Fairest

by Beth Bishop

  Chapter Fourteen

  The knock on the door woke me. Gina bolted upright in her bed with her fists raised. As Carly said, Gina was jumpy. She was a year younger than I was but taller and tough. I patted my hand to her and waited until she dropped her hands and stopped breathing hard. From the open door between our room and Nate’s, I heard a TV and him chatting. In particular, I heard Terrell and guessed that all the guys were still hanging out in there.

  I looked at the clock, verifying it had been long enough for all our dirty clothes to have been washed. “It’s probably our laundry,” I said to Gina.

  When I got up to answer the door, Terrell came over and stood in the doorway between our rooms. I looked through the peephole and saw a man dressed in a hotel uniform with a cleaning service cart behind him.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “Miss Daniels?” he asked. “Housekeeping.”

  “Oh.” I looked at Terrell, who shrugged. I unlatched the chain, twisted the deadbolt open, and opened the door.

  From behind his back, the man pulled a gun. I yelped and tried to slam the door shut. He was much too strong for me and easily pushed open the door so he could enter the room.

  “Let’s do this nice and quiet, now,” he said. He glanced over to where Gina crouched between our beds. “That will cost extra.”

  The man kicked the door shut and revealed Terrell, who stood behind it in the pass-through doorway. Terrell dove at the man, knocking him sideways and causing him to fire his gun across the room at our window instead of into me. From the other room, Nate barreled into mine and helped Terrell tackle the gunman. I ducked between the beds, and Gina and I squealed as the guys wrestled with my attacker.

  “Why are you after Skye?” Terrell asked the man.

  He didn’t respond. The gun waved through the air, and Terrell grabbed it as Nate struggled to control the man’s arm. The gun went off again, firing into the bathroom. Nate managed to wrench the gunman’s wrist. With a bark of pain, he fired a third time. Then, all three guys went still.

  “What? Oh my God.” I scrambled around the end of the bed and over to them.

  AJ and Isaac now stood in the doorway, open-mouthed. I jerked Nate from the top of the pile. A quick pat down and shirt inspection showed me he was unharmed. When Terrell stood, we saw that Terrell’s shirt was red, and the assassin had a large, bloody patch on the chest of his uniform.

  “Oh, shit.” I clapped my hand over my mouth. “Is he…is he dead?”

  The three of us leaned over him. His eyes were glassy, empty. Terrell felt his pulse and nodded to me. “Yeah.”

  “Great. What are we gonna do?” Nate asked. “Do you think anyone heard? His gun has one of those silencer things on it.”

  Between the beds, Gina fell to her knees and began wailing. AJ and Isaac bolted over to her and helped her onto the edge of her bed with her back to the dead guy in the floor. It was my first body, and as the shock hit me, I shook as if I had violent chills.

  “Damn,” Terrell said. “I never actually killed anybody before.”

  “You didn’t kill him,” I chattered. “He had the gun.”

  “Don’t matter,” Nate said. “That guy’s white. Terrell and I are black. Who’s gonna look like the victim? His handprints are all over the gun.”

  “That’s just crazy.” I shook my head a little too wildly. “It was an accident. He attacked all of us.”

  Another knock came at the door, and when I checked, it was Carly with Dee. “What are you guys watching on TV?” she asked in a motherly tone. “You woke up Dee.”

  “Go over to Nate’s door,” I said. I looked at AJ. “You guys take Gina in there, too.”

  They did as I said, and I went into the boys’ room, shutting the door between the rooms. I let Carly in, and her eyes went wide when she saw how upset Gina was. She looked at me, and my face must have told her that we were all having a bad afternoon. I tugged her toward the go-between door.

  “The guy,” I waved my hands, “I mean a guy came back for me.” I jerked my head at my door. “Dee doesn’t need to see what’s in there.”

  “Dee,” Carly said, “Stay in here, and watch TV with Gina. I’m gonna go in Skye’s room for some grown-up girl talk.”

