said he hated having the AC on, but the fan rattled so much, it was like having someone in the room that wouldn’t shut up. He said, ‘This damn thing’s got a lot to say.’ ”
Jada turned to Drake, excitement building in her now. “Those weren’t the exact words, but something like that. I know it’s not much, but it’s weird, right?”
Drake nodded to her. “Go ahead. Look.”
She took a deep breath, reached up, and began to run her hands over the tops of the fan blades, one at a time. On the third one, she froze, her breath catching in her throat. Drake heard the sound as she peeled off a scrap of paper that had been taped to the top of the fan blade.
“What does it say?” Sully asked.
Jada stared down at it, and a smile blossomed on her face. She handed the paper to Sully, who glanced at it and then passed it on to Drake.
On the tiny scrap of paper, inside a hastily scrawled heart, Luka Hzujak had written the number 271.
Drake glanced up at Sully. “Room 271?”
Jada laughed, drying her eyes. “They were searching the wrong room.”
They raced one another to the door.
Intimidation didn’t work on the front desk clerk a second time. Drake and Sully explained that the accommodations they had been given simply wouldn’t do and that Room 271 would be significantly preferable, but the clerk did not seem interested in cooperating. It had been one thing for Jada to claim she wanted to stay in the same room her father had been in, but the little man in the red jacket clearly thought that now the Americans were just being difficult or they were up to something. Not to mention that they hadn’t exactly endeared themselves to him by bullying him when they’d first arrived.
Money solved it all. Once again, Drake had reason to be grateful for his trip to Ecuador, though the money he had made on that job seemed to be vanishing faster than a magician’s assistant. The clerk kept a stern, suspicious look on his face all through their transaction but eventually produced a pair of key cards for 271 and handed them to Drake.
The little man patted the pocket of his red jacket, in which Drake’s money made a little crinkling noise.
“A pleasure doing business with you, sir,” the clerk said. He smiled, his yellow teeth like dark kernels of corn under his mustache.
“You’re a walking cliché, buddy,” Drake told him.
Jada grabbed him by the arm, tugging him away, in a hurry to get back upstairs. The clerk was taking a reservation as they departed, but he spared a glance at Drake and smiled, patting his pocket again. He gave Drake a thumbs-up.
“Bastard has my money,” Drake muttered as they hurried up the stairs. “I liked that money.”
“You’ll have a lot more than that when we track down this treasure,” Jada said quietly. “You can take your expenses off the top.”
Her tone held nothing bitter, but just hearing her say the words made him remember why they were there. This gig was costing him a lot of money and he did want to recoup whatever he could, but he felt like a jerk focusing on the money.
“Sorry,” he said as they reached the top of the stairs.
Jada touched his arm. “Don’t be,” she said, glancing first at Drake and then at Sully. “Thank you. Both of you. Whatever comes of this, I wouldn’t even have gotten this far without you.”
They passed a man wheeling a room service cart in the second floor corridor. At a bend in the hall there were floor-to-ceiling windows with a beautiful view of the lake. The late afternoon sun had turned golden, and a single sailboat moved slowly across the surface. The sight of it reminded Drake of the two cigarette boats he’d noticed earlier, but if the pair of silver bullets was still on the water, they must have moved to another part of the lake.
At Room 271, Sully held out a hand and Drake slipped him a key card. They glanced up and down the corridor. Luka’s killers had not known about whatever secrets he’d hidden in this room—they couldn’t have without finding the note on top of the ceiling fan—but Drake was feeling cautious, anyway.
“Pretty lucky this room wasn’t booked for tonight, right?” Sully asked, as if their good fortune had some other significance.
“Sometimes luck is just luck,” Jada said.
Drake nodded. “True. But we don’t usually have the good kind.”
Sully