“Enough?” He grabbed her arm and nudged her out the door into the hall. “It’s about time. You’re pale as a sheet. You need some air.”
They pushed past policemen and firefighters as they made their way to the elevator and rode down to the lobby. Kendra felt as if she was suffocating as she ran for the glass lobby doors and stumbled onto the sidewalk.
Then Lynch was beside her, holding her close. “Hey … It’s okay.”
“Tell that to Huston.”
“He was a cop. It’s a dangerous job.”
“I know.” She clutched him tighter. “But I liked him. And you saw what that son of a bitch did to him. It’s just that—”
Kendra’s phone buzzed.
“That’s probably Griffin, wondering why I bolted the way I did.”
“Let it go,” Lynch said. “Screw him.”
Kendra stared at her phone screen.
She froze.
“Kendra?”
She slowly showed the phone to Lynch.
The message read: YOU AREN’T WEARING THE RING I GAVE YOU.
Lynch muttered a curse as he instinctively moved between Kendra and the street, using his body as a shield as he looked up and down the busy thoroughfare.
Kendra looked at the message again. The “from” tag was simply: ZACHARY.
Here? Now?
She whirled and joined Lynch in scanning the pedestrians, the sidewalk vendors, the people in cars … Was Zachary one of them?
Lynch pushed her back toward the hotel doors. “Move. Get back inside.”
“No!” She was still scanning the street. “He’s here. I have to keep looking.”
“The hell you do.”
“Wait.” She was trying to jerk her arm away from him as she looked over her shoulder. Where are you, you monster …
“Get inside. Now!”
Lynch practically pushed her through the door into the lobby.
“But what if he’s out there?” Kendra’s hands clenched into fists. Her eyes were blazing with anger.
He maintained his grip on her. “Exactly. He could see you and you couldn’t see him.”
“I might have if you’d let me keep looking.”
“Think about it. If Zachary is as clever as you’re saying, would he have let you see him? No. And you would be a sitting duck out there.”
Her phone buzzed again.
The screen read: LOOK BEHIND YOU.
She and Lynch spun around.
There was only the everyday activity of a large hotel lobby. Guests checking in, bellmen handling bags, guests waiting for elevators …
Was he playing with them?
Kendra no longer felt fear; pure rage coursed through her veins.
She gripped her phone and began to type feverishly.
“What are you doing?” Lynch asked.
“Typing my response.”
“Kendra…”
She pushed “send” and stared with fierce satisfaction at her message still on the screen: WATCH YOUR BACK, ZACHARY. I’M COMING FOR YOU.
CHAPTER
14
“WHERE ARE YOU?” KENDRA demanded as soon as Griffin answered his phone. “I need to talk to you.”
“You’re talking to me,” Griffin said. “Why the hell did you take off from the crime scene? The team wanted to discuss your findings in—”
“I was having trouble thinking of it as a crime scene. I wanted out of there. Now where are you?”
He was silent. “I’m on my way down to hotel security.”
“We’ll meet you there.” She pressed the disconnect. “Security,” she told Lynch. “And we’ll be lucky if he doesn’t drag the entire team down there so that they can discuss that, too.” She added through clenched teeth, “They’re driving me crazy. I feel as if I’m being smothered every time they start to analyze and expound.”
“Easy,” Lynch said. “I know you’re on edge, but we need Griffin for the moment. He can smooth the way for us.”
She knew that, but it did little to keep her frustration in check. “You’re right,” she said curtly. “But everyone is treating Huston’s death as just another murder. But it’s all wrong, he died because Zachary wanted to mock us. He died because Zachary wanted to show me he could do it.”
“Entirely possible. But that doesn’t make it your fault.”
“Then why does it feel like it is?”
“Because you liked Huston, and you’re not thinking clearly at the moment. You’re angry and feeling a little bewildered. But now the only thing of importance is to find out how Zachary did it.” He punched the elevator button. “And that means you have to be moderately civil to Griffin for the next several hours. Don’t worry, I’ll be there to run interference.”
“You don’t have the best track record in that area. Not with Griffin.”
“Then we’ll make it a joint project.”
“Maybe,” she said skeptically.
Kendra and Lynch caught up with Griffin, Metcalf, and Gina as they walked down the hall toward the second-floor hotel security office. Thank heavens he’d left his precious dream team behind, Kendra thought relieved.
“You can see I’m busy,” Griffin said. “What did you want to talk about?”
Kendra held up her phone and showed Griffin the LOOK BEHIND YOU text still on her screen.
“What the hell is that?” Griffin asked.
“A text from Zachary, sent to me less than ten minutes ago. He sent me two.” Kendra displayed the previous message: YOU’RE NOT WEARING THE RING I GAVE YOU.
Griffin seemed more disturbed by this text. “Where were you when you received this one?”
“Outside the building.” She tried to forget that moment of panic and think logically. “It doesn’t mean I was being watched, of course. It wasn’t like I was ever going to slip on that class ring we found and go about my day.”
“Hmm. But it doesn’t mean that he wasn’t watching you. We need to find from where that message was sent. Probably a burner phone, but if we determine it was here in a common area, we can check security camera video against the timing to see if someone appears to be sending a text at that exact moment. It could help us. Rendell is upstairs uploading the contents of Huston’s phone right now, but you should show him what you just showed me. He’ll look into it.”
“That photo of the hotel room wall was sent from Huston’s phone less than an hour ago,” Lynch said. “But I’d say he’s been dead quite a bit longer. Did Rendell have anything to say about that?”
“The timestamp embedded in the photo shows it was snapped with Huston’s phone at 5:40 A.M. The email with that photo was created at the same time but programmed to be sent over four hours later. According to the M.E.’s initial findings, that lines up with the time of death.”
Kendra nodded toward the hotel security office. “Are we here to check security camera footage?”
“Yes. This hotel isn’t exactly flooded with cameras, but there’s good coverage in the lobby, most of the exterior entrances, and in the elevator lobbies on each floor. They’re giving us copies of all their footage between five and six this morning, but we’ll take a quick look while we’re here.”
Kendra and Lynch joined the group for their “quick look,” which ended up taking more than three hours and which yielded, as far as Kendra could tell, absolutely nothing. There was some activity in the lobby and rear loading dock, but otherwise it was fairly quiet.