“All right. I’ll be down as soon as I can.” Till hung up.
Wendy appeared at the connecting door. “Who was that?”
“There’s a guy downstairs who wants to talk to me. Just a second.” He went to the desk where he had left his belongings, and found the papers for his rental car. He dialed a number from the back sheet. “Hello,” he said. “My name is Jack Till. I’m a customer, and I was wondering if you could tell me if you have a Mr. Sheffield at your office. You do? Is he in the office today? No, that’s okay. Thanks. I’ll talk to him later.”
“What’s wrong?” Wendy asked.
“Just a precaution. The other night, the cop promised he wasn’t going to write down where we were staying. Maybe he forgot to tell his partner. There’s a workout room off the back hallway on the ground floor. You know— treadmills and weight benches and stuff. I saw it when I came in the back door a couple of nights ago. Go in there and wait for me.”
She nodded. “Okay. Are we in trouble?”
“Sorry. It’s just another precaution. If this isn’t about you, then there’s no reason for him to know about you. I’ll come for you when I’m done.”
“Fine,” she said.
He opened the door and they walked down the hall to the stairwell. They descended to the first floor and he led her to the door of the gym, looked through the small window to see who was inside, and opened the door for her. “Nobody there. See you in a little while.”
“Right.”
He returned to the stairwell, ran up the stairs and along the hall to the elevator, then took it to the lobby. As Till stepped out into the lobby, he saw the man who was waiting for him. He was tall, about forty years old, wearing a gray sport coat, white shirt, and a red tie. He looked like a former high-school athlete who already had the bad knees and the slight belly, and would probably have the heart attack in a few more years.
The man stepped forward and held out his hand. “Mr. Till? Rob Sheffield. Thanks for setting aside the time to talk to me.”
Till shook his hand. “No problem. What do we need to do?”
“You tell me the whole story of what happened to the car, I go back to the office and fill out the forms, and the company takes care of getting it appraised and sending it to the shop.”
“All right. By the way, how did you find out where I was staying?”
Sheffield smiled. “The rental papers, I imagine.”
Till didn’t smile. “I didn’t know where I was staying when I rented the car.”
“Then I suppose it must have come from the police report after the accident. I really don’t know. I was out and the office called me and asked me to stop by. Maybe I can find out for you later.” He took a small notebook and a pen from his coat. “Would you like to begin by answering a few quick questions? First one, your full name.”
“John Robert Till.”
“And the car. What was the make and model, if you can remember?”
Till stood up. “I’ve got the rental papers upstairs. I’ll be right back.”
Sheffield held up his hand. “That’s not necessary. I just—”
But Till was walking quickly to the elevator and could not be stopped. He saw that one of the two was empty with its door open, so he punched the button and rode it up to the second floor.
He hurried up the hall, stopped at the door to his room, and confirmed his suspicion. The woodwork was gouged and compressed beside the lock, as though the door had been pried open with a crowbar. He pushed the door open gingerly, then stepped inside and quietly moved into Wendy’s room. There was no sign of the intruder, and his suitcase and Wendy’s were where they had left them, apparently undisturbed. The intruder had not been interested in them. He had come for Wendy.
Till picked up the two suitcases, hurried down the hall to the stairwell, and descended to the first floor. He set the suitcases down, then went out the door to the hall, stepped to the gym door and looked in the window, but there was no sign of Wendy. Instead there was a short, stocky man in his thirties in a navy suit and a tie. The man walked across the exercise room toward the locker rooms. As Till watched, he walked to the door marked “Ladies,” opened it, and stepped in.
Till moved quickly into the exercise room, opened the door of the women’s locker room, slipped inside and kept the door from swinging to, then eased it shut. From somewhere around a corner, he could hear a slow drip of water.
Till waited.
When he heard a set of hard-soled shoes step onto a tiled floor, he moved toward the sound. He came to the corner of the entry and saw two rows of blue lockers with wooden benches in front of them. As he sighted along the row, he heard a faint shuffling sound on the tiles behind him. He turned and saw the man, already in motion, his arm swinging downward toward Till’s head, a short iron pry-bar gripped in his hand.
Till ducked so the swing missed his head and struck a glancing blow off his right shoulder. He threw a quick left hook into the bridge of the man’s nose, then a hard punch to the man’s stomach. The man bent over and the bar clanged onto the tile floor. His left hand clutched his bloody nose.
Till saw that the man was using the crouch as a way to hide the movement of his right hand into his coat. Till squatted, snatched the pry-bar, and swung it in one motion. It hit the man’s shin and buckled his left leg. Then he swung again quickly and hit the man’s right forearm just as the gun appeared. Till’s blow knocked the arm aside, but the man maintained his grip on the gun. Till popped up and swung the pry-bar once more, this time into the side of the man’s head.
The man fell onto his side and lay motionless. Till lifted the man’s gun out of his hand, pocketed it, took a deep breath and said in a normal voice that sounded loud in the empty locker room, “Wendy? It’s me, Jack. Wendy!”
He heard a metallic clank on the other side of the first row of lockers, and came around the end in time to see one of them open. He came closer, and watched Wendy sidestep out of the locker. She saw him. “Jack! I thought I heard—”
“You did. Come on! There’s at least one more.”
“Come where?”
“The car.” He put the gun into his belt where his sport coat would hide it, and they hurried out the gym door and across the hall to the stairwell where he had left their suitcases. He pointed to hers. “Take whatever you can’t replace, and we’ll leave them.”
She knelt and opened her suitcase, took a large stack of currency out and put it into her purse. Jack opened his suitcase, found his gun, slid a new magazine into it, and then pushed both suitcases into the dark space under the bottom flight of stairs.
He handed his gun to Wendy. The gun looked big and heavy in her small hand. “Put the gun in your purse. Keep it on top so you can reach it.”
“Are you saying that I should shoot somebody?”
“I hope not. So far there’s one other man—tall, in a gray sport coat and red tie. He was trying to keep me occupied while this one got you. But there could be more.” He took out the gun he had taken from the man in the locker room, checked the load, and then slipped it back into his belt. “Now we’ve got to step out of here, walk to our car, and go. Ready?”
Wendy nodded.
They walked to the rear exit of the building at the end of the wall, and Till stopped to look through the glass door. He could see his rented blue Cadillac in the lot, about two hundred feet away. It was now the middle of the morning, so most of the cars that had been parked around his last night were already gone.
He said, “The tall guy is in the lobby, and I’m pretty sure he can see the car through the front windows if he looks. I’m going to walk toward it. You go out and inch to the left along the wall toward the end of the building. If I make it to the car, be ready to climb in. If something happens, get out of sight and I’ll find you later.”
“This is a crummy way to start a relationship,” she said.
“After we get to the DA’s office, we’ll drive straight to counseling.” He pulled her out the door with him and walked briskly across the lot toward the blue Cadillac.
Wendy began walking slowly along the side of the building toward the corner, but she kept moving her eyes to Jack Till to check on his progress.
