The elevator dinged to announce Lucy’s destination.
Like any good scientist, she accepted that she lived in an uncertain universe, but whatever she discovered in the Tesla Suite might turn hers completely on its head. As Lucy hesitated, the doors started to swish closed.
“Thirty-third floor,” said the bellhop with a hint of irritation, shooting out a hand to block the sensor. The doors jolted open again, and a shudder passed through her.
Be brave, Luce.
“Thanks.” Her reply was sheepish as she wedged herself through the grouchy, probably jet-lagged family, to the front of the elevator.
The bellhop gave her a perfunctory, “Enjoy your stay,” as the doors closed once more, whisking them onward and upward.
Lucy stepped onto a hideous brown carpet. The diamond pattern was enough to make her head spin. She very much doubted she would enjoy her stay.
Steeling herself, she glanced around the corridor. All was quiet except for the humming elevator banks.
Sleuthing wasn’t exactly a specialty of Lucy’s—nothing worth investigating happened in the town of Eaton—so she would approach the situation like one of her experiments. She had already completed step one by gaining access to the thirty-third floor; step two was getting into the room.
Strawberry suddenly coated her tongue.
This could not be happening now. Lucy was not having the beginning of a sensory seizure in the middle of a Manhattan hotel hallway.
It had been exactly eighteen months and twenty-one days since she’d smelled or tasted anything that wasn’t real. Ever since her neurologist had switched her onto a new medication. Lucy knew the precise date because she kept her own detailed records. She’d started her “Brain Journals” when she was eight (hence the imaginative title) and they allowed her the illusion of control.
Lucy’s symptoms had never conformed to any standard type of epilepsy but that didn’t stop her from trying to catch something the doctors had missed.
Sweat beaded across her hairline. You can do this. It was almost convincing.
Methodically, Lucy put one foot in front of the other. The white walls and cognac-colored carpet made the narrow corridor appear tunnel-like: a journey to the center of the earth. As she propelled herself to the end of the hallway, the taste of strawberries mercifully faded.
The door to Room 3327 was adorned with a brass plaque.
The Tesla Suite.
Embedded into the shiny metal were two black-and-white photographs. A mustachioed man in his thirties stared out of the first, stark angular cheeks leading to lips lifted in a barely discernible smirk. His expression intimated that he was in on some cosmic joke—and you weren’t.
In the second photo to the left of the engraved room number, bolts of lightning surged toward an enormous cylindrical coil. The streaks writhed in the air like the tentacles of a humongous sea creature. The sort Captain Nemo would battle.
Here lived Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla from 1933 until his death in 1943, read the inscription on the plaque.
Lucy perused the list of Tesla’s achievements embossed in brass. He was the inventor of AC electrical power as well as the generator and motor. Not to mention designing the electrical power plant at Niagara Falls and patenting wireless communication.
What could be the link between Tesla’s inventions and her father’s company?
The Sapientia Group invested primarily in tech start-ups. It scoured the globe looking for the next Steve Jobs working out of his basement in Kuala Lumpur or Johannesburg. Surely any patents Tesla held were long-since outdated? He had died before the Cold War even started.
And why encrypt an address that was public knowledge? Especially in a photo of Lucy?
She had to get onto the other side of that door.
Lucy jiggled the knob. Another electronic keycard was required. If only she’d brought a Taser with her instead of pepper spray for protection in the Bad Apple, she could fry the circuitry. She slapped her palm against the plaque with a grunt of frustration.
Footsteps. Crap. Her entire body tensed. They got closer. Keeping her breathing as calm as possible, Lucy pressed herself into the opposite doorframe and tried to calculate whether the angle would be sufficient to obscure her from view.
Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty.
A housekeeper pushed a cleaning trolley toward her. In a stroke of luck, the woman wore massive headphones, dancing the way you do when no one’s around, while her eyes remained simultaneously glued to the screen of her cell. On autopilot she grabbed a handful of mini-toiletries, parked the cart, swiped a card, and shook her moneymaker right into a bedroom a couple doors down.
Exhale. Lucy’s shoulders sagged.
The housekeeper hadn’t noticed her, but she did leave the master keycard dangling from the handle of the cart in plain view. The phrase “low-hanging fruit” came to mind.
Was Lucy really considering what she was considering? Breaking and entering would make a Technicolor addition to her college transcript.
Taking a page from Cole’s book, Lucy lunged for the cleaning cart, nabbed the keycard, and brushed it against the swipe pad before she could consider the consequences.
A satisfying click filled her ears as the door unlocked. Lucy tossed the card in the direction of the cart. It landed soundlessly on the carpet. Close enough. Hopefully the maid would think it had simply succumbed to gravity.
Eyeballing Tesla, Lucy turned the handle and stepped inside.
Here went nothing.