Security(51)

Tessa is weeping. Clinging fast to Brian and weeping. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—I was so mad at you for such a long time. I wasted so much time.”

Brian pulls the covers over them. “Tess, don’t cry.” Then Brian begins confessing. Specifics about Mitch, how many conversations, how many arguments he and Mitch had about Tessa. How he, Brian, never really argued that he himself should be the one for her, though he knew Tessa loved him more. Because he, Brian, felt that was an unfair advantage, somehow. He confesses, now, how stupid that was. He laughs at how stupid, but Tessa’s drying his eyes—really, this is nauseating—and he says, “It was this whole other layer of guilt. After Mitch died. Because it kind of, I can barely say it, but it cleared the way for me. With you. He even talked once about how we could share you, make up a schedule—he was high at the time, but I still busted his lip.”

“Sounds like him,” Tessa says, smiling.

“It was more than Mitch, though. I can’t pawn it all off on him. It was me. It was—it was our parents ditching us when we were two. I’ve looked into it. I hired a PI and everything. Tracked ’em down. They’re still alive. They’ve got a whole mess of kids, live in Pacoima, in this dump with a dirt lawn. They’re drunks, both of them.”

Tessa puts Brian’s head between her breasts and plays with his hair.

The Killer is walking down the stairs of the regular penthouse, flicking blood off his knife in quick whipping motions. Spatters dot the wallpaper, the carpet. He arrives in the eighteenth--floor hallway. Crosses it. Puts his card key into the lock of Room 1802, the deluxe penthouse.

The lock flashes red.

I smile. The Thinker is boxing up his cards. There are only two keys that access Room 1802. One is on the nightstand beside Tessa. The other is in my pocket.

The Killer pushes on the door. The doors are constructed so as not to give in the slightest without card key access. They have no exterior handles, only locks. The Killer’s push therefore makes no noise inside Room 1802. The Killer tries his card key again. The lock again flashes red.

I smile.

Brian says, “I saw them. I watched them. I went to talk to them, but I ended up watching, for hours and hours. Parked my bike and camped out on a bus bench across from their house. This was about a month ago. I was going to ask them—man, a trillion things. I’d planned to tell them about Mitch. The PI said they were drunks, but I still wasn’t—the woman came out to get the mail, and she wasn’t wearing any f*cking pants. Just her underwear and this blouse it looked like she hadn’t washed in forever. She watched TV all day, same chair, and about six or seven different brats—at least one set of twins—around the house, all around her. Maybe if I’d gone on a weekday. I went on a Saturday, so the kids weren’t in school. I went on a Saturday so I could meet the dad, too. But the dad paints houses, and he didn’t get home till almost dark, and he went inside, and in the window, the woman gets up and goes and jumps on him, right in front of the kids. He takes her up against the wall—hand to God, Tess—right in front of the kids, and the kids don’t even care.” Brian pushes his face into Tessa’s right breast. It seems to comfort him.

Tessa also comforts him, saying, “They’re missing out, not knowing you,” and kissing the top of his head.

“I thought of you,” Brian says. “I thought, looking at them, ‘At least I can hire a PI and get a look. Tess can’t do that.’ And after that, I was itching for an excuse, any excuse, to come see you. So when I’m buying the paper one day and I see you on the travel magazine, I was like, ‘Well, there we go.’ ”

Tessa says, “There we go,” and then she begins confessing. About how she hired a PI, too, and he turned up five women who might have thrown a baby in a Spokane Dumpster, but one of the women was black, one Latina, so that made three, since Tessa is whitest white. How the trail led into the mountains of northern Washington State, another trail to Canada, another to Florida, and Tessa decided it didn’t matter. She didn’t need to know. She was fine by herself, she was okay alone. But she wasn’t, she says; she isn’t. She’s been imagining Brian beside her in bed since he left for the motocross circuit when she was fourteen, and she’s been imagining him sexually since before that, from about thirteen. She had a dream about him kissing her and touching her naked body when she was thirteen years old and he was asleep two feet away from her. Which was why she started sleeping in her own bed, down the hall.

Brian’s mouth falls open. “Are you serious?”

The Killer is winding up to kick the door of Room 1802, the deluxe penthouse. He doesn’t do it, because his phone lights up, in his hand, where he just finished sending a message to the Thinker about this unexpected turn of events: a scant few hours until the morning security shift arrives, two people left alive in the hotel, and he can’t get to them.

Well, four people alive: there’s also he, the Killer, and there’s also Jules, whose cries emanate through the door to Room 1801, the regular penthouse, which the Killer left open.

Six people left alive, counting the twentieth floor.

Jules sounds—disturbingly childlike. She’s still in her corner. She looks at Justin, and she cries and she cries. It never takes the form of a word, like “Help.” It sounds like a siren whose batteries are dying.