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She stumped out, slammed the connecting door. Locked it.
Sveti pulled the tattered T-shirt over her shivering self, wondering how it was possible to hate someone so much and still be so grateful to her. She tried to get to her feet, but the thigh Yuri had kicked buckled under her. She finally just crawled over to Rachel, and pulled the little girl onto her lap.
They huddled there for a long time, clutching each other, until it was impossible to tell who was comforting who.
The batwing flutterof a shadow across her face jolted Becca out of the doze that had overcome her. It was that big black SUV. Adrenaline jolted through her. A Mercedes, she noticed now. Too late to catch the plate number, damn. The vehicle had already turned perpendicular to hers, and pulled to a stop in front of the hotel’s back entrance.
It pulled away again, leaving Diana behind, clutching a white box to her chest. The SUV accelerated away, as if it were glad to be rid of her. Diana stared after it, looking dazed and lost. Her eyes looked huge. The raccoon effect of tear-smudged makeup. Becca was very familiar with that particular fashion statement these days.
She firmly squashed a niggling feeling of sympathy for the woman. Save it for someone who deserves it, she lectured herself. If Diana was in cahoots with that poisonous snake Mathes, who was involved with that monster Zhoglo, then she was up to no good, and that was that.
Diana stumbled over her feet on her way to the rear entrance. She seemed baffled by the fact that it was now locked, and stared blankly at the door for several seconds before fishing out her key card.
Becca chewed her knuckles and thought it over. At this point, it was unlikely that Diana would leave the hotel again. Whatever she’d been planning to do, she had done. There was little else that Becca could usefully do here—other than call Nick, come clean, and hand the whole thing over to him. Which meant she needed a phone.
But she was unwilling to leave and lose track of Diana again, after all this chasing around, losing her and pinning her down again. The pay phone in the corridor of the hotel had a clear view of both entrances. She would hang around the door and wait for an opportunity to slip in after the next legitimate hotel guest.
God, this skulking and loitering made her nervous. She sauntered towards the hotel, fishing out her dead cell phone for cover, and wishing, for the first and only time in her life, that she smoked. Just to have a believable excuse for lounging around in doorways.
Before she got halfway across the parking lot, Diana exploded out the back door and hurried to her car. No white box. She did not appear to see Becca at all—even when Becca abruptly changed course and headed back to her car. Diana was swept up in her own inner drama, thank God.
Becca pulled out after her, her heart thudding, and forced herself to keep a discreet distance. She didn’t have far to go. Diana pulled over at the nearest roadhouse bar, a seedy windowless cement building with a neon sign that read Starlight Lounge.
Becca parked as near as she dared, and slumped in her seat. She held the phone to her ear and watched as Diana took off her glasses, covered her face with her hands, and wept for ten minutes. Then she sprang out of the car, lurched over to the curb, and vomited.
Becca flinched in involuntary fellowship. Ooh. Nasty. So Diana belonged to the Mighty Sisterhood of Stress Urpers. Bummer for her, that she’d chosen a life of despicable crime. If she kept this crap up, she was going to be hurling her hash left and right.
Diana dabbed her face with a tissue and stumbled into the bar. Becca got out of her car, feeling like a puppet being manipulated by an unfamiliar entity. She strode over to Diana’s car and peered in.
The passenger seat was cluttered: paper coffee cups, sunglasses, a comb, used tissues smeared with mascara, a ripped open package for a digital voice recorder. The plastic bubble that had held the small microphone was empty. She hadn’t seen one of those in years, back when she was doing dictation. Typing up medical notes for doctors. Paralegaling.
People used an app on their phones now. Maybe doctors didn’t. Or maybe Diana didn’t want any of this info to be on her phone.
A crazy, half-baked idea began to form as she stared down at the sunglasses. She gazed at her own reflection in Diana’s car window. Her own hair was slightly shorter and not quite as floofy, but—hmmm.
Half of her screamed no, stop, back it up, call it off. The rest of her shrieked go for it before you chicken out you pansy ass airhead, go!
She looked for a big rock, found one a safe distance from Urping Ground Zero, and screwed up her courage. This was going to be the hardest part. Going against all her social conditioning. If anyone saw her smashing in another woman’s car window, she would just start shriekingthat bitch is screwing my husband!
She lifted the rock, fingers white, arm trembling…and hesitated. She reached out with her other hand. Tried the door.
Unlocked. For God’s sake, any stress urper should know that a woman who had just puked her guts out probably did not have the presence of mind to lock her car. Unless she was a superwoman. And superwomen did not urp. Nosirree, no superwomen in the Sisterhood.
Becca felt like a total idiot, jittery from having worked herself into such a state. No time for dithering, though. She grabbed the sunglasses and the lipstick. Then noticed the other smooth black rectangular object lying on the seat. A portable powerbank cell phone charger. And she wanted it.
She grabbed it, and stuck it in her pocket. She was now officially a thief. It felt odd.
She raced back to her car. Plugged her useless phone into the charger and stuck it in the glove box. Tore out of the parking lot, zoomed back to the hotel, tires squealing. No time for cogitating or knuckle chewing. She had to be quick, decisive. And as cool and smooth as soft-serve vanilla ice cream. She switched on her dome light, yanked her comb out of her purse and tried to tease her hair out into Dianaesque proportions. She slicked on some of Diana’s crimson lipstick, and was startled by the harsh effect. She needed dramatic eye makeup to balance it out. Fortunately, she had Diana’s Zsa Zsa Gabor sunglasses. She stuck her black-framed specs in her pocket, and donned the sunglasses. She would be virtually blind, but hey. Vision, schmision.
She detached her phone, which had acquired a vanishingly small amount of charge, but better than nothing. She glanced in the mirror and winced. She looked like a celebrity battered wife.
Whatever. Becca shrugged off her coat and marched around the building, then flounced in as if she owned the place, squinting to get her bearings.
There were two desk clerks. One was the redhead who had checked Diana in. She sailed past them, down the hall, into the stairwell, knees wobbling. Estimating the time it would take a guest to get to her room and discover she’d left her key card inside.
She swept out again, grateful to find the big-haired redhead busy on the phone. She smiled at the other, an older woman with gray hair.
“Hi. I’m Diana, in room 317,” she said. “I’m so embarrassed, but it looks like I’ve locked myself out. Could you do up a new card for me?”
