He shook his head. “I didn’t play the game nearly as much as Charlie did.”
“And your girlfriend, Jenna, how much did she play?”
“I’m honestly not sure. She always skirts around the question.”
“That’s suspicious.”
“Everything seems suspicious to me these days.”
“And you both played games at Arcadia?”
“Yes.”
“Is it possible that could have been where a second round of subliminal psychoactive imagery was implemented?”
“It’s possible, but I don’t see how they would’ve done it. We were still playing games in headsets, just like Rogue Horizon. Anything they had the chance to do to us yesterday, they should’ve been able to do with the game alone. I still don’t get why they need to lure all the gamers out there.” He told her about the dreams, about how Arcadia awaits must’ve been burned into his subconscious by Rogue Horizon, and how those two words were the final ones Charlie spoke.
“Well, that’s concerning.” She took another sip. “Has Jenna displayed any of these symptoms?”
“Not that I can tell. She won’t talk to me about it.”
Gonzalez looked around. “Speaking of which, where is she?”
“She said she was just going to get her phone from the room.”
“And when was that?”
He thought for a moment, glancing at his watch. “Nearly twenty minutes ago.”
Gonzalez stood up. “Where is your room?”
“The 19th floor.”
“She should be back by now. Call her.”
Lewis whipped out his S9 and dialed her number. The phone rang many times, then her voicemail began: “Hi, you’ve reached Jenna Bateman. Please leave a message–”
“Shit,” he said, tapping the End Call icon.
“We need to get moving.” Gonzalez stood up.
“You don’t think…?”
“You’re the paranoid one, you tell me.”
Lewis swore under his breath, leaving his pina colada next to Jenna’s untouched one as both of them headed into the hotel at a brisk pace. Inside was roughly the same temperature as the outside.
They reached the elevator and wound up sharing the lift with a heavyset man in a Golden Knights jersey. With Gonzalez in her Kings tee, he realized he was the only one in the elevator not wearing a hockey shirt.
The Golden Knights fan got off on the 12th floor. The lift resumed its ascent. He felt more nervous with each number that ticked upward. It’ll be fine, he told himself. She’s fine. Gonzalez said nothing beside him. A tense mood hung in the air.
Finally, the doors to the 19th floor opened.
The hallway was dark.
“Shit,” Gonzalez said. She pulled out a pistol she had concealed underneath her leather jacket.
The only illumination in the corridor came from the soft red glow of the emergency exit signs. Gonzalez looked left and right with her weapon at the ready, then turned back to Lewis.
Keeping her voice low, she said, “Alright, the coast seems clear. Stay close.”
Together, they inched down the hallway. There was no sign of movement. Carefully, Lewis led her to the door to his room. He took out his keycard, slid it into the slot, and retracted it when the light glowed green. There was a click as it unlocked.
He grabbed the handle and turned to her. Gonzalez nodded, gun at the ready.
Lewis threw the door open and she darted forward, checking the bathroom with her weapon out in front of her, then moved into the main area where the bed and the TV were. The lights flickered on and off. Gonzalez looked at something on the ground, then up along one of the walls. From where he stood by the entrance, Lewis couldn’t see what she was examining. He looked left and right back down the hallway, making sure no one else had appeared.
“Lewis,” she said, very serious now. “You need to look at this.”
He dreaded what he was about to see but tried to contain his fear as he entered the room and turned the corner. Jenna was nowhere to be found, but a nightstand was turned over and the suitcases looked ransacked. A bullet hole had been made in the wall. One of the bedside lamps lay on the floor.
Part of its white base was stained red with blood.
22
Lewis covered his mouth. “Jesus Christ.”
“It’s not necessarily hers,” Gonzalez said, putting up a hand as she bent down to pick the object up. “She may have fought back against her attacker and bashed them over the head with this in self-defense.”
“Did someone kidnap her?”
“I don’t know. It looks like it.”
“Shit.” He turned around and leaned his forearm and head against the wall, angrily kicking the baseboard.
“This happened in the last twenty minutes. Probably less. We need to move.”
Gonzalez led him back out into the darkened hallway, and they started making their way back to the elevator. Lewis abruptly stopped. “Wait, do you hear that?”
The FBI agent turned around and listened carefully.
Now they both recognized it. It sounded like a person sobbing.
Gonzalez and Lewis headed back past his room and further down the hall, where the weeping noise came from a supply closet. Gonzalez threw the door open, keeping the gun at the ready. A Filipino woman in a maid’s uniform sat on the ground, tears streaming from her eyes. She shrieked back when she saw them.
“No worry, ma’am,” Gonzalez said, withdrawing her badge from a pocket inside her jacket. “I’m with the FBI. What’s going on here?”
“Two people, a man and a woman, came up here and…” She sniffed and wiped her nose with her finger. “I saw them break into a room. I heard a struggle, then a gunshot. But a muffled one, like one with a silencer…”
“How’d you hear a silenced gunshot?” Lewis asked. “Were you right outside the door?”
“Near it,” the woman said with a nod.
“Those things aren’t perfect,” Gonzalez said. “That’s why we refer to them as sound suppressors.”
He nodded. It would’ve been loud enough for someone listening carefully in the hall, but not loud enough to send everyone on this floor into a panic. Although, he wondered why more people weren’t freaking out about the power outage.
The maid continued her story. “Someone got hurt, I could hear them cry in pain. Then a girl, she ran out of the room and went down the stairs. I hid in the closet, but I heard the two people go after her.”
“The attackers, what did they look like?” Gonzalez asked, leaning down.
“They wore suits. Both the man and the woman wore black suits.”
The FBI agent nodded. “Thank you. Call the police. We’re going after them.”
She and Lewis began running down the hall toward the elevator.
“Jenna could’ve gotten away,” Lewis said.
“It’s possible, but it’s also possible that they caught up with her on another floor.” She slammed the down arrow button.
“Where do we look?”
“We go to security, which should be somewhere on the first floor. With my badge, we should be able to get in and review CCTV footage to see where they went.”
“What if she’s still hiding in the building?”
“Then the people who came for her are still here too.”
The doors opened. Both of them got in and Lewis quickly hit the button for the ground floor. The lift descended several levels, then stopped at the 14th floor to let in a family of four.
“Shit,” Gonzalez muttered, slipping her gun back into the holster before the new arrivals could see it. The elevator became pretty crowded with all six of them.