the woman agreed immediately. “And if you find any damage to anything in your luggage, the hotel will be responsible.”
I’m not the lawsuit type, Alex thought, realizing the woman was working hard to make it right and avoid anything unpleasant for her employers. But right now she just wanted to get this done.
Lynn unlocked the door, and Alex cautiously stepped inside. The maid had apparently already been in, the towels were fresh and the bed was made. The drapes were nearly closed, the slight gap letting in a swath of light that fell across the table beside those windows, as if it were a spotlight highlighting the one thing in the room that looked out of place. A single page of newspaper, with a ragged edge that told her it had been torn out.
“I don’t know how they missed that,” Lynn said, taking a step toward it.
“I’ll get it,” Alex said hastily, stepping ahead of the woman. She paused only to look at the door itself; the lock appeared intact. She bent to look and saw what appeared to be a small amount of some kind of smeared residue on the faceplate of the lock.
She reached into her purse and took out a latex glove from the small packet she always kept handy. She pulled it on her left hand and touched the edge of the residue. The glove clung for a moment, then released. Whatever it had been, an effort had been made to clean it, which had probably destroyed any evidence value.
Lynn was staring at her, but she wasn’t about to take time to explain. She entered the room, and after a quick look to be sure she wouldn’t be disturbing anything else, she reached out for the torn newspaper page. When she got to the new room, she’d pull out an evidence envelope to put it in, and keep from disturbing any trace evidence or prints that might be on it. At least it was porous paper, and more likely to retain prints.
She wished she had her own lab equipment handy, or even just a lab to borrow, but she knew any good forensics person would find anything that was there.
Then she saw what was on the page, the story that had been highlighted by the way the page was folded, and her heart slammed into her throat.
She stared down at the small but painfully clear picture of the man who had been at the center of her life for as long as she could remember. And couldn’t deny what was right in front of her. The threat was implicit, just short of declared in black-and-white.
The story was from yesterday’s paper, about the upcoming FTC hearings, accompanied by a photo of her grandfather, exiting the Federal Trade Commission Building after a meeting last year.
The very same building where he was meeting with them today.
Chapter 5
Although she knew it was relatively quick, it seemed like forever before they had arranged a new room. On the concierge level this time, no doubt as part of their effort to placate her, because they had no way of knowing that this little inconvenience was the very least of her current worries.
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