Wilderness of Mirrors (19 page)

The fire winked back, conspiring along with C.

Nigel hadn’t exactly extricated himself from the Samantha Situation. Not with his thumb drinking heartbeats from the pulse at her wrist.

He needed to let her know without letting
it
know.

He used American Sign Language with calculated slowness. His thumb brushing outward from under her chin. Pointer finger rotating now, drawing invisible and tight circles in the direction of the ceiling.

Not Alone.

She didn’t stiffen. Good instincts.

He didn’t think he could feel murderous intent out there.

Then again, he hadn’t noticed C’s tail.

Her hands spoke back. ‘
Can I help?’

‘Maybe.’
Don’t discount your resources. Never let emotion torch possibility.

If
it
listened,
it
listened with resources as well. Probably had Nigel’s mobile tagged. Hers wasn’t as likely.

He went on instinct. ‘
Text Brad. Tell him to pick you up here. Now.’
Then he asked aloud, “You want another drink?” ‘
Say,
‘
Yes’.’

“Yes.”

He slid from behind her. Not a care in the world. Yawned. Casual, relaxed and slightly drunk to anyone looking. Crossing the room, checking sightlines. Listening. But
it
wasn’t there. At least, not in this room, where the barman heard his question.

“The same, sir?”

Nigel shook his head. “Two g and t’s.” He leaned across the counter, left foot resting on the brass rail, hands clasped one over the other. “Tanner been in tonight?”

“No, sir.”

“Merrick?”

“I’ve not seen him since last week. I believe he mentioned a trip to Australia, sir.”

“Ah, the boys are all out making love or money, eh?”

“As you say, sir.”

Nigel punctuated the conversation with a few taps of his hand. “Good man. Back in minute.” He had a weave to his step and the pepper snifter and a steak knife. Things were brightening.

The gentleman’s lavatory at the bar’s rear had no exit, apart from a window that looked down upon the street from two stories up. No fire escape there. All urinals. No stalls.

He pushed through the door while staring into the surface of the brass plaque. Samantha sat before the fire, seeming to fiddle with her mobile. The bartender resumed his game of solitaire, and, somewhere outside the bar,
it
lurked.

Inside, he latched the door and dumped his jacket and tie. His ribs ached, but The Firm’s doctor had done well taping them. They weren’t going anywhere he wasn’t. He undid his cufflinks and dropped them into a pocket. Brad’s shirt was roomier than normal so he rotated torso and arms to feel any snags. Movement was good. He slid the knife under the rolled cuff of one shirtsleeve and tucked the pepper in his pocket.

The window had a thin white wire alongside it. A frigid slip of air accompanied it. He’d opened it once before after they’d banned smoking in the Smoking Room, and nothing had happened. The wire was untouched, gray with dusty resentment. An outdated alarm system.

He snapped open the mullioned widow’s latch, pushed the heavy sill and stepped up using the room’s electric heater. It warmed the sole of his loafer. Then he was out into the night, balanced between the window ledge and the curvy stone balustrades. Without recent injuries, the job would have been an easy one. Tonight, in the rainy slick chill, he felt seventy.

He cemented a foot on the rail’s six inches of flat surface and pushed the dark sash back into place. Then, that unexplainable sixth sense newly triggered, he realize
it
was somewhere just below, hidden like a tick between the massive stone buildings of Whitehall.

He slithered ghost-like from across five feet to the next window, hugging the wall to him, thankful for its cavernously rough neo-Gothic surface and years of training. Five minutes and four windows later, he made out the green of an exit sign blurry through seeded glass.

It was the annexation. The long hallway that ran from The Club’s rear rooms to the hotel’s staff rooms. He slid his pilfered knife into the drizzly world and used it to pry another latch. After some squeaking, there was a dull snapping of metal heard through the wood’s vocal chords.

His shoulder was needed and, even then, the black wood resisted. With a screech of protest, it gave way and Nigel fell with caution into the warmth. He yanked the window into place and ducked into a closet of a room. Stacked along meticulously labeled shelves, there were waiter’s jackets, tablecloths, napkins and every fabric, dutifully starched and folded, known to hotel-kind.

