Run Rose Run(86)

There was the faintest whiff of cigarette smoke in the air—AnnieLee never smoked—and, even fainter, what seemed to him like the metallic scent of fear.

Ethan leaned against the wall and closed his eyes as an old, sharp anguish shot through him. He was back in North Carolina, walking into a room where his wife lay strangled. She’d been wearing the nightgown he’d bought her for her birthday, the one made of silk as red as blood.

He took a deep, shuddering inhale—One, two, three, four—held it—One, two, three, four—and let it out: One, two, three, four. He waited four seconds and did the whole thing again. Box breathing, Jeanie had called it, and she had said it kept her calm in moments of great stress.

If only, he thought, it could have kept her safe.

Then Ethan pushed himself off the wall, shaking his head as if he could rattle loose the memories of his wife. He still missed Jeanie, despite her betrayal. But it was time to worry about a living woman.

He crept silently through the entryway, though he knew that whoever had come in had long since vanished. The bedroom lay ahead of him, and the living room was to the left. He went into the bedroom first. The bed was in disarray, its covers kicked to the floor. He glanced over at the muted TV, which was broadcasting drone footage of an enormous cliffside mansion. Closed-captioning suggested that it could be his for a mere sixteen million euros.

A black dress with a muted sparkle dangled halfway off the end of the bed. He felt the heavy, expensive fabric as he read the card from Ruthanna: You know what I say about “too much”… He tossed the card back onto the bed—he did indeed know.

And it certainly explained the shoe he saw lying in the middle of the bed. A thin, impossibly high stiletto with a jewel-encrusted heel, it looked more like a weapon than it did footwear. He couldn’t imagine AnnieLee ever wearing such a thing, though clearly Ruthanna hoped her protégé might be convinced. He spotted the other shoe by the wall, as if AnnieLee had flung it there in a huff after trying it on. He bent down to pick it up and noticed a pale bit of something clinging to the heel. He peered closer. It looked like…a scrape of skin.

Ethan stood motionless, even as his heartbeat quickened. Someone had used the shoe as a weapon.

He set it carefully on the bed and moved into the living room. The balcony doors were open wide, their pale curtains fluttering lightly in the breeze. A vase of roses had been knocked over, and water pooled on the coffee table, dripping down onto the thick cream carpet.

He walked out onto the balcony, gripped the railing, and looked down. He felt an almost overwhelming vertigo as he thought about falling that far. Below he could see the broken glass awning, and ribbons of caution tape blocking the hotel’s front entrance.

Ethan stepped away from the railing and breathed slowly again, trying to calm himself. But it seemed he could feel AnnieLee’s desperate panic, and the feeling caused him nearly physical pain.

Someone had come into her room, and this someone was a person she feared so much that she chose to throw herself off a balcony rather than face him. The realization of what this meant felt like a punch to Ethan’s gut. The person couldn’t be a crazed fan, or an anonymous petty Vegas criminal, or a random psychopath. He was someone AnnieLee knew.

Was he one of the men from the black truck? The driver of the Impala? Or someone so frightening that he was only now making himself known?

Ethan knew that he should call the police. But he also knew that doing so would most likely backfire. AnnieLee would be furious, and she would push against everyone, dodge any questions, refuse to cooperate. And how could the police investigate a crime that its victim said never even happened?

He stepped back into the hotel room. He’d played enough amateur detective for the day. Anyway, the answers weren’t to be found at the Aquitaine Hotel. They lay with AnnieLee.

He found her bag and began to gather up what little clothing there was. And as he did, he asked himself, What sort of person packed a tiny duffel bag for a three-week road trip?

A person used to privation and lack—that’s who. Ruthanna joked that there was no such thing as having too much, but suddenly Ethan understood that AnnieLee didn’t even believe in having enough. He’d always thought that she wore the same too-small boots and the same two pairs of jeans because she was superstitious: she thought they were lucky. But now it seemed to him that there were darker, sadder reasons.

Either she didn’t think she deserved more or she knew she needed to travel light, so that at any moment she could grab everything and run.





Chapter

77


So she really seemed okay? Body, mind, all of it?” Jack asked, pouring himself a Scotch from Ruthanna’s minibar, though five o’clock was still a ways off.

Ruthanna nodded, her mouth full of fancy French chocolate. Low-carb diet be damned—stress like this called for truffles, or whatever the hell those delicious little cocoa-covered balls were. “AnnieLee was as impatient and headstrong as ever,” she said. “But then she was sleeping when I left. I think they still want to do some kind of psychiatric evaluation.” She picked up another truffle and then set it back down again. Maybe Scotch was the thing for stress. Or both. “I somehow still can’t believe it,” she said. “I keep thinking someone’s going to pinch my arm and tell me to wake up.”

“If only,” Jack said, grimacing and rubbing his forehead.