The cat yowled and jumped off the counter, landed close to his head.
Kellen jumped and gasped.
The cat raced out of the bathroom.
Mr. Gilfilen’s chest gave a great heave. And another. And another.
She wanted to collapse with relief.
He was breathing, but his rapid pulse and cool, clammy skin told her he was in shock. Shock would kill him.
She had no time for tears, but they trickled down her cheeks as she wrapped him in the second bath mat, then ran to strip the blankets off the bed. When she returned, his eyes were open. He couldn’t speak, but his eyes flicked at her.
“Honestly,” she scolded as she flung the blankets over his legs and went looking for the source of all that blood. “I tried to tell you. Let the big boys handle this. Did you listen? No, you did not. Now look what they did to you.”
He closed his eyes.
“Look what they did to—” she faltered “—your hand.” His left hand was half severed. He’d wrapped it in his handkerchief. How he had not bled to death, she didn’t know.
Outside in the suite, she heard a tumult as people crowded through the door, as Max called her name.
“In the bathroom,” she shouted.
He got there first, filled the doorway with his mass, took in the situation. He moved in and took over, pushed her gently out of the way. He wrapped Mr. Gilfilen more tightly in the blankets, called for warm packs, pressed the hand firmly onto the arm, said to Kellen, “They’ll try to reattach.” Then to the resort’s assembled first aid team, “Get ice packs for the hand.”
In moments, the team had stabilized Mr. Gilfilen, loaded him onto a gurney and wheeled him away.
When he was gone, Kellen sat on the toilet and did what she’d told Mr. Gilfilen to do. She breathed.
Max returned with a throw. He flung it around her shoulders, knelt and hugged her.
She let him. Philadelphia or not, she needed a hug.
“Helicopter is on its way,” he said. “You saved his life.”
“I hope so. Did you find the cat?” she asked.
“What cat?”
The one that saved Mr. Gilfilen’s life.
She turned to him. She had wondered what she should say when next she saw Max Di Luca, the questions she should ask, the explanations she should demand. But her private nightmares didn’t matter now. Instead, she said, “We’ve got to evacuate the guests.”
“And all personnel.”
She shook her head. “No. One of them is a killer. We have to find out who and end this thing.”
33
In the morning, Mr. Gilfilen was still alive in the ICU in a Portland, Oregon, hospital, Kellen had donned her Kevlar vest under her shirt and was carrying her pistol and the Yearning Sands guests were being kindly ushered out the door. Finding guests accommodations elsewhere was easy enough in the off-season and with such a reduced guest list. The official story was that a structural problem had been uncovered in the recent construction. Most of them had heard some version of the real story and were more than willing to accept a voucher or better accommodations elsewhere.
No one could find Nils Brooks to ask him to leave—dark and suspicious mutterings were heard—and Kellen felt her suspicions of him rise once more.
Carson Lennex flatly refused to go. The resort was, he said, his home, and no killer was going to chase him away. Which in the circumstances was damned shady, to say the least.
As people came and went, Max made himself useful, carrying bags, helping Frances and Sheri Jean contact the other resorts, reassuring the guests. More than that, he was the security manager, he was clearly packing a firearm and he was visible. His size alone, packaged nicely in that dark suit, seemed to reassure everyone and keep terror at bay.
Kellen personally arranged transportation for those headed to the airstrip and organized the farewell appetizers and beverages in the lobby for every departing guest. Finding the necessary staff to handle the workload proved the real challenge; most of the spa staff called in sick or scared, some of the maids and desk staff simply didn’t come to work and the security center was unmanned. Chef Reinhart and Chef Norbert arrived separately, both bearing well-sharpened butcher knives in their belts; the sous chef for each was a no-show. That created a great kerfuffle in the kitchen as they shouted commands at each other, until Gabriella got tired of listening and made them chop for her.
Birdie drove the first group to the airstrip to catch Chad Griffin’s plane to Seattle, but when Kellen tried to locate Temo for the second shift, he was unreachable, and she wanted to find him, shake him, make him be the Temo she believed him to be.
The last group out the door was the Shivering Sherlocks; they were scheduled to check out today anyway, but Kellen gave them a voucher for one night free on their next visit and got into the driver’s seat to take them to the airstrip. Mitch came along to serve the food and drink, and to charm the women with his good looks and flattery.
That was fine with Kellen. Her focus kept wandering, running through the suspects in her mind. To pick up a gun and shoot someone required a cold purpose—or a hot temper. But to deliberately attempt to strangle a man, to watch him kick and struggle, then when he was subdued, to take a sharp blade and try to sever his hand…that was cold. That was vicious.
Mr. Gilfilen had lived, but what had he done to his attacker to escape? He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t tell anyone. He was unconscious, recovering from surgery, fighting for his life. She would figure this out, and she would get her revenge. For Mr. Gilfilen, and for all of the victims who had died for this deadly game of smuggling. She would get revenge for herself, too. She’d come back to the United States determined to work hard, play hard, be strong, be brave for all the days that were left to her. Not to witness more pain. Not to fight an unseen foe who lived for blood and cruelty.
Who was it?
She glanced at Mitch, half-turned toward the back, asking the Shivering Sherlocks about their mystery weekend, asking what they would remember when they got home.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll remember.” Candy sat directly behind the driver’s seat, and she leaned forward and spoke right in Kellen’s ear. “The guest bath in Carson Lennex’s penthouse was busy, so I hustled upstairs to his suite to use the potty up there. Guess what I found?”
“Tell me you didn’t dig through his nightstand and find his porn,” Rita said.
“Not porn.” In the rearview mirror, Kellen saw Candy frown. “I don’t think. It certainly wasn’t hidden away.”
Nancy leaned forward out of the very back seat. “What was it?”
Candy said, “He had these stone statues on glass shelves with lights under each one, and I’m telling you, girls—”
Kellen found herself breathing slowly, steadily, listening intently.
“—if we ever met a man with a package like that,” Candy continued, “we’d run for the hills.”
“What was it?” Tammy asked.
“Some kind of fertility god, I suppose. Gross, this little guy holding this penis twice his size.” Candy must have made a gesture, because the women whooped with laughter.
Abruptly, Mitch turned around and faced front.
Because the Shivering Sherlocks were giving him the very information he needed? Or because he was embarrassed by a group of elderly women hooting about a man’s genitals?
“Sounds like an Inuit fertility god,” Rita suggested.
“Exactly.” Candy sounded pleased with the idea. “There was a female statue, too, all fat and pregnant, an exaggeration of fertility. Carson Lennex collects some pretty weird stuff.”
“Probably he didn’t think anyone would see it,” Patty said.
“He wasn’t too worried about it. There was backlighting.” Candy sounded as if she had settled back against the seat. “Those things were the grossest statues I ever saw. Art! Heaven preserve me.”