In for the Kill

66

Quietly…This had to be done so quietly.

He lay on his stomach in the duct and peered down through the vent cover into the dimly lighted bathroom. He could see an angled slope of white plastic shower curtain, falling away, a corner of a marble vanity top like the one in his own room, the pattern of the off-white tile floor.

Undoubtedly there would be someone standing close guard over Myrna, but they wouldn't be in the bedroom with her. They'd have the suite bugged, though, and the slightest irregular sound would bring them running. Almost certainly Quinn himself was somewhere nearby, controlling the surveillance, maybe in another room on the same floor, listening. Sherman hoped so.

Of course there was always the possibility that Mom's bedroom was unoccupied, that the bait wasn't actually in the trap.

No, that would be risky for them. He might somehow tumble to it and bolt without making a try for the prize. After everything that had happened, they wouldn't chance that. They were too smart.

He smiled and reassured himself. They were the way God made prey animals, just smart enough and no more.

Sherman turned his head, pressing his cheek against the steel grate of the vent cover, and lay listening.

Silence. Complete silence.

Then, very softly, someone breathing. The slow, steady rhythm of deep sleep.

His heartbeat kicked into high and he heard his blood rushing in his ears. For a moment he felt light-headed.

She was there. Like the queen in her nest.

He could feel her presence nearby.

He pressed his cheek harder against the cool steel and was surprised to find himself crying.

A tear worked its way through the grate and he heard it strike the tile floor.

It did nothing to lessen his resolve.

Sergeant Al Allsworth was twenty-six years on the force and had done this kind of duty before. Ten years ago, in a Times Square hotel, he'd taken a bullet for a state witness and preserved testimony that helped to put major organized crime figures in prison.

Fifty-one years old now, Allsworth wasn't regarded as a genius and would never advance far in the NYPD, but he had a rarer and more valuable commodity than intelligence. He was one hundred percent certified reliable, a cop in every cell of his body. He would do his duty and would preserve Myrna Kraft's life even if it meant giving up his own. That was what he was about and he was respected for it.

Allsworth sat now on the small sofa in the anteroom of Myrna's suite, a People magazine fanned cover-up over his knee. He was a big man, bald but for a dusting of buzz-cut gray hair around his ears. He had bunched muscles, a stomach paunch, and a slab-sided face with a thin scar that ran through both lips near the right corner of his mouth.

His eyes were half closed but he was nowhere near sleep. The only light in the room was from the reading lamp on the table beside him. His uniform tie was loosened, as was the top button of his shirt, and his eight-point cap lay on the nearby table, alongside a half-full coffee cup.

Allsworth thrived on caffeine on this kind of duty; it was what kept him awake and alert while he was in the stand-down-but-aware state that every cop on steady stakeout duty learns to accomplish. He drank his coffee black and was on his second pot. The room reeked of overheated stale coffee, but he was used to the acrid aroma and didn't notice.

It seemed he wouldn't notice if a gunfight broke out in the room, but the part of Allsworth that listened was somehow made more alert and sensitive by the reduced activity of the rest of his body. He looked like a weary, middle-aged cop of the sort who might help lure a kid's cat down from a tree, gone somewhat to seed and slumped almost dozing on a sofa, but Allsworth was much more than that.

He was ready.

Shifting her weight back and forth violently, Lauri managed to work the chair she was bound to across the carpet until she was within a few feet of the nightstand by the bed.

Now what?

She couldn't reach the phone, but her fingers weren't taped together, so maybe she could maneuver the chair around so she could clutch the cord and pull it closer.

It was slow, difficult work, making her perspire heavily, which at least somewhat loosened the tape. And it was delicate work, because if she didn't manage enough control over her movements, the chair would tip over and she'd never be able to right herself.

Finally she managed to angle the chair correctly, then she worked desperately to move it the final six inches she needed if she might touch her fingertips to the tantalizingly dangling cord.

Each time the chair tipped toward the phone, she scissored her right middle finger and forefinger. She felt the tips of the fingers brushing the cord. One more rocking motion might be all she needed.

She held her breath, and shifted her weight to tip the chair as far back as she could without falling.

Now forward.

She felt the cord between her fingers and brought them together hard and held them, gripping the elusive cord.

As the chair's momentum reversed and it began to tip back the other way, she worked her fingers so the cord was wrapped partly around one of them.

Something wrong!

She knew immediately that in her eagerness to draw the cord closer and hold it, she'd thrown her weight back and to the side too vigorously.

The chair was tipping too far.

Toppling.

Oh, God! Falling…

Turning!

