by Cindi Myers
“We can ask her when we see her again,” she said. “Whenever that is.”
“Tomorrow,” Simon said. “I plan on taking you to the same safe house where she and her son are staying.”
She lay back, weariness dragging at her. “That would be good.” There were too many unanswered questions in her life right now.
Chapter Ten
Victor lay awake long after the hotel had fallen silent. The clock on the mantle struck a doleful midnight, and he rose and began to pace. The old wood floors creaked beneath his feet and odd drafts swirled in his wake, setting the pages of magazines fluttering and the leaves of potted plants rustling. He added wood to the fire and the blaze roared to life, sparks spiraling up the chimney, the logs popping and crackling. He should have been exhausted, after hours in the cold, trudging miles through the snow before he was able to flag down a passing county truck, the driver astonished to find anyone out on the closed road. By the time he had reached the Foote Hotel, he had been half-frozen and aching for bed.
But his encounter with Simon Woolridge had energized him. He had had no idea Woolridge and Andi were here when he chose this place to stay the night. He just needed a room for one night, and this was the only place he could find. This had worked out great because it saved him having to look for her, but he had to figure out how to get the cop out of the picture so that he could get to Andi. Soon after that, Metwater and the key to a million dollars would be his.
He moved to the kitchen, ignoring the employees-only sign on the door, and headed for the massive commercial refrigerator. He needed fuel for his body and his mind. He opened the door and found a pan half full of lasagna, which he ate with his hands, red sauce staining his fingers and running into his goatee. He grinned at the idea, and grabbed a pint of milk to wash down the culinary carnage. Finished with his meal, he left the empty dish in the sink and washed his face and hands, dripping water on the floor.
He returned to the front room and the crackling fire, and listened for any sound of movement overhead. Wind moaned outside and the old house creaked, but he could detect no sign of life from the occupants of the bedrooms overhead. Behind the front desk, he found an old-fashioned registrar. Apparently the bookkeeping at the Foote Hotel was as antiquated as the furnishings. He flipped to that day’s date and found the neat inscription, “Mr. and Mrs. Simon Woolridge.” Mr. and Mrs., was it? Another attempt to hide Ms. Matheson’s identity? Probably. A woman who would hook up with Metwater didn’t strike him as the law-and-order type.
The Woolridges were in the Grandpa Foote room, which the fire plan on the wall showed him was at the very end of the hall. He studied the layout of the hotel with a critical eye. To get to that room from here, he would have to climb the stairs—which creaked. He knew because he had spent the early evening listening to the treads protest loudly with almost every footfall as the various guests made their way up to bed. Then, once he had surmounted the obstacle of the stairs, he would have to traverse a long hallway, which also transmitted the sound of every footstep in amplified clarity. At this time of night, most of the guests would probably wake at his approach, and it was pretty much a given that Woolridge, the wary cop, would as well.
The fire plan indicated every exit in red letters—including one at either end of the long upstairs hallway. Each of these doors opened to an outside balcony, with steps leading down to the street. The doors were probably locked at night, but a survey of the keys stored in a drawer beneath the register revealed one marked Outer Doors. He pocketed this one, then found the key labeled Grandpa Foote and took it as well. Adrenaline buzzing in his brain like good vodka, he moved to the sofa and extracted his pistol from his coat and checked that it was fully loaded. Holding it at the ready in his right hand, he eased open the front door and walked around the side of the building until he came to the stairs that led up to the balcony at the end of the hallway nearest Simon and Andi’s room.
These steps were newer and quieter than the ones inside, and the night wind helped hide the sound of his approach. He opened the door with his key, closed it behind him and tiptoed a short five steps to the door marked Grandpa Foote.
An ear to the door revealed the muted rumble of soft snoring. He eased the gun into his coat pocket and pulled out a knife. He would cut Woolridge’s throat while he slept, and threaten Andi with the same if she didn’t come with him quietly.
The key slid smoothly into the lock, and the knob turned soundlessly. But when he tried to push open the door, it refused to budge. He pushed harder and heard the scrape of wood on wood, and then a woman’s startled cry.
Hastily, he retreated toward the deeper shadows near the exit. The door to the room across the hall from Woolridge’s opened, and a woman’s pale face peeked out. “I told you,” she whispered, staring directly at him. She looked over her shoulder, back into the room. “It’s the ghost of Grandpa Foote. I told you I felt his presence. I knew he would materialize tonight.”
While her face was turned away from him, he darted to the exit and out onto the porch again. He would give the two ghost hunters time to settle down before he tried again. Obviously, Woolridge had barricaded the door from the inside. Victor needed to find a way to draw him out. Then he could slip in and grab Andi.
His thoughts shifted to the fire plan, picturing the layout of the hotel once more in his mind. He could see the red exit signs marked on the little hand-drawn map. But there had been other red letters too, those marking fire alarms—one at each end of the hallway.
He glanced inside and spotted the alarm on the wall. A check of the door across the hall from Grandpa Foote—a room marked as Mountain Man—showed the door shut tight. The ghost hunters had once more retired. Wasting no time, Victor opened the door, moved to the alarm, jerked open the cover and pulled down the handle. An ear-splitting mechanical shriek filled the hallway as he retreated outside once more.
