by Julie Kenner
WELCOME TO GAMING CENTER
>Retrieve Assignment<<<>>>Report to Headquarters<<<
WELCOME TO REPORTING CENTER
>Enter Journal Entry<<< >>>Submit Viewable Report<<<
PLAYER REPORT:
REPORT NO. A-0003
Filed By: Lynx
Subject: Temporary Setback
Report: Target located at Plaza and Campbell Apartment bars. Despite use of laser sight equipment, attempt failed due to interference by protector. Second attempt also failed. Due to laser sight equipment malfunction, 9mm standard sight Beretta utilized instead. Inferior lighting and poor conditions. Unable to obtain good shot.
The hunt proceeds.
>End Report<<<
Send Report to Opponent?>>Yes<< >>No<<
The Carlyle hotel. That was where her parents were, and that was where Lynx would go next.
It was a deliciously simple plan, and he felt no qualms carrying it out, particularly since the tracking software had been offline since last night.
How else would he find the girl if he didn’t draw her out? And how better to draw her out and throw her off balance than by providing her a personal tragedy?
Once he’d lost them at Grand Central, he’d been forced to comb through her profile for clues as to where she might go next, safe places she might visit, friends she might call. Her parents had seemed a long shot, living as they did in Texas. But God was smiling on him, because a few calls had revealed that her parents were traveling. Even more fortuitous, they were visiting their darling daughter.
He’d started with the five-star hotels, calling to see if they were checked in. He’d hit pay dirt with the second phone call.
Straightforward. Simple. Perfect.
He simply needed to get Melanie’s attention. Get her in his sights and then take her out.
Oh, yes. This was undoubtedly the perfect plan.
Chapter
48
B y ten-twenty we were back on the street, shopping bag in tow, and heading up Madison toward 76th Street and The Carlyle hotel. As soon as we were about a block away, I pulled the necklace out of my pocket and looked at it. The chain was nondescript, just plain silver links, and the price tag was remarkable only in that it was large and purple and said PSW. Unfortunately, the medallion wasn’t that interesting either. It was a small silver oval with the image on one side of an angel holding a sword and the words Pray For Me etched around the side. The back was smooth except for an inscription.
“What does it say?” Stryker asked when I relayed all of that to him.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It’s very small, and I can’t focus while we’re walking.”
“Then stop for a second,” he said.
I shook my head. “No. It’s almost ten-thirty. We need to get to the hotel. I can’t risk Lynx finding my parents before we do.” Now that Lynx had missed me twice, my fear for my parents’ safety had ratcheted up. I’d tried calling them again earlier but hadn’t caught them. I told myself everything was fine—they’d just been on the train coming back from Long Island—but I couldn’t shake my nervousness.
“If anything happens to my parents…” I trailed off. My mom might drive me nuts, but I still loved her. And I sure as hell didn’t want her racing through Manhattan with a madman on her heels.
“We’ll get them out of New York,” Stryker promised.
“I hope so. But if we can’t think of something clever to convince them, then I’m telling them the truth.”
I didn’t want to, but I’d rather spill the whole story than see something happen to them.
Stryker nodded in agreement, then turned toward me as we paused at a corner, waiting for traffic to pass. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“We could just buy a plane ticket and get you the hell out of here.”
I drew in a breath. So far, I hadn’t allowed myself the luxury of thinking about running, but now that he’d voiced the possibility, I couldn’t deny the appeal. A remote little Mexican beach and Stryker’s twenty grand. Or, at least, what was left of it.
Stryker would give me the money, I was sure of that. Or, rather, I was as sure as I could be without asking him outright.
The thing was, I didn’t want to run. I didn’t want to live on a beach in Mexico. I wasn’t the relaxing type. I can’t remember the last time I took a vacation without having something else going on at the same time—writing a paper, preparing a presentation, catching up on tons of committee work.
A day at the beach would be fun.
Two days would be stressful.
Three days without my computer and my books and my friends would be nightmarish.
And a lifetime without all the conveniences and comforts I’d grown up with would be completely intolerable.
I suppose that sounds a bit ridiculous when balanced against the possibility of some nutcase whacking me as I rounded the corner from 59th onto Fifth Avenue, but this was my life. And I didn’t want to leave it. I’d defied my parents in order to go to school in New York, and every day I survived here without any financial help from my mom and dad was a little victory.
Besides, I loved New York. It was fast-paced, exciting, and had the world’s best shoes.
Most of all, it was home.
I wasn’t about to let some psycho trash all that.
My life. My fight.
“Mel?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
We hurried the last few blocks and reached the hotel at ten-thirty—a good thirty minutes before my parents were scheduled to arrive.
Manhattan has a lot of hotels, and The Carlyle is among my favorites. The possibility of a celebrity sighting there is high, though not as high as at The Waldorf=Astoria (where an encounter with Paris Hilton is practically guaranteed). But the thing I really love about The Carlyle is the smell. Silly, I know, but the hotel is so spotless that the scent of the magnificent flower arrangements seems to fill the air.