She clenched her eyes shut and bumped her shoulder and head on the floor as the chair swiveled on one rear leg and hit hard on its side.

But she'd held on to the cord. In fact it was wrapped even more tightly around her forefinger.

She remembered a brief dinging sound as she'd fallen, and knew what it meant. She'd pulled the phone off the nightstand. The receiver had bounced out of its cradle and was lying on the carpet. Her shoulder felt broken. Her head ached and throbbed, but she could move it to the side and see the phone's base.

The problem was that it was at the other end of the chair, near her feet.

Lying in a seated position on her left side, she struggled to move her left foot closer to the phone. The force of her fall had caused the tape to loosen even more, and she managed to clench her toes and wriggle the foot until she'd worked off her left high-heeled shoe.

It was a small accomplishment, but now she didn't feel completely helpless. She had a real shot at alerting someone to her plight, at getting free. She had actual hope.

She adjusted position to take as much weight as possible off the left chair leg and dug her toes into the carpet.

It took her several minutes to find the technique that would let her edge her taped nylon leg over near the phone's base. The way she was lying she couldn't actually see the phone's keypad, but she could reach it with her heel.

Drawing a deep breath, leaning her upper body as hard as possible into the carpet, she fought the pain in her shoulder and used her nyloned heel to press again and again on the phone's keypad.

Though it wasn't likely, she told herself she might coincidentally tap out a number that was valid, that would somehow summon help. The numerals nine and one, she remembered, were diagonally opposite each other on the keypad, so she tried to adjust each press of her heel to increase the chance that she'd hit the right keys. After a while, she moved her heel in patterns of three with a pause between each effort. Nine-one-one.

She hoped.

As she fought her bonds and pain and the cramping of her muscles, Lauri wondered what the odds were that she'd actually reach the emergency number with her thumping heel.

She decided they were long enough that they didn't merit thinking about, but they were the only odds she had so she went with them.

In room 624, Pearl leaned slightly forward, rested a fingertip on her right earphone, and smiled.

"What's funny?" Quinn asked. He'd dragged one of the upholstered armchairs over to the window and was slumped in it with his legs extended and crossed at the ankles.

"She snores," Pearl said. "Not very loud, but at last she snores."

"So what?"

Pearl looked over at him, thinking he'd better not mention that she also snored, though not very loud. Quinn seemed to know what she was thinking and looked away. Did the bastard smile?

"It isn't fair," Pearl said, "that somebody looks like Michelle Pfeiffer and snores and men think it's sexy, but when other women snore it's a turn-off."

"Myrna Kraft doesn't look like Michelle Pfeiffer."

"I wasn't talking about Myrna Kraft, I was talking about Michelle Pfeiffer."

"It isn't fair," Quinn said, "that somebody looks like Michelle Pfeiffer."

God, we're getting tired. Too tired.

He stood up from the chair, stretched, and worked his arms back and forth to get up his circulation, then stepped over to the window to observe the dimly lit street below with its sparse vehicular and pedestrian traffic that never disappeared altogether. New York at night.

"Looks innocent enough out there," he said, not turning around.

"We know what that means."

"Uh-huh." Quinn glanced at his watch and sat back down.

Pearl thought they were probably wasting their time, but she knew better than to say so.

Four floors beneath Quinn and Pearl, Jeb Jones sat in a chair he'd moved over to his window. He was watching the homeless man across the street. The police had allowed Jeb to be in the same hotel as his mother, but they didn't want him to be any part of what might happen if Sherman came calling. They wanted him out of the way.

Jeb wanted to be here. As far as he was concerned, he had every right to be here. He'd pretended to go along with the idea that he wanted to be nearby so he could comfort his mother only after Sherman had been captured. But only pretended.

He already knew the route he'd take to her room four floors above his own. Out his door, turn left, and run up the stairs. There was a cop on the sixth-floor landing, but Jeb knew that if Sherman was thought to be near his mother all of the cops would converge on her room as fast as possible.

Jeb would be right behind the cop on the landing.

The key was the homeless man across the street. His clothes were ragged and he was seated on a blanket in a dark doorway, slouched backward against the closed door, his head bowed as if he were sleeping. There was a begging cup on the corner of the blanket, but Jeb knew the man wasn't a beggar. He was an undercover cop.

Jeb had even seen the beggar speaking into a brown paper bag that was supposed to contain a bottle, and once he was sure the man had used a cell phone.

Like all the cops in and around the hotel, the beggar would get the word as soon as something was happening. They were all in touch with each other, ready to act in unison, ready to converge like a trap springing closed. The beggar was a tooth in a trap's jaw.

The beggar who was a cop.

The instant he moved, Jeb would move.