The door to Mountain Man was the first one to open. “The ghost set off the alarm,” a stout woman with short curly hair announced to no one in particular. “I saw him.”
No one paid her any attention. The alarm continued to shriek, and soon other guests joined the ghostbusters in the hallway, milling around in pajamas and robes and hastily donned coats and slippers. At last the door to Grandpa Foote opened and Simon emerged.
“What’s going on?” he shouted above the murmur of the other guests and the blare of the alarm.
“The ghost set off the fire alarm,” the curly-haired woman said.
“I think I smell smoke,” another woman added.
“We’d better get out of here,” a man said, his hands on the shoulders of a petite woman in a Wonder Woman nightshirt. “A place this old could go up in a flash.”
This started an exodus toward the stairs. Victor took advantage of the commotion to slip inside, keeping to the shadows along the wall. With Simon’s back still to him, he moved into Grandpa Foote and shut the door behind him.
* * *
SIMON PUSHED HIS WAY through the crowd in the hallway, trying to assess the situation as the fire alarm echoed in the enclosed space. Up and down the hall, doors stood open and people milled about. If the building really had been on fire, half of them would be toast by now, but Simon didn’t smell any smoke. For that reason alone, he had suggested Andi stay in the room while he checked things out. No sense in her going out in the cold if she didn’t have to.
“Did anyone call nine-one-one?” someone asked as the guests crowded onto the stairs.
“Did anyone call Mike?” Simon asked.
“I did,” someone else said. “He’s on his way.”
The fact that the alarm was sounding, but none of the hotel’s smoke alarms were going off, made Simon suspect deliberate mischief rather than an actual blaze. He located the alarm on the wall, the door open and the handle forced down. “I don’t think there’s a fire!” he shouted to be heard above the commotion.
“Someone pulled the fire alarm. Probably a kid who thinks he’s funny.” He recalled doing the same when he was a young teen—and being grounded for a month afterward when his father found out. He tried to shove the handle back up, hoping to shut off the deafening clamor, but it refused to budge.
“The ghost set that off.” A woman stopped at his shoulder and scowled at him. “I saw him.”
Whatever she had seen, Simon was sure it wasn’t a ghost. “What did he look like?” he asked.
“He had white hair and a white beard,” she said. “I’m sure it was Grandpa Foote.”
“We should go.” A man took her arm and tried to move her toward the door, but she stood her ground.
“There’s no fire,” she said. “The ghost of Grandpa Foote is playing tricks.”
Blond hair could look white in the semidarkness, Simon thought. And hadn’t Andi described Victor’s goatee as a beard earlier? Cold sweat drenched him as he looked around for the Russian, who was nowhere to be seen in the milling crowd. Cursing himself for leaving Andi, he rushed back to his room.
The door swung open easily at his touch, and he stared into the empty room. Andi’s robe lay in a silken puddle by the bed, as if she had been interrupted in the act of putting it on. Cursing himself for a fool, Simon raced outside again. “Andi!” he shouted.
Half a dozen heads turned toward him, their faces blank. “Has anyone seen a very pregnant woman?” he asked. “Blonde, in a white nightgown?”
Mutely, they all shook their heads. He spotted the woman who had told him about the ghost. “This ghost, have you seen him again?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. He probably won’t show himself again tonight. He got what he wanted—everyone up and in a turmoil. He’ll be happy now. For a while, at least. That’s how the spirits are.”
When Simon found Victor, he was going to make him very, very unhappy.
* * *
ANDI WAS GETTING really tired of men grabbing her and trying to drag her off. First Daniel, and now this Victor guy. She was going to have to start arming herself or something. But honestly, she had been expecting Simon when the door to her room opened, not the Russian. Before she could even scream, Victor had clamped one hand over her mouth, wrapped the other arm across her chest and dragged her backward into the hall and out the door. She could hardly breathe, he was squeezing her so tightly.
And now she was freezing, the rough boards of the porch icy against her bare feet, an arctic wind cutting through her thin nightgown. The night was pitch-black, with no moon and certainly no streetlights to illuminate the scene. A few people had emerged from the hotel to the street below, but they were oblivious to what was happening right over their heads. There was no way this was going to end well for her, and she had her baby to think of too.
Years ago, she had taken a women’s self-defense seminar at her university. About a hundred young women had gathered in a gymnasium while a pair of burly guys demonstrated a dozen ways to fight back against an attacker. Then the women had paired up and practiced a few of the moves, with a lot of giggling and not a great deal of finesse. Andi struggled to remember any of those moves now. Wasn’t there something about gouging eyes or trying to break his nose?
She reached up and raked her nails across Victor’s face, which only earned a punch to the side of her head that made her ears ring. But it also made her even angrier, and instinct took over from her faulty memory as she kicked her heel back to land firmly between Victor’s legs.
The results were both instant and highly gratifying. He let out a strangled moan, released her and dropped to his knees, hands covering his crotch. She stumbled down the stairs and into the street, where she collided with Mike, who was hurrying down the sidewalk toward the hotel. “Hey, there.” He steadied her with both hands. “What’s going on?”
