Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(86)

“Of course,” he said. He didn’t seem all that deterred. He shed his sports jacket and tie and busied himself with the champagne while I looked around. He had clearly been living in the hotel for a while. His presence was everywhere. There were clothes and bags strewn all over. I saw with interest that the desk was covered in papers. Next to the desk was a briefcase. Maybe more papers in the bedroom. Many people worked from bed. Especially in a hotel. Maybe Silas liked to get started first thing in the morning, comfortably horizontal, with a room-service tray and fresh coffee within arm’s reach.

The lawyer was still occupied with the champagne bottle. He had unwrapped the gold foil and was twisting ineffectually at the cork.

“You look like that cork’s giving you some trouble.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m okay…” His words were slurred and tired. He fumbled at the cork and almost dropped the bottle.

“Let me help you.” I took the bottle from him. He didn’t protest. He looked at me dully, shirt half unbuttoned. Thankfully, he hadn’t gotten to his pants yet. His chest was covered by hair. I remembered it from my photographs. I twisted slightly, loosening the cork, and then got a thumb under the edge and applied pressure. I thought of his hand, squeezing my ass in the same possessive way that he had seized the ice bucket.

There was a loud pop. The cork shot out. It turned out that the bottle neck had been pointed Silas’s way. The cork bounced off his nose.

He rubbed his nose and looked confused. “Oww,” he stated. “That hurt.”

“Sorry. My fault. Maybe you should sit down,” I suggested.

“I’m fine,” he said, but let me lead him into the bedroom all the same.

He sat on the edge of the bed and watched me as I found a water glass. I poured champagne into the glass until it was full. I handed the glass to him. “Cheers. Drink up.”

The lawyer took the glass like a child and drank.

I watched him. He was sweating. His eyes were half-closed.

“More,” I suggested. “You’re almost there.”

“More,” he repeated as he drank. “More … more.”

“Good boy.” I patted him gently on the head. He had almost finished the glass when his hand loosened. The glass fell out of his hand and landed on his lap. Spilled champagne moistened his crotch. His eyes were fully closed. He slumped sideways onto the bed, breathing audibly. I picked up the glass and put it on the coffee table. Then I took a long, critical look at the lawyer. He had started snoring. I pulled his feet over onto the mattress so he wouldn’t roll off. Silas Johnson looked like every marching band in the Big Ten could have been in the room playing at full volume and he wouldn’t have even blinked. He’d wake up with a hellish hangover, but he’d be fine.

I went to work.

It took me under an hour to go through every single document in the suite, starting with the briefcase. The lawyer seemed to be simultaneously working on several cases. Some of the names were familiar from the search of his office, and some weren’t. But I couldn’t find anything about Care4. I was careful to put each paper back exactly in its original place. The last thing I wanted was Silas Johnson wondering if he’d had his room searched.

On the second pass through the room I pulled his pants off and checked his pockets. I went through his wallet, seeing platinum credit cards, a plastic room key, various insurance and membership cards, a driver’s license, two condoms, a thick fold of cash, and several folded pieces of paper with phone numbers that I assumed to be the fruits of his bar-and-champagne routine. I also found his car key. The Mercedes. It had been a silver late-model sedan, I remembered. An S550. I wasn’t thrilled about having to check the car. It would be parked in the hotel garage. I didn’t like parking garages. Cameras everywhere. It was one thing being in a hotel room. If anyone checked security footage, all it would show was me accompanying the more-than-willing occupant of the room and then later leaving alone. Hard to take issue with that. A parking garage was different. Tapes would show a woman unlocking and searching a car that wasn’t hers. Not to mention the problems that could occur if there were monitors being checked in real time by security. All kinds of potential trouble. But I didn’t really have a choice.

I took his room key from his pocket. No matter what I found, I would need to get back into the room to return the car key.

I was walking out when I saw the safe.

It was in the closet. A standard hotel safe, black-painted steel bolted into the wall, hidden behind a row of dark suits. A basic model with a keypad and small digital display. A small white square of paper was glued onto the front of the safe, offering simplistic directions for setting a code and unlocking it.

Hotel safes were designed with two considerations: security and convenience. The goal was to offer a basic level of protection while ensuring that the unlocking process wasn’t so complicated that a stream of annoyed guests would flood the front desk with forgotten combinations. Hotel safes weren’t even comparable to the really good home models. Just enough to satisfy a standard hotel insurance policy. This one was pretty average. Four digits, according to the instructions. Crucially, there was no cut-off feature. The safe wouldn’t shut down after a certain number of incorrect guesses the way an iPhone would. Four digits was a lot easier for a guest to remember than six or eight digits. Four digits was also a lot easier to guess. Exponentially fewer combinations.