Shaban slowed as the Happy Mariner came into view. He pulled into an alley alongside the motel, hiding the Porsche there. One disadvantage of driving a luxury sports car was that it was easily recognized and remembered.
He checked his phone, but there had been no further alerts in the last half hour. The ones he’d received were consistent with Kyle’s story of holing up here.
It was a lucky break that she’d called him. Otherwise he might have been chasing her all night.
He left the car and prowled along the U-shaped building until he was close to room 101. It lay on the end, well away from the office. Most of the rooms he passed were dark and, if he could judge by the number of empty spaces in the lot, unoccupied.
The light in 101 was on. It glowed behind the heavy curtains drawn over the front windows, with narrow stripes of light bleeding through at the edges.
She was probably in there. Waiting, hoping to return the shipment and beg his forgiveness. But it was just possible she had some mischief in mind.
He had never known Kyle Ridley to carry a gun. But then he knew very little about her. She might have lured him here with the intention of silencing him before she left New Jersey for good.
His safest strategy would be to shoot her as soon as she opened the door. But suppose she did not have the product with her. On the phone she’d said she had put it someplace safe and would take him to it. This might have been a lie. But he couldn’t be sure.
Frowning, he made his way around the building to the rear. A swimming pool was back there, empty of water. It faced a line of concrete patios. Each patio had its own sliding glass door.
The door to room 101 gave him an idea. Kyle Ridley would be watching the front door. She would not expect him to enter from the rear.
He approached the door and tested the handle. Locked, naturally. But the lock was nothing. It was not even keyed, just a simple latch. There was a chain on the inside, but it hung down uselessly, unattached. He saw no obstacles on the track—no plywood plank or security pin that would arrest the door’s movement once it was unlatched.
Even for an amateur like himself, a lock like this would pose no obstacle.
Defeat the latch, slide open the door, enter through the thick drapery. If he could do this with sufficient stealth, he could surprise Kyle Ridley from behind and take control of her at gunpoint before she had a chance to react.
Such precautions might well prove unnecessary, but he was a cautious man.
Kneeling by the door, he set to work.
*
Bonnie sat in the armchair, watching the front door, her hand on the Walther. She had no idea when Shaban Dragusha would arrive. He might come in an hour or in ten minutes. He could be here already.
Only an hour ago, in the Sand Bar, she’d told Kyle that Shaban might enter shooting. Kyle had insisted he wouldn’t. That was probably true. But you never knew about these things. If he did plan on making a dramatic entrance, she would have only a fraction of a second to react. It could go either way.
Oh, hell. It would probably work out okay. She wished it hadn’t had to take place in a motel room, though. Motel rooms always had been unlucky for her. There was the motel in Pennsylvania where her parents had been killed by Lucas Hatch and his gang while she hid in the bathroom, hearing every sound. The motel in Brighton Cove where Pascal had tried to make her talk. The motel in Ridgefield where Streinikov’s crew had nearly finished her off.
Yeah, motels had never been lucky for her. Motels … or mobile homes.
She remembered a mobile home in Arizona. The heat and the closeness and the vinyl record spinning on a turntable …
Her cell phone rang, startling her out of the memory. The screen displayed the name G Mitter. Gloria, Bill’s wife. Bonnie answered. “Parker.”
“Well?” a peremptory voice demanded.
“Huh?”
“Did you follow him? What did you find out?”
“You mean he’s not home yet?”
“No, he’s not home yet. Shouldn’t you know that? Aren’t you with him?”
She wanted Bill to be the one to break the news. “Sorry, no. I lost him.”
“What you mean, you lost him?”
“I had him, and then I didn’t have him anymore.”
“How could that happen?”
“There was a lot of traffic. I got stuck at a red light. Redboarded, as it’s known in the biz. By the time the light turned green, he was gone. Them’s the breaks.”
“You sound awfully insouciant about it.”
Bonnie didn’t know what insouciant meant. “I won’t lose him next time.”
“I’m very disappointed in you, Miss Parker.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot.”
She clicked off, bored with the conversation. It was bad enough that she had to sit and wait for a guest who might or might not try to shoot her on sight. She wasn’t going to add insult to injury by taking a bunch of abuse for a purely imaginary screwup.
*
Shaban had no lock-picking tools, but he did carry a pocket knife with multiple functions—a Swiss Army knife, he believed it was called, though he didn’t know why. Surely no army would be outfitted with such minuscule equipment.
One of the knife’s extensions was a flathead screwdriver. Carefully he inserted the tip between the door and the frame, then raised it along the frame until it made contact with the latch. He pressed upward on the lever. Once or twice the screwdriver slipped and made a small scratching noise, but he was sure it wasn’t loud enough to be heard from inside.
He shifted the screwdriver’s position experimentally until the lever disengaged. With his other hand, he again tested the handle. This time the door yielded, sliding open a half inch.
It glided noiselessly on the track. There was no breeze to stir the draperies.
All right. Inside.
He drew the FEG 9, his American Gangster gun, from his shoulder holster. He had not used the gun on Todd Patterson in the church. He would use it on Kyle Ridley tonight. But first he and the girl would have a talk about loyalty and honor and the foolishness of crossing a man like him.
Standing, he eased the door open another few inches, then a few inches more, until he’d made a gap just wide enough to slip through. It would be impossible to enter without disturbing the drapes. Best, then, to shove them aside and go in fast. She would surely be facing the other direction. In the time it took for her to turn, he would see if she held a gun in her hand. If she did, he would fire. Hesitation was what got men killed.
He took a breath, put his fate in the hands of the saints, and brushed the draperies back as he plunged through the opening into the room.
There was just enough time for him to see that the space before him was empty, and then a gun’s muzzle kissed the side of his face.
She had anticipated his move, had hidden alongside the glass door. She had him—what was the expression?—dead to rights.
His eyes tracked sideways, and he saw the woman holding the gun. Not Kyle Ridley.
“Parker?” he breathed.
“Hey, Shabby,” Bonnie Parker said. “Long time, no see.”