He simply sat there, as though he had been waiting a very, very long time for her to notice him.
Then he said, quietly,
“Don’t scream.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Despite or, perhaps, because of it, her mind screamed anyway—an internal, silent shriek that ricocheted off bone—but her throat stayed locked.
The man at the end of the bed might have been carved there.Burly frame wedged into the motel chair, elbows on knees, gun held in both hands, the barrel level with the bridge of her nose.Ill-fitting overalls of blue and yellow, the fabric pulled tight across his shoulders, giving him the hunched bulk of a man who’d grown wider than his clothes.An olive-colored baseball cap threw his face into shadow, but not enough to hide the wiry grey hair bristling from his ears and nostrils.
The CCTV guy, she thought numbly.
He shifted a fraction, as if to remind her the gun was not a hallucination.“If you scream,” he added mildly, “I’ll have to do something about it.And I’d rather we… talk.”
Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her teeth.The TV murmured behind him, flickering light stroking his shoulders, throwing him in and out of contrast.Some cop show, some pretend danger.The irony would’ve been funny on another night.
She swallowed, testing whether her voice would work.
“Okay,” she said.It came out hoarse, thin.“I won’t.”
“Good girl.”A dry smile.“I thought you’d be sensible.You are, after all, your father’s daughter.”
The words slid into her like a blade.
She kept her eyes on the gun.Was he the killer?Saving the knife for later?Or another monster altogether?Did it matter now?It was a semi-auto, black, compact, the whole of her world at the end of its barrel.Range: maybe six feet from the chair to the bed.No margin for error.No sudden moves.
Focus.
Distance to the door: three steps and a lunge.To the phone on the nightstand: one step and a suicidal grab.To the lamp: closer, but tipping a lamp was only useful if the man with the gun misjudged the distraction.
“Who are you?”she asked, stalling.Buying brain time.
“You know who I am.”He tilted his head, the brim of the cap shifting just enough to reveal more of his face: mid-fifties, heavy jowls, pale eyes that had the flat steadiness of someone who’d watched a lot of bad things and never looked away.“You’re smarter than that, Agent Valentine.I’m Quinn Marsh.”
He said it with a certain flourish, as if he knew she’d know the name.Did she?Had Poppy mentioned it in an update, a list of low-level Cox-groupies under observation, as yet lacking any concrete reason to pull them in?She felt sure the name would have stuck.It sounded more like a geological feature than a name.
Whatever.Something concrete was now sitting in a chair at the end of her bed.
“How did you get in?”she asked, because talking was better than not.
“Oh, it was easy.”He spoke as if they were sharing tips about parking.“You made it easy.I picked the lock when you went to Reception.Reckless, Dr.Valentine.”
“Agent Valentine,” she corrected automatically.
He gave a small, almost indulgent shrug.“Agent.Doctor.Daughter.All the same person, in the end.”He jerked a thumb behind his shoulder.“I was in the closet before you’d finished paying for your chips.”
The faint chemical note she’d noticed on returning.Not the AC.Him.The trace of some cleaner or solvent he carried on his clothes, layered over sweat and old oil.
“What’s with the outfit?”she asked.
"Overalls.It's like something out of the comic books," he said, smiling a joyless smile."An invisibility cloak.Looks like you've come to fix something, and the world looks right through you."
Her pulse spiked, but she forced herself to breathe slowly, evenly.Panic narrowed thinking, turned options into walls.
“What do you want?”she asked.
His eyes fixed on hers.For a moment, everything else—the TV, the hum of the aircon, the thin sheets pinning her legs—fell away.
