“I’ll have him call you if he comes to the desk,” the concierge said, then hung up with a click.
Aria paced around the hotel room, occasionally pulling back the curtains and staring at the empty beach out the window. After a few minutes, she couldn’t stand being in the room for another second and grabbed her keys. The hallway was eerily empty. A door quickly shut, as if someone didn’t want to be seen. The elevator cables creaked and moaned, sounding like screams. The dream throbbed in Aria’s mind. He’s just using you, Ali had said.
She rode the elevator to the ground floor and checked the fitness room, but only a couple of chubby women were walking on the treadmills, drinking something called AminoSpa. She popped her head into the little restaurant that served the buffet breakfast, but Hallbjorn wasn’t there, either. She pushed through the revolving doors that led to the valet parking area. What if the Icelandic police had tracked Hallbjorn here and took him away while Aria was sleeping?
Suddenly, Aria wanted nothing more than to see Hallbjorn’s blond head appear over the dunes. She craned her neck, hoping. When someone appeared, her heart lifted, but it was a middle-aged woman in a down coat instead. She was running at top speed.
“Take cover!” the woman screamed, shooting past Aria and through the revolving door into the hotel. A man sprinted up from the dunes next, glancing nervously over his shoulder. More people followed, terrified looks on their faces. All of them kept checking behind them, as though they were trying to outrun a tsunami.
A guy Mike’s age grabbed Aria’s arm. “Get back inside!” he shouted. “It’s dangerous out here!”
“Why?” Aria squinted at him.
“Didn’t you hear?” The guy looked at Aria like a tree branch had just sprouted out of her head. He pulled Aria inside and pointed to a TV screen tuned to CNN in the corner of the lobby. The Atlantic City skyline was on the screen. An anchor stared excitedly into the camera.
“Apparently, the incident happened just a few minutes ago, and we’re getting the very first footage of the rampage in Atlantic City,” the reporter said.
Rampage? Atlantic City? Aria moved closer to the TV. Was a serial killer targeting the city? She glanced out the window again, fearing for Hallbjorn’s life. What on earth had she done, dragging him here? What if he was hurt?
Then she turned back to the TV screen. A banner had appeared at the bottom. Deadly Cats Loose in Atlantic City, NJ.
Aria opened her mouth to scream, but no sounds came out.
A picture of the two silver panthers appeared, along with a shot of Biedermeister and Bitschi in their magician’s capes. “Panthers are very dangerous,” the CNN correspondent said. “They’ve been known to maul humans, so please, everyone in Atlantic City, stay inside.”
Aria sank into a chair, feeling dizzy. The next shot on the screen was of the tiny cages where the panthers had been held that Aria had seen the night before. Both doors were wide open, the locks broken. Words had been spray-painted on the cement floor in front of the cages. Panthers have rights, too. Animal cruelty is wrong.
“I can’t believe someone could do such a thing,” a woman who had come to a stop next to Aria murmured. “Do you think it’s al-Qaeda?”
Bile rose in Aria’s throat. She inched away from the woman as though she were culpable, too. She knew exactly who had done it. Without a shadow of a doubt.
Hallbjorn.
Chapter 13
Mistakes Were Made
In a matter of minutes, every guest of the Borgata was cowering in the lobby, too afraid to go outside and face the loose panthers. Rumors of panther sightings swirled. People had seen them on the beach, near the local diner that was famous for its blueberry pancakes, and roaring outside the Trump Taj Mahal. Apparently one of the panthers had trapped a child under the boardwalk; a couple of people had thrown hamburger meat on the sand, distracting the cat and allowing the kid to escape. The other panther had found its way into a strip club. Every stripper and patron was forced to evacuate, the girls standing in the parking lot in next to nothing.
Broadcasts of the panthers’ rampage played on every television screen in the Borgata’s lobby, bars, and restaurants. News vans from everywhere in the tristate area screeched into the Borgata parking lot, and the lobby quickly transformed into a makeshift studio. Biedermeister and Bitschi were being interviewed over by the Starbucks kiosk, looking haggard and distraught. “I don’t know who would do this to us,” Biedermeister said, shaking his head. “We have no enemies.”