I wipe my face again and make myself breathe evenly.
It was probably nothing. It was probably exactly what it looked like — a predatory little production company that had been eyeing my father's campaign looking for leverage. That was why Gerald binned the correspondence and he had marked the email for deletion. He had known. Of course, he had known.
I was the one who hadn't.
Why am I so stupid?
I pull my knees tighter and think about the green-eyed man again despite myself. He was older than me, not by a small amount either, somewhere in his late thirties perhaps, closer to Gerald's age than mine. He didn't look like a con man. The suit, the room, and the men stationed in the corridor, none of them had the feeling of something fraudulent. Which, I suppose, was exactly what made him dangerous.
I stand up.
I am going home. I am going to message Mrs. Park tonight and tell her I need a few days and I am going to go back to my apartment and close the curtains and stay indoors and be exactly what everyone seemed to need me to be, which was invisible and contained and safely out of the way. Maybe that was the correct answer. Maybe the locked room was where I actually belonged.
I reach for my bag to find my laptop and start looking at flights.
There is a knock at the door.
I go still.
"Room service."
I look at the door. Then at the small decorative statue on the side table by the window, heavy stone, satisfying weight. I pick it up and hold it behind my back.
"I didn't order anything," I call out.
"Complimentary service for first class suite guests, ma'am. Hotel special."
I stand there for a moment. The voice is neutral and pleasant and ordinary.
I cross to the door and open it.
The man outside is in a hotel uniform, pushing one of those silver trolleys with the domed lids that suggest something warm and elaborate inside. He smiles at me with warmth.
I lower the statue slightly and smile back.
He turns to leave but a second man comes through before the door has time to close. He moves fast, shutting the door behind him in one motion, then the two of them pull out guns.
So no room service after all.
"Hands," the first man says.
I raise them. The statue is still in my right hand.
"Alright," I say. My voice comes out smoother than I have any right to expect. "Let's talk about this. What do you want?"
Neither of them answers. The first man steps toward me and I make the calculation in half a second and I attack.
The statue hits the side of his head with a sound I will probably think about later and he falls and I grab his gun before he finishes falling and I come back up with it pointed at the second man and I say, "Move and I will blow both your brains out."
He raises his hands.
I stand there with the gun level and my heart pounding extremely loud in my chest and I think it through fast because I have to.
I can't shoot. This is a hotel, a busy one, the institutional response to gunfire that would bring every authority in Las Vegas down on this floor within minutes. My father's name would be in the headline by morning. His campaign would not survive the subheading.
I inhale.
"Toss it," I tell the second man, nodding at his gun.
