Page 59 of After The Storm
For five blocks, he ran at top speed between yards and parking lots until he saw a red neon motel sign. It wasn’t a five star hotel or Butcher’s place, but as long as it gave them somewhere to hide for the next day or so, it would have to do.
Roman gently set Kate down on her feet in the shadows at the end of the building and pointed toward the bushes nearby. “Stay in there and don’t come out until I get back.”
She nodded and frowned up at him. “I will. I promise.”
He hurried down to the motel office and found a nice young girl no older than eighteen working the check-in desk. She looked up from a magazine and smiled at him as he walked in, tucking her blond hair behind her ears.
“Well, hello there! How are you tonight?” she asked as she stood up to her full height.
“I’m good. I need a room for the next two nights,” he said as sweetly as he could, still trying to hide his disgust at how bad this night had turned.
“Two nights. Sure. That’ll be one hundred and twenty-two. Cash or credit?”
He handed her a credit card with another of his aliases and signed the bill when she slid it across the counter. “There you go. Thanks.”
She handed him the red plastic keychain with the room key and smiled at him. “You’re in Room 17. To get there, just go out, turn right, and head down the sidewalk. Have a good night, Mr. Stanton.”
Forcing a smile, he mumbled, “I can only hope.”
He returned to the bushes to find Kate leaning against the building and favoring her sprained ankle. “Come on. Just don’t step really hard on it and you’ll be fine.”
Kate pouted. “You aren’t going to carry me?”
“I’m trying not to attract a lot of attention. A man carrying a woman might make people notice us, so just take your time. We’re in Room 17 just down here a few doors.”
He opened the red motel room door and flicked the switch on the wall to turn on the light. The Louisiana Motel was only slightly better than the one he’d originally found Kate in. The room was basically a white ten by ten foot box with exposed pipes painted white in an effort to hide them that hadn’t succeeded. An old, yellowed air conditioning unit sat in the wall up near the ceiling, its frayed cord hanging down beneath the unit. A particleboard dresser stood nearby with a mirror propped up against the wall on top of it. Next to that sat a full size bed with a hideous red and green floral bedspread covering it. Another piece of particleboard furniture that was supposed to be a dresser sat in front of the bed holding a TV that had first been watched in the eighties.
Kate followed him into the room and looked around. “It isn’t so bad. It’s definitely better than the Bayou. You have to admit that.”
She sat down on the bed while Roman called Xavier again. If he found out anything they could use, maybe they wouldn’t have to spend much time at all in this place.
“Sorry. I haven’t gotten very far yet, Roman.”
“I need something here, Xavier,” he said, pacing back and forth across the room in front of Kate as his anger began to boil over.
“Whoever’s behind all this is good and well-funded. I’m going to need more time to make the connections. What’s the hurry anyway? You’re supposed to be enjoying a few days and nights at that lake house. Relax and kick back while I work on things.”
Barely able to contain his disgust, Roman said, “We had to leave, so there’s no more lake house and no more relaxing. I’m stuck in a shithole motel, so get going so I can get the fuck out of this place.”
“Oh. Okay, man. I’ll put a rush on things as much as I can.”
Roman ended the call without even saying goodbye and tossed his phone on the bed as he continued to pace back and forth, choosing to remain silent.
This night had gone from bad to worse.
Chapter Eighteen
From the bedto the door and back again, over and over Roman paced without saying a word as Kate watched him grow angrier by the second. The smile he’d worn just a short time ago when they lay together in each other’s arms after making love was gone, replaced by a scowl worse than any she’d seen on his face before.
That said something since she’d certainly tried his patience repeatedly since the night they met.
She wanted to say the words that would make things better, but every time she tried, he shut her down. Was calling Eve really that huge a mistake?
Opening her mouth to ask him that very question, Kate saw him draw his eyebrows in tightly and changed her mind about saying anything. Better to not make things worse. He looked like he might explode if he got any angrier.
Instead, she pulled the laptop across the bed toward her and opened it up to keep herself busy. Maybe if she made some headway in her research on Jonas’s leads Roman would forgive her.
Before she could read a word on the page in front of her, he yanked the laptop away and slammed it shut in her face. Then he walked off with it, like she couldn’t even be trusted to go online.