Torrent

CHAPTER 5

The two men stood in the doorway, their jaws slack, seemingly as surprised to see us as we were to see them. Actually, I wasn’t so much surprised as chagrinned.

“Room service,” I announced. “We thought you’d left for dinner, so we came to tidy your room.” Oh, yeah, they were totally going to believe that. If we weren’t standing next to the window on the far side of the bed, I’d try charging past them to see if we could escape before their reflexes caught up to us, but vaulting over the furniture to reach the door would give them time to react.

“Pardon?” one asked. A little slighter and shorter than his comrade, he seemed the younger of the two, and didn’t look like he needed to shave often. He blinked a few times, as if he might believe me. His deep green-blue eyes reminded me of an alpine lake I’d hiked to in the Rockies once. A few tufts of blond hair had escaped his black cap and hinted of a boyish tousled style.

The other fellow… There was nothing boyish about him, though he didn’t look like he needed to shave often either. Beneath his black leather jacket, he wore a dark gray T-shirt that fitted his torso and had a deep V-neck that promised defined pectoral muscles. He was lean rather than bulky, but his outfit along with his cold stare reminded me of Schwarzenegger in the Terminator movies. He didn’t look like he believed us.

“Tidy,” he said, taking in the room-and the fact that nothing in it was amiss, nor did the quilt have so much as a wrinkle to it. “There is nothing that requires tidying.” His gaze flicked from us to the bedside table and back again, eyes narrowing. His irises were as striking as the other man’s, a rich violet that wouldn’t be possible to achieve without contact lenses. I hoped that meant his vision was poor and that he’d have a hard time leaping over the bed to catch us.

“That’s because we clean in the mornings,” I said. “We only have to tidy in the evening for our messy guests. Since that’s obviously not you two, we’ll just turn down the bed and place mints on your pillows.” Without taking my eyes from the pair-or dropping my best customer-service-with-a-smile smile-I pulled down the corner of the quilt and fluffed the pillow. “Simon, did you remember the mints?”

“Uhm, no. They’re in the cart.”

“Uh oh, we better go get them.” My heart was beating a couple thousand times a minute as I eased around the end of the bed and headed for the door. Maybe we should have tried throwing ourselves out the window instead. It was only the second story. We couldn’t break more than a few bones in such a fall, right?

Too late now. I was only a couple of feet away from the riders, with Simon on my heels. I didn’t like the way they were looking at each other, like old friends who could exchange complicated messages with nothing but a glance.

“I think the cart’s right out there,” I said and tried to dart between them.

A hand clamped onto my biceps. I tried to jerk away, but I might as well have been attempting to escape from steel shackles. It was Violet Eyes, and he pulled me close, glaring down at me.

“Why were you searching our room?”

“Searching? Is that what you think we were doing?” I waved to Simon, hoping he could slip past and escape into the hallway where he could find help or cook up some scheme to free me, but the second man had blocked his approach to the doorway. “I told you,” I said with as much affronted indignation as I could manage, “we work here and were here to tidy your room if it needed it. If you don’t let go of me, I’ll tell the owner, and she’ll call the police.”

Blue Eyes looked more uncertain than his buddy. “Jakatra, maybe we should let them go. Nothing’s missing. I could sense if it were.”

“They are thieves,” Violet Eyes-Jakatra said. “Even in this benighted realm, that is a crime.”

“Crime?” Simon blurted. “You’re the ones who stole my metal detector up on that mountain. What’d you do with it?”

I winced. If they hadn’t known we were responsible for their mutilated tires, they did now.

“Sah,” Blue Eyes whispered. I didn’t know what “sah” meant, but his expression grew slightly contrite.

Jakatra’s glare didn’t soften. “We didn’t steal it; we required its use for a short time. We left it against a tree near where that large conveyance was parked.”

“Fine,” Simon said, “then we can all forget we saw each other and I’ll go get it.” He met my eyes.

I gave him a quick nod. These guys might not agree with his suggestion, but it was time to depart either way.

Simon grabbed the smaller fellow, trying to stomp on his foot and push him out of the way. Jakatra’s steel grip hadn’t let up, but my first escape attempt hadn’t been more than a reflex-not a particularly honed one at that. This time, I put some thought into getting away. I grabbed the wrist that held me, intending to twist it against the joint so the pain would force him to let me go. To further distract him, I drove my knee toward his groin at the same time.

But my knee hit nothing except the doorjamb he’d been standing in front of. Faster than I could register, he had twisted away, evading both of my attacks. Before I could attempt a counter, I found my face mashed against that doorjamb. I tried to wriggle free, but a heavy weight against my back had me pinned. My arms were yanked behind me, and I couldn’t find any leverage to stomp on his foot. I couldn’t even see his foot.

“What should we do with them?” Blue Eyes asked, telling me he’d conquered Simon as easily as I’d been trapped.

Damn. I’d never been in a real fight in my life, but I’d thought those hours in the dojo would translate to a modicum of competence.

A clink sounded against the window on the door at the end of the hallway. The weight on my back shifted-the man turning part way to look toward the noise. The attack came from the opposite direction though. Temi raced into view, a fire extinguisher in her hands, its muzzle aimed at us.

I squinted my eyes shut and buried my chin in my chest. A white spray of chemicals assaulted us. My attacker drew back, lifting an arm to shield his face. This time when I threw a kick, it connected with his shin. Not much of an assault, but I was more interested in lunging into the hallway. Whether because of surprise or because the extinguisher’s propellant made everything slippery I didn’t know, but his grip on me fell away.

I almost stumbled and fell on my face, but Temi flung the extinguisher at someone and caught me.

“Simon,” I started, but a familiar form smothered in white spurted out of the room beside me.

“Go,” he ordered.

We went. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t graceful, but we sprinted down the stairs and out the front door. We almost knocked over an elderly couple climbing the steps to the porch with their arms laden with shopping bags. I veered to one side of them as Simon went to the other, and we vaulted the railing, landing on the sidewalk.

A startled, “Watch out!” came from behind us.

I sprinted for the Jaguar without waiting to see if anyone was giving chase. I jumped into the back a second before Simon landed in the passenger seat, smearing white goo all over the expensive leather. Temi lagged behind, a grimace of pain on her face as she limped down the sidewalk. I’d forgotten about her injury. I lunged over the seat back to open her door for her. She flung herself inside, hardly the graceful form she’d once been, but she got her legs into place and shoved the key into the ignition.

At the Vendome, several people had come out onto the porch, some with drinks in hand. Great, we were the evening entertainment. I didn’t see our strange leather-clad men though.

Temi tore out of the parking space and roared off down the street at twice the speed limit. I checked that corner window on the way by, and caught Blue Eyes staring down at me. It was probably only in my imagination that a strange glow brightened the room behind him.