I couldn’t leave a lead dangling, not when Rostov had left me in the dark—literally—and Jenna Townsend was a big lead. Besides, she had my gun. I left the casino and walked into the hotel that bordered it. I walked to the front desk and requested a courtesy phone. Jenna answered quickly. “Robert?”
“No, it’s Quentin,” I said. “What are you doing?”
“Packing,” she said. Disappointment was evident in her voice.
“Do you want me to come up there?”
She hesitated. “You left a gun in that bucket, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“When I found it I freaked out.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve got some information.”
“About my husband?”
“Maybe.”
She hesitated again. I was very strange—as strangers went—and it was late at night.
“Come up,” she said finally. “Room eighteen eleven.”
I hung up and headed for the elevators. I felt a bit shitty, as I didn’t really have a lead on her lost groom. I had only a foggy idea of what might have happened to him—something like Ezzie. I consoled myself with the idea it was all for a good cause. People were dying and vanishing. Maybe I couldn’t get Jenna’s husband back, but her tragedy and my experiences were almost certainly related. If I could figure out what was going on, maybe I could help both of us. I was sure of one thing: she was the only lead I had.
Jenna wasn’t in her wedding dress when she opened the door, but her beauty remained. She had changed out of her white satin into blue jeans and black boots. Her jeans hugged her body in all the right places and dragged my eyes downward. I knew it was rude to ogle her—she was a bride or possibly a recent widow—but I couldn’t help myself.
“What do you know?” she asked at the door.
“Can I come in?”
She hesitated, then turned around and walked back into her room. I caught the heavy door before it could shut and followed her. We both sat in hotel chairs around a hotel table and faced each other. I looked around the place, noticing it was a full suite. There was a half-sized fridge and a king-sized bed. The bed wasn’t in the shape of a heart—but the Jacuzzi was. I could just see it through the archway leading into the bathroom. It would have been worth a joke if it hadn’t been further evidence of her tragic circumstances. I looked back at her and hoped the poor bastard she had married had at least gotten to enjoy his wedding night.
Jenna reached down and pulled up a rattling bucket of coins. She pushed them toward me, sliding them over the table.
“I suppose you are waiting to get this back. It’s all there, you can count it.”
“I trust you,” I said. I took the pistol out of the bucket and put it into my pocket.
She shook her head. “Well, that makes one of us. Why did you give me that gun, anyway?”
“I didn’t want them to have me arrested. You can’t carry a pistol into a casino, and I don’t have a permit for it, in any case.”
Jenna eyed me warily. “Why the hell are you doing this? How did you get caught up in my life? I’m not going to give you anything—if that’s what you’re hoping for.”
“Did you get a chance to look me up on the Internet?”
“Yeah. The crackpot website. Stories about monsters and stuff.”
“That’s all real,” I said. “You told me yourself that your husband vanished. Where did it happen?”
She pointed toward the bathroom. “In there, just last night. He was wearing his tux still. We’d just gotten back from the wedding. No family. I wish now we’d flown out my mom, but we didn’t. She’s a pain—it just comes naturally to her. So we got married in private, and dressed up all the way for the pictures. I wanted to send them home and make it look real to everyone back there.”
I thought about asking her where “back there” was, but it didn’t really matter. Besides, she was gushing now, telling me her story all at once. I didn’t want to interrupt and slow her down. I wanted to hear it all.
Jenna stood up and headed with halting steps toward the bathroom. I followed her discreetly. It was as if she didn’t even see me. “Right here, see this scorch mark on the floor?” she asked. “That’s the spot where it touched down.”
“Touched down?”
“Yeah. A weird thing—a small, quiet tornado. But it wasn’t windy, really. It was as if part of the room itself was twisting—as if the colors and shapes were all bending and blending. I don’t know. It was like this spot touched some other spot in another place. Two places blurred together. The air moved and rippled like water going down a drain.”
“OK,” I said, trying to envision it. “Did something come through, or go out?”