As White as Snow (11 page)

Lumikki opened her eyes.

An orange number eight. Now she saw it clearly in her mind, but she couldn’t connect it to anything. She took a long swig from her water bottle and headed off. Maybe she would remember if she walked a bit. Lumikki climbed the stairs from the riverbank to the bridge. At the end of the bridge was a rotating advertisement. A smiling woman advertising a new, long-lasting deodorant was just turning away, revealing a poster for yet another cop show. Apparently, people never got tired of watching night after night as someone killed someone else while other people investigated how it had happened.

Lumikki was already walking past when the upper edge of the poster caught her eye. An orange circle with a number eight in the middle.

Of course. Channel eight.

Lumikki knew where the reporter worked.

There was so much glass that the building almost looked unreal. The surface reflected the pink, purple, and orange of the evening sun, which burned even brighter and more deeply than in the logo. Finding the headquarters of Super8 Media in downtown Prague hadn’t been difficult. The rotating logo on the roof of the glass office tower was visible for miles. Lumikki looked through the glass wall into the lobby, where a receptionist was intently focused on painting her nails. Most likely, some of the shifts ran late into the night.

Lumikki had done some quick homework by Googling the company on her phone. She’d found out it was actually a media conglomerate that not only had a TV station and news production facilities, but also owned a tabloid, several magazines, and a boatload of websites. Super8 lived up to its name. It had clout.

Lumikki hesitated. She didn’t actually have a plan. So she decided to do what she had always found best when she was unsure: feign complete confidence. It worked in about ninety percent of cases. Straightening up, she walked through the revolving doors.

The receptionist doing her nails was obviously nonplussed to see a girl standing in front of her with a backpack who had been outside sweating all day. Just her expression asked Lumikki to leave immediately without the woman actually having to open her mouth and say it out loud. Lumikki didn’t let the look bother her.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for a man,” Lumikki began in English. Now the woman’s expression changed to one that seemed to say, “Aren’t we all, darling?”

“Unfortunately, I can’t remember his name, but I know he works here. We have a meeting scheduled,” Lumikki continued with assurance.

The receptionist looked her up and down, seeming to consider whether to call security. Then she sighed and said, “You’ll have to give me a little more to go on than that. We have quite a few men working here.”

Lumikki described the man with the notepad as precisely as she could. The receptionist’s brow wrinkled. Lumikki tried to guess her age, putting it at somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. She looked like a woman who didn’t date nearly as much as she wanted, but paid close attention to good-looking men and their marital statuses.

So Lumikki bit her lower lip and leaned over the desk, lowering her voice confidentially.

“He was kind of hot. And no wedding ring.”

The receptionist’s eyes brightened.

“Then it has to be Jiři! But he’s probably already gone for the day. Are you sure that—oh, wait. Here he comes! Jiři, you have a visitor.”

Lumikki saw the young man stepping out of the elevator. Yes, he was the same one Lumikki had seen earlier. He looked at the receptionist and Lumikki in confusion. Then he said something to the receptionist in Czech. The receptionist motioned in Lumikki’s direction. The man’s brow furrowed. Lumikki knew she had to act fast before they really did call security and have her thrown out.

“I have some news for you about the man you interviewed today. He’s dead,” Lumikki said.

That did the trick. Lumikki saw surprise and interest in the eyes of this man called Jiři.

“Let’s go someplace we can chat,” he said, taking Lumikki by the arm.

Looking after them wistfully, the receptionist sighed with a shrug and then went back to her nails.

A man put a phone to his ear. He had to call immediately. Those were the instructions. The answer came instantly.

“A young girl just came to get him from the office.”

“A young girl?”

“Yes. She spoke English. Looked like a tourist.”

“Could it be one of his one-night stands?”

“She didn’t look right for that. And besides, she said she knew something about Target One’s death.”

The other side of the line was quiet for a few seconds.

“Are you following them?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Let the girl tell him what she knows. That might be just the right move at this stage.”

“And after that?”

“We don’t know who this girl is. We can’t afford to let anyone screw up the plan now. When they separate, eliminate the girl.”

“Understood.”

The man was about to hang up when the woman gave him one more instruction.

“After you hang up, take a picture of the girl and send it to me and Father. If the girl gets away from you, we’ll need to know what she looks like.”

Then the woman hung up before the man could say anything. He stifled the irritated grunt that was already on its way up his throat. “If the girl gets away from you.” He wasn’t in the habit of letting targets get away. His job was to make sure that when a client wanted to stop a target permanently, the target got stopped permanently. He didn’t have a reputation as the most reliable contract killer in the city for nothing.

But reliability also meant not getting on edge about how on edge the client was. He always followed instructions precisely, and so, he lifted his phone and pretended to take some pictures of the old buildings and their ornate architecture, although in reality he was photographing the girl with the short hair. He got three good pictures that would make identification easy.

