Spiders in a Dark Web

by Emily Senecal

  Entering, we were instantly transported into a world of gleaming floors, polished wood walls and ambient lighting. The lobby was dotted with people, milling around, standing at the front desk, sitting in tasteful groupings of chairs. Of those I noticed, most looked like tourists, the expensively-dressed kind who could afford to stay here, with a smattering of businesspeople who were probably taking advantage of their per diem.

  We waited a few minutes for the next available clerk, a politely effusive young man. He checked us in efficiently and with considerable aplomb, making sure we knew all of the many amenities that the hotel offered its exalted guests. It was such a far cry from our bargain motel in Tucson, I had to smother a laugh on our way to the elevators. We’d refused the help of a bellboy; no need to waste five dollars on a tip when we only had light bags.

  We made our way up to the sixteenth floor and followed the signs to our room. The door opened to a low-lit, beautifully-decorated space with a clean, modern design. A large part of the open space was taken up with a king-size bed, but there was also a café table with two chairs, an armchair with matching footstool, the usual dresser-console below the flat screen TV and a long, padded window seat. The curtains were open, the views spectacular. Our room looked over the city, versus the bay, alight with activity as the dark of evening settled.

  I went to the bathroom then made way for Peter, conscientiously pulling out my phone to check in my location at the hotel. I also did a quick ATM search, and made sure that the map apps were registering where I was. I sat down on the pristine white expanse of bed, the phone in my hand, unsure what to do next.

  A soft knock on the door had me up on my feet, meeting Peter as he came out of the bathroom.

  “Someone’s at the door,” I whispered urgently.

  Without answering, he walked calmly over to it and looked through the peephole.

  “It’s an employee,” he said in a low voice, then opened the door.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I heard a voice say. “But you left your credit card at the front desk.”

  “Oh, did we? Thanks,” Peter said, accepting the card the man held out.

  “You’re welcome, sir. Have a good evening.”

  “Thanks, you too,” Peter said. He took a half step toward me and looked down at the card. The door was slowly falling shut. There was a split second before it latched, and in that second someone pushed it open.

  “There you are,” a woman’s voice said, with insincere warmth. “We were wondering when you two would get here.”

  And in walked my aunt Rosemary, closely followed by my uncle, Leonard.

  The spiders had arrived.

  Chapter 18

  As soon as Rosemary appeared in the doorway, Peter had moved to block her from entering—but the sight of the small, dully gleaming gun Leonard DiGregorio held made him stop and begin to back toward me instead. The door closed with a sickening thud, and Rosemary turned to quickly lock the bolt and chain before coming forward.

  “Have a seat,” she ordered, her face a smooth, expressionless mask.

  We edged our way over to the low window seat and sat down, Peter taking my hand in his. It felt warm and clammy—but maybe it was mine that was clammy.

  I didn’t know how to react to this development. Part of my mind thought, holy crap, it worked!—they traced us here, while another part was absolutely terrified, and another regretted that they’d entered the trap before the police arrived, assuming they were going to arrive at all, which seemed unfortunate, and across it all I seemed to just be watching, waiting blankly for what came next.

  Without touching anything, Rosemary sat down in one of the chairs beside the table, while Leonard stood stolidly at her shoulder. We all examined each other for a tense moment. They were older, I saw—the sun and time hadn’t been especially kind to either of them. Leonard had lost of most of the top of his hair and shorn off the rest, leaving him bald. His clean-shaven face was lined, his eyes sharp and suspicious. He never once lowered the gun, pointed somewhere between the two of us. It had a silencer; at least, it had a long nose attached to the muzzle, so I dazedly assumed that it must be a silencer.

  My aunt, who I’d vaguely known as a brunette like Marianne, was a fashionable redhead—though the color had begun to grow out, leaving a half-inch wide stripe of gray at her scalp. She wore heavy eye shadow and bright maroon lipstick, which I personally thought was a mistake. Her skin, too, was lined, and showed signs of sunspots in spite of an obvious attempt to hide them under makeup. Her eyes were sharp and subtle, giving nothing away.

