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He pulled his flight bag from the floor of the closet and tossed it onto the side of the bed. “Someone—a cop—told the desk clerk a story about Mr. Dewitt’s missing rifle. I think—”
“Who’s Mr. Dewitt?” Responding to the haste with which he was gathering up his belongings from the bedside table and dumping them into the duffel, she crammed her feet into her boots.
“Dash. Somebody smart got his name and used it to track us here. Doesn’t sound like Wilson and Rawlins. They would have knocked and announced themselves.”
“So the policeman—”
“Was probably working for the other faction, keeping an eye out for us.”
Boots on, she yanked her coat from a hanger in the closet. “Where is he now?”
“Don’t know. But I’m not waiting around to ask.” He shouldered his flight bag, went to the door, and put his hand on the knob. But there he paused, reached for her hand, and pressed Wes’s key ring into it. “Listen. I don’t know what we might encounter on our way out. But whatever happens, you get away from here. Drive like a bat out of hell. Understand?”
“Do you think—”
“I don’t know, but if I’m detained, for any reason, in any way, you run to Wes’s car and head for Tennessee.”
“I can’t leave you.”
“You can. You will. You’ve got to get to Violet. If you don’t, everything we’ve been through won’t count for shit. You’ve got to make it, Brynn.”
A protest was forming on her lips. He stopped it with a quick but potent kiss, then repeated, “You’ve got to make it.”
Gazing into his eyes, she nodded with full understanding.
He checked the peephole, then opened the door, and, pulling her along behind him, turned to his left.
He ran smack into Goliad. Rather, into the bore of Goliad’s pistol.
6:47 a.m.
The man had to have been hiding in the recess between the door of their room and the one next to it. He was alone. Rye asked, “Where’s your buddy? The one who kept vigil?”
“I sent him on his way, figuring you wouldn’t come out as long as he was there.”
“Smart.” Then, in as droll a tone as Rye could muster, he said, “You had just as well put the gun away. You’re not going to shoot me.”
“I’d be doing the world a huge favor.”
Rye chuckled. “Couldn’t agree with you more. But you don’t know which one of us has what you came after.”
That gave Goliad pause.
Rye cocked his eyebrow. “See? You shoot one of us and grab the other, you may be grabbing the wrong one. In which case, you’ve got a body that you have to take time to search, while whichever one of us you didn’t shoot is raising a hue and cry. In a hotel overflowing with potential witnesses. Security cameras all over the place.”
Rye shook his head. “Outcome of that scenario is capture and life in prison for you. It’s the same dilemma you faced in the cabin, except that this is more problematic. You don’t have your sidekick, and there are seven stories between you and escape. No, Goliad, you’re too smart and careful to do something dumb like that.
“You would be identified within minutes. In no time, your connection to the Hunts would be discovered, and then you’d really be screwed in any number of ways, and I can think of a dozen without even trying very hard. But the first of them is that killing me won’t guarantee that you’ll obtain the life-extending elixir for the senator, which is what they sent you to do, and I don’t think they would forgive a fuckup of that scope.”
Rye eyed him steadily. Goliad’s obsidian eyes didn’t blink. Rye said, “The real reason I know that you won’t shoot either of us? If you were going to, you would have by now.”
He knew better than to credit himself with talking Goliad out of shooting him. Goliad had realized the diff
iculties involved even before Rye had rattled them off to him. So, no, he didn’t fire the pistol, but neither did he pack it away.
He turned it on Brynn. “Where’s the stuff?”
Before she could answer, Rye said, “One more thing. Another deterrent that you should think about.”
