Security(6)

Tessa moves closer. The men make a space for her, and she occupies it. “Is he your twin brother?”

“No,” Vin says. He hangs his head. “No, he’s not.”

Brian puts out his hand. He doesn’t touch Tessa. He puts his hand in the middle of the circle of men that Tessa’s invaded, and they all look at it. It seems to ask for peace. His short fingernails have rings of black underneath them. He says again, “Thanks, guys. Really, I mean it.” Before they can thank him in return, Brian asks, “Tess, could I talk to you a second?”

The men disperse with halfhearted waves and mumbled thank--yous. Pat waits until all his apprentices are in the van and then shakes a finger at Vin. It is doubtful this scolding involves walkie--talkies.

Tessa watches the van.

Brian watches Tessa, catches himself, and watches the van.

It reverses, pebbles popping in its tire treads, and makes a U--turn in the north parking lot, which contains ten vehicles among spaces for two hundred. It passes Brian and Tessa, dividing them at an angle from the . . .

Camera 3

. . . front door, where Franklin pokes his head out, furtively, before the van’s bulk rolls away. He’s holding a large pair of scissors.

Camera 2

. . . maze. The van’s shadow almost obscures Brian’s arm as it reaches on instinct for Tessa, in case the van gets too close.



Brian puts his hands in his pockets as if he doesn’t trust them. “You’re wondering what the hell I’m doing here.”

Tessa crosses her arms and bends one knee.

“And there’s a great reason.” Brian’s mouth and eyes squinch. He’s trying to effect charm but achieves only constipation.

She twists at the waist and peers at Brian haughtily. Usually, this stance of Tessa’s unnerves men. But Brian first smiles, amused at her pose, and then hides a laugh in his fist. Tessa glares at him. Brian pretends to cough, his teeth flashing despite the hotel’s towering shadow. He says, trying not to laugh, “I was in the neighborhood.”

Tessa stomps her foot, her mouth puckered angrily, her entire body suddenly open, yet defiant. Brian shakes his head, laughing loudly now, and reaches as if to hug her. But Tessa is in that same instant stalking toward the hotel. She looks gray in its long silhouette.

The Killer has left Room 717. He is approaching the seventh--floor cleaning closet at the south end of the hallway. If one were stepping out of the glass elevator, one would turn right and walk forty feet, and there would be no mistaking the slatted door that bends outward in three sections (in the style of laundry facilities or other functional household areas) for a guest room. There would be no reason for any guest to open it. The Killer opens the cleaning closet: plastic bottles full of primary colors, white towels of various sizes, vacuum attachments, furniture polish, and carpet cleaner. There would be no reason to suspect the sturdy shelves or their contents. The Killer holds a controller—it resembles a garage door opener—in his left hand. He double--checks that the hallways are empty, presses the controller’s single button, and the cleaning closet’s shelves slide sideways. The Killer boards the secret elevator. He pulls the cleaning closet’s door closed—flattening its three folds—before pressing the controller’s button again. The cleaning closet shelves reposition. The secret elevator is not beautiful, like the glass elevator. Fluorescent--lit and blond--wood--paneled, it’s the kind of elevator that belongs in a bureaucratic institution. But it is much faster than the main elevator. The Killer presses the button marked “8.”

Brian says, “Wait. Wait, Tess, wait. Wait.” He doesn’t touch her. He cuts off her path to the front doors instead.

She tries to get around him. “Bri? Move.”

“I need to talk to—”

Tessa’s quite quick, particularly at ducking. Anyone who’s boxed with her would know that. She rushes past Brian, and inside, and is most of the way across the foyer—watching him over her shoulder—before his voice rings toward the gaudy chandelier, shouting, “Tess, for God’s sake, don’t be—”

The blade slices her cleanly.

“Mon Dieu!” Henri cries, and drops a large knife. A thin stream of red splashes from its tip.

Tessa grabs her left palm. She squeezes her eyes shut as her mouth falls open.

Brian is also, it becomes obvious, quite quick. He shakes Henri by the lapels of his white chef’s coat—“What the damn hell!”—and shoves hard enough that Henri’s considerable girth tumbles backward over a reception sofa. Brian, in seemingly the same movement, bends low to Tessa and tries to coax her hands apart. His forehead is touching her forehead. One can imagine how their exhales must be mingling. He is saying something, whispering it, and this—his whispering—appears to cause Tessa much more pain than the cut across the palm of her hand, which she eventually shows him. Blood fills it in a shallow pool.

“It’s nothing,” she says.

“It’s not nothing.” Brian shucks his jacket and tears the sleeve off his black T--shirt.

Tessa laughs a little. “So macho, Bri.”

“Thanks,” he says, tying the cloth like a crude bandage. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”

“If you think for one bald second I’m getting on that motorcycle—”

“We’ll take your car.”