Sin did not expect the scene that awaited her.
Owen and Officer Duffy stood on either side of the door with guns braced, ready to take out whoever came through.
She looked from side to side as they slowly lowered their weapons. "What the hell is going on?"
Even before either man could answer, she shook her head. "There's something going down in the lobby, too."
"Shit." Duffy was the one who muttered it, but it was Owen who moved.
"We have to leave. Now."
Seeing the necessity in his eyes, Sin adopted an act now, ask questions later attitude. "Which way?"
"I don't know." Owen appeared both in control and at a loss. "I know the lobby is probably a bad idea. We had a shot fired."
The look in his eyes and her own knowledge of procedure told them the hotel staff would hang back, knowing they were untrained in diffusing these situations. But the police would be here any second. If they were smart, they'd come in quietly through a back entrance.
"Just one shot?" It was a pertinent question.
One shot followed by silence meant the situation might be over, but likely wasn't still an issue. Paramedics might be in order, but the likelihood of bystanders getting shot went down—at least somewhat. Multiple shots meant an active shooter; it meant they would run a raid, going in fast and hard.
"Just one."
Sin turned inward. This night was a clusterfuck. Though the sun was coming up, the night was continuing. She wanted to sigh, but there was too much adrenaline for that. "Split up."
She turned to Duffy. "Can you take the Holders?"
"Not all of them." He tipped his head, never setting down the gun he now casually aimed on Randall Holder.
Before Sin could process that Owen jumped in, "Nikki led the Mechanic to us."
Automatically, she leaned forward, her mouth wanting to fall open. Only years of training her face not to react kept her from screaming at the heavens. "Then leave her for him."
"No!—" Randall holder yelled
Sin turned to respond, but it was Duffy who beat her to it. "Keep your fat mouth shut or I will drop you where you stand. Do you read me?"
A stiff nod followed from the older man who looked like he was about to crumble.
As Sin followed the rapid-fire conversation, she saw that it was Owen who both damned the couple and saved them. He pointed at Holder, still stiffly cradling his wife. "Duffy, just them?"
This time the officer nodded. And Sin got on board. "We'll text with an address. You take them out the side. If you need to, drop them both—shoot them, leave them, I don't care."
It was Owen's look of agreement that led her to understand she wasn't being too harsh. Apparently Nikki had led the Mechanic here on purpose. Sin took in the blood on the woman's forehead as Randall passed by holding her. Maybe she wasn't asleep . . .
With a quick click, Owen opened the door to the hallway after listening for a second. He didn't pop his head out or check. Duffy went out first, heading across the hall to the small room for ice, the bucket he'd grabbed concealing the gun ready in his grip.
After a moment he came back and joined Randall Holder as they headed with Nikki, the bin of ice, and the hidden gun down the hallway toward the exit sign. Randall Holder would have to carry his wife down the stairs. But according to the he-didn't-give-one-fuck look on Owen's face, one or the other of them had earned it.
It was up to Duffy and Mr. Holder to make people think it was normal for them to walk down the hall carrying a completely passed out woman.
While they waited only as long as they had to for some semblance of normalcy, Sin traded her jacket for one from Annika.
Still in her clothing from kicking in doors, she and Nick had come in a side entrance. If the police were here already from the gunshot . . . "When was the shot fired Owen?"
"Ten minutes ago?" He looked to Annika, who nodded her best agreement in response.
It was hairy, if you weren't used to guns going off. It could have been anything as long as twenty minutes or as short as two. Sin only knew it wasn't less time or she would have heard as she and Nick climbed the steps.
While she watched, her brother traded his shirt for one of Owen’s and they all tried to look different and normal. The three kids didn't help. She pulled out her phone and an address that she'd banked a while ago. "Let's try this one."
Transferring the data to Owen might leave a trail, so she waited while he copied it into a note for himself. "You tell Duffy—and only Duffy—once you're on the road."
It was Annika who nodded as she zipped up her bag.
Sin was about ready to shove the five of them out the door when the Holder boy spoke up. "Are my dad and mom going to be okay?"
"That's entirely up to them." Owen's face looked grim. But there wasn't time for more. "Right now, we are your family. We need to get out of here."
Sin held her breath, because it got sticky from here on out. Dirty cops, no one to trust, kids in the mix. But Annika handled it fine.
