melting. By tomorrow morning, I’ll bet we can get out of
here.”
“Tomorrow’s a long way off,” Max replied in a grim voice.
“I won’t go to my room tonight. I’ll stay up, and insist that
everybody else does, too. We can take turns
sleeping on those sofas in the lobby. Three on guard duty,
three catching some Z’s. The buddy system was a bust.”
“That’s because we’re not used to doing things in pairs,”
Ava pointed out, then turned to the cousins. “I mean, we’re
executives, we’re used to being independent and going our
separate ways.”
“No teamwork, huh?” said Renie. “Every man—sorry, every
“Well,” Ava said lamely, “we do tend to think mostly in
terms of our own departments. You have to. Otherwise,
you’d get shortchanged on personnel, budget, even floor
space and office equipment.”
“Don’t I know it?” Max muttered, starting back into the
corridor. “As Frank would say, you have to chart your own
course.”
“But he also says we have to row together,” Ava countered,
following Max down the hall. “When you’re at the top, like
Frank is, you can see the big…”
Renie closed the door. “I can’t stand another word of that
crap,” she declared. “They’ve got dead bodies all over the
place, the company may be in ruins, they’re all scared out
of their wits—and they still talk the corporate line. It’s sickening.”
Judith wasn’t really listening to Renie. After taking a couple
of bites of her sandwich, she asked her cousin to make sure
the coast was clear in the corridor.
Renie opened the door again. “They’re gone. So what?”
Judith gave Renie a baleful look. “They didn’t lock the
door. Either Max and Ava don’t think we’re dangerous, or
they know we’re not. Let’s go.”
“Go where?” Renie was looking blank.
“The bathroom, remember?” Judith breezed past her
cousin.
“What bathroom? I thought you—oh, never mind.” Renie
trotted behind Judith as they covered the length of the corridor until they reached Leon’s room.
In the struggle to get Killegrew and Russell out of the
room and away from Nadia’s corpse, no one had thought
to lock Leon’s door, either. Judith marched right inside,
though Renie lingered briefly on the threshold.
“How many times do we have to view the body?” Renie
asked.
“Avert your eyes,” Judith called over her shoulder as she
went into the bathroom. “At least they already moved Andrea