“Information for information,” I bargained. “You answer one of my questions, and I’ll answer one of yours.”
He sized me up, running through his options in his head. He could bolt, but that meant I might turn him in. Or he could tell me the truth, which could work for both of us.
“You’ll think I’m crazy,” he warned.
“Try me.”
“A few days ago, you followed me home and asked if I knew anything about the women who have been disappearing around Chicago,” he said.
I nodded. “You told me you weren’t a liar.”
“I’m not,” he replied. “But I did withhold some of the truth.”
I lifted an eyebrow as I waited for more. Luis began pacing in front of Wolf’s bookshelf.
“My sister used to work here as well,” he began. “As a maid. She was younger than me and a bit reckless. She and her friends would party in empty rooms at night. I warned her that she would get caught, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”
“Let me guess. She got caught?”
Luis shook his head. “One night, she stole a keycard for the adjoining penthouse. Apparently, she’d found out that it would be empty for the night and decided it would be the perfect place to throw a party. Only, she never came home.”
“She vanished?”
“Four months ago,” he answered. “I haven’t seen her since.”
“What did the police say?”
Luis laughed without humor. “You think I could go to the police about this?”
“She’s undocumented,” I guessed.
He mockingly saluted. “The police might have found her, but at what cost? She would have been sent back to a place we never fully considered to be home.”
“Regardless, the police haven’t found any of the missing women,” I said. “They don’t have any hints or leads at all. It’s like they were abducted by aliens.”
Luis studied me. “What do you think happened to them?”
The answer scared me. It crept up the back of my neck like a poisonous spider, ready to inject paralyzing venom into its prey. I had been hoping to avoid the facts, though they had been staring me in the face ever since Angelica tripped over Megan Hollows’s body.
“I don’t know,” I told Luis, feeling the lie tighten my throat. “But if we get caught in Wolf’s penthouse, we’ll never figure it out. Let’s go. Are you going to tell me how you got in here?”
He pointed across the room, to the panel that hid the secret passage that led to the lower floors. “This hotel is full of hidden rooms and stairways. I came through that one.”
“How did you find it?” I said. “I examined the other side of that one. There was no way to open the door from the outside.”
“There is,” Luis replied. “If you know the Saint Angel’s secrets. And I’ve been uncovering them one by one.”
“Can you show me?”
A deep voice sounded in the front room of the penthouse, mere feet away from mine and Luis’s position. I recognized Fletcher Stevens’ dulcet tones.
“I understand she doesn’t take appointments,” Fletcher was saying. “But this is a special occasion. Tell her it’s about Wolf Godfrey. She’ll want to speak to me.”
Luis placed a finger over his lips and peeked from the office to check Fletcher’s position. Then he waved me across the room. I darted toward the fake window, slid the glass out of place, and slipped into the passage beyond.
Fortunately, Fletcher was too absorbed with his phone call to notice Luis as he dashed from the office to the stairs. I enclosed us in the darkness right as Fletcher pivoted to face the windows.
Luis flicked a lighter, and the tiny flame led us downward. In silence, we made our way to the exit and emerged in the vending room on the twenty-fifth floor. From there, we took the elevator to the lobby. On our way, an alliance solidified. Luis’s grief and anger about his sister’s disappearance was palpable. Perhaps it was foolish of me, but I no longer doubted his motives for sneaking around the Saint Angel. I trusted him.
In the lobby, a confrontation had caught the ears and eyes of everyone passing through. Wolf Godfrey and Pearl Godfrey stood at opposite ends of the ornate room, screaming at each other with as much enthusiasm as they could muster. Janine, wide-eyed, stood behind the front desk with the phone to her ear, no doubt calling the police, while the skinny bell boy attempted to keep Pearl’s rage at bay. She shook off his grasp.
“He was my husband!” she spat at Wolf. “We signed an agreement. Everything he owned belongs to me now! Don’t make me call my lawyers.”
“Call them,” Wolf roared in reply. “You are no daughter of mine. I have no obligation to you.”
“You have an obligation to your son,” Pearl said. “To the law! The money in Jonathan’s trust fund belongs to me.”
Wolf laughed maniacally. “There is no money in Jonathan’s trust fund, honey.”
Pearl’s cheeks lit up red with fury, but her tone was oddly calm as she said, “You’re lying.”
Wolf grinned, baring his teeth. “No, ma’am. That money’s gone. Don’t you know anything about your dearest Jonathan? Perhaps you should have asked him about the details of his trust fund while he was still alive enough to tell you.”
“You’re lying!” Pearl said again. Visibly shaking, she crossed the lobby, stalking Wolf. When he backed away, his cane caught on the lip of the carpet. A collective gasped echoed as Wolf stumbled and fell, landing hard enough to elicit a yelp from his throat. The bell boy rushed to help him, but Pearl got there first. She wrapped her hand around Wolf’s arm, pulling him upward, but she did not help him to his feet. With her face inches from his, she whispered, “You killed him, didn’t you? You were jealous of your own son, jealous enough to poison him with your own medication.”
Wolf’s upper lip curled. He clenched Pearl’s collar and yanked her even closer. “How dare you,” he said, so quietly that I only saw his
