Thomas Perry - Dead Aim

She returned her attention to Tim. She had moved closer to him, and sometimes touched his arm or his hand as she made a point. She was secure now, and she could concentrate on the hunt. Soon they were off the freeway, going south over a winding canyon road down into Beverly Hills. When they reached Sunset and she saw the wide avenues lined with tall coconut palms, she began to watch for the hotel. She saw it coming from a distance. After a few seconds’ thought, she said, “Anyone have a plan besides me?”

Ten minutes later, Kira and Tim entered the lobby. Tim was carrying his suitcase and had her overnight bag strapped over his shoulder, but he was strong enough so that it looked effortless. Kira scurried to the counter ahead of him and said, “We just called a few minutes ago and had a room set aside for us.”

The clerk was a girl about Kira’s age. “Mr. and Mrs. Wilson?”

“That’s right.”

“And how will you be paying for your stay with us?”

Kira placed on the counter one of the two credit cards she had bought before the hunt. It had been sold to her for two thousand dollars as a spree card. It was a perfect clone of a real card belonging to a real Mrs. Wilson, who was supposedly in Europe for the summer, where someone had gotten the card’s information when she had used it. Kira had bought the clone because she had known that on this hunt she would have to make her own arrangements for getting out afterward, and, with the fake Massachusetts driver’s license she’d had made to order, the card would allow her to rent a car or buy a plane ticket.

She held her breath as the clerk swiped the card on a magnetic reader, looked at a screen, and frowned. She swiped it again, and Kira began to feel the hairs on the back of her neck rise. She slipped her hand into her purse, grasped the pistol’s grips, and let her face go blank. The clerk turned the card around to face her, and began tapping keys on the card reader. There was a pause while the machine communicated over a telephone line with some other machine, and then a sudden clackety-clack as the reader printed out a receipt. The clerk smiled, and Kira slowly pulled her right hand out of the purse. She took the clerk’s silver pen and signed, then accepted the little folder with the magnetic key cards, turned, and walked to the row of elevators in an alcove.

As soon as they were inside, Tim leaned close and whispered, “I didn’t see any sign of him in the lobby or the gift shop.” She felt the soft puffs of his breath on her ear, and it made delicious chills go down her spine. She pulled away, and gave a little shimmy. “That tickles.” Then she raised her eyes to him. “No. But let’s talk in the room.”

She had asked for a room as high up as possible, where there would be a view, and she had scored the fifteenth floor. She had told the others casually, without making too much of it, and left it to them to remember their negative comments and to consider whether they could have gotten so close to Mallon’s room so effortlessly.

She had turned to Jimmy and said, “You two will have to find a way to watch his car without getting noticed.” She had been aware that she was making the estrangement between them complete. Jimmy and Lee would be outside somewhere, or possibly in a dark, damp underground parking structure, while she took Tim upstairs to a comfortable hotel room with her. She and Tim would probably be the ones to get Mallon, and Jimmy and Lee would get nothing.

She gave Tim one of the card keys to their room and whispered, “1509,” then slipped the other card into a pocket of her purse, where she could find it easily. As the elevator stopped and she walked out, she thought about the fifteenth floor. No hotel ever had a thirteenth, so they called that the fourteenth, and the fifteenth was really the fourteenth. She had traveled with her father and mother enough to know that she would almost certainly be able to get a room up high. That was because business travelers all knew that no fire department in the world had a ladder that went up above the sixth floor. If Mallon had unexpectedly shown up an hour ago and been given the fifteenth floor, chances were that she would be too.

She let Tim go ahead of her past 1503, his heavy feet made heavier by the luggage he carried. She used the noise to cover her while she stopped by the door. She placed her ear to the wood and listened. She heard Tim open room 1509. She knew he was standing in the doorway holding the door open and watching her from behind, so she tried to look dangerous and alluring at the same time, making her leg muscles tense and sucking in her abdominals to prepare to spring.

She held her pose for fifteen or twenty seconds, but she could hear nothing. She turned her head slightly and brought her eye to the corner to see Tim. He was no longer holding the luggage. He had his jacket over his left arm, and the other hand hidden, obviously on his gun. He was staring at her hard.

Kira stayed still for another few seconds to give Mr. Mallon a chance to move or cough or snore. Then she straightened and walked silently, as Debbie had taught her, placing her weight on the outer edges of her feet. She slipped through the doorway of 1509 past Tim, and waited for him to close the door quietly.

“I’m pretty sure he’s out,” she said. “It’s too early for dinner.”

Tim nodded. “Best thing to do is wait for him.” He sat down on the bed.

She stood in front of him so she could look into his eyes. “Do you want to see if we can get into his room and wait there for him?”

Tim said, a little too quickly, “I don’t see how.”

“You’re right,” she said. “That was a silly idea.” She sat on the other side of the bed. “It’s just that these magnetic key cards sometimes don’t work right, and you can open more than one door with them. I don’t suppose it happens very often.”

He seemed a bit more interested. He stood and picked up his jacket, then quickly went out the door. She was amazed. He had not said anything to her about joining him or anything. She picked up her purse and went to the door. She opened it a crack to look down the hall, but he was already on the way back. He brushed past her into the room, then went to the windows. He said, “So much for that. Not even any balcony, so that’s out too.”

“I don’t think it would be much fun to climb from one to the other way up here, anyway,” she said, then gave a little shiver. He didn’t seem to have seen it, or to be listening to her.

Kira walked toward the cabinet that held the television set, but when she reached it she didn’t feel like opening it. She was aware that time was going by, and the time was precious. It was nearly dark outside, day turning to evening. She knew it was likely that if Mallon was out now, he would probably be out for the evening. If he came back, the others would be watching for his car. He was dead without knowing it. What was bothering her was that she had gone to a lot of trouble, taken a lot of chances, and used up some luck to get where she was at this moment, and her forward motion seemed to have stalled.

Each of them seemed to be letting sentences die off at the end, and then turning their attention inward, wishing that they liked each other better, wondering what had gone wrong. She stole a glance at Tim. He was lying on the bed with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling with a pouting expression. People in situations like this wore out their enthusiasm; they just got tired of smiling, tired of thinking of the right things to say, tired of listening.

Kira couldn’t let it go that way, let this chance turn into a failure that would gnaw at her later, just because of shyness, or passivity, or laziness or something. She heard herself whispering, “I want this.” She hesitated, glancing at the television cabinet. Finally she took two deep breaths and walked around to the other side of the bed.