Nigel lowered his damp sleeves, covering the silt left by the building’s exterior. He slid a black jacket over his shoulders and refastened the cufflinks below the purposefully short sleeves. On went a bowtie. A fresh towel – white he noticed with nothing akin to amusement – went over his knife-concealing arm and a hand through his wet hair changed his appearance.

Then, a wad of pepper in his lower cheek, and he filtered into the hall. He aimed toward the back entrance to the corridor. It ran around the massive stairwell where it joined up with The Churchill Bar’s main entrance.

Nigel stalked on while the skylight above became the moon to his hunt.

N
igel was gone and she still didn’t understand exactly what had prompted it.

At first she thought maybe he was hallucinating again. She’d felt his posture alter. He was sober but weaving drunk. He was relaxed and taut as a man with a noose for a necklace. Using her cell’s reflective surface, she’d watched him enter the lavatory door. And that was six minutes ago.

She began to sense something herself. Something indefinably
wrong.

Nigel wasn’t an actuary, whatever he wanted her to believe. And she wasn’t sure how that made her feel. Angry. Guilty. Terrified that just maybe AG was what Nigel had sensed. What Nigel had inadvertently stumbled into.

Which meant she absolutely wasn’t about to text Brad.

Because if she was wrong about AG, it meant Nigel needed some more rest. And if she was correct, there was always the chance they wouldn’t recognize him. Brad would be harder to miss.

She sat fixated on the little screen, staring at the backward bar wondering if she should do something. Get the drinks? Knock on the door?

It was a metaphor for her life. Alice and her Looking Glass.

The thought made her sick.

Maybe there was a second way out, and Nigel had gone after someone and gotten killed. The lump in that space just beneath her sternum grew. She felt the burn of fear infect her lungs. Her hands grew colder, her toes too. Up went the pulsing of her heart, down went her sense of reason.

Breathe. Try to remain calm.

But it was too late. There was an explosion in her head. The scent of fire too. And then no sound, just the knowledge that nothing would ever be the same. Then she saw Marc’s face and Loch’s too. The pain was nearly unbearable until she felt the brush of fur against her bared foot. Tam.

She touched a hand to his fur and began humming. The vibration rattled away the chunk of fear in her chest. Feeling returned to her hands and feet. The reverberation was low enough the fire’s sound covered it. She stood finally, feet bared. So much for Club rules.

Tam cocked an eye. Her hand motioned
Stay
.

Fine by him. He dropped again, content with heat and sleep.

There was the bartender, facing her. She moved in his direction. “Would you like more ice, madam?” He gestured to the drinks Nigel had ordered.

“No thank you.”

He didn’t appear nervous, probably hadn’t heard gunshots or seen raining blood. That was good.

She crossed the room to the beautifully burnished cherry bar. The glasses were cold and slippery as dying fish in her hands.

What the hell was going on?

She had half a mind to go bang on the bathroom door. Call the police. Rush into the hall, down the stairs and out into the night. Hail a cab. Escape. Something. Anything. Just waiting was interminable.

Fuck it.

She put the glasses down and went to get her boots and Tam. It wasn’t much of a plan, but if the dog thought she was in trouble, the bastard who was responsible would have something else to think about when 320 psi of hellish teeth came down on him.

Sometimes Nigel could forget the bad things he’d done. When he was drowning in the sick feeling of too much adrenaline. When he could hear preludes to his own funeral music. When he was the fly in the web. Then, only then, was he the Zen spider, completely focused and oddly at peace.

His feet padded away the carpeted yards and yards of space. Room service. Bar service. Death service. Eyes forward. Be that nobody and you’ll not be anybody.

Nigel kept to the oval’s opposite side and disappeared down the length of another hall. It led to a bank of elevators servicing both the dining rooms of The Club and The Royal Horseguard Hotel’s staff.

Nigel waited for the elevator to open. He stepped inside and discarded jacket, towel and hairstyle. Back went the cuffs; out came the tails and The Drunk.

Make a fuss. Draw attention down, up and around. The elevator opened on the lobby. Several couples queued in manicured groupings. Sex after a meal and passable attempts at conversation. Prostitution for the politically correct.

Not his Samantha, though. He’d never had a better worst date in his life.