She shook her head. Explaining now would take too much breath. “Have you seen Simon?” she asked.
“No. I just got here.”
She followed Mike inside, to a front room full of other guests. The blare of the fire alarm wasn’t as loud down here, the raised voices of the guests almost drowning it out. Mike ignored their questions and marched past them up the stairs, Andi behind him.
They met Simon at the top of the staircase. He was fully dressed, including his coat, his dark brows drawn together in a forbidding expression. “I tried to shut off the fire alarm, but no luck,” he said to Mike as he moved down the stairs. Then he spotted Andi and stopped. “Are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded, and started past him. He touched her arm, gently, the slightest brush of his fingers. “Victor?” he asked.
She nodded. “I don’t know where he is now. I don’t care.”
“I thought he had kidnapped you,” Simon said.
“He tried, but I got away.”
“How?”
She frowned at him. “I’m a lot tougher than I look. But right now, I’m freezing. I need to get dressed.”
“I’ll be up in a minute.”
She continued upstairs after Mike, while Simon started down again. He was probably going to look for Victor, though she was sure by now he would be gone. There were too many people around at this point for him to attempt to grab her again.
Upstairs, Mike disabled the alarm. “What idiot set this off?” he asked.
“It was the ghost of Grandpa Foote,” said the curly-haired woman from the room across the hall, a fuzzy brown robe belted around her solid figure. “I saw him. He was hovering over there, next to his room.” She pointed to Andi and Simon’s room, the one labeled Grandpa Foote. “Then he moved over and pulled the alarm.”
“Why would a ghost pull a fire alarm?” Andi asked.
“They like to cause trouble,” the woman said. “Especially for people who are occupying the places they once occupied.” She turned back to Mike. “You should consider doing something to appease him. Maybe hang his portrait downstairs in a place of honor or something.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Mike said. He waited until she and her husband had retreated to their room and shut the door before he turned to Andi. “Any idea who actually did this?”
“I think it was Victor,” she said. “The man you let sleep on the sofa. I think I saw him up here right after it happened.”
Mike’s shoulders slumped. “That’s what I get for being a nice guy. Well, as my dad always said, ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’” He glanced down at her bare feet. “You must be freezing. You should go back to bed.”
She returned to her room, taking care to lock the door behind her, and fix the chair back in place. She was pulling on socks when someone knocked. “It’s me,” Simon said.
She tugged up the last sock, tightened the belt on her robe then went to let him in. He was still scowling, and the wind had tousled his hair. She resisted the urge to smooth it back into place. “No sign of him,” he said, moving past her and taking off his coat.
She fitted the chair back under the doorknob then sat down on the side of the bed again, pulling the blankets around to cover her knees. Simon paced in front of her. “I should have realized it was a trick to draw me away,” he said. “I never should have left you alone.”
“I’m not going to accept an apology for something that wasn’t your fault.” She caught his hand as he passed, and he stopped and met her gaze. “If you had insisted I come with you, instead of leaving me behind in the room, maybe he would have shot you or stabbed you, and then dragged me away anyway. As it is, I’m okay.”
He sat beside her, still holding her hand. “What happened?” he asked.
“He came in the room, grabbed me and dragged me out onto the porch. I kicked him where it hurts, he let me go and I ran. I hope he’s still hurting.”
Simon glanced at the clock. “It’s only two thirty. You should try to get some sleep.”
“Only if you’ll
try to sleep too.”
He shook his head and started to rise, but she tugged him down beside her once more. “You’re not going to help anyone by staying awake until you’re dead on your feet,” she said. “He’s not going to come back here tonight, but if he does, we can set up something so we’ll hear him.”
“Like what?” he asked.
She looked around the room, and spotted the old-fashioned bowl and pitcher on the dresser. “We’ll put those china dishes, plus the glasses from the bathroom, on the chair in front of the door,” she said. “If anyone tries to shove it open, they’ll fall to the floor and break—or at least make enough noise to wake us.”
Simon considered the idea, then nodded. “It’s primitive, but effective.” He stood and carried the dresser set to the chair, then retrieved the glasses from the bathroom and balanced them so that any movement of the door would send them crashing down. Then he lay beside Andi, still fully clothed.
“Are you going to undress?” she asked.
“No.” He reached up and switched off the bedside lamp. “Go to sleep,” he said. “I’ll be right here.”
Were there any more comforting words in the English language?
And was there anyone more stubborn than this lawman? Andi closed her eyes and settled against the solid, reassuring wall of his back. She had proved tonight that she could defend herself when she had to, but she liked knowing she had this gentle man on her side, a man who was determined to protect her at any cost.
Chapter Eleven
Simon woke with a start, the first gray light seeping beneath the window shade. The memory of where he was—and why—filled him. He turned his head to look at Andi, who lay curled on her side next to him. He clenched his hands into fists, resisting the urge to reach out and touch her, not wanting to wake her. The erotic tenderness of the night before had been so incredible—the kind of experience that changed a person on some level he couldn’t name. How was it possible to feel so close to a person he had known for such a short time?