  “Okay,” she said, smiling and hopping up onto AJ’s bed.

  I opened the door just wide enough for the two of us to slip through and closed it behind Carly. While Terrell and Nate quietly told her what happened, I went over to the dead man. After gagging once, I bent down and picked up the gun. I used my T-shirt to rub the gun clean. Gingerly, I pulled the waistband of his pants away from his body and stuffed the gun into his pants.

  “There.” I looked at them. “What do we do with him?”

  “It’s almost dark. We could take him to the dumpster,” Nate suggested.

  “How did he know where to find you?” Terrell asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he traced my credit card. Lizette is the only one who knew I was here.” Carly looked at me meaningfully, and Terrell coughed. “Oh…oh, no.” I shook my head. “She wouldn’t do that. I don’t even bother her, for God’s sake.”

  “I think it’s highly likely that your stepmom paid someone to off you,” Nate said. “Must be some reason why.” I shrugged. “You got a lawyer or something?”

  “No,” I said reflexively, but then I thought of Linc. “Uh, I know somebody, though.”

  Before I made the call to Linc, I called down to the front desk to apologize in advance if we disturbed anyone. I claimed we were watching TV too loudly and two of the boys had a minor scuffle. The concierge who replaced Roger on the shift swap said no one had complained, but he appreciated my apology.

  After that call, I got my phone and scrolled down through my numbers until I found Linc’s. Using the room phone again, I made the call. The phone rang five times and went to voicemail.

  “Linc, this is Skye. Please, call me back at this number. Don’t call my cell, because it’s almost dead, and…I lost my charger.” I hung up the phone and looked at what passed for the adults of this rag-tag group of homeless children. “Now, we wait and hope he isn’t out doing something stupid, like I expect him to be.”

  While we waited, Nate and Terrell used one of the spare blankets from the closet to cover the body. I wrapped up in my bedspread to try to stop the chills. Carly went out and wheeled the laundry and cleaning supply cart into the room. Terrell tried to wash out his shirt in my sink, and I thought I should go back down to the shops and get him another one. For it to be our first murder, I thought we were handling it quite well.

  All three of us jumped when the phone rang. “Hello?” I answered quietly.

  “Skye,” Linc drawled loudly. “I wish you could see Whit’s face. It’s priceless.” I smirked and felt stupid for doing it, since he couldn’t see me. “To what do I owe the honor of a personal phone call?” I heard music in the background and laughter.

  “I need a lawyer, and I thought of you,” I said.

  “Whoa, hold on a sec.” After a moment, the background noise cut out completely. “What’s going on?”

  “Someone tried to kill me, twice.” Carly came over and sat next to me. She rubbed her hand up and down my back, and I found it helped me stay calm.

  “What?” It came out upset, outraged, and disbelieving all at once. “I will kill him.”

  “Uh, well. That’s why I’m calling. He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  As quickly and quietly as I could, I gave Linc the rundown of my last two days. I told him about the man outside the House of Blues and about running until I stopped in an old, abandoned hotel. I told him about meeting my accomplices and moving to the Marriott. I told him about calling Lizette, the new guy, the fight, and the gun.

  “Were you hurt?”

  “No. I mea
n, I have a raw neck from my necklace, but no one was hurt.”

  “Where is the body?”

  “Uh, over on the floor. I wiped the gun, and the guys covered him with a blanket.”

  “You wiped the gun?” he asked in a tone as if I was stupid.

  “I didn’t want Nate and Terrell to get in trouble. I’ll take the blame for it if necessary.”

  “Skye, no one is going to believe that a five foot three waif with big tits took down a guy like you described to me.”

  “I don’t see how my breasts have anything to do with it,” I grumbled. “I don’t care. They didn’t do anything wrong.” Nervous and impatient, I said, “Can you help me or not?”

  “Yeah,” he said and then cursed. “My dad is going to kill me for being drunk, but I’ll call him. Then, I’ll call you back.”

  “Okay.”

