Hollywood Sinners

99



Without hesitation, Robert issued orders. It was a discreet operation, had been practised countless times that way, and it was vital they stay calm. If an intruder was here, he would be found in a matter of minutes. Robert knew his own hotel and every place in it. He had security walking the building. There was nowhere for a man to hide.

Lana.

Robert had to find her. If someone was in his hotel, someone who shouldn’t be, he wasn’t taking any risks. Lana should be downstairs by now. The fact she wasn’t didn’t sit easily with him. But it wasn’t his job. Cole would surely be with her by now, they’d be making their way down to the car–maybe they’d already left. All the same, he needed to know she was safe. It would make this thing a whole lot easier.

He summoned the elevator to the thirtieth floor. In his office he extracted the weapon from his desk drawer, slipping it into the band of his suit trousers.

On his way up to the Pagoda Suite, floors building beneath him as he climbed higher, he tried to hold down the horror that came with owning a hotel of this scale. Explosives.

Whatever you do, don’t have a bomb.

Robert alighted far into the tip of the blade. He knew exactly where he was heading.

Lana.

To his surprise, Cole was there, pacing the corridor, red in the face.

‘What’s going on?’ demanded Robert.

Cole shot him a look. ‘I can’t get in. She must have already gone.’

‘She can’t have, I’d have seen her.’

Cole barked a hysterical laugh. ‘You’d think she could just make this easy for me, wouldn’t you? One damn night, that’s all it is.’ Checking himself, he added, ‘Excuse me, I’ve got a wife to find.’

Robert held out an arm. ‘Wait a minute. Have you tried to get in?’

‘It’s locked.’

‘I know that. Do you have a key?’

‘What?’

‘A key. Do you have one?’

‘Lana has it. But she’s not in there, I told you–I already knocked, no response.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Unless she’s gone to sleep. My God, if she’s gone to sleep I’ll … She keeps getting tired, she’s dead to the world with it these days …’

Robert drew a card out of his inside pocket. ‘Do I have your permission?’

Cole nodded. ‘Go on.’

In a swift movement Robert sliced the card and pushed the door. There was a strange smell, weirdly familiar.

The first thing he noticed was that the terrace doors were open, white curtains billowing in the night air. A lamp lay in glass shards on the floor; a chair was kicked over on its side; a crimson slick smeared across the wooden boards.

And then, at their feet …

Cole reacted first. ‘What the hell …?’ The colour drained from his face. He backed up, tripping over a carpet, flattening himself against the far wall.

For Robert, movement was impossible.

It was Lana. Her dress was torn. Her face was beaten. Her eyes were closed.

Dead to the world.





100



The man stood over her, hands gripping her wrists, dragging her limp body out into the night. He was thin and small, his back arched. He was bald on the top, but at the back of his head strings of hair curled round the starched white collar of his shirt, damp with sweat. Where it parted Robert could see a scar, pale and jagged, that ran from one side to the other.

Slowly, deliberately, without taking his hands off Lana, the man turned to face him. His profile came into view, the long, beak-like nose and thin, hard line of his mouth. When his pitiless eyes fixed on Robert’s, the younger man’s heart stopped.

‘Lester Fallon.’

A whisper before the floor rose up to meet him. He put out his hands, feeling for support. Grabbing a dresser, he pulled the sheet of linen off its surface and with it came a crash of glass.

‘Do something!’ screamed Cole from behind. The sound reached Robert from miles away, as if it had travelled for a long time down a dark tunnel. ‘For Christ’s sake, do something!’

Lester Fallon, the man he had killed a decade ago, put a hand to his waist and pulled out a gun. He pointed it at Robert’s forehead.

‘Hello, Mr St Louis.’ He put his head on one side. ‘Remember me?’

Outside, Cole wet himself. ‘He’s got a gun, you hear me?’ he spluttered. ‘A gun! We’ve gotta get out of here now!’

Robert heard running footsteps. They were going to be rescued. They had been found.

But the footsteps were moving further away, further and further until he couldn’t hear them any more.

Lester Fallon.

The bastard was still alive.

‘I’ve been waiting a long time for this,’ he said, his face twisted in sick pleasure. ‘And you’re very considerate–I didn’t even need to come find you.’ He released the safety catch. ‘You just walked straight into the last thirty seconds of your life.’

Robert refused to be afraid. Later there would be a time for fear. And there would be a later. He could not give up on Lana. It wasn’t possible that she should die here, like this. Not after everything they had been through.

A pulse began, a flame catching in the pitch. Weak at first and then getting brighter, becoming hotter, until he could hear the rush of blood in his ears, spreading through his muscles and into his heart like fuel.

This isn’t how it ends.

He charged at the man with the full force of his body. Lester toppled backwards, winded, knocking his head against the table. He went to roll out of the way but the other man was too fast, driving at him, sending them both crashing through the window. A wall of glass fell behind them, quick as water. The cold air was like a smack.

Robert punched Lester’s face twice, slamming his head into the terrace. Lester tried to hit back but he was too slow. Robert caught his wrist, turned it on his own face and delivered two crunching blows to his jaw. Blinking, the sweet thick taste of blood in his throat and coming out of his nose, Lester hammered the butt of the gun into Robert’s shoulder. He pushed him off, kicking him in the stomach, driving his foot into the cavity beneath Robert’s rib cage. Robert fell backwards against the iron railings, struggling to breathe, every lungful freezing in his windpipe. Thousands of feet below the bright lights of the Strip; the bleating car horns seeping up; the carpet laid out, blood-red.

Lester stood, his chin dripping.

‘Surprised?’ he rasped. A dark bubble popped at his lips.

Robert gasped for air. One push and he’d be over the edge. With dreadful understanding he realised that was where Lana had been heading.

Lester limped towards him, raised the gun and waved it in his face, mocking him. He started laughing, a high, hectic sound. It would be easy to knock the bastard out right now, he thought. One blow to the head. But he wanted Robert St Louis alive when he put a bullet in him.

‘Take a look at this face,’ rasped Lester, gesturing wildly with the gun. ‘Take a long, hard look, you murdering sonofabitch.

Because this is the last face you’re ever going to see. You hear me? The last face you’ll ever—’

This isn’t how it ends.

As if in slow motion, Robert drew the weapon from his waist.

The gun he had never had to use before now but had been meant for this moment. The gun he had taken from outside the trailer that night, scooping it up in a panic so they would never find out. The gun he’d taken and never told her about. The same gun Lester had pulled on him and Lana on her birthday twelve years ago.

God help me or I will kill you again.

He aimed it at Lester, took aim and fired. The impact blasted Lester’s weapon from his hand, sending it flying into the night sky.

Fast as a snake, Robert sprang at him. He knocked Lester backwards, struggling to get a grip on his wrists, fighting to restrain him. Lester’s upper body went thrashing over the railings, grappling with the gun, wrestling the other man’s hold, the weapon weaving in the night air. With a roar Lester tore at Robert’s fingers, prising them open, feeling the trigger return home.

Lester was strong. He had come back from the dead. He was the resurrected; the all-powerful, the unstoppable. He was ending the world tonight.

The gun turned.

A single shot rang out.