“Poof,” Angela repeated. She threw herself back on the other bed.
“Yep,” I said.
Croc had completely taken over the second bed and I had no desire to share that space with him. So I moved to the armchair in the corner.
Angela sat up. “You know what? I’ve got to do something. I can’t sit here like this.”
“But Boone said …”
“I know. I’m not going anywhere. Physically, at least. But we can still dig into Boone’s background. I can’t stand not knowing. So if he won’t tell me, I’ll just start looking myself. Send another text to P.K. and ask him if he’s found anything yet. He’s got better resources than we do. Just tell him we need more WH info if he finds anything interesting. That will sail by X-Ray.”
I knew better than to argue with Angela so I sent another text. Angela sat at the desk and flipped open her laptop. Before long she was lost in something she’d found on the Internet. I don’t know if it had to do with our homework, Boone, or if she was pulling up a schematic of the hotel to find a way out through the ventilation system.
Croc sat up now and cocked his head. He made a series of strange sounds. Not exactly whines or growls, but he jumped down off the bed and was now staring at me and huffing and pawing at the chair.
“What’s got into him all of a sudden?” Angela asked.
“Beats me,” I said. Croc usually slept most of the time. Now he looked a little agitated.
“Just out of curiosity, do you suppose he’s had all his shots?” I asked as he edged closer to me.
“I would think. Boone seems very attached to him. I don’t expect he’d allow Croc to get sick if he could avoid it,” Angela said.
“The way he’s looking at me is creeping me out a little.”
Angela retrieved the room-service menu from the desk drawer and sat down on the corner of the bed opposite me. I was practicing more cuts and shuffles with a deck of cards. There was a small table in between the two beds where the room phone rested.
“What do you want to eat?” Angela asked.
“Burger, fries, milkshake,” I said.
“Q!” She laughed. “You better hope my dad doesn’t check the room-service receipts. He does that, you know.”
“I’m willing to risk it.”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to eat a salad once in a while,” she said.
“Lettuce and tomato on my burger, please.”
“They have salads that look really good,” Angela insisted.
“Go ahead. Order one.”
“Oh, all right, burger for you it is,” she muttered. As she reached for the phone Croc was suddenly there; he gently knocked her hand away with his muzzle. She reached again and he did the same thing.
“Stop it, Croc,” she said absentmindedly, still studying the menu. Again, as her hand went for the handset, Croc pushed it to the side.
“What is up with him?” Angela asked.
“Obviously he doesn’t want you to order salad.”
Croc positioned himself against her legs and each time she tried to reach the phone, he interfered with her in some way. Always gently, but still preventing her from using the telephone. Finally Angela couldn’t take it anymore and grabbed his collar. She walked him into my room and shut the adjoining door. Croc scratched at the door and whined.
“Hey! I have to sleep in there tonight! Do you know how stinky it’s going to be?”
She ignored me.
“That is weird. I’ve never seen him act like that before,” Angela said. She sat back down on the bed and picked up the phone and placed the order.
A few minutes later, while Croc scratched and whined, it came over me.
The itch.
I’d been doing a one-handed cut of the deck and it just hit me. The itch is a feeling I get every once in a while. It’s not exactly precognition or anything like that. I can’t tell what’s going to happen, only that something is going to happen.
The last time it happened to me, Croc had been there. And he’d been acting all strange then, too, barking at the truck Malak and Bethany were riding in when I thought he had just gone nuts. Now he was weirding out again and I had the itch. There are no coincidences. But like I said, I never know exactly what to do with the itch and it doesn’t necessarily mean something bad is going to happen. Not true. Something bad almost always happens. Otherwise I’d probably never notice.
A few minutes later, with Croc still scratching and whining from the next room, there was a knock on Angela’s door. When she opened it, a room-service waiter was there with the food on a cart covered by a floor-length tablecloth.
The waiter pushed the cart into the room.
Before the door could swing shut, a woman with the most bleached-blond hair I’d ever seen, followed by a guy with a gun, stepped inside the room. Both of them were wearing press credentials and had cameras around their necks. The hotel was crawling with media types so it was probably a pretty good cover.
“Well, aren’t you two just as cute as little bluebonnets. I’m pleased to meet you both. My name is Ruby Spencer.”