Remi turned on the flashlight on her phone and rushed to the door of her room.
She got into the hallway just as Daniel opened his door. They ended up shining their flashlights in each other’s faces.
“Ah! Get that out of my eyes!” she said.
“You do the same,” Daniel said, putting his hand over his face. Remi saw he was holding his gun, no doubt drawn the instant he was left in the darkness with Peeters. Remi couldn’t blame him. She sure wouldn’t want to be in a dark room with that worm.
“What’s going on?” Peeters demanded from inside the room.
Daniel turned to him. “Just sit tight, Signor Peeters. You, Antonio, go down and see what’s happening while I stay with him. Our man downstairs isn’t picking up.”
“All right,” the Italian officer said in English.
“Check on the painting,” Remi added in Italian.
The man nodded and walked quickly for the stairs at the end of the hall, a flashlight in his hand.
“Go back in the room and sit tight; I can handle Peeters. Don’t worry, I won’t take my eyes off him. Or my gun,” Daniel told Remi, then closed the door.
Remi shook her head. How many times had he told her that and how many times had it worked? Americans never learned.
She slammed her room door, knowing that Daniel would hear it, and followed the police officer down the hall. He had just passed through the door to the stairs and gone out of sight.
By the time she got to the door to the stairwell, he had made it a couple of floors down. He stood there, telling a worried couple to go back to their rooms. Remi watched as the lights from their phones disappeared and the policeman continued down the stairs, his flashlight beam bobbing back and forth in time to his steps.
Remi followed. He probably heard her but wouldn’t have thought anything of someone else on the stairwell. He didn’t look up, anyway.
He disappeared through the ground floor door. Remi hastened down the rest of the stairwell.
As she got to the door, caution kicked in. She turned off her phone, plunging the stairwell into near darkness. Each landing had a narrow window, but as it faced a nearby office building, closed for the evening, it let in little light.
Remi opened the door a crack. From what she could see, it opened into a hallway. To her left was a glass door leading to a dining area, visible thanks to its large windows overlooking a garden she had remembered seeing when she arrived. To her right the hallway led to the front desk area. She could see little out there, as the hallway made a right turn. Faint light, no doubt from the streetlights shining through the glass front doors, shone from around the corner.
She slipped out into the hallway. A cry and the thud of a body hitting the floor made her pause. Someone shouted. The sound of running feet, then an agonized scream.
Run, her instincts told her. It’s only a painting. Let the police handle it.
She didn’t listen. The Remi Laurent of six months ago would have listened. She would have taken the safe, sane option. But now, after having had a taste of the chase on not one but two cases, she couldn’t turn back.
She moved forward, clutching her pepper spray.
More sound of movement around the corner, and an agonized gasp, followed by heavy breathing.
Creeping to the corner, she peeked around.
All she saw was the front desk of the hotel. The lobby was empty, dimly lit by the streetlights filtering inside through the big glass doors.
Where is everyone?
Another moan. The sound of movement behind the counter.
Not daring to turn on the flashlight on her phone, she crouched down and crept out of sight along the front desk to where it was open on one side, allowing the employees to get behind it.
The painting had been placed in a locker in the room behind.
She peeked around the open portion of the counter. Dimly she could see the shapes of two bodies, lying prone, dark blots in the general gloom. One shifted slightly, emitting a moan. Where was the third man? There had been the receptionist, the plainclothesman, and the uniformed officer she had followed down. But she saw only two bodies.
A crash in the back room made her jump. Briefly a faint light flicked on back there. She got a fleeting image of the doorway, a row of suitcases lined against the wall, and that was all.
She crept behind the counter, peering at the two figures. Now that she was closer, she could tell one was the policeman. He was unconscious or dead. The other was dressed in a suit. Guest? Manager? The plainclothes officer? She couldn’t tell. He moaned softly, his leg shifting a little.
The back room lit up briefly again, and she saw the little will-o’-wisp on a penlight dance briefly at the far end of the room before winking out.
Remi crouched there in the shadows, unsure what to do. She shifted to the right, intending on getting to the side of the doorway and out of sight until she could figure out her course of action, but as she did so her foot struck something small and heavy on the floor. There was a metallic clatter and a thump as whatever she had kicked hit the back of the counter.
The pen light snapped back on, fixing her in its beam.
Remi let out a little cry and froze.
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” an American voice said. “I’m trying to find the main fuse box. What’s going on around here? Someone hurt that cop and the manager and then ran upstairs.”
Blinking in the light that still shone on her, Remi gripped her pepper spray and replied, “I-I don’t know.”
Is this him? Or did he run upstairs?
The killer might have beaten up the manager to get Peeters’s room number.
Remi turned on the flashlight on her phone, illuminating the scene.
A well-built man about six feet tall stood in the back room. To one side, the door to the lockup was open. She could see the painting leaning against the back wall. The man stood at the other side of the back room. This made her breathe a bit easier.
What made her pause was that he still kept the pen light pointed directly at her, held at head level so she couldn’t see his face.
“Ah! Thanks, ma’am. There’s the fuse box.”
He walked over to the little metal panel on one wall.
I need to call Daniel. But to do that I have to take my eyes off him. He’s only a few steps away.
The sound of a fist pounding on glass made her jump.
She whirled around and saw an Italian couple standing outside the sliding glass door, knocking on the glass and peering into the darkened lobby. The automatic door was stuck shut thanks to the electricity being out.
Immediately she whirled back around to keep an eye on the American, half expecting to find him rushing for her.
But he was still fiddling with the fuse box.
“Someone’s smashed the main switch,” he said. “I can’t get it back on. What the hell is going on?”
Perhaps it was the confidence in his voice. Perhaps it was the fact that the closet lay open and he hadn’t grabbed the painting. Perhaps it was the persistent knocking on the glass door by the Italian couple, assuring her she wasn’t alone.
Perhaps it was all three things. Whatever it was, Remi never quite knew, but she felt enough confidence to tuck the pepper spray in her breast pocket and call Daniel.
And before it even had a chance to ring, Remi froze. Because the man fussing with the fuse panel had lowered his pen light a little, and Remi could see he looked in his forties, athletic and with short blond hair and blue eyes.
Just as Peeters described the man who had spoken to him about his paintings.
“Hello?” Daniel’s voice came over the phone.
The man turned to her, a strange light coming into his gaze. Remi looked away, trying to act casual. The knocking at the glass door continued.
Remi spotted what she had accidentally kicked a minute before.
The policeman’s gun, lying a couple of steps away against the inside of the counter.
“Front desk!” she shouted into the phone.
She tossed the phone at the killer, startling him for a moment as she dove for the gun.
Diving down, she grasped the pistol, a long-barreled .38. Much like the one her father used to let her fire in the countryside. Although she hadn’t fired one since she was a teenager.
She sure would fire one now.
If she got the chance. The killer hadn’t stayed startled for long. He tossed aside his own pen light and rushed her, hands reaching out.
She brought the gun up. Too late.
His hand clamped like iron on her wrist, pushing her aim away. His other hand went behind his back, pulled out something from under his shirt, and came back into view.
The streetlight filtering through the glass door was just enough for Remi to see the gleam of a knife.
“You didn’t recognize me in time,” the killer said. “But I recognized you. Oh yes, I recognized you from Peeters’s house, and again at the police station. I was hoping to bluff you into going away so I wouldn’t have to bother with you. But no, you stayed. You’re getting in my way. No one does that and lives.”