Her hand creeped to her lower abdomen as she spoke to the kids. She looked at all of them with a mother's understanding, and for a moment Sin felt so much at a loss. She didn't understand anything about these kids. Not even their fear. She'd never been afraid for her own parents; her change had been massive and momentary. One minute everything was fine. The next they were gone and everything was wrong. She'd never had a chance to help, to contribute, to save them, not like the Holder kids.
Annika's words were true but guarded. She didn't lie, but neither did she tell the whole truth. "Duffy doesn't want to hurt them. He's trying to save us and you. Owen chose him because he's on our side. The rest of the officers we don't know about. So we're going to get out of here as a team." She nodded at each of the kids, and it worked so well even the toddler nodded back in understanding. "Then we'll find your parents and we'll figure out who to trust and how to get you guys back home."
That involved killing the Mechanic, Sin knew. Annika knew that, too, but didn't say they might be on the run forever if the rest of them couldn't take him out of commission. But Annika's words were all that was necessary to send them through the adjoining door and out into the hallway.
At least if anyone was watching the hotel cameras—a reasonable likelihood given the gunshot—they would look like a happy family leaving early for something. The oldest boy's backpack and the diaper bag would help with the illusion. They should make it through the lobby without being stopped.
For a moment Sin wondered if they should have kept one of the kids behind, to help her and Nick get out. People just didn't suspect parents or kids of much as long as they were clean and seemed happy.
She turned to Nick. They had no kids, no bags, nothing—only different jackets than they came in with. If they were seen coming in, they might be recognized going out. If not, then they were at risk for coming out of the same room as Duffy and the Holders just moments ago.
If someone were watching this hallway, simply their pattern of entering and leaving the rooms would be suspicious. "Do we wait?"
Waiting would allow Owen, Annika and the kids to maybe get out before the real red flags were raised about these two rooms. Someone downstairs could be punching keys right now to see that both rooms were rented by the same person and that the connecting door had been opened.
"I don't think we can."
It's what Sin hated about nice hotels. When it was just her, nice was easy. She came and went on her own. A lone woman with odd hours in a big city hotel raised zero flags. But this? This was a mess. Waiting meant a head start for the others. It also meant the Mechanic might be one step closer to them.
For a moment Sin contemplated that.
"Will he come if we wait him out?"
It would be an almost-too-easy way to find the elusive man.
But even as Nick shook his head, she understood. The risk was too great. Someone would pinpoint the gunshot to this room. Or at least come knocking on doors and ask about it. With a grim nod, she turned the knob, smiled over her shoulder at him, expecting Nick to watch her back in the face of her attempted normalcy as she stepped blindly into the hallway.
Just then the elevator doors opened with a ding, spilling several officers into the space. Their dark blue uniforms spoke in deep contrast to the plush cream decor. The hands that rested casually on their weapons stated that all was not casual.
"Ma'am?"
Though she'd seen them in her peripheral vision, Sin turned, acting surprised and slightly confused. "Officer."
She knew how innocent people acted, and how guilty people acted, so she spun her own response. A small smile, a bit of a dismissal as she turned back to Nick portrayed someone who knew they hadn't done anything wrong. Still she wasn't surprised as several of them fanned out and knocked on doors while two approached her and Nick.
As the officers stopped them, Sin and Nick looked to each other, and Nick frowned slightly, "Is there a problem?"
There would only be one if one of these guys recognized Nick. If one of these guys was in a Kurev pocket and wasn't happy to be suddenly liberated from it. "There were gunshots. Did you hear them?"
Sin pulled back, a planned reaction. "Here? . . . No."
Then she looked at the floor in the distance and stopped her facial muscles before looking back up at the officer. "Is that what that was?"
"What did you hear?"
She shrugged as though struggling for words. She wasn't struggling, she was stealing. Borrowing from a woman she'd interviewed a small handful of years ago, she gave a plausible lie. "It sounded like someone cracked something wooden. I thought maybe someone was having a fight, but then there was no more noise, so I thought I was mistaken. Maybe someone dropped something?" She shook her head a little. "You think it was a gunshot?"
It was a great deflection.
"We're not sure ma'am. But we are checking everything. Can you tell us where it came from?" His hand still rested on his gun and the snap was still flipped up for an easy draw.
She was just grateful she hadn't fired her weapon tonight. If they were hauled to the station and checked for residue on their hands at least they would come up negative. She needed to get out. She needed to find Lee and that was seeming harder and harder to accomplish. But though pressure pushed at the back of her eyes, she didn't let it show. Breaking down here would get her hauled in for sure.
