You strip the tape away, lower the glasses over your eyes. “I’m all ears.”
“Take Henry’s vest with you.”
The green line directs you back to the elevator. From there it’s back down to the lobby. You pass by Guest Services, and Arma’s eyes lift to you. You make eye contact and try to tell her with just your face that something is wrong, but of course she thinks that wrong thing is you. Outside, the sun bathes the atrium in its ever-warm glow. The trees sway with a peaceful wind. Guests talk in hushed, polite tones. As Quinn guides you down a hallway, someone steps into the green line: a thin, bald man with a pencil mustache. He wears a suit, a purple tie, and a lighter purple kerchief poking out of the breast pocket. His voice is light and lispy. “Hi, excuse me, I know you’re just doing your job, and I know we’re on high alert and all that, but unless you’re on duty in the front lobby, if you could avoid walking past the guests and keep to the service hallways? I thought that was understood in the contract?”
“Tell him you’re doing your job and you’re in a hurry.”
“Sure,” you say. “I understand.”
“Walk away. Don’t say anything else. You’re going to the service hall anyway.”
You grit your teeth and stare at him a second longer than you have to. You think about mouthing something to him, but you can’t think of what, and in that second, he nods and walks off. He doesn’t want to deal with you any more than Arma did.
In the service hallway, hotel staff wheel room service carts with covered plates and cling wrap protecting the water glasses. Tiny, single-use ketchups and mustards and mayonnaise. A few staff members nod at you, but mostly no one notices. Just a security guard, gun strapped to his hip, carrying a vest that’s not his, sweating through his uniform.
“Okay, now into the kitchen. On your left.”
Into the kitchen, past the gas-fired range and the cooks, you follow the green line, but your stomach doesn’t truly sink until you realize you are not going to some guest’s room. The green line takes you to the edge of the kitchen and two double doors.
“Through there.”
A waiter breezes by with a tray, and as the doors swing out you see the immense luxury restaurant on the other side, hundreds of people eating dinner, packed around a mirrored bar, and sitting on a veranda with umbrellas blocking the low sun. Black columns rise into a crème ceiling that matches the tablecloths and sets off the burgundy tile. Waiters and waitresses move between the tables, pouring wine, twisting the bottles to catch the last drop. There are children eating at some of these tables, coloring on placemats and picking at chicken tenders. There is the clatter of silverware and conversation and the wind moving into the dining room from the veranda that overlooks a small waterfall, part of the river you saw on the other side of the hotel.
You stand there, Henry’s vest in hand, rooted in place.
“Keeper,” Quinn says firmly. “You need to keep moving.”
“Why in there?”
“Through the doors, Keeper.”
“You can’t set these off in there.” You don’t know what else to say, so you add, “Please.” As if that word has ever meant anything.
“Listen to me.” Jansi again. “You don’t have a choice in this. You are going to walk into that room. You’re going to set Henry’s vest on the veranda. Then you are going to walk to table fifty-one. That’s to your left. It’s a table of four—two men, two women, and you’ll recognize the man in the blue suit with the gray hair. Do you understand? Tell me you understand.”
“No.” The sweat comes racing down your temple, and an incoming waitress glances at you as she passes by. “I can’t do that. I can’t do any of this.”
“Not only can you, but you will. Remember what I said. There’s no choice here.”
You begin walking back the way you came. Quinn and Jansi are both yelling into the com at once.
“These are not innocent people. There is no one innocent in that room—”
“If you don’t turn around right now—”
“That vest is going off one way or another—”
“So set it the fuck off!” you shout, and several heads in the kitchen turn to you. But it’s the dinner rush, and they are slammed. They’re weirded out but quickly return to their various tasks. You lower your voice. “It’s just people out there. With kids. They’re just—it’s just people…”
Your plan is to get outside as fast as possible, get as far away from the crowded restaurant as possible.
“Keeper.” It’s Quinn now. Her voice calm. “We can either set it off in the lobby or you can do as you’re told. Either way. The difference is—” You smash back through the kitchen doors into the hallway. “The difference is, will your girlfriend and your son have money to survive? Will your family get a chance to start fresh? Or will they all be dead before the sun rises in Ohio?”
You stop and buckle where you stand, holding your face. You want to scream so badly but don’t dare. You feel like your head is being ripped apart. You smack one hand against this pointless ornate wallpaper, elegant even in the service hallway. You stupidly wonder how long you’d have to work, how much money you’d have to save, before you and Raquel could afford a weekend getaway at this place.
“The choice is yours, Keeper. You can secure your family’s future or you can kill them right now.” She waits for you, but you are crying too hard to respond, grinding your forehead into the wall. “Keeper, turn around and go into that dining room.”
You sniff. You have mucus all over your lower lip.
“What about a deal?”
Silence from the other end.
“The man in the blue suit. Who is he?”
More silence, then finally, “What do you mean ‘deal’?”
“You want that one guy at table fifty-one? What if I let the rest of ’em go? I let all them go, then it’s just me and him.”
There’s a pause and then you hear a man’s voice in the background. Kai. He must have been with them the whole time. “I don’t see why that wouldn’t work.”
“No!” Jansi cries. “What are you talking about? No one in that room is innocent! These are the people we’re at war with. There is not one person in that room who doesn’t have blood on their hands.”
“Just calm down,” says Kai.
“She’s right,” says Quinn, and then they are all arguing, and you just stand there with your head against the wall waiting to see what they decide. You try to interrupt them.
“I’m betting that without the one guy, this plan will mostly be for nothing. So maybe I hold more cards than you think.”
This quiets them. They mute the conversation on their end, and you wait. Finally, Quinn comes back on.
“We have a compromise.”
And you actually laugh. You laugh right out loud.
“What’s so funny?”
“Everything,” you tell her. “Just about fucking everything.”
“We want the other three people at the table,” says Quinn. “You can let everyone else go, but all four of them at that table stay.”
You swallow. Four lives for the life of your children and their mothers. After everything, it turns into an even trade. You can already feel hell’s flames licking at the tight leather of these foreign boots, for that’s where this will take you. No question about that.
“Deal.”