The girl looked young and determined, but not the slightest bit dangerous. Elimination felt excessive. The man’s profession did not include questioning orders, though. He felt no pity or compassion for his targets. If he had, he couldn’t have done his work.

The man sent one of the pictures to his client and the man called the Father. Now if they wished they could see how the girl had looked when she was still alive. She wasn’t going to be for long.

Two hours later, when Lumikki sat down on her bed at the hostel, her head was full of thoughts and questions, and her sweaty clothing felt unbearable. She had to get in the shower. Now. Under the cool water it would be easier to think about what Jiři Hašek had told her and contemplate her next steps.

She went into the bathroom and pulled off her shorts, shirt, panties, and bra. Pushing the rusty metal plug into the sink drain, she tossed in her clothes, covered them with water, and squirted some hand soap on top. That should deal with the worst of the body odor.

Lumikki already knew the shower pressure stunk, so she didn’t let it bother her. The cool, almost cold water felt good against her skin. It cleared her mind.

Jiři had said that—

Suddenly, Lumikki heard a strange sound. She turned off the water and listened. It was like someone was trying to get into her room using the wrong key. Had some drunk forgotten his room number again? But she didn’t hear any grumbling or swearing. Grabbing a towel and wrapping it
around herself, Lumikki was just about to march out and deliver a few choice words to whoever was messing with her door when she heard the lock click and the door open quietly. Lumikki froze in place and listened.

Someone was in her room.

The steps were steady and muted. As if someone very purposeful was trying to keep quiet.

A cleaner? Not at this time of night. And besides, cleaners yelled “cleaning” or “housekeeping” before they came in.

A burglar? That felt more likely. Lumikki hoped he would just take her money and not her passport.

There was no window in the bathroom. No escape. Lumikki focused all her hope on the thief just grabbing whatever he was after and making a run for it. Lumikki knew that hope was in vain when she saw the door handle start to turn.

A tall, burly man with tanned skin whipped the door open and almost tripped on a towel lying crumpled on the floor. He pulled the shower curtain aside, but there was no one behind it. The man touched the clothing soaking in the sink. He stank of cheap aftershave and man sweat.

Lumikki looked down at the top of his head. He had started balding. He probably didn’t even realize it yet himself since the bald spot was still so small in amongst his black hair. Lumikki didn’t hold her breath. She knew that, at some point, holding your breath always backfires when you have to exhale uncontrollably, which makes much more noise than steady breathing.

Lumikki held herself perfectly still in the air duct above the bathroom. Fortunately, the one-and-a-half-star hostel had
invested just enough in the bathroom ceiling that they’d put up a couple of boards to protect the duct. Lumikki had been able to pull herself up between them.

The man looked around. He even tapped on the walls. He didn’t look up. Not yet, at least.

Who the hell was he and what did he want in Lumikki’s room?

Lumikki felt a line of water run from her wet hair down her forehead to the tip of her nose. There, the water formed a droplet and dangled precariously. With her hands busy holding herself up, Lumikki had no way to wipe it away. She knew that when the droplet fell, it would hit the man’s head, right on his bald spot. That’s when he would look up.

Lumikki’s hands and legs trembled with effort. Staying still was hard. She had to stay still.

Suddenly, that familiar singing started coming down the hall. The partiers from the room next door.

The droplet fell from Lumikki’s nose.

The man turned and stepped over to the bathroom door to listen.

The droplet fell without a sound on Lumikki’s crumpled towel.

The man waited until the drunken revelers had passed and then slipped out.

Lumikki waited as the man’s footsteps receded, long enough to be sure he was gone. Then, shaking, she climbed down out of the air vent and collapsed for a few seconds onto her towel on the floor.

The smell of the man still hung in the air, stinging her nostrils.

When Lumikki finally got back on her feet, she went to inspect her belongings. Nothing had been taken. The intruder wasn’t a burglar. He had only been looking for one thing, and that one thing had been Lumikki.

Lumikki knew she wasn’t safe here anymore.

SUNDAY, JUNE 19, EARLY MORNING

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

Drops of water fell on the pavement. The thin produce bag must have had a hole or tear in it, which was letting water out. Lumikki had shoved her wet clothes from the sink into this bag and all the rest of her stuff into her backpack as quickly as possible. She had taken only five minutes to pack. Now she stood on the street wondering what to do.

She could try to find another cheap hostel, but would anyone let her in at this time of night? It was already past eleven o’clock. The thought of tramping from hostel to hostel in hopes of finding an open room didn’t appeal to her. Neither did spending an hour surfing on her phone or in an Internet café and trying to track down a bed that way.