  Both of their teeth had grown brownish, and they smelled of stale cigarettes and cloying perfume and cologne. They wore plain clothing, khakis and light jackets and sensible shoes, carrying small canvas bags; clothing so plain you didn’t notice what they had on. In a crowd of tourists in any city, they would blend in beautifully.

  I didn’t know what they saw when they looked at us, but whatever it was didn’t seem to intimidate them.

  “All too easy,” Rosemary said coolly, echoing my thoughts. “You couldn’t have been more obvious if you’d taken out an ad in the paper. Fortunately we were able to catch an early flight.”

  “A flight from where?” Peter inquired.

  It was reassuring that his voice was so steady, even while his hand grasped mine tightly. Rosemary gave a short laugh and shook her head.

  “Nice try, whoever you are. Your bad luck for getting mixed up in this.” She sounded raspier than I remembered, less cultured. Probably they’d been putting on some kind of act when my parents were around. The humanitarian act. “So, Lola. We don’t have a lot of time, and we don’t want to spend it watching your boyfriend bleed out. What does Marianne have on us? And what the hell do you know about it?”

  I swallowed, unsure of what to say. Nothing I’d thought or imagined had prepared me for this. For being face to face with them, eye to eye, questioned brutally and simply. I had no stratagems, no games, no glib answers.

  “Is Marianne here?” I found myself asking—surprising all of us about equally.

  “She’s on her way,” Leonard said, speaking for the first time. His accent wasn’t American, but I couldn’t bother to identify it just now.

  “Yes, so there isn’t any time to waste,” Rosemary agreed, so much master of the situation that I felt a faint spark of annoyance. This was our trap. Whether or not they’d sprung it too soon, before the authorities had a chance to intervene, it was ours. They were our pawns, not the other way around.

  Not that it really mattered. They had the gun.

  “Marianne told us how to find evidence—against you,” I said, sticking to the truth. “We got it to the authorities—and made a deal to get her immunity if she testified,” I added. I’d been trying to think of a way to do that, so it didn’t ring false to me. I didn’t know if they’d believe it, but it would explain why Marianne had to be present.

  A short, ominous pause followed.

  “What evidence?” Rosemary asked lightly.

  So Marianne hadn’t shown it to them yet. Either she hadn’t been able to access it, or she’d waited for us to make our move first…

  “A bunch of stuff—I didn’t see all of it,” I said quickly. “Passports and names—it was about something in Brazil.”

  Leonard looked positively ugly with anger, but Rosemary took it in stride.

  “So she was coming here to turn herself in? We guessed as much,” she said, turning her head to briefly meet her partner’s gaze. “We’ll just have to make sure she doesn’t have the chance.”

  “Should’ve done it ages ago,” Leonard said darkly.

  Australian, I guessed, unable to help myself.

  “Maybe so,” Rosemary shrugged. As if it didn’t matter very much. She stared at me with narrowed eyes, which I met as unflinchingly as possible. “So this is how you turned out,” she commented, not sounding impressed. “You look nothing like your mother.”

  I had no response. It was true: to a casu
al observer, I didn’t look like either of my parents, though a more perceptive person could have told you that I had my mother’s eyebrows and nose and my father’s mouth. Now that I thought about it, Marianne looked a little like Rosemary; they had the same heart-shaped face. But the resemblance ended there.

  “Better get on with it. Both of you, on your knees. Here.” She pointed at the small area of carpet in front of her.

  Peter, with a stricken glance at me, slowly stood up, pulling me with him. I knew what he meant to do. Before they had a chance to kill us outright, he was going to go for the gun. Leonard, while discernibly strong and wiry, was also at least thirty years older. Peter might just have a chance of taking Leonard down if he moved at the right moment.

  Which meant I’d need to tackle Rosemary.

  I couldn’t tell if she was armed, but I could only assume she had some form of deadly weapon on her person and wouldn’t be afraid to use it. I started to mentally psych myself up for it, knowing that my chances of success were slim at best. They were cagey and clever enough to watch for an attack. They would shoot before we got a chance to do more than try. We took a step forward, then another.

