“All good,” Holly whispered, feedback squealing. “That blond guy was in the lobby. Sitting on an armchair, talking to a couple of people. I think he looked my way.”
“He did,” Rafe added, “but he didn’t register a problem.”
The elevator chimed. A voice crackled, a Scottish accent. “Are you going down?”
“No, ma’am,” Rafe said. “Catch the next one.”
A few seconds later, another chime. The top floor? Samira listened for footfalls—but the hallways on the accommodation floors were carpeted. She pictured the scene from the plans and photos, filling in the gaps from her own experience of hotels heaving with diplomats. With Hyland and Laura both out, only a few diplomatic security agents would be on guard in the hall—maybe at the elevators, at the right-hand turn in the corridor, outside the senator’s suite... The adjoining rooms would have been cleared for Hyland’s personal staff. A group of suits wearing lanyards had left the hotel just after Hyland—going for dinner, maybe—but some might have stayed back to do paperwork and communications. Samira rubbed her face with both hands. How long was the damn hallway? She checked the time on the car’s clock. Less than ninety minutes until the password changed.
“Hey, man, you know the rules.” A different American accent in the earpiece. “No men in the suite unsupervised.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Rafe, sounding creditably nonchalant.
Samira raised her eyebrows, Jamie mirroring her. Laura wasn’t allowed to be alone with a man in her own hotel suite? Still, it wasn’t much of a setback. Surely Rafe could wait outside, and it was Holly who had the safecracking equipment in her clutch—including, curiously, a stethoscope, pen and notebook, in which she’d drawn a grid. Evidently she hadn’t always been a sailing instructor.
“The suite’s empty,” Holly said, accompanied by shuffling and slapping noises. She’d switched on her continuous feed. “No sign of the fob.” After a few minutes, a clatter—coat hangers being moved? “The safe is standard hotel equipment. Shouldn’t take long. I’ll have to take out the earpiece for a bit.”
A clunk. Holly’s breath became audible, joining the rhythm of the dripping water. Jamie’s eyes fixed blindly into the middle distance behind Samira, as if he were also conjuring an image of Holly, stethoscope pressed against the metal door, turning the dial, listening to whatever it was you listened to when you cracked a safe. Who knew safecrackers actually used stethoscopes? On the car clock, three endless minutes flicked by.
“Okay,” Holly whispered. “It’s a five-digit code.”
Jamie refocused on Samira. She widened her eyes. All that time just to figure out how many numbers she had to crack?
Samira’s laptop chimed and lit up, making her jump.
“Oh my God,” she said to Jamie. “It’s the alert I set up for Charlotte. She’s online.” Hope sparked in her belly, then extinguished. “Or someone else is using her credentials.”
“Can you tell the difference?”
Samira tried a few web pages. “Nothing on her public social media, and I don’t want to risk logging in to my social media to check her private accounts—not on the hotel’s Wi-Fi. I’ll check if she’s been in the game.” She brought up “Cosmos.” “Oh God. She hasn’t been in here but Erebus has.” She clicked into the world where Charlotte had left the message. “There’s a new treasure chest, left a couple of hours ago. Damn, I should have checked.” She clicked on it. “It’s password-protected.”
“Shite.”
“Hang on. The password is a security question.” She clicked through. “Jagger’s favorite food. Okay, that’s kind of creepy.” She typedkitfoand hit Enter. “I’m in. This person knew Latif well.”
As Samira read, the earpiece crackled. “Good news, for those of you listening at home,” Holly said. “I have the fob. Heading back.”
Samira looked at Jamie. It worked. It actually worked.
“What’s the message?” he said, nodding at the laptop.
“It’s a British cell phone number, with the phone provider’s website and a PIN. And a note—‘This guy has Vespa.’” Samira zeroed in on the number. “That’s the phone we stole from the goon at the hospital. We already have access to his information. This doesn’t help.”
“Are you sure?”
“I remember numbers. It had a lot of sevens in it. It’s the same...” Through the earpiece, Holly reported they were safely back in the elevator. “Hold on. No, it’s not the same. That number ended in a five. This one’s a four. They’re sequential—it’s one of the phones our goon in the hospital was communicating with. Shit.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I can log in to the provider website and maybe track the movements of this second phone. If it indeed belongs to someone who’s been involved with Charlotte’s disappearance, I might be able to triangulate the movements of the two phones with the location she’s just logged on from.”
“I love it when I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“It means I might be able to find Charlotte.”
“I like that even more.”
Her hands shook so hard she couldn’t type the web address. She pressed both hands to her chest. Her heart thumped.
