Four steps farther down the hallway, he pushed down on the polished chrome handle and kicked the first door open. The mirrored closet door reflected back his image. Not recognizing himself, he almost fired.
The ferocity in his own eyes surprised him.
Shit, do I really look like that?
He took a deep breath from his diaphragm and counted to four before exhaling, then repeated the process a half-dozen times, the way Holly had taught him. Boxed breathing, she called it. Something she’d learned from yoga class at the gym.
He felt more centered in his body, clearheaded.
The room appeared empty. Opened suitcases. Clothes scattered across the double bed and floor. A travel guide to Oman open on the nightstand, next to a stack of CDs. A copy of the French edition of GQ.
A pair of women’s white high-heeled shoes by the drape-covered window. The shoes new. Barely worn, if ever. He stepped over them and opened a door to the right of the nightstand.
Another dark hallway that reeked of gasoline, with a sitting room to the right that overlooked the hotel gardens. To his left, a walk-in closet. Mostly empty, except for a silver-gray man’s suit wrapped in clear plastic, a pair of men’s sandals.
Sensing something emerging from the sitting room across the hallway, he twisted his body left to reduce the angle of access through the door. His heart skipped a beat as a gun behind him discharged.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Intense heat splashed against his face, and searing metal grazed the skin above his jaw.
His ears numb, he spun down to the carpeted floor and held himself up on his left forearm. Caught sight of the dark figure out of the corner of his eye.
A torch of some sort illuminated the man’s face and torso.
With the pistol in his right fist, Crocker fired repeatedly into the man’s shins and knees. First the sound of cracking, splintering bone, then a bottle exploded against the edge of the doorway and flames burst into the closet.
An eruption of gold singed Crocker’s eyebrows, eyelashes, and hair.
He jumped back into the closet as the man wailed from the sitting room and fire spread in the hallway between.
A patch of gasoline flames jumped onto the right front of Crocker’s shirt. He ripped the polo off and flung it against the wall. Smelled his own burning flesh.
Lying on his back, he raised the pistol in both hands and discharged round after round in the direction of the groans across the hall, spending the ammo completely. Then, pulling the suit from the hanger and ripping off the plastic, Crocker used it as a shield to cover his face and torso as he hurried through the flames into the sitting room.
Breathing hard, he stood over the man who had thrown the Molotov cocktail, watching his face relax with a final sigh, a kind of prayer. Then heard a rattle from his throat.
Another wolf down.
Crocker’s whole body throbbing with determination and fear, he felt above his right jawbone where blood oozed from a shallow crease. The skin near his right shoulder was red and tender. The smoke and heat burned his eyes.
He had to dismiss the pain now and recover the pistol from the man on the floor, because the one he’d been using was empty.
A terrible, soul-wrenching grimace leered from the man’s gaunt, bearded face. It didn’t appear to be Cyrus or anyone else he could identify. Dark pants, a white shirt, a round gold pendant around his neck engraved with the throne verse of Ayat al-Kursi from the Koran.
After prying the Glock 19 from the dead man’s fingers, he waited, expecting others. Then squeezed past the flames that were climbing up the wall and entering the closet. Through thick, astringent smoke, five more paces to a door that was locked.
A smoke alarm screeched and overhead sprinklers went off.
His head and shirt were practically drenched when he tried the a door second time.
Same result.
He had to get inside. So, holding the Glock in his left hand, he cocked his right foot back and smashed his boot into the door near the lock. The slick wood splintered and buckled but didn’t break. The second time he lifted his foot back, he slipped on the carpet and fell.
Bracing himself against the back wall, he kicked again. This time a piece of the frame shattered and the door came halfway open.
Standing behind the right door frame, he pushed it in with the hand holding the Glock. No response came from inside the bathroom. Just the hiss of falling water and smoke, which seemed to grow thicker by the second.
Seven rapid beats of his heart before he poked his head in. Through the light gray haze, he saw opulent green marble and gold interrupted by a large white object hanging from a hook on the left wall.
Crocker identified it as a wedding dress with a ruffled skirt and a lace top.
He thought he caught a whiff of flower-scented perfume in the acidic smoke.
On the double-sink counter rested a brush, a toothbrush, a tube of Colgate, a pair of scissors. To the far right corner an oversized tub. To his immediate right a glass-enclosed shower. And in front of that another door that he assumed hid the commode.
His eyes burning, Crocker turned the knob and swung it open.
Sitting on the toilet, bent over forward with her face toward the floor, was a pale-skinned woman in a frilly white bra and panties. Thick silver tape had been wrapped around her ankles, wrists, and mouth.
Crocker couldn’t tell if she was dead or alive.
“Malie?” he whispered, praying that she was still breathing.
No response.
“Malie, can you hear me?”
He saw the taunt skin near the base of her neck quiver.
“I’m an American. I’ve come to save you.”
He felt pride in saying it.
“Malie, look at me. Please.”
She lifted her head. With the light streaming through the window to her right and the fumes surrounding her, she reminded him of a painting of a Flemish Madonna. One eye blue, the other green, both wide with terror. The tears that had run down her cheeks left red streaks. Her wet, light brown hair was gathered on the sides in white ribbons.
“Malie, your ordeal is over.”
His heart clenched, imagining all she’d been through.
He tried to smile, but the effort hurt. And sensed that he must look frightening with the gash along his jaw, the claw marks, the blood running down his neck.
As she straightened up, her expression changed from a pleading anguish to a raw kind of anger.
She mumbled through the tape over her mouth. “My name isn’t Malie.”
“What?” Heavy disappointment. “Your name isn’t Malie?”
She shook her head. “No.”
Where the fuck is Malie? he asked himself, ignoring for now the consequences of what he’d done so far.
Even though the fire was out, thick white smoke still poured in from the hall, burning his throat and eyes.
When she did look up, he was struck by the expression of hurt and shame frozen on her oddly inert face.
That’s when he realized that the body heals, but the psyche inside it is more fragile. Thinking about the hundreds of thousands of children’s and young people’s psyches that had been shattered because of some kind of abuse or war, he peeled the tape from the girl’s ankles and wrists. He took special care with her mouth, then brought her a wet towel to clean her face.
With the tape removed, she looked no more than sixteen.
“You have a name?”
“Brigitte.”
“Brigitte, do you know Malie?”
“There was another girl. But they didn’t allow us to speak.”
“Blond?”
“Yes. Very light hair.”
“She came over on the boat with you and was here, in this suite?”
“Yes.”
When he helped her up, she trembled on legs that appeared atrophied. Makeup had been applied to cover purple and blue bruises on both thighs.