Faisal had stopped in the office of the Blue Moon Hotel. The office was separate from the row of units that sat diagonally from it. He’d walked in from the street, not wanting to call attention to himself or alert anyone to his presence.
He walked into the office prepared to face whoever was manning this operation with all the charm he could muster. A woman lifted her head from the desk, looked at him with rheumy dark eyes and smiled. Her disheveled bleached blond hair was giving him déjà vu, for it reminded him of the manager’s style in the hotel he had checked into. He pushed that thought aside. He needed information and he needed to concentrate to get it.
“Can I help you?”
Her round, out-of-shape body leaned over the counter, spilling her large breasts literally onto the counter. He kept his eyes on her face, ignored her disappointed look and smiled his most charming smile.
“Beautiful night,” he said.
“It is.”
And from there he turned on the charm. It was a gift that he rarely used but one that came naturally. Ironically, he’d used it twice in the space of an hour. He gave his full attention to the woman on the other side of the counter. By the time he was done with his “feel good,” “you’re the greatest” routine, he’d asked the questions he needed to and gotten the answer to each of them. She readily identified Ava from a picture.
“She checked in this morning. Poor thing needed work. She covered an afternoon shift,” she said, her eyes roving over him. “She’s in the end unit.”
He left the office with a smile and a quick salute and headed away from the units she’d pointed at. He’d seen movement he couldn’t identity, and putting himself into a possible line of fire was no way to help Ava.
He moved quietly along the fringes of the parking lot of the Blue Moon Motel. It was dark and there was no traffic on the road that skirted the motel that he now knew Ava was staying at. He crouched down using the darkness as cover. He paused for a moment to take stock of the situation. He gave himself a minute and then two, for he was hidden behind a boulder that looked like it had been placed there in an aborted attempt at landscaping. Ahead, the lot was dimly lit by a light on one side and the blue light that thinly streamed from the motel sign. The place was run-down, the motel itself painted a faded and dismal gray. Ironically, that fact was at complete odds with what one might expect given the motel’s name—Blue Moon Motel. The only thing blue was the annoying sign that cast blue tendrils of light across everything.
His attention turned toward the movement he saw by the end unit. It was the bulky shadow of a man. He had a picture on his phone, thanks to his RCMP contact, of the hit man but in the muted light from this distance, he wasn’t identifying anything. A shadow moved farther away. The bulk indicated it might be another man. The first man was nearer the building, while the other man was yards away, putting him on the edge of the parking lot. A gunshot echoed through the night and he hit the ground near the sidewalk, where he immediately rose to his haunches and moved behind the hood of the nearest vehicle.
Dallas Tenorson or Ben Whyte or both could be here or not and it was all supposition. The only thing that was for sure was that a gun had been fired. He was pretty sure it had been from the man nearer the motel units aiming for a second one in the parking lot. But the man at the fringes had not fired back. That in itself was an interesting fact.
The information he’d received confirmed that Ben Whyte was in the area. Could one of the two be Ben? If it was Ben, he had the home advantage. These were his childhood stomping grounds. He knew every bit of this land. He’d known that the land deals had been nothing but worthless contracts. He’d known it all, for this was where they’d been inked. It was here that they had fleeced enough buyers to make Ben a rich man if he could just cash in on his last deal.
He crouched down. He had his gun out and in one hand. He wasn’t expecting to shoot anyone, not yet. He hoped not ever, but then he always hoped that. He squinted. He could see the shadowy figures, one moving in on the other. He wasn’t sure what was going on. His priority was keeping Ava safe, and to do that he needed to get her out of there as quickly as possible.
One man moved closer to her door. Too close for his liking. He knew who it must be. He could see the off-kilter way he walked, as if one leg couldn’t quite support the weight that was expected of it. He knew why he walked that way. One of the unit lights near the end clicked on and then immediately off but it was enough to see the distinctive profile that was Ben Whyte.
Faisal shifted his Glock, feeling the comforting weight. He had no sympathy for either Dallas Tenorson, a man who seemed to spend his life contracting to kill, or Ben Whyte, his intended victim. If the second man was Dallas, then there was no way he could take him out without giving an open path for Ben to kill Ava. Ava’s room remained in darkness and he could only wonder if she was awake or asleep. Was she spooked by the earlier gunfire? There was always the chance that she’d open the door and make herself vulnerable. He could try to take at least one of these men out but neither were close enough for a clean shot.
It was too dangerous. He couldn’t risk trying to take either of them out and alerting the other to his presence. Instead, he had to sneak around them and get Ava out before he addressed the other two. To do that he was going to have to go around back. He could only hope that, like every motel built in this style, there was a window in the bathroom. He thought of fire codes. He didn’t know what the damn fire codes were—he could only pray. If there wasn’t a window... The thought dropped. He wouldn’t think of that and would just have come up with a new plan then if it came to that. He began to make his way around the building, moving quickly before the explosive situation in front of him blew up.
A movement ahead. Ben Whyte was five yards from Ava’s front door. There was no more time to consider. He had to move. He ducked down behind a worn-out van with chipped gray paint. Another shot was fired and the man on the fringes of the worn parking lot dropped. The shot was masked by the sound of a semi pulling out on the edges of the commercial district of town.
He couldn’t get a clear shot from here. With his gun in both hands he moved quickly and quietly to the back of the building. He slipped around the building with his back to the wall, watching for movement in the darkness broken only by a yard light over fifty feet away.
Two minutes later he was outside Ava’s back window. He gave the signal that they’d used so often, what seemed like forever ago. He waited. Nothing.
He tapped on the window again. One, two, three—same as he had so many years ago when he called her out in their university days to whatever party had been going on. He hoped she remembered. Hoped that she realized the danger and got out before it was too late. Before he needed to do something more drastic that could compound the danger she was already in.
She had to remember. But he couldn’t assume anything, couldn’t make that mistake, for Ava’s life was on the line.