Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,274

It would only take her two and a half minutes to get in and out.

She would choose a hotel near the hospital to make the timing less conspicuous. As she decided this, she saw the hotel she wanted just a few blocks south. It wasn’t someplace she would ever actually stay, of course, but it would do for a grisly tableau.

It felt like watching in real time as she ran through the check-in.

Alice strides into the modest lobby of the hotel. On her, the maroon-dyed shoes and the long hoodie tied around her waist look like a fashion statement. The woman at the desk is alone. She looks up, not very interested at first, but then she processes Alice’s stunning face. She stares with awe, barely noticing that Alice’s hands are free.

But Alice is dissatisfied.

The vision rewinds. Alice is back in the hospital, exiting the blood bank with her pockets full of four cold, quietly sloshing bags. She makes the shortest detour, ducking into a curtained-off treatment area. A woman sleeps, her vitals beeping on the monitors behind her. There is a sack with the women’s belongings, and beside it a blue duffel bag. Alice takes the bag and returns to the hallway. The detour adds only two seconds to her trip.

Alice is back in the hotel lobby. She wears no sweatshirt, and the duffel bag is slung over her shoulder. The woman behind the counter does her double take. There is nothing wrong with the picture now. Alice asks for two rooms, double occupancy for one, single for the other. She puts her driver’s license—not a fake—on the counter with a credit card in her own name. She chatters about her companions, her father and her brother, who have gone to find covered parking for the car. The woman starts typing on her computer. Alice glances at her wrist; it’s bare.

The vision pauses.

“Jasper, I need your watch.”

He held out his arm, and she took the bespoke Breguet—a gift from her—off his wrist. He didn’t bother to wonder why; he was too used to this. The watch hung loose against her hand. She wore it like a bangle bracelet, and it looked perfect. She could start a trend.

The vision resumes.

Alice looks at the watch dangling in such a chic way from her wrist.

“It’s only ten-fifty,” she says to the woman. “Your clock there is fast.”

The woman nods absently, typing the time Alice has just fed her into the reservation.

Alice grows a little too still, waiting for the woman to finish. It takes much longer than it should, but there’s nothing to do but wait.

Finally the woman hands her two sets of key cards, and writes down the numbers. They both start with a one: 106 and 108.

The vision rewinds.

Alice walks into the lobby. The woman behind the counter does her double take. Alice asks for two rooms, double occupancy for one, single for the other. Second floor, please, if that’s not too much trouble. She puts her cards on the counter. She chatters about her companions. The woman starts typing in her computer. Alice corrects the time. Alice waits.

The woman hands her two sets of key cards. She writes down the numbers 209 and 211. Alice smiles at her and takes the keys. Alice moves at human speed until she is in the stairwell.

Alice ducks into both rooms, dropping the duffel bag in the first, and turns lights on, closes curtains, puts out the “do not disturb” signs. Blood bags in hand, she flits down the empty hallway to another stairwell. No one sees her. She pauses at the landing in the middle of the flight. At the base of the stairs is an exit to the outside. The door is flanked by a floor-to-ceiling pane of glass. There is no one near the exit on the outside.

Alice dials her phone.

“Sound the horn for three seconds.”

An obnoxiously loud klaxon rises from the parking lot, covering the sound of the heavy traffic on the freeway (a different freeway, one we did not all but shut down).

Alice hurls herself down the stairs, curling like a bowling ball. She smashes through the dead center of the tall window. The glass lands on the sidewalk and gravel, some of it flying all the way to the pavement of the parking lot. It creates a pattern like a sunburst, glittering in the white shine from above. Alice retreats to the shadow of the door, and—one by one—rips the blood bags open using the broken glass