Sterling let out a strained growl. A warning. Every movement tightened the ropes, even speaking. Panic told her to gasp. She knew better.
Lukas’s grip slipped. With her hands tied by her neck, her nails could reach his wrists. Barely.
She exhaled and clawed. Her fingernail pierced his skin. Lukas hissed. Wincing, she dragged her nail with a force that threatened to rip it off. He cried out. His grip weakened.
By jamming her elbows into the crook of his arms, she drew his face lower and slammed her forehead against his nose. The pain was unbearable, but worth it.
He scrambled for her wrists. Bracing herself against his grip, shedragged herself up, then thrust her knee right between the fucker’s legs.
Lukas yelped, grasped his crotch, and rolled off the bed, crunching on a pile of broken glass from the bottle he’d hit Harry with.
She choked in air, wincing. Her tears mixed with sweat, blood, and saliva.
She wriggled off the bed, then stood. Lukas was on the floor, broken glass glinting around him like macabre starlight.
She jammed her boot into his stomach. Then again into his crotch.
Her raw skin burned. Her lungs screamed for air. Lukas grappled for her ankle. She stomped his hand, then ground it into the glass like a used cigarette. He slumped on the floor.
She ran.
The hall was dark. Her scream for help, only a dry whisper, met with eerie quiet. Fernando didn’t answer. She had to hide.
She crept along the wall, flocked velvet wallpaper caressing her swollen skin, feet slipping as she rounded the spiral staircase. On the first-floor landing, she spotted the bookshelf by Room 13, still unlatched from earlier. She eased it open and slipped in but couldn’t close it with her hands tied, let alone lock it.Fuck.
Help,she mouthed to no one.
The curtain over the library windows fluttered with the draft. The door creaked shut. The latch clicked.
She scanned for something to undo her binds. Wavering light glinted off Herr Kleinmann’s dagger on the shelf of the display case, locked behind the glass, out of reach.
The far wall bore a trio of black-and-white photographs. She hit Herr Kleinmann’s portrait with her elbow, knocking it to the floor, cracking the glass. He landed face up, his gargantuan Poirot mustache curled over his smile. She hooked the safety knot around her left wrist onto the picture nail, then tugged it loose. After wrigglingfree, she cut the remaining binds with a letter opener, leaving shallow scratches on her skin. The least of her injuries now, each searing wound indistinguishable from the next.
She collapsed onto the Persian rug. The plush carpet felt like the Hotel wrapping her in a blanket, holding her head to its chest. The thumping on the floor, its heartbeat.
No, it was footsteps. Someone was in the hall.
Fuck. She couldn’t move. But she had to.
Suddenly, the carpet felt like a bed of needles. She rose to her knees, letting out an involuntary hiss of pain as she crawled towards the desk to hide.
Voices called her name. Ghosts of the Orient, welcoming her to the grave.
“Sterling.”
It was a man. Lukas. Hunting her.
Herr Kleinmann’s cracked portrait stared up, reflecting the bottom edge of the curtains. Each time they fluttered, light from the street flashed across the broken glass. A draft whistled through the old windows.
The glass spiderweb sparkled blue for a moment, then dimmed.
Heavy boots thundered upstairs, followed by a rustle of commotion. The curtains danced with the draft. Strobing lights winked through the slit. Neon blue. Police lights.
Someone called her name again, louder.
“Sterling!”
Andreas.