Pointing back at the door, she spoke again. "That's our room, so it was maybe . . . that side?" She put a question on the end of it. "But it might have been above us or below us."
It took three more minutes, as the officer took their names and info. Nick gave his family name, and Sin wondered if maybe word had gotten around. Whether "Vasilescu" would help them or hurt them, she didn't know. She gave them the name on the ID she carried. They were asked to approximate the time of the shot, which they both did poorly, even arguing a little about it, before they were told they might not be able to get back into their room later.
"We'll be out most of the day. Do you think it will be okay when we return then? No one will go in our room, go through our things, right?" She played the concern well.
"No ma'am, and you should be fine coming back then. We should have this all cleared up soon we hope."
"Oh good." Only then were she and Nick allowed on the elevator and she fought a smile.
The officers wouldn't wrap it up. Unless the shot went through the ceiling into another room, they would have to get into that very room to discover the source of the bullet. And they'd just promised her they wouldn't.
In the lobby, they passed several other officers stopping people as they left or entered. But they were allowed to go by after mentioning the officers questioning them on their floor.
Sin stepped out the sliding doors into the cold Chicago sunshine and wondered when in the hell she was going to get to see Lee again.
Nick drove the car to the next stop, wondering if there was a motel or hotel in the entire city they hadn't yet stayed at. He wasn't used to all this running. He usually hid in the open—did deals behind Kaspar's back, stole his officers out from under him, tried to get them to reveal tidbits that Nick could later use against him.
He'd played the meek brother, not as strong, not as capable, for so long that being free and yet still under the gun was bizarre to him. Nick fought the sigh that wanted to escape. He'd been up all night and they had jack shit to show for it. "Is this the right place?"
"Yeah." She nodded and checked her phone.
A lone number had been sent from Annika’s phone indicating the room number. Owen had sent a message. "Just come in when you get here."
Room 141 had a blue door—different from each of the others down the hallway. It would have been cute had the colors had any relationship to each other. Instead it looked as though the owners had bought out the incorrectly mixed paints at a store. Glosses and eggshells made random patterns. Some of the uglier colors must have come in bigger cans, because two or three doors would be painted in the worst options. There were colors that Sin didn't even have names for . . . and she'd worked clothing retail in another life.
Annika smiled at them as the door opened. Owen did not—he held a gun on them until the backlighting of the sun cleared their faces and allowed him to see who they were.
"Put that away Owen." Annika shoved at his shoulder just as the man was holstering the weapon anyway.
For a brief moment, Nick saw himself and Reese the same way.
He wouldn't be here if she were alive.
He didn't know where he would be. If he were honest, he knew their relationship had been new enough that it wasn't necessarily the real deal. But their friendship had been old enough that he'd been willing to bet on it.
And he had to let it go.
If he was going to have any semblance of a life, he had to let Reese go. Turning to his sister, he watched her become engulfed in a hug from Annika, partially against Sin's will. But it was good for her. He hoped she didn't have to get over Lee.
The spurt of hope—the punch of knowing it wasn't over yet—woke him back up. He turned to Owen, "We didn't find Lee."
But the former agent nodded. "So what didn't you check?"
He couldn't ask what they did or if they'd shot anyone. Dunham didn't want to know and would be in legal trouble if he did. But he could ask where they'd been in vague terms.
"Nowhere. We checked them all."
All of them. He and Sin had kicked in every door. Nearly shot a homeless teenager. Waited for the Mechanic around every door.
"All of them?" Owen looked shocked. Nick understood.
They'd been so certain. They thought they knew how the Kurevs were operating. But there'd been nothing.
"Maybe he moved him earlier in the evening."
Nick shook his head. Impossible. "There was blood, evidence that someone had been there, but nothing recent enough to be from tonight."
Owen put his hands on his hips and stared blindly into space, thinking. Nick recognized the look, he'd been doing it too.
While Owen tried to sort it out, Sin extracted herself from Annika's grip and frowned briefly at the other woman. Annika gave a tight nod back, making Sin change the topic. Nick wondered if it was one of those "between women" things.
Sin floored them all. "It was Churkin in the cabin that night."
They all thought it was a possibility.
But Nick had never heard her say that as a definitive before. "What makes you certain?"