Michael Connelly - 9 Dragons

It took him less than a minute to turn the lock. He held the knob without pushing the door open until Eleanor came hurrying back down the dimly lit hallway.

“There’s a security chain,” she whispered.

Bosch nodded and stood up, still holding the knob with his right hand. He knew he could easily shoulder the door past a security chain.

“Ready?” he whispered.

Eleanor nodded. Bosch then reached back and under his jacket and pulled the gun. He thumbed off the safety and looked at Eleanor. In unison, they mouthed the words one, two, three and he pushed the door open.

There was no security chain in place. The door moved all the way open and Bosch quickly entered the room. Eleanor came in right behind him.

The room was empty.

Bosch stepped through the room to the tiny bathroom. He slapped the dirty plastic shower curtain back from a small, tiled shower space but it was empty. He walked back into the room and looked at Eleanor. He said the words he dreaded.

“She’s gone.”

“Are you sure this is even the room?” she asked.

Bosch was. He had already looked at the pattern of cracks and nail holes on the wall over the bed. He took the folded photo print out of his jacket and handed it to her.

“This is the room.”

He put the gun back under his jacket and in the waistband of his pants. He tried to keep the searing sense of futility and dread from engulfing him. But he wasn’t sure where to go from here.

Eleanor dropped the photo on the bed.

“There’s got to be some sign that she was here. Something.”

“Let’s go. We’ll talk to the guy downstairs. We’ll find out who rented the room Friday.”

“No, wait. We have to look around first.”

She dropped down and looked under the bed.

“Eleanor, she’s not under the bed. She’s gone and we need to keep moving. Call Sun and tell him not to come up. Tell him to get the car.”

“No, this can’t be.”

She moved from looking under the bed to kneeling next to it, elbows on top, as if she were a child praying before bedtime.

“She can’t be gone. We…”

Bosch came around the bed and leaned down behind her. He put his arms around her and pulled her up standing.

“Come on, Eleanor, we have to go. We’re going to find her. I told you we would. We just have to keep moving. That’s all. We have to stay strong and keep moving.”

He ushered her toward the door, but she broke free and headed toward the bathroom. She had to see it empty for herself.

“Eleanor, please.”

She disappeared into the room and Bosch heard her pull the shower curtain back. But then she didn’t return.

“Harry?”

Bosch quickly crossed the room and entered the bathroom. Eleanor was leaning over the side of the toilet and lifting the wastebasket. She brought it around to him. At the bottom of the basket was a small wad of toilet paper with blood on it.

Eleanor retrieved it with two fingers and held it up. The blood had made a stain smaller than a dime. The size of the stain and the wadding of the tissue suggested it had been held against a small cut or wound to stanch the flow of blood.

Eleanor leaned into Bosch, and Harry knew that she was assuming that they were looking at their daughter’s blood.

“We don’t know what this means yet, Eleanor.”

His counsel was ignored. Her body language suggested a breakdown was coming.

“They drugged her,” she said. “They put a needle in her arm.”

“We don’t know that yet. Let’s go downstairs and talk to the guy.”

She didn’t move. She stared at the blood and tissue like it was a red-and-white flower.

“Do you have something to put this in”

Bosch always carried a small quantity of sealable evidence bags in his coat pockets. He pulled one out now and Eleanor placed the wad in it. He closed it and put it into his pocket.

“Okay, let’s go.”

They finally left the room. Bosch had one arm around Eleanor’s back and was looking at her face as they entered the hall. He half expected her to break free and run back to the room. But then he saw some sort of recognition flare in her eyes as she focused down the hall.

“Harry”

Bosch turned, expecting it to be Sun. But it wasn’t.

Two men were approaching from the end of the hall. They were walking side by side with purpose. Bosch realized that they were the two men who had been the last passengers with them in the elevator going up. They had been going to sixteen.

The moment the men saw Harry and Eleanor enter the hallway, their hands went inside their jackets to their waistbands. Bosch saw one man close his grip and instinctively knew he was pulling a gun.

Bosch brought his right arm up to the center of Eleanor’s back and shoved her across the hall toward the elevator alcove. At the same time, he brought his left hand up behind his back and grabbed his gun. One of the men yelled something in a language Bosch didn’t understand and raised his weapon.

Bosch pulled his own gun and brought it around on aim. He opened fire at the same moment shots were fired from one of the men down the hall. Bosch fired repeatedly, at least ten shots, and continued after he saw both men go down.

Holding his aim, he moved forward on them. One was lying on top of the other’s legs. One was dead, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. The other was still alive and breathing shallowly at the same time he was still trying to pull his gun from his waistband. Bosch looked down and saw that the hammer spur had gotten snagged in the waistband of his pants. He had never gotten the gun out.

Bosch reached down and took the man’s hand off the weapon and roughly pulled the gun loose. The man dropped his hand to the floor. Bosch slid the gun across the carpet out of his reach.

There were two wounds in the man’s upper chest. Bosch had gone for body mass and his aim was true. The man was bleeding out quickly.

“Where is she?” Bosch said. “Where is she?”

The man made a grunting sound and blood dripped from his mouth down the side of his face. Bosch knew he would be dead in another minute.

Bosch heard a door open down the hallway and then quickly close. He checked but saw no one. Most people in a place like this wouldn’t want to get involved. Still, he knew it wouldn’t be long before the police stormed the hotel on the report of a shooting.

He turned back to the dying man.

“Where is she?” he repeated. “Where’s my?-”

He saw that the man was dead.

“Shit!”

Bosch got up and turned back to the alcove and Eleanor.

“They had to have-”

She was on the floor. Bosch rushed to her and dropped down to the floor.

“Eleanor!”

He was too late. Her eyes were open and just as blank as the man’s in the hallway.

“No, no, please, no. Eleanor! ”

He couldn’t see any wound but she wasn’t breathing and her eyes were fixed. He shook her by the shoulders and got no response. He put one hand behind her head and opened her mouth with the other. He leaned forward to blow air into her lungs. But then he felt the wound. He pulled his hand out of her hair and it was covered in blood. He turned her head and saw the wound in the hairline behind her left ear. He realized she had probably been hit as he had pushed her into the alcove. He had pushed her into the shot.

“Eleanor,” he said quietly.

Bosch leaned forward and put his face down on her chest between her breasts. He smelled her familiar fragrance. He heard a loud, awful groan and realized it had come from himself.

For thirty seconds he didn’t move. He just held her there. Then he heard the elevator open behind him and finally raised himself up.