Page 87 of Vicious
“Yeah.” I hang up on Drake and dial Hunter, who is just as cheerful as last time I called him.
“Did you find your girl?” Hunter asks.
“No. Maybe.” I curse under my breath when a car suddenly merges into my lane. “Look, she might need medical attention, and as you so kindly pointed out, you’re a doctor. Drake is going to text you an address. Meet me there.”
It feels like I’m wasting time, but I have no other clues. I’m driving toward May’s house, though, as if that’s going to bring me closer.
I’m halfway there when my phone pings with the address. It’s a motel outside of New Bristol, and dread pools in my stomach when I realize just how far away it is. At least an hour when traffic is light, more during rush hour.
Fuck.
At the next light, I input the address into the GPS, and I start driving there.
She has to be safe. She has to be alive.
By the time I pull into the shitty motel parking lot, I’m completely agitated. I spot May’s clunker of a car, so at least I know this is the correct place.
I’m less hopeful when I notice that it’s parked in front of a motel room with its door wide open.
I let out another curse and park my car next to hers, barely waiting for the car to be stopped before I jump out.
The room is a shithole, but I guess that’s about all you could expect out of a place like this. The door hangs oddly on the hinges, and I notice large muddy footprints on the carpet. Nice clues if I was a detective and I had time to do shoeprint analysis, but I’m more than aware by now that May does not have the luxury of that time.
I start combing the room for other clues when I hear more cars pulling up out front.
Drake is the first to enter the room, looking casual in jeans and a t-shirt. I dimly have to appreciate that he didn’t take time to preen and admire himself in the mirror, but I’d never thank him for it.
He whistles. “Fuck,” he summarizes. “I’ll start knocking on doors.” He flashes me a smile that I think is meant to be reassuring, but there’s no humor in it. “Someone has to have heard something, whether they ignored it or not. You want to go to the front desk? Doubt the fuckheads called the police, and maybe that’s for the best, honestly, but still.”
“Yeah. I should…” I start turning to leave, when I notice something poking out from underneath the bottom corner of the bed.
It’s Simon’s phone.
I curse and pick it up. There’s no passcode on it, which is lucky and just another hint at how fucking incompetent Simon is. Didn’t the public defender’s office teach him to lock everything down?
I look at the recent calls. The first one is to me, but the one before that, just half an hour earlier, is to a number listed as Jake (Lender).
“Hey, Drake?” I shout.
“Drake’s a few doors down, talking to somebody,” Hunter says from the doorway. He doesn’t step into the room. “This place is a dump.”
It really is. I guess that’s all they could afford, even with the money she’d taken from me—and I can’t even be angry she stole from me, or that she left anymore. I’m just frantic.
“I know.” I gesture vaguely at the room. “See if you can figure anything out. I’m going to the front desk.”
When I get up to the front, there’s no one there. I ring the bell several times, and a girl who doesn’t look old enough to drive, let alone to work at a place like this, peeks around the doorway of a room marked ‘office.’
“I’m sorry,” she squeaks. “We’re closed.” She shuts the door to the office she’d been in.
“Do you want me to call the cops and get you arrested?” I shout in her direction. “Because I’m sure I can find twenty different violations, and I have enough friends on the force that they’ll be happy to tear this place apart. If you’d rather have a nice, quiet evening, I suggest coming out to talk to me.”
There’s a moment of nothing, then she reluctantly opens the door. She doesn’t step outside of it, though, prepared to flee at the first sign of trouble. “I don’t know anything,” she says immediately. “The second someone started yelling, I holed up in here, okay? I didn’t know what else to do. Boss says not to call the cops and to stay safe at all costs.” Nervously biting her lip, she fidgets with the hem of her shirt. “I shouldn’t be telling you that, but please don’t involve the cops. I’ll lose my job.”
“Yeah, I don’t care about any of that anyway.” I force myself to remain calm. Snapping at people rarely gets you anywhere. “Look, I’m trying to find my friend. Do those security cameras out front actually work? Because I’d really like to see what happened.”
She swallows hard, obviously weighing her options. Finally, she decides to cooperate, and she steps out behind the front desk instead of trying to hide from me. “I… Yes. Look, I’m sorry no one helped your… your friend. But everyone here? We— They all have reasons not to. And there were three of them! What was I supposed to do?”
“Fuck what your boss says and call the goddamn cops,” Drake says from behind me. “Jesus fucking Christ, woman. How would you feel if that had been you?”