  “Skye,” he said and paused for a bit. “Don’t touch or move anything else, and don’t worry.”

  He hung up, and I put the phone back on the receiver. “He said not to move or touch anything else. He’s gonna call me back.”

  Nate went into his room to check on everyone. When he came back, he reported that they really were watching TV. Gina had calmed down, and Dee was still oblivious.

  The four of us—Nate, Terrell, Carly, and I—sat there for what seemed like an hour. When the phone finally rang, it had only been twenty minutes. It was Linc’s father. After the world’s briefest introduction, I related the entire story to him.

  He told me not to move or touch anything else. He said he would take his private jet—his private jet—and help me in dealing with the police. Meanwhile, he would have some of his people dig into Lizette and any others who might have a reason to want me dead. When I asked if that wasn’t the job of the police, he told me it was, but he preferred his people to do their own investigating.

  “Stay calm, young lady. I will help you take care of this.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  When I hung up the phone, Terrell said, “Let’s move out of this room.”

  I nodded. “Carly and I will go back down and get you a new shirt, just in case.”

  “Yeah, and we’ll check and see if the laundry is ready, too,” she added.

  Carly and I took the elevator down, but we didn’t talk. I felt like a zombie at that point, sort of shambling around without any real direction. Carly picked out the clothes, and I paid for them. After that, I followed her to the laundry. Carly spoke to a woman there who gave us an enormous, plastic bag containing our clothes.

  Together, Carly and I dragged it to the service elevator and then down the hall to my room. Terrell changed, and we moved into Nate’s room. Everyone except Dee was a little on-edge. She seemed just as happy as always. She let AJ borrow her monkey so he could pretend it was King Kong. He shot it down from the top of the TV with the little airplane—part of a set of toy vehicles I’d gotten for him.

  I didn’t have the stomach to dine with a corpse next door, so we all went down to have dinner in the hotel restaurant. I ordered crawfish Étouffée but didn’t eat much of it. I imagined that, living on the streets in a big city, these kids had seen just about every horrible thing there was. A dead man didn’t rattle them as much as it did me. I hated that. Their childhoods had been so destroyed, a dead guy in the same room with them wasn’t the most disturbing thing to happen to them.

  “When this is over, I’m going to do something more permanent for y’all, for all orphans here.” I looked at each of them. “I swear.”

  “You’ve already made it better for us, Skye,” Terrell said. The others either nodded or verbally agreed with him. “But, we believe in you.”

  “I’m glad,” I said and felt renewed by their trust in me.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Nate and Terrell stayed with me, but Carly took the others to her room. I didn’t want them re-traumatized and further involved, especially when I knew the police would come. I sighed, knowing I would never again be welcome at the New Orleans Marriott.

  At eleven o’clock that night, a knock came on Nate’s door. I slid off his bed, and Terrell went with me to check the peephole. I saw a man with short, dark hair in a dark suit with a shaggy-headed, ill-looking Linc standing next to him. I hadn’t expected him to come.

  “Skye,” Linc said, and his father put his hand on his son’s arm.

  I nodded to Terrell and then opened the door. “Hello, Mister Moore,” I said. “I wish we were meeting under better circumstances, and I thank you for helping me.” I held out my hand to him.

  He shook it and said, “Anything for one of Linc’s friends.”

  When Mister Moore released my hand, Linc pushed around him and grabbed me in a bear hug. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said as he pressed his cheek onto the top of my head. Still unsure if he had fully evolved from bully to friend, I tentatively put my arms around him.

  Once he released me, I introduced Linc and his father to Terrell and Nate. I told Mister Moore that I had been unable to get in touch with my father, and he assured me we could find some way to contact him. I went back over the story with Mister Moore. Then, we made a call to the front desk and let them call the police.

  When they came, Mister Moore sat with me while I told my story to the police. When I told them why I wiped down the gun, they told me I had seen too many movies. They tried to call my daddy and were unsuccessful in reaching him. We had to bring Gina in to corroborate our stories, and I was glad she stayed calm. Once the crew from the coroner’s office took the body away, the police asked us to come down to the station for another round of questioning.

