Four Live Rounds

The footsteps were coming up from the lobby stairs. Devlin took the sheet of paper, wrote “I love you,” and held the message up to the peephole, then moved quickly into the alcove and down three steps before stopping.

Now there were footsteps climbing this stairwell, too, these faster, with a kind of clicking, like a dog’s toenails on a hardwood floor.

She backtracked to the fourth floor, glanced around the corner from the stairwell, the footsteps getting louder on the lobby staircase, at the other end, the faster ones rushing up beneath her.

She ran into the fourth-floor corridor, searching for that unlocked door, finally finding it four down and across the hall from her mother’s room. She slipped inside just as someone’s head emerged into view from the lobby stairs.

She eased the door shut, stared through the peephole.

A long black shape loped by.

Five seconds later, it returned, stood staring at the door, whining and sniffing the floor.

A man walked into view—the tall, cowboy-hatted guard with long hair. He patted the wolf’s head, knelt down, let the animal nuzzle into his neck.

Another man drew everyone’s attention—short and round, wearing a green kimono, sandals, with a red bandanna tied onto his left arm, pursuant to Ethan’s instructions.

The great black wolf sat at attention beside the guard, hackles raised, eyeing the guest.

“Hey, Reynolds,” the guard said. “Good to see you again.”

“Likewise, Gerald, likewise. Say, would you be so kind as to point me in the direction of the pregnant woman Ethan mentioned this morning?”

“Sure, right this way.”

The men and the wolf started back toward the alcove, and just before their voices diminished entirely, Devlin heard the guard say, “She’s in four twenty-nine. I think you’re going to enjoy yourself, my friend.”

FORTY-EIGHT

Devlin stood outside room 429, the corridor empty, her right arm sagging with the weight of the gun.

The high twang of Reynolds’s voice passed easily through the door: “I want you to take that off right now and sit down. You know how much money I’ve made this year?”

“How much?”

There was a sound like a hand clap. “Don’t you f**king say one word to me. Eighty-four million. One year. That moisten you up?”

Devlin thought she heard footsteps coming up the staircase at the other end, hustled into the alcove for a moment to wait, but no one came.

When she returned to the door, she could hear the bed creaking, Reynolds making noise.

Winded, he said, “Feel free to moan or whatever the f**k.”

Her mother moaned.

“You know I could kill you if I wanted?” he said, breathless.

Devlin wiped the tears out of her eyes so she could see, tried but couldn’t stop herself from glancing through the peephole, saw it happening, knew instantly she never should have looked, that the sight of the small, fat man riding her mother was an image she would never expunge, and a deep seed of rage sprouted up in the pit of her stomach, swelling her throat, flooding her eyes.

She put her hand on the doorknob, turned it, the bolt retracting, the room unlocked.

A hairsbreadth from pushing it open and walking inside, she stopped, willing back the rage. She could shoot this man right now, but the gunshot would summon everyone to the fourth floor. There’d be no hiding out until nighttime, then slipping back to the tent to await the return of their bush pilot. It might save her mother in the short term, but it would kill them all in the long.

The bolt slid back into the door frame and Devlin leaned against the wall beside the door.

She wept soundlessly, praying her mother wasn’t present, that she’d managed to transport herself to another place and time—a childhood memory, her wedding day, perhaps a family holiday, like the Christmas they’d spent eight years ago in Tahiti, opening presents at sunrise on the beach.

FORTY-NINE

When Reynolds had finished with her mother, Devlin crept back to room 420, and shut herself inside.

She waited for hours, huddled in a corner, out of eyesight from the peephole, watching the gray sky fade up, plateau, and begin its short return to darkness. She was hungry, thirsty. She prayed for Kalyn, her father and mother, and despite everything, just knowing that Rachael was four doors down brought her a comfort she hadn’t felt in years.

Dusk had come when Devlin decided it was time to leave the lodge and head back to the tent.

She got up and walked to the window, saw it was still snowing, the landscape gray and bleak. The long inner lake was wind-stirred, small waves lapping at the snowy shore, and the snow-bowed spruce trees stood completely white as she looked down on them from four floors above.

Devlin went to the door, glanced out the peephole, the corridor empty from her vantage. She slipped outside and ran down to 429, peeked through the peephole, saw her mother asleep in bed.

Devlin moved quietly toward the stairwell, descended to the first floor, and crept down the corridor, stopping along the way in 119 to retrieve her parka and snow pants.

She finally emerged into the lobby. It smelled of wood smoke, a fire burning in the freestanding hearth, and someone had placed candles on the newels of the staircase. Lanterns, mounted to the walls, glowed with firelight, casting strange shadows on the stone floor. Noise and more light emanated from the archway at the other end of the lobby, adjacent to the library.

She stole up to it, light and sound filling the passage, wonderful smells wafting out from the dining hall, accompanied by the voices of f**ked-out, happy Texans.

Supper. Her stomach ached, but the thought of eating snow outside, that she might at least quench her thirst, spurred her on.

Devlin glanced at the front entrance but decided it would be safer to depart the way she’d come, down through the cellar, out the door under the veranda.

She walked into the library, which was empty and warm.

As she reached to open the cellar door, someone raced in, and a hand covered her mouth before she even had a chance to turn around.

“Don’t scream, baby. It’s just me.”

Kalyn let her go, and the girl and the woman embraced, Devlin flushing with relief.

Kalyn quietly closed the library door and knelt down with Devlin by the hearth, said, “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“I’ve been hiding. Have you seen my dad?”

“No, honey.”

Devlin tried to reassure herself. Doesn’t mean he’s dead, she thought. She said, “My mom’s here. She’s alive, so maybe your sister is—”