  Rosemary stood, impatiently gesturing at the ground. My muscles tensed. I heard Peter take a quick breath.

  Oh, God, this is it, I thought shakenly, even as I told myself to go for her eyes.

  With the impact of a shot, a peremptory knock broke across the grim silence. I started as Rosemary involuntarily turned toward the sound and Leonard swung the gun directly into Peter’s chest, staring at him with menacing intensity. After only the slightest hesitation, Rosemary walked cautiously to the door, just as Peter had done, and peered out through the peephole. Her breath came out in a quick, quiet huff.

  A huff of triumph.

  “Lo?” I heard a muffled voice say. “Are you in there?”

  Marianne.

  ■ ■ ■

  Rosemary reached to pull me roughly forward, her fingers digging into the flesh of my arm. Peter, frozen, the gun still pressed to his clavicle, stood back, watching me with a tight mouth and eyes. They didn’t need to tell us to be quiet.

  This close to her, the odors of tobacco and perfume were almost overpowering. I tried to hold my breath as the unpleasantly noxious combination hit my nose.

  “Get her in here,” she hissed in my ear.

  Unlocking the door with shaking hands, I grasped the handle and opened it. Just outside, Marianne’s eyes, wide and dark, met mine. Two men heavy with bulletproof gear stood some distance down the hall, out of sight of the peephole, staring at me. Holding guns.

  The police.

  “Marianne,” I breathed, my eyes twitching to the men and back to her. “Come inside.”

  Marianne also glanced at her daunting companions, then back at me.

  “I can’t believe you were stupid enough to come here,” she scolded audibly, then mouthed, “Are they in there?”

  I nodded very slightly and swiveled my eyes to my right, behind the door. She looked around and nodded at the men I could see, who silently moved closer to the wall and gestured—presumably to others farther away.

  I was too frightened to be reassured by their presence. Too frightened to be relieved to see my cousin or the reinforcements with her. Leonard had a gun pressed against Peter’s heart.

  I moved back a little, repeating nervously, “Come in.”

  Rosemary yanked me out of the way as Marianne stepped into the room, then set her shoulder against the door as it closed. Showing no surprise at the sight of her parents, Marianne gazed briefly at her mother before slipping a protective arm around my shoulders.

  “Well, here we all are. Seems like old times, right?”

  She never once looked at Leonard directly, with a dismissal that was an insult in itself. Through ringing ears, I heard him give a muted, vicious snarl. She kept a firm hold of me, maneuvering us so that our backs were to the open bathroom door.

  “How fortunate,” Rosemary said, with chilling satisfaction.

  Marianne inclined her head. She wore black from head to toe: long black jacket buttoned to the neck, slacks and boots. Above the black, inches from mine, her face was drawn and bloodless. Her familiar scent surrounded me, and I took a deep breath, my eyes on Peter.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Marianne was saying. “In fact, I ordered champagne—I didn’t know you’d be here, of course, but it doesn’t matter. You can toast with us.”

  “How civilized of you, Marianne. But I’m afraid we don’t have time for that. One more body won’t matter, will it? Everyone—down on your knees.”

  “Was that the plan? Hmm. Not an ideal place for a group execution, so messy…” Marianne murmured. “Three corpses is kind of a lot, you know.”

  “You may be right,” Rosemary said, not at all thrown. “Just the two, then, as planned. The third person can, ah… take a little walk with us. Do you volunteer?”

  “That could work,” Marianne agreed, ignoring the question. “Though a bloodbath and a hostage—not quite your style, is it? ‘Get out clean and fast,’ isn’t that what you always said? Not what you always did, though. Rio, for instance. This time you might not be so lucky.”

  Rosemary’s icy façade showed a crack as she glared furiously at her daughter, quickly smoothed over. I wasn’t sure which was more terrifying—the mask, or the glimpse of blinding rage.

  “Well, all the more reason not to waste time. Step away from her—you two, down on your knees!”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Marianne said sweetly.