Then there was Irina’s haunted look and for a moment he forgot to act. He stumbled from the elevator and bounced off the back of a thick woman wearing a sock for a dress and too much mink.

“Oi.” Her mouth was a spasm of shockingly pink lipstick.

He slurred, “You can take the girl out of East End, but you can’t take the cock
ney
out of the girl.”

There was a shrill squeak of protest from her heaving bosom, a few laughs from prettier girls with better accents, and the too-late attempt at chivalry from her pompous companion.

“Here. Did you just insult my wife?”

Nigel had noted the too-shiny ring on her finger and the dented, matte-finished ring on his. “No. Your wife’s at home with the kids waiting for you to get back from your business trip.” He pushed a finger into the man’s middle section. Who the hell wore pocket watches? “Excuse me. I’ve got a date with a bottle of Dalwhinnie.”

That shut them all up. By the time he’d extricated himself, the chatter and shouts of outrage had drawn the attention of the concierge. Nigel swept by and ducked into the coatroom behind the empty front desk. He shoved a hat over his head, thrust his arms into a black trench and whipped a piece of luggage from the lowest shelf.

Then he was back through the marble-floored space, weaving his way among milling guests and the great-coated staff. He headed purposefully to the curb, no trace of The Drunk, shunning the doorman’s offer to secure a cab. He crossed the slushy street and caught the far-away odor of stale foreign cigarettes, bergamot-infused cologne and cherry Fisherman’s Friends. Someone had lingered quite a while to leave that imprint. His skin prickled.

Only this someone wasn’t as good as he thought.

Nigel approached the shadowed figures of the bronze World War II Memorial. He left the borrowed suitcase in the capable hands of the immortalized Royal Tank Division and loosened his muscles. Four steps later, he lunged around the gloomy corner.

He blew a blast of pepper from pressed lips as he chopped his opponent’s wrist with the edge of his hand. There was a gurgled scream. Nigel gripped flailing bones and spun the stunned man into a chokehold. Two feeble hands whipped upward and clawed at Nigel’s forearm. But by now, the man’s gun was ensconced in Nigel’s left hand.

“Quiet or I’ll drop you behind the railing and shoot you.” The movements and groans stilled. Nigel allowed a little more air into the man’s gasping throat. He leaned into the ear nearest him and started a harsh Estonian whispering. “Better. Now tell me, just how the fuck did an idiot like you find me? Hmmm. Was it Ivan? I don’t think so. Not that smart is he, Jaak?”

Despite being blinded and choked by pepper, Nigel’s quarry managed to flinch at the mention of his own name. Nigel chuckled. “You know your not good enough to kill me, you piece of shit.” The body in his arms was trembling now. “Shaking, Jaak? Going to piss your pants? Not something you’d want Ivan to hear about. No. I thought not. Here’s what we’re going to do. Listen carefully because that bit of cold you feel prodding the buttons of your collar is your gun. And the bit of cold you don’t feel is the knife I’ve got against the back of your greasy head.”

Nigel’s whispers continued and Jaak’s sore throat became the least of his many, many worries.

Neutered or not, Tamar shamed men with more equipment. He had a stalk to his gait, a prowl of leonine proportions. And they spotted Nigel’s stalker one floor above them at the same moment.

Samantha noted him because his entire being was fixated on the door to The Churchill Bar. He was positioned by the women’s lavatory waiting for a girl who wouldn’t be wearing the stole he so casually held for her.

Except, he quivered beneath the surface, eyes darting down at instead of overtly gazing.

She could smell a little perfume, an expensive bottle of something he’d sprayed on the pashmina. His own cologne was masculine. She liked Vulfix; her Uncle Loch had used it. A smile flitted across her mouth as she remembered his life-long battle to convert John from American shaving cream and cheap disposable razors to a brush and tub.

“Xie xie.” She and Tam headed down the curving stairwell as Sam slowly worked her way into jacket and gloves. By the time they reached the lobby, their tracker had sidled down nearer to The Bar door.

So he was waiting for Nigel.

AG wasn’t wasting any time
.

“Night, Travers.”

“Would you like me to secure you a cab, Miss?”

“Thank you, but no. I’d just like some fresh air. I’m waiting for Mr. Forsythe. We’ll be walking home together.”

“Very well. Good night, Miss.”