The Dead Girls Club - Damien Angelica Walters Page 0,80
happening to me. I could tell him the truth.
Fuck. That.
I pull free from his grasp. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
He says nothing, but it doesn’t matter. I’m already walking away.
* * *
The hotel where Lauren works in downtown Baltimore is easy to find, and there’s plenty of available parking in the garage below. My heart’s already pounding, and despite the fact that it’s cold enough for a light coat, sweat glues my shirt to my back. I tie a navy-blue scarf around my head a la Audrey Hepburn before I get out of the car. Not much of a disguise, but it’s the best I can do. I’m not planning on getting too close. I just want to see her before we meet tonight.
Once I reach the hotel’s lobby, a modern open space, all gray, black, and glass, I press the button for the elevator, peeking around while I wait. A businessman waiting at the front counter. A clerk with an ornate updo. Another with winged eyeliner. A man in cook’s whites crosses the lobby, entering the restaurant off to the side. A middle-aged security guard in a crisp uniform, military haircut, arms crossed over a broad chest. I smell coffee and furniture polish, a not-unpleasant combination.
The car arrives with a cheery bing that makes me jump, and I ride to the top floor—the twelfth—alone. The hotel is shaped like a large rectangle with a center hallway running the length. Easy to see from one end to the other. There are no housekeeping carts on this floor. Only closed doors and quiet. Old nicotine ghosts cling to the air.
Down to the eleventh—one cart. A too-young-to-be-Lauren housekeeper. Gray uniform shirt with the hotel’s logo on the left side, black pants. No old-cigarette smell, only lavender air freshener.
No carts on the tenth floor, but there are two on the ninth, with two housekeepers about my age chatting beside one.
One cart on the eighth floor, the housekeeper out of sight. I pass by and peer into the open door. A woman emerges holding a bottle of cleaning fluid. She’s older, thin, short, with salt-and-pepper hair, but she has dark eyes. Wide hips. Not Lauren.
“Do you need something?” she says.
“Oh, no, thank you,” I say. I scurry down the hall toward the elevator, feeling her watching the entire time. When I get on the car, I catch sight of myself in the mirrored front panel—my skin is blotchy, my eyeliner has smudged. I force myself to calm down, but I‘m running out of time. If I don’t find Lauren soon, this was a wasted effort.
I step out of the elevator on the seventh floor, but there are no carts here. I’m back in the car and the doors are halfway shut when an arm halts their movement, an arm belonging to the security guard I passed on the way in. There’s a half smile on his lips, but it stops there. His stance is solid, feet wide. His gaze sizes me up from head to toe, not in a sexual manner. I fight the urge to smooth my hair, stand straighter.
“Are you okay?” he says.
I swallow hard and say, “I’m fine. Just late for a meeting and I got turned around somewhere. I’ve never been here before.”
He nods and joins me in the elevator, tipping his head toward the number panel, where the six is illuminated. “The meeting rooms are on the second floor.” He even pushes the button for me.
I can smell the mint mouthwash he recently used. Can he smell the bitter adrenaline spiking in my veins? Hear the pounding of my heart? Is his showing up simply a bad coincidence on my part? Or did someone call him to investigate a panicky woman running from floor to floor? But I can handle this. I’ve done nothing wrong.
“My boss is going to kill me,” I say, glancing down at my feet as I Marilyn Monroe my voice. “And it isn’t even my fault. He didn’t tell me where the meeting was. His assistant did and she told me the wrong floor, and I can’t lose this job. I just can’t.” My act has the intended effect. He shifts his weight, leaning away from me. His jaw relaxes. And when the doors slide open on the sixth floor, there’s not much I can do. I stay put, making a show of looking at the time on my phone. When we reach the second floor, he remains inside the elevator.