Chapter 9: The Woman in the Powder Room

Fio followed the black car for twenty minutes without turning her headlights off once.

"I hate this," she said. "I've never followed anyone. Do I look like I follow people?"

"You look like you're doing great."

"My brother is going to kill me."

"Your brother let a stranger slap me in front of eighty people. He can wait."

The car stopped at a hotel on the lake, the kind with a doorman and a revolving door.

The woman in white got out with a coat around her shoulders and a man in a black suit at her elbow.

She did not look like she was coming home.

She looked like she wanted to be sick.

Fio parked across the street.

"Stay here," I said.

"Mara."

"If I'm not back in twenty minutes, call your brother and tell him I'm in room fourteen-ten."

She stared at me.

"How do you know the room?"

I got out of the car.

The line had given it to me while we drove.

【Fourteen-ten. The man leaves at eleven.】

At ten to eleven, I rode the elevator up in a borrowed coat from Fio's back seat, with my gown showing underneath.

At eleven the man in the black suit came out of the room, rubbing his jaw, and went to the stairwell.

I waited until the door shut behind him.

Then I knocked.

"I said I didn't want anything," a voice called from inside. It was my voice, with a little rasp.

"Room service," I said.

"I didn't order."

"It's from Dario."

Locks turned.

The door opened on a chain, and one dark eye looked out.

It widened.

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