The Lady Has a Past (Burning Cove #5) - Amanda Quick Page 0,84

“And the energy is fairly fresh. Two different people, I think.”

Luther took out his gun. “Someone inside?”

“Maybe.” Simon peered through the opaque glass set into the door. The room on the other side was cloaked in gloom. “No way to know for sure until I’m inside.”

“In my experience, that is usually too late.”

“Yeah, that’s been my experience, too. Let’s see if we can make whoever is in there panic and run.”

Simon opened the briefcase and took out his pistol. He and Luther flattened themselves against the wall. Simon opened the door.

Silence. But not the silence of an empty space.

A heartbeat later the shooting started. The glass in the door exploded. Bullets zinged off metal and thudded into the hallway wall.

Footsteps thudded inside the room. A few seconds later a figure rushed out of the gym.

And tripped over the briefcase that Simon had positioned on the threshold of the door. Luther switched on his flashlight.

A man in a hotel uniform sprawled on the tiles. It took a beat for Simon to recognize him.

“The night clerk,” he said. “Hiram.”

“I didn’t do it,” Hiram whimpered. “I swear I didn’t do it. Nobody was supposed to get hurt.”

Luther looked at Simon. “Someone, probably half the guests in the hotel, will have heard the shots. The front desk is probably calling the police right now.”

“We’ll have to come back later,” Simon said. He studied Hiram. “You’re the one who takes care of the paperwork needed to cover up the middle-of-the-night checkouts. Did you make up room two twenty-one after the guests were kidnapped?”

Hiram groaned. “Yeah. But I had nothing to do with what happened to those women. All I know is that they were all okay. Draper put them on the train. Nobody got hurt.”

“A lot of people did get hurt,” Luther said. “But lucky for you we don’t have time to go into the details. We’ll leave that for the police.”

“Fuck,” Hiram muttered. “I just came here for the money. Janet Frampton and I were seeing each other. I found out she had the combination of Guppy’s safe. She wrote it down and kept it in a drawer in her bedroom. After I heard what happened to Janet I figured I might have a shot at opening the safe. I got the combination, but I had to wait for the cops to leave. When Billingsley took off, I decided to make my play.”

“You got the money,” Simon said. “Why go into the gym?”

“Janet said she was almost positive Guppy kept the drugs in there. She’d seen Guppy coming out of the gym at odd hours when no one else was around. Janet searched the place several times, but she was never able to find the stuff.”

“You’re talking about the drugs used to keep the victims in a semiconscious state?” Luther asked.

“Yeah. Guppy gave the drugs to Janet to put into the women’s food and tea. After I got the money out of the safe I decided to take a quick look around the gym to see if I could find the stuff. Figured I could sell it on the street in L.A. Lot of drugs in that town. That’s when I saw her. I knew I had to get out. Next thing I know, you two are coming through the door.”

“Your day is going downhill from here,” Luther said. “In a few minutes you’ll be talking to the police.”

“I didn’t kill her,” Hiram whimpered. “I swear it. It must have been Billingsley.”

“Who is dead in there?” Simon asked.

“You’ll see.” Hiram shook his head. “I didn’t do it.”

Sirens wailed in the distance.

Luther hauled Hiram to his feet and turned to Simon. “Let’s go take a look.”

Simon flipped on the lights. The overhead fixtures illuminated a metal forest of gleaming machines. Some of the equipment was familiar. He recognized the treadmills and weight-lifting apparatus, but many of the devices were nothing short of bizarre.

There were steel cages that had clearly been designed to accommodate a female body. Several machines were equipped with electrically driven rollers. Others featured ominous-looking leather straps. A number of tables had pulleys and cables attached at all four corners.

“Lyra is right,” Simon said. “The place looks like a modern version of a medieval torture chamber.”

“She’s over there,” Hiram muttered.

Simon turned around. So did Luther.

There was a woman locked inside one of the humanoid metal cages. She stared out through the bars with unseeing eyes. Her elaborate makeup could not disguise the fact that her features were frozen in a mask of rage