  The third knock shattered even Rosemary’s calm—she barely moved, but visibly shook with rage and frustration. Marianne’s hand tightened on my arm as my body gave a startled jolt. I looked anxiously at Peter, but thankfully for us, Leonard seemed to have nerves of steel. One finger twitch and Peter would be dead.

  “Champagne,” Marianne announced. “My treat.”

  Rosemary, after a long look through the door, stared suspiciously at her daughter. The knock came again, followed by a man’s voice saying, “Room service.”

  “Don’t try anything stupid,” Rosemary warned softly.

  She glanced at Leonard, who positioned himself behind Peter. I didn’t have to see it to know the gun was now pressed into his spine.

  “Oh, please,” Marianne said impatiently, pushing me aside—off balance, I stumbled partway into the lighted bathroom—and reached to open the door.

  I expected all hell to break loose—that the cops would come in, guns ablaze, shouting for everyone to put their hands up. But instead I heard the muted sound of a trolley being wheeled into the room. A correct-looking waiter was pulling a bottle out of an ice bucket, preparing to open it.

  Marianne watched him, an ambivalent smile playing on her lips. Rosemary stood back, motionless, her face livid under the thick makeup, while Peter’s expression was inscrutable. I saw a glance pass between him and Marianne, but before I could guess what it meant, the waiter had lifted the bottle slightly and, without further ado, flung it directly at Peter and Leonard.

  As it came flying, Peter dropped and hit the floor with a loud thump. The bottle caught Leonard—still holding the gun—full in the chest. He fired once as he staggered back, the bullet making little sound as it left the chamber and lodged itself into a wall just beyond Rosemary’s head.

  That’s when hell broke loose. Somehow the door hadn’t been allowed to latch; it was flung open, the floodgate was released and what seemed like dozens of armed and unyielding strangers filled the small space, shouting commands. It was probably less than a dozen, but all the noise and movement made everything more frenzied.

  I immediately put my hands in the air, as did Peter, still sitting on the floor, in some danger of being trampled. I saw the waiter and two other figures wrestling with Leonard, pushing him face down across the window seat and seizing the gun from his reluctant fist. Marianne and Rosemary stood surrounded, Marianne with her hands up, Rosemary agains
t the wall, rigid with shock and fury.

  She wasn’t rigid for long, though.

  In the chaos of the offensive, while more officers ran to help subdue Leonard and others checked the room and covered the rest of us, Rosemary collapsed into a wholly convincing faint, caught just in time by two of the officers closest to her. Her body went slack, drooping awkwardly as gravity pulled her full weight downward. Just beyond her, I noticed Marianne move slightly, opening her mouth as if to speak.

  Before she could say anything, before the two would-be-rescuers could do more than try to set the limp form down in the limited floor space between boots and trolley, it came to sudden, startling life in their arms. Taking advantage of the element of surprise, Rosemary nimbly wriggled out of their now-slack hands and threw herself toward the open doorway, twisting in mid-air to viciously kick both of them in the knee. She twisted again and landed easily on her feet while the officers stumbled against each other with surprised grunts of pain, falling clumsily to block the exit behind her.

  I’d never seen anything like it—the speed, the grace, and the violence of her movements.

  She’d disappeared before they could do more than wheeze for backup, struggling to get up and give chase while more feet pounded down the hall.

  ■ ■ ■

  There was no way to know if she’d managed to make it out. I couldn’t think. I watched as Marianne, lowering her arms and hugging them to herself, talked to a woman who came in shortly after Rosemary’s departure. Only five cops were left in the room now: two guarding the sullenly handcuffed Leonard, the one Marianne was talking to, one who was helping Peter up, and one who just finished checking the bathroom and closet.

  “You can put your hands down,” he said to me.

  “Oh,” I said, and did so.

  Peter slowly walked over, nodding at the guard beside me. The man—I wasn’t sure if he was an officer or an agent or what; his vest said FBI—patted each of us down, thoroughly if rapidly, and stepped away to talk to his colleagues. Marianne gestured for us to join her, reaching to hug me tightly as we approached.