The rest of the hotel is pretty impressive, too, I had to admit as we approached the main entrance, marked by an ornate, art deco porte cochere. Beneath the overhang, two gold doors flanked a single revolving door. And sculpted trees were artfully placed on either side of the entrance.
A doorman held the door for us, and we stepped into the main lobby. The floor—a black marble, I think—was so polished that it reflected as well as a mirror. We hurried across the area, examining every face as we went. No one familiar. We took the elevator up to the thirty-sixth floor, found my parents’ room, and pounded on the door.
Nothing.
“Well?” I said, gesturing toward the door.
Stryker grinned at me. “Are you suggesting I commit a felony?”
I rolled my eyes. “Just open it.”
He pulled out the set of picks he’d used at The Campbell Apartment and went to work on the master key portion of the lock underneath the card key contraption, the part the maids and service people used.
I kept an eye out, trying to think of a plausible story if any of the guests or staff got curious about us. I shouldn’t have worried; the corridor remained empty.
A few short moments later, and we were inside. The room was neat, with just a few of my parents’ personal items scattered about. I checked the bathroom. My mom’s makeup case wasn’t there, confirming that she’d spent the night somewhere else.
I breathed a sigh of relief, finally able to acknowledge what had been haunting me: the fear that we’d open that door and find them laid out on the bed with bullet holes in their heads.
“We should get back downstairs,” Stryker said. “Keep a lookout.”
He was right, and we headed back down, then did a quick circle through the hotel. Breakfast was still being served in the Dumonet at The Carlyle restaurant. We stepped inside, and I looked around the room, taking in the expansive marble, along with the velvet-covered walls. Magnificent pieces of art filled the room, ranging from rich engravings to detailed hunting print
s. There seemed to be treasure everywhere we turned.
The one thing we didn’t see was my parents.
Our luck was the same in the Gallery, the Café Carlyle and the Bemelmans Bar. Fabulous art and tons of style, but I was too preoccupied with my missing parents to really notice. We explored the other nooks and crannies, then ended up back in the lobby. Once again, I dialed both their cell phones, and once again I got voice mail. I left another message to call me, but I wasn’t expecting to hear back.
“What now?” I asked.
Stryker led me to a pomegranate-colored couch with its back to the wall and a wide view of the lobby. “Now we wait.” He held out his hand. “Let’s take a look at that necklace.”
Chapter
49
S tryker peered at the necklace and the saint’s medal suspended from it. Made of polished silver, the image was perfectly clear—a broad-winged angel holding a spear, his arm back as if to thrust the point home.
“Michael,” he said. “The archangel.”
“Oh,” Mel said.
“It’s a saint’s medal,” he clarified. “A lot of Catholics wear them. They pray to the saints to intercede with God.”
She cocked her head, examining him in that perceptive way she had, as if there were no secret he could hide from her. “Are you Catholic?”
“Technically, yeah.” He’d been raised Catholic, but he’d had a few issues with God after his mother died. “My background doesn’t matter. Don’t the clues always tie to the target?”
“Well, yeah, but I’m not Catholic. I’m—” She stopped, cutting her words off abruptly.
“What?”
“My profile. I did a paper a few years ago on ciphers and the Vatican. The Vatican was huge into cryptology back in the early 1800s, and I did a ton of research on it. I even presented the paper at some conference. I don’t even remember where now. I probably would have mentioned it in the profile.”
“Well, there’s our connection.” He flipped the medal over and squinted at the inscription. “Well, this means nothing to me.”
“What’s it say?”
He held it out for Mel to see.
y = a.cosh(x/a)
“Any idea what that is?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said, not missing a beat. “It’s the equation for a catenary curve. But what that has to do with anything, I really don’t know.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “And what’s a catenary curve?”
“Well, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
He raised his brows, and she grinned. “Sorry. Just tossing your line back to you.” She cleared her throat. “A catenary curve is the shape of a perfectly flexible chain suspended on its ends and acted upon by gravity.”
“Great. Happy to know that. What does that have to do with an archangel? Or you, for that matter?”
“Beats the hell out of me,” she said. “But we need to figure it out.”
He nodded, momentarily forgetting about curves and saints as he once again scanned the faces in the lobby. They had a good view, but not a perfect one, and he wanted to double-check the rest of the hotel. He stood up, holding out his hand. “Time for one more walk-through,” he said.
They made the circuit again and were standing near an obscenely large flower arrangement when Stryker heard Mel gasp. He glanced at her sharply, saw her terrified expression, and turned in the direction she was looking.
Lynx. Striding across the lobby to the elevator bank.
“He didn’t see us,” Stryker said.
“No,” she said, her voice shaking with fear. “That woman. By the concierge desk. That’s my mom.”
Stryker turned sharply, saw the well-dressed blond woman commanding the concierge’s full attention. Lynx didn’t seem to notice, and Stryker assumed the assassin didn’t know what the Prescotts looked like. But he’d bet money Lynx had their room number.