  After I told Carly where we were going, Terrell, Nate, Gina, and I followed the police down to their cars. Mister Moore and Linc rode in a cab and met us at the station. It was early in the morning, and I was tired. The last two days had been some of the longest of my life.

  The police took pictures of my neck, and I drew them a sketch of my necklace. I told them my hair-brained ideas about Lizette and that it would be a crime against humanity if they held Terrell or Nate responsible for my attacker’s death.

  “I mean, you saw the hole he shot in the window and the wall. He pulled the trigger himself, no matter if Nate had his hand on the guy’s wrist or Terrell touched the gun,” I insisted.

  “It’s okay, Miss Daniels,” tall, thin policeman Gimble said. “All the evidence points to it being an accident, and Gina’s testimony supports what you’ve told us. We’re going to release you into Mister Moore’s custody until we can find out more about if and how your stepmother is involved.”

  “What about Terrell and Nate?” I asked.

  “They are both under eighteen, so we’re releasing them to the state home. The other kids, too.”

  “No.” I jumped to my feet. Through the interview, Linc had been sitting with me and holding my hand. When I stood, I jerked him up with me. “I promised them I would see after them.”

  “They can’t stay at the hotel,” Detective Gimble said.

  “Find them a bed and breakfast, then. Somewhere that will feed them. I don’t care. I am paying for it, and there won’t be any trouble, as it was my fault they got involved in the first place. Please. If you saw where they’d been living,” I shook my head and tears came to my eyes, “I promised them, Detective Gimble.”

  He blew out a puff of air. “Okay.” He flipped open his phone. “I’ll see if we can set them up at Olivier House on Toulouse and Dauphine.”

  “Okay, okay,” I nodded.

  “Mister Moore, I think it’s safest for Skye if you take her back to New York with you,” Detective Gimble said.

  “Yes,” Linc said quickly and then looked at his father. “Sorry, sir.”

  “No, it’s fine,” Mister Moore said.

  “We’ll contact your stepmother and tr
y to get a landline for Mister Daniels in Japan.” Detective Gimble turned to me. “Without telling her exactly, we’ll hint that something bad has happened to you. Meanwhile, we’ll get a search warrant for the house and look into our John Doe. Don’t call her, and nobody should tell her where you are if she happens to get in contact with any of your friends.”

  “She won’t,” I said. “I don’t have any friends, other than my new ones here.”

  “The hell, Skye?” Linc jerked me sideways by our joined hands. “I think I’m a pretty good friend to you.”

  In his father voice, Mister Moore said, “Lincoln, your mother and I did not raise you to speak like that.” Linc turned red, but I couldn’t tell if it was from shame or anger.

  I tugged on his hand until he looked at me. “Sorry.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “No, really. You are being a very good friend to me. It’s just…well, you know. You don’t have the best track record with me.”

  He kept my hand in his while I waited for Terrell and Nate to be released and during the cab ride back to the hotel. The hotel manager had the rest of the gang and all our stuff clustered in the empty dining room. I gave Carly the address of the bed and breakfast and told her the gang was expected. I promised that I would come up with a better arrangement for them, but in the meantime, they weren’t to worry. I was footing the bill for their stay, and if they had any needs the Olivier couldn’t take care of, the staff there had instructions to run a tab.

  I apologized profusely for getting them all into such a mess, but I swore I would make things right. When Mister Moore told me we needed to get going, I gave them all hugs—especially Terrell and Nate, whom I thanked for saving my life.

  “Take care, Skye,” Terrell said.

  “You, too. I’ll see y’all soon,” I promised.

  I’d never been on a private jet until Mister Moore escorted me aboard his. The inside looked like a posh living room with white, leather seats, a card table, and a little dining room. Linc said there was a bed if I wanted to lay down, and even though I was exhausted, I was too wired to sleep. Instead, I sat beside him.