“I need her room number and key.”

“Certainly.” The manager smiled nervously. Jean wondered what exactly it was he was trying to hide. “However, Ms. Schmidt is not in the hotel at present. She left this afternoon at around five and has not yet returned.”

Jean Rizzo experienced a sharp pain in his chest. I’m too late.

“Did she say where she was going?”

“I’m afraid not. But she has been interested in the chess championships we’re hosting here in Plovdiv. She attended a game yesterday. It’s the final tonight. Viktor Grinski is playing Vasily Karmonov. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d gone over to watch.”

Seven nights at three times three. Nine o’clock. Jean looked at his watch. It was already ten after nine. The meeting with Daniel Cooper would be happening now. If Tracy had found him. There was a chance she was still scrambling around in the dark, trying to solve the last piece of the riddle, just as he was doing.

Jean grabbed a piece of paper and scrawled down some numbers. “This is my phone. I’ll be at the championships. If she returns, the moment she returns, I want you to call me at once. Do not let her leave under any circumstances. Do you understand?”

“Of course. May I tell her that the police—”

“No,” Jean shouted over his shoulder. He was already halfway out the door. “Don’t tell her anything. Just keep her here.”

TRACY DRAGGED DANIEL COOPER’S limp body out of the tunnel back into the amphitheater. It was only a few yards back to the light of the outside world, but it felt like miles. Cooper weighed a ton. He was a slight man, but his limbs seemed to have been filled with lead. By the time she got him outside, she was soaked with sweat.

He was breathing, but barely. Blood poured hot and red from the gash on his head, like magma spilling out of a fissure in the earth’s crust. The whole left side of his skull had folded in, like a child’s soccer ball that had been stamped on.

“Where’s Jeff? Where is he!”

Cooper groaned. A hideous gurgling sound started somewhere in his throat.

“Tell me where he is!” Tracy demanded. She was becoming hysterical. “What did you do to him?”

Cooper was slipping in and out of consciousness. It was clear he didn’t have much time left. That it was now or never.

Tracy forced herself to calm down. She tried a different tack.

“You’re dying, Daniel. You need to confess. Make your last act of contrition before the Lord. Do you want the Lord’s mercy, Daniel?”

Cooper grunted. His lips were moving, but no sound came out.

“Jeff Stevens . . . ,” Tracy prompted, bending low so her ear was right next to his mouth.

“Golgotha.” Cooper’s voice was a whisper. “The lamb. Sacrificed, like the others.”

“What others? Do you mean the women you killed? The prostitutes.”

A smile played around the corners of Daniel Cooper’s lips. “I killed them for you, Tracy.” The gurgling started again. “You were my salvation. My reward . . .”

Tracy couldn’t allow the horror of what Cooper was saying to sink in. Those women were dead. There was a chance Jeff might still be alive. She had to save him, had to try.

“Where is Golgotha, Daniel? Where is Jeff?”

“Place of the skull . . . death on the cross . . .”

“Is it here? In Plovdiv?”

“Plovdiv . . . on the hill.”

This was hopeless. Cooper was rambling. His voice grew fainter. He began calling for his mother, and moaning. He kept talking about blood. Before long Tracy had lost him again.

She ran back into the tunnel. Her cell phone was on the ground close by the entrance, where Cooper had first attacked her. The screen was cracked but the phone still worked. Switching it on, she punched out the familiar number.

Jean Rizzo sounded frantic. “Tracy? Tracy, is that you? Are you all right?”

Tags: Sidney Sheldon Thriller
Source: readsnovelonline.net