The High School Reunion From Hell - Saranna DeWylde Page 0,53
put alerts out at the Canadian Border. So we’re going to drive to Florida, through the Keys and then there’ll be an outfitted shipping container ready to get you into Brazil.”
“Oh, I don’t want to shit in a bucket,” Presley wailed. “I mean, I’ll do it, but…”
Gabe laughed. “When I say outfitted, I mean outfitted. Plumbing, everything. The CIVA uses them to transport high profile targets and supplies.”
“You’ll stay behind and work on this from your end to get us cleared?” I asked.
“Yeah, and I’ll be in touch when you can come back.”
“Okay, everyone, let’s get some food and rest. We’ll meet back here at eight sharp,” Marc said.
“No, not here,” Gabe corrected. “The access to those service tunnels is by the doggie daycare. We’ll meet there.”
“There’s a door there that goes directly to the outside. Is that what you’re talking about?” I asked.
“No. There’s a hidden run that goes in between the hotel walls and it’ll lead us out far away from the normal exits.”
I’d seen the plans for the hotel.
Those hidden walkways weren’t on them.
Chapter Fifteen
I knew that Gabe was at super-secret agency spook level with his access to information, but I had a bad feeling about just how he knew about those access tunnels.
Especially considering the thing that I’d seen in the tunnels, and what had attacked me in the restroom.
Shit, I realized that sticky ink was still in Lila Jean’s purse.
I wondered just what Gabe knew about it.
I double-checked the hotel cameras again, just to make sure they were off. Scrolling through on my laptop, I saw that they weren’t online for the hotel, but they were a live feed to somewhere.
Someone else had tapped in. They’d have an easy access view into whatever we were doing. Was it Order, FBVI, CIVA, or local PD? We had to find out before we made our move. I texted Gabe to come to my room.
It wasn’t long before I heard a knock on the door, and when I checked through the security peep hole, it was Gabe. He had to have been close by, which was weird. What was he doing on my side of the hotel?
“What’s up, Marge?”
I searched his face and all I saw was genuine concern.
“The cameras are live. I wanted to check in with you and see if it was FBVI.”
“Fuck. That’s not me.”
“What are we going to do? They’re going to see us going down to the dog run, and they’ll see us moving down that tunnel toward the exit. There’s a camera right over the entrance to the daycare.”
“Maybe we can interrupt the signal,” Gabe said. “We’d have to do it fairly quickly before we made our move, but we can do it.”
“I want to know who else has their fingers in this pie. What if there are players on the board we don’t know about?”
He nodded. “I don’t know if we have time to trace the signal, but it would be good to know who exactly had their eyes in the sky.”
“There was something else,” I began.
His eyes searched my face. “What is it?”
“You’ve seen some shit. Things that a lot of other people haven’t, right?”
“I guess you could say that. Why?”
“I saw something in that access tunnel by the doggie daycare.”
“Something?” he repeated. “What kind of something?”
“The Big Bad kind. It’s a vamp of some kind, I think? It tried to bite me, but it had a bad day.”
“What was it like, this vamp thing?”
“It seemed like it was made of shadows and misery. Or squid. It inked on me, and the shit was sticky, but direct light melted it almost like acid. After both encounters, it disappeared into the ventilation system.”
His face went pale. “Margie. Why are you just telling me this now?”
“Well, shit, my guy, I’ve been a little distracted with murder.”
“Can you show me where you saw it?” he asked. “I need to take some readings.”
We headed out first to the upper event room ladies room where the thing had attacked me. I noticed that maintenance had repaired the door partition I’d threw the thing into and they’d even managed to suck out the dead roached from the light cover.
“There.” I pointed to the vent shaft. “It dropped down from there.”
“And in a public bathroom,” he said, and shook his head.
“Right? Public bathrooms are always creepy, somehow. They always feel oddly exposed.”
He jumped up on the sink vanity like I’d done, and then leaped to grab the grate, and it slid open for him.
“It was secured last