Brian Freeman - The Crooked Street

“So what really happened on Tuesday?” Frost asked.

“At first, it went off just like we planned. When I saw the mayor with Filko, I couldn’t believe our luck. This was big. There was no way they wouldn’t call for Lombard’s help when I disappeared. So I did my thing with the two of them all evening, and when Filko and I were alone, I knew the cameras were getting everything. It would ruin him when it came out.”

“How bad was it?”

“Bad. I deal with my share of freaks, but I knew why Naomi was so desperate to take him down. Even so, I didn’t care. When Filko finally passed out, I slipped up top to find Denny on the bridge, and he took me below deck. We’d arranged it all in advance. Everyone else was asleep. He hid me in the engine room, and after that, he sounded the alarm that I’d gone overboard. As far as the others were concerned, I was dead in the ocean.”

“And when the boat came back in?” Frost asked.

“Trent was in the harbor waiting for us. He’d given me and Denny special phones. As soon as the trouble was starting, we could speed-dial Trent and get him in there with the whole damn cavalry. We could nail Lombard. We could nail Filko. But it didn’t work that way. Nobody got hurt. Belinda handed out cash to keep everyone quiet. And the cleanup crew found the cameras, so that meant we had nothing on Filko. The whole thing was a bust. We couldn’t prove a thing.”

“Except Lombard wasn’t done,” Frost said.

“Yeah. Trent was afraid of that. That’s why he hid me here for a few days while we waited to see what happened next.”

“Why didn’t he watch the witnesses? He had to know they were in danger.”

“He didn’t want to scare off Lombard. They didn’t know Trent, they knew Denny. He was their contact. Trent told Denny to make sure everybody kept their eyes open and to call if they noticed anything weird. Nobody did. Except once Lombard went into action, he moved as fast as a snake. Trent didn’t know anything was going on until Denny called him on Friday night, and by then, it was too late to stop it. I’ve been lying low ever since, until Trent could figure out what to do. As long as I was still dead, I was safe.”

Frost shook his head. “Trent should have told me the truth.”

“He wasn’t sure if he could trust you.”

“And I didn’t trust him, because I knew he was keeping things from me,” Frost said. “Instead, we all got played by Lombard.”

Fawn got up from the bed and came over to him. “It’s time for me to come back to life. I can blow the lid off the whole thing. I can tell everyone what happened on the boat, and we can tie it to Trent, Denny, Chester, Carla, Mr. Jin, all of them. The only way for Lombard to fix it was to eliminate every witness. Well, he missed one. Me.”

“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.”

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.