trap, and he wondered how much time they had before it sprang shut. “When did you call him?”
“Tonight before I talked to you,” Fawn said. “But I didn’t tell him where I was.”
Frost hurried to the hotel room door, checked the peephole, and put his ear to the door to listen to the hallway. He heard nothing on the other side. “That doesn’t matter. They’ll be able to pinpoint your cell location. They’re probably on their way.”
A crack broke through Fawn’s studied composure. Her eyes blinked rapidly. She bit down nervously on her lower lip and joined him by the door, where her face was in shadow. “So what do we do?”
He slid his gun out of his holster, and he took Fawn’s hand. “We need to get you out of here. Right now.”
43
Frost checked the hallway. No one was there.
The carpet hushed their footsteps as they hurried toward the glowing bank of capsule-shaped elevators. He kept his gun in the pocket of his jacket with his fingers curled around the butt. As they walked, he looked over the railing at the nearby floors. He didn’t like what he saw.
Six floors down, a twenty-something man lingered in the corridor on the far side of the hotel with a phone pressed to his ear. The man acted casual, as if he were simply on a late-night conference call, but his eyes moved pointedly, studying each floor. Frost tried to back out of sight, but he was too late. The man spotted him, and his stare fixed on Frost and Fawn long enough to make it clear that they were targets.
“Lombard’s here,” Frost murmured.
“Should we go back to my room?”
“No, it’s too late for that. They know where we are.”
He guided them to where an empty elevator was waiting. He went first and pulled Fawn in behind him, but he kept them far from the floor-to-ceiling window. Instead of going to the street level, he pushed the button for the atrium lobby, which was actually the third floor of the hotel. The elevator descended swiftly, and he watched the huge Eclipse sculpture looming closer.
His gun was in his hand as the lobby doors opened. He tensed, expecting a welcoming committee, but they were alone. He tucked the gun into his pocket again and led Fawn into the vast open space of the atrium. Across from the sculpture, he saw the check-in desk, where two bored hotel employees chatted. The hotel bar was directly ahead. The drunk businessmen who’d been there when he first arrived had left, but someone else was there now, casually reading a paper copy of the Chronicle, with his phone on the cushion of the chair beside him.
Frost recognized him.
It was Romeo Laredo, the muscular IT guy who’d pushed Diego Casal in front of the train. The Lombard operative with the code name Guerrero. Romeo was looking across the lobby at Frost and Fawn, as if he’d been expecting them. His face broke into a friendly grin, but there was a buzz saw hiding behind his smile. Romeo had a raincoat draped across his lap, and as Frost watched, the man’s right hand slipped under the coat. He was armed.
“This way,” Frost whispered to Fawn, pushing her toward an escalator that led down one floor to the conference center. “Quickly.”
They reached the second floor of the hotel, and he took a moment to orient himself. The solid wall in front of them rose from the downstairs ballroom, and a corridor on their left led to a series of smaller meeting rooms. When he glanced back to the top of the escalator, he saw Romeo standing there, watching them. The young man’s huge smile didn’t change. Romeo looked in both directions to make sure he was alone, and then he headed calmly down the escalator steps.
“Run,” Frost said.
He grabbed Fawn’s hand, and they sprinted along the ballroom wall toward the northeast corner of the hotel. Halfway there, the corridor turned sharply as the building narrowed to a point. Ahead of him, he could see glass doors leading outside with nothing but blackness behind them. He drew his gun into his hand, but no one was waiting for them. He shoved through the doors, and they emerged onto the top of stone steps that descended toward a cobblestone plaza on the Embarcadero. The Ferry Building was across the street, and palm trees lined the curb. Cold rain swept like a curtain into their faces.
“My car’s on Market Street,” he told her.
They splashed down the steps. He could see his Suburban at the curb under the streetlights, but his truck had company. A charcoal-gray BMW was parked beside it, and he saw Luis Moreno from the Department of Building Inspection leaning against the BMW’s door. Another of Lombard’s twenty-something army. Moreno, like Romeo, wore a casual grin and had his hands buried in the pockets of a trench coat. When he saw Frost and Fawn, he started toward them through the pouring rain.
Meanwhile, Romeo was coming for them down the plaza steps.
Frost spun around and marched the opposite way with Fawn at his hip. When they were out of sight, they ran through the outdoor shops of Embarcadero Center toward the opposite side of the hotel. It was a long block, and before they reached the other end, he heard voices shouting behind them. He couldn’t see anyone through the downpour, but he knew the two men weren’t far behind.
They emerged onto Drumm Street. The rain drowned out the noise around them. The hotel was on their left, and across the street was a series of chain stores. Subway. Starbucks. 7-Eleven. Walgreens. All closed. He pointed toward the opposite side, and they ran that way, passing under a streetlight and then reaching a darker section of the block near the deserted storefronts. There were cars parked all along the curb, including a large black van with a logo for a local coffee company. He looked back at the Embarcadero Center corridor and didn’t see Romeo or Moreno on the street yet. They only had a few seconds.
“Underneath the van,” he said. “Hurry.”
He pushed on Fawn’s shoulders, and the two of them dropped to their hands and knees and slithered under the chassis of the black van. A torrent of water flooded along the curb, soaking them. Rain dripped like waterfalls around them on every side. He held his breath. He had his gun in one hand, and his other arm was draped around Fawn’s shoulder. She huddled against him. In the darkness, he put a finger over his lips and made sure she stayed silent.
Footsteps closed in on them.
One man was on the street, and the other was on the sidewalk. They kicked through rainwater, searching the block, going back and forth. Frost heard one of them shout to the other in frustration, “Where the hell are they?”
Then silence.