Five more flights…He and Garrett had already finished searching the twelfth floor.
“What do we do?” Vero whispered.
I grabbed the corners of my duvet, my pulse hammering as I considered the stairs. There was no way we could get both bodies up a full flight before Nick and Garrett reached our floor. And dragging the bodies back over the carpet to the suite would take too long. We’d have to get to the fifteenth floor before Nick and Garrett made it that far.
“Come on,” I whispered, dragging Louis to the edge of the steps. I held fast as gravity pulled him over the brink, letting the slick Egyptian cotton ease his fall down the metal treads. He bounced down the first flight with a series of muted thuds, punctuated by the echo of Nick’s and Garrett’s shoes.
My heels clicked too loudly as I descended the steps. I kicked offmy stilettos, abandoning them in a corner of the stairwell. Vero did the same. I rounded the next landing barefoot, hissing at her to hurry up. She gave Marco a firm push with her bare foot. The sudden drop of his weight ripped the duvet from her hand. She gasped as Marco’s body rolled down the stairs, the fabric unwinding around him, leaving a lavender-and-rose-hip-scented trail as he tumbled down the risers with a series of wet slaps. My heart lodged in my throat as he landed ass-side up on the landing beside me.
Nick and Garrett couldn’t have been more than three floors below us.
“Slow down, Stokes. My leg’s killing me. Give me a second to catch up,” Nick said.
Vero scurried down the steps. We dropped to our knees, frantically working the duvet under Marco’s belly to the steady, slow beat of Nick’s and Garrett’s soles plodding upward. I grabbed Marco’s arms. Vero took his feet. They were slick with oil and hard to hold. With gritted teeth, we hauled him into the center of the duvet and threw the corners over him, towing him the rest of the way down to the fifteenth floor.
Flinging the fire door open as quietly as I could, I hauled Louis over the threshold into the empty hallway. I rushed back to help Vero with her messy bundle, dragging Marco out of the stairwell just as Nick and Garrett crested the last flight of stairs.
We pressed our backs against the door, but the latch wouldn’t close. I glanced down at the bundle at our feet. Marco’s bald scalp was peeking out of its wrappings.
Oh, god.
“His hair!” I hissed, searching for his toupee.
Vero gasped and pointed at the doorjamb. A nest of matted black strands was wedged in the hinge. Nick’s shadow limped toward the narrow crack between the door and the frame. My heart stopped when he paused beside it, close enough for me to hear his labored breathing through the gap.
“Last flight,” Garrett called over his shoulder. “You coming?”
“I’m coming,” Nick said, eyes squeezed shut as he clutched the railing and massaged his thigh. He wiped his brow with his sleeve as he resumed his ascent. Vero and I listened, hands clasped, as his staggered footfalls faded up the stairs.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, yanking the toupee free of the door. With the last of our strength—and maybe the last of our sanity—we towed the bodies to Louis’s room and dragged them over the finish line.
CHAPTER 22
Vero and I situated the bodies in the bathtub in Louis’s room. It was significantly smaller than the jetted luxury tub in Marco’s suite, and I was grateful the rigor mortis phase had (mostly) passed, making it possible to squish them more easily into the narrow basin. Though that didn’t leave much of a window before the next stage of decomposition was going to become a bigger problem. By my best estimates, we had less than thirty-six hours left to identify the killer and locate the car. Assuming said killer had no desire to turn himself in, that also meant we’d need to purge every trace of ourselves from this hotel and get the hell out of Atlantic City before the police found the men’s remains.
I sent Cam a text, telling him he could relax his assault on the elevators, but to stay out of sight on the upper floors until he heard from me again.
I stripped the pillowcases off the bed and tossed a few to Vero.
“What are these for?” she asked.
“We need more ice. A lot of it. The closest machine is upstairs. While we’re there, we can check and see if Nick and Garrett are gone.”
We put up theDO NOT DISTURBsign and crept to the stairwell, listening to make sure it was empty before returning to the seventeenth floor. We peeked out into Marco’s hall. We’d left the door braced open when we left the suite, and I prayed Cam was right, that the mess inside would paint a convincing illusion.
Voices carried from inside. A plastic bag rustled. The clank of empty bottles and a low whistle.
“Looks like someone threw one hell of a party.”Nick.
“Smells like it, too,” Garrett chimed in.
Vero and I ducked behind the stairwell door as a woman stormed out of the elevator and turned down the hall toward Marco’s suite. “Where is he?” she called out in a shrill, angry voice, her thick New Jersey accent echoing through the corridor. Her silver bob bounced with her determined stride. She barged through the open door into the suite, her slingbacks clacking on the marble before jolting to a stop. “Who the hell are you two? And where’s Kevin Bacon?”
“Kevin Bacon was here?” Garrett asked.
“Of course he was here,” she said with an exasperated huff. “Out of my way. Marco!” she shouted. “Marco Giovanni Toscano, where the hell is my—” The woman’s gasp was audible from the hall. “What on earth has been going on in here?” She called out for Kevin Bacon, doors opening and slamming inside as if she was searching every room for him.
“Are you Mrs. Toscano?” Nick asked as her heels clacked back into the foyer.
