Mistress

Chapter 24

I quietly slide off the bed and slither along the carpet. I can’t see below the door frame. I have no way of knowing if someone is standing outside my door.

But those keys didn’t just fall off by themselves. Someone must have pushed against the door.

I hold my breath, count down the first twenty presidents, and wait for any further movement. I stare at that door until my eyes are playing tricks on me, until that door is breathing in and out, expanding and contracting.

I lie there perfectly still for at least ten minutes, my face pressed against carpet fibers of cheap quality and questionable hygiene. Maybe the sound of the keys landing on the glass mirror, meant to alert me, had the additional effect of spooking them. But it’s kind of hard to believe that men armed with automatic weapons would be scared off by a set of car keys and a hand mirror.

I push off the carpet to a crouch, then tiptoe toward the door, careful to stay out of the line of the door frame. If these guys are inclined to unload their weapons through the door, I don’t want to be on the receiving end.

I approach the door and hold my breath again and listen. Nothing that I can hear but the quiet hum of the cheap air conditioner in my room.

Okay, it could have been gravity, not an intruder. But I have to be sure.

From my position outside the door frame, I leap into the line of fire, so to speak, and peek through the peephole. Nothing. Nobody out there.

Okay. Maybe it was just gravity. Maybe I need to get a grip.

“It’s time to end this,” I announce to no one but myself. I’m not even sure what that means, because I’m not exactly in control of events, but it sounded cool and I’ll take any relief right now. Something Eastwood or Stallone would say before engaging the villain in a climactic scene. Load the chamber, cock the weapon, and say, This ends here. No-This ends now.

“This ends now,” I say to the mirror.

I have one card left to play. I’m going back to Diana’s apartment to grab the surveillance tapes. They’ll tell me who pushed her off the terrace.

Then I jump as I hear a short, loud buzz, then the same sound a second time. Terror fills me and disintegrates in the time it takes my brain to register that my smartphone, resting on the nightstand, has just received a text message.

I reach for my phone as though it were a hot burner on a stove. The sender has been blocked. The message is a photograph. It takes me a moment to get it in full view.

“Oh, no,” I mumble.

It’s a photograph of Diana’s brother, Randy Hotchkiss, lying facedown in a pool of blood.

And underneath it, these words:

Randy couldn’t stop asking questions.

Can you?