“I’m following him,” Stryker said. “Go into the ladies’ room. Your mom will meet you there.”
“What—”
He pressed his fingers to her lips, then kissed her forehead. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes.” She didn’t even hesitate.
“Then go.”
She nodded, hurrying in the other direction to the restroom.
Across the lobby, the elevator dinged, and Lynx stepped on. The doors slid shut, and the assassin disappeared. Not for long, though. Not if Stryker had anything to say about it.
He hurried in that direction, stopping only briefly at the concierge desk. “Mrs. Prescott?”
Her head snapped up. “Yes?”
“I have a message from your daughter. She asked to speak to you in the ladies’ room. I think you should hurry. I think she’s ill.”
Chapter
50
T he ladies’ room was ornate and, thankfully, empty except for the attendant who sat on the little stool and handed out towels and various grooming products in exchange for tips.
The door banged open, and I was sure it would be someone else. With the way my luck had been going, it would have to be.
It was Mom.
“Melanie! Darling, are you all right?” She pressed a hand against my forehead. “That man said you were sick.” She fingered my jacket, then examined my face. “Dear God, child. You look awful.” She took a handful of my hair, held it up, then let it drop with a littletsk-tsk. I tell you, the woman has a real knack for fostering self-esteem.
I didn’t bother with an answer, just took her wrist and tugged her into the handicapped stall with me. Fortunately, she wasn’t expecting it, so she didn’t fight me. I leaned around her and latched the stall, then parked myself in front of the door just in case she tried to bolt.
“Melanie! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
I put my finger to my lips. “Please, Mom. Please keep your voice down.”
Her eyes widened and I cringed, expecting a blowup. But Mom surprised me. She nodded, then adjusted her skirt, making sure not to brush against anything in the stall. “What’s going on, Melanie? Are you ill? What is this about?”
“I’m fine.” And then, because that wasn’t quite true, I amended with, “I’m not sick.”
“Then what…?”
“Listen Mom, I can’t…I can’t tell you what’s going on.”
“Melan—”
I held up my hand.
My mother’s pencil-thin brows arched up, her matte foundation and powder caking a bit in the furrows of her forehead. No one interrupted my mom.
“Do you trust me, Mom?”
She blinked and took a step backwards. “What a question.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Of course I trust you, honey. I love you.”
“I know. I know you love me, but sometimes…” I shook my head, mortified to realize tears were streaming down my face. No time. I just needed to say this. To take care of this. “You have to leave now. You and Daddy. Get out of the city. No bags, no luggage, no going back to your room, and no talking to anyone at all.”
“Melanie? What are you—”
“Where’s Daddy?”
“He wanted to self-park the car. You know how he is.”
“The car? You drove?” Only my parents would drive to New York from Houston.
“Well, yes. We brought the Lexus.”
“Leave it. Just leave it. Take a taxi to the airport and go home. I’ll take care of the car.”
“This is absurd. I’m not going to just—”
“Mom. Do it. For once in your life, do what I ask.”
She pulled herself up to her full height, her fighting stance, and I dug my heels in. But then she reached out and stroked my cheek. “You’re crying.”
“It’s important, Mom. Please, please, please leave.”
She studied my face for a moment, and I held my breath. My mother had never once agreed with my decisions. The move to New York had been a mistake. My major absurd, my wardrobe frivolous, and my over
all appearance sloppy. I didn’t expect her to agree, but I had to try. And I couldn’t tell her the reason because I know my mom; she’d call the police. No, she had to leave simply because I asked her to. Knowing my mom, that was asking a lot.
I sighed. She either left willingly, or I was going to get Stryker to remove my parents forcibly back to Texas.
With the pad of her thumb, she brushed a tear from my eye. “If you’re in some sort of trouble, baby…”
I smiled. Trouble was an understatement. “I just need you to do this. No questions. I’ll explain later. I promise.” I looked at her, willing my eyes not to tear up anymore. “Please.”
“Of course we will. If it’s that important, we’ll leave right now.”
“It’s that important.”
“All right.” She looked like she wanted to argue.
“Now,” I said. “You have to leave now. Don’t even check out. Just call from the road. Have them ship your things home. And after we leave this stall, don’t say another word to me. Don’t even look at me.”
“I—”
“Mom. Please.”
“Of course.”
“Do you promise?”
She nodded.
“Say it out loud.”
I thought she’d argue. Again, she surprised me. “I promise.”
“I love you. Tell Daddy I love him, too.”
“We love you, too, baby.”
I managed a watery smile, then opened the stall and stepped out before pausing as something occurred to me. “Have you ever lied to me?”
Mom almost smiled. “No, baby. I haven’t.”
“Good,” I said. “Don’t start now.”
Chapter
51
I let Mom leave, waited two minutes, then followed. She was in the lobby when I got there, whispering something to my father. His face was creased, and he looked older than I remembered. I slipped back into the restroom and watched them from a crack in the door, afraid I’d never have the strength to keep my secret if I had to keep it from Daddy.
