Hotel Noir: Kiss Me to Survive novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Loading Dock

Fenella tries the service exit and is grabbed outside; Enoch drags her back, the midnight kiss runs long, and the old boss checks in next door.

I lasted until four in the afternoon.

Then I put the key from the locker in my bra, put on my delivery jacket, and took the service stairs down.

I had driven to the Noir's loading dock a hundred times.

I knew the dock door was never locked from inside, because the linen men needed it.

I pushed the bar and stepped out into gray rain.

There was a strip of brass set into the concrete, as wide as my finger, running along the foot of the dock.

I stepped over it without looking.

My plan was to cut through the alley to the bus stop.

I would be at Calder Union Depot in twenty minutes.

I took barely a few steps.

A hand closed over my mouth and an arm hooked my waist.

A man said into my ear, "Mr. Lucan said you'd come out the back."

I kicked.

I got his shin, then his knee, and he grunted and hauled me up off the ground.

A black car idled at the end of the alley with its back door open.

I bit his hand, and he cursed, and a second man came around the dumpster and caught my feet.

They carried me.

I screamed, and the rain swallowed it.

Then I heard running, and a voice I knew said, "Put her down."

The man holding my feet let go.

I dropped on the wet concrete and looked up.

Enoch stood on the wrong side of the brass line, in his black suit and no coat, rain running down his face.

He had not put his gloves on, and I saw his bare hands.

They were scarred across the knuckles.

"Hatherley," the man by the car said, and he sounded nervous. "You're off house ground. You know the rule."

"I know it better than you do." Enoch took one step toward him.

"You touch her, you touch the Truce."

"She stepped out. She's anyone's."

"Then I'm anyone," Enoch said.

He hit the first man so fast I did not see it.

The man folded over his own stomach, and Enoch took his gun and tossed it into the dumpster.

The second one swung a short club.

Enoch caught it by the wrist, turned it, and I heard something crack.

He dropped to his knees in the alley, and Enoch let go and wiped his hand on his trousers.

It took less time than it took me to stand up.

I had thought he was a hotel manager.

He had done that without breathing hard, and my heart was going so fast I thought I'd be sick.

He crossed to me and took my jacket by the collar.

"Inside," he said.

"You hit them."

"Inside, Fenella."

He pulled me over the brass line and through the dock door and into the service stairwell.

The door shut behind us, and the sound went away.

He pushed me back against the concrete wall, not hard, and put one hand beside my head.

"I told you," he said. His voice was rough. "I told you I couldn't follow you."

"You followed me."

"And I can't do it again." He was breathing now. "Do you understand? If they'd had you in the car..."

"I'd be dead."

"You'd be a day from dead, and I'd have to explain it to Odile."

I laughed, cracked and wet, and put my hand over my mouth.

He looked at me, and the anger went out of his face.

"You're bleeding," he said.

A bit of skin on my palm was scraped open from the concrete.

He took my wrist and turned my hand up and pressed his thumb beside the cut, very lightly.

I felt that in the base of my spine.

"I need to get something from the depot," I said. "That's why I went."

"I know what's at the depot."

"Then you know why I won't give you the key."

"I know why you won't," he said. "I'd do the same."

At midnight I came down in the wine-colored dress Odile had left on my bed.

The lobby was full this time.

Porters stood in a line, with three night clerks beside them.

A woman in an evening coat sat very still in an armchair, holding a drink she did not touch.

"The outside witness," Enoch said quietly. "She's from one of the other families, and she'll tell them what she sees."

The clock above the desk read two minutes to twelve.

Lucan leaned on a pillar in his cream suit with his arms folded.

His face was swollen along one cheek.

I looked at Enoch.

"Did you...?"

"No. That was Odile," Enoch said. "He tried your door."

Then the clock struck, and Enoch took my face in both hands and kissed me.

It was not last night.

Last night I had grabbed him to survive.

Tonight I knew what his mouth tasted like.

My hands went up into the hair at his neck before I could stop them.

He made a low sound against my lips and his arm locked around my waist and pulled me flat against him.

It went on.

It went on past the point where a kiss is a rule.

Somebody coughed, and I did not care.

Then the revolving door turned, and cold air came across the marble, and the whole lobby went silent in a different way.

Enoch lifted his head.

An old man stood in the doorway in a charcoal overcoat, with a silver-topped cane.

His white hair was combed straight back, and his smile was dry as paper.

Lucan straightened off the pillar.

"Father," he said.

"Enoch," said Augustin Lasker, in a voice that filled the hall. "How kind of you to keep my witness warm."

He crossed the marble, tapping the cane.

"I'll take the suite next to hers," he said, "for as long as it takes."

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