William Bernhardt - Dark Justice

And he just hoped they could get back before it was too late.

“What the hell is that racket?”

Tess pushed the drapes to the side and peered outside. There was a major commotion on the street, but it wasn’t close enough that she could see anything.

Every time Tess heard a noise from the street, she jumped three feet. And in the last few minutes, there had been a lot of noises.

Stay calm, girl, she told herself, as if that might actually do some good. You’ve been in tighter scrapes than this. Did you panic when the police caught you going through Madonna’s luggage? Did you turn to jelly when Sean Penn took a shot at you? Of course not. You’re a grown-up and a journalist-a journalist with a hell of a story to tell.

If she could only live long enough to tell it.

She had retraced all her steps, all her thoughts, all her conversations in her mind. Everything she had seen or heard since she first came to this backwater burg. And she had convinced herself she knew who killed Dwayne Gardiner. The killer had made a fatal error.

The only problem was that she was certain the killer would soon recognize the error, too. And as soon as that happened, the killer would be trying to remedy the mistake.

And the only way to remedy the mistake was to eliminate one Tess O’Connell.

She threw all her clothes and belongings haphazardly into her small suitcase. The clothes would be a mess when she arrived home-if she arrived home-but at the moment, fashion gaffes were the least of her concerns. She grabbed the bag, crossed the room in three giant steps, and flung open the door.

An instant after she opened it, she heard the sound of another door closing. It wasn’t a loud sound. It almost wasn’t there at all; it was more like a whisper, a soft whooshing of air. But she had heard it. At least she thought she had.

Why would someone close his door the instant she opened hers? Unless someone was watching her. Someone who didn’t want to be seen.

She bit down on her knuckle. That was the problem with paranoia-it wasn’t always unjustified. But when you were the paranoid one, it was impossible to know which concerns were ridiculous and which concerns might get your head blown off.

Well, she couldn’t spend the rest of her life in her room-not if she wanted to get this story in print. She didn’t even have a fax machine here. And she wasn’t going to give up this Pulitzer sure-bet.

She took a deep breath and plunged into the hallway. So far, so good-no one jumped out of a hidey-hole with machine guns blazing. She walked rapidly down the corridor, dragging her suitcase behind her. She was glad she’d learned to pack light; she didn’t need anything weighing her down.

She paced the full length of the corridor, then took a right turn and made a beeline for the elevator bank. When she reached the elevators, she slowed. Her footsteps stopped.

But someone else’s didn’t. Not right away, that is. She stopped, and then a heartbeat later, so did someone else. Almost perfectly in step with her. But not quite.

Tess felt an icy grip at the base of her spine. Someone was following her. And there was only one person who would have a motive to do that-

To hell with the elevators. She ducked into the adjoining stairwell and raced down the stairs, baggage bumping every step behind her. A few years before, when she had been determined to lose the unwanted and unneeded extra ten pounds she wore around her waist, she had started walking the stairs every day during lunch hour. Since the LA. skyscraper she worked in had over forty floors, it was pretty strenuous exercise. Once up and down and she was usually bushed.

She just hoped she had retained some of those skills. Magic Valley wasn’t LA.; it was only five flights down. But at the moment, five flights seemed like an endless expanse.

She had almost made it to the fourth floor when she heard a pneumatic release of air. Someone else had opened the door. Someone else was in the stairwell.

She was not alone.

She tossed aside the suitcase. What did she need with a lot of clothes and underarm deodorant anyway? She had her money in her purse. What she needed was to make it to her rental car. Alive.

She was in a full-out run now, no holds barred. She raced down the stairs as fast as she could without falling, taking the steps two at a time whenever possible. She was making good time now-the third floor, the second …

But she could still hear the footsteps behind her, and they were moving just as fast. Whoever was chasing her seemed determined not to let her escape.

Tess hit the ground floor running. She thought about hailing the bell captain, trying to get help. But what if he wasn’t at his station, what if she didn’t make it in time? It all seemed too risky, in her panicked state. She didn’t want to be trapped in this hotel a second longer. She wanted to be in her car, leaving the whole town in her dust.

She crossed the lobby quickly and headed for the parking garage. The hotel had valet parking, but the valet wasn’t there. Just as well-she could do it faster herself. She snatched her keys from the pegboard at the valet station, then barreled into the parking garage scanning for space number twenty-two.

She ran up the nearest slope, checking the numbers painted on the asphalt outside each space. Twenty-two, twenty-two … the numbers she was seeing were in the thirties and getting bigger, not smaller. Where was it, damn it? She couldn’t be sure how much space she’d put between herself and her pursuer, but she knew it wasn’t nearly enough.

The numbers were still getting bigger. She must’ve gone the wrong way. She whirled around without breaking her speed, blazing down the slope heading the other way …

An arm reached out from nowhere and grabbed her.

Tess screamed.

She couldn’t decide whether to scream at him or to scream for help, so she ended up doing both at once. “ Help! Let go of me !”

“Hey, lady, relax, okay?”

Tess pulled herself together and stared at the man holding her arm. He wasn’t the murderer. But she had seen that face before.

“I’m Johnny. The bellhop, remember? I’ve been working your floor. I showed you to your room.”

A wave of relief flooded over her. He was the bellhop, for God’s sake. The bellhop!

“I’m-sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I thought someone was following me.”

“You were right,” Johnny said. He wiped the sweat from his brow. “I’ve been following you since you left your room. You dropped this.”

It was her wallet. The boy was holding her wallet.

It was so pathetic she had to laugh. Here she was-scared out of her skin, certain she was about to die-and all the man wanted was to return her wallet.

Tess tried to regain some tiny measure of her composure. “Thank you. It must’ve spilled out of my purse when …” When she sprinted down the hallway like a madwoman, she thought, but did not say. “I threw everything together in kind of a rush.”

“It’s all right, ma’am. I just didn’t want you to leave without it.”

“Of course.” She opened the wallet. “Here, let me-”

“That’s not necessary, ma’am. Just doing my job.”

“Well, if you say so.” She closed the wallet and tucked it back inside her purse. “Anyway, thanks again.”

Waving, she started back in the direction where she now realized her car must be. What a fool I’ve been, she thought. What a fool I’ve made of myself. She started to laugh. It was so stupid now, in retrospect. A few noises in the street, a few creaks in the hallway, and she had totally lost it.

She found the Ford Taurus she had rented in Seattle and slipped inside. Jesus, it was just as well she was working this assignment alone. She’d never be able to live this one down back at the National Whisper .