Part 3
He had to get back into Room 214, pull what answers he could out of that ruined plaster, and get to his car—snow drift or cracked engine block be damned.
A harsh metallic snap echoed behind him.
Julian froze, his hand dropping from his wrist as the sound reverberated down the narrow hallway like a dropped iron rod.
"I don't remember handing you a second key, Mr. Vance."
Mona Higgins stepped out from the recessed doorway of the linen closet fifteen feet back, a battered twelve-gauge shotgun held casually across the chest of her down-filled hunting vest.
Her copper hair was coming loose from its bun, wisps sticking to the sweat at her temples, and her slate-gray eyes were flat, lethal, and entirely fixed on him.
"I asked for extra towels," Julian lied, his voice thin and hollow in the freezing air. "The lobby was empty."
"The lobby is behind you, auditor." Mona racked the slide with a fluid, terrifying ease. The heavy brass hull clicked cleanly into the chamber. "And the linen closet’s right where I’m standing. So what are you doing prowling around condemned doors?"
Her knuckles, heavy with cheap silver rings, tightened against the checkered wooden stock.
Julian held up his hands, taking a slow, instinctual half-step backward toward the cracked frame of 214.
"The latch was loose," he said, his mouth dry. "I thought I heard water running. A pipe leaking into the floorboards."
"You think I don't know what water sounds like in my own building?" Mona took two deliberate strides forward, the massive ring of skeleton keys at her hip chiming with dull, rhythmic menace. "I know every groan this place makes. And I know the sound of a city man sticking his nose where he’ll lose it."
She leveled the blackened muzzle directly at his sternum, the twin bores looking wide enough to swallow his fist.
"Turn around," she ordered, her husky voice dropping an octave, deadened by the low acoustic ceiling. "Hands where I can see them. You're walking out the front doors into the drift. I don't care if you freeze on the asphalt, but you won't die on my carpet."
Julian’s pulse hammered behind his eyes, deafening and frantic.
Self-preservation was the only instinct he had ever truly mastered, the reflex that had let him abandon Clara, let him cook the firm's ledgers, let him run until the mountains ran out of road.
He didn't raise his hands higher.
Instead, he dropped his shoulder, pivoted hard on his salt-caked heel, and threw his weight against the loose door of Room 214.
The busted frame gave way with a screech of bent brass screws.
Julian tumbled into the suffocating chill of the dark bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him and throwing the deadbolt before Mona's boot hit the wood on the other side.
The impact rattled through the rotten jamb, showering his shoulders in flakes of dead paint.
"Open it!" Mona barked, the wood splintering under the heavy butt of the shotgun. "I swear to God, Vance, I will blow this hinge clean through your chest!"
Julian didn't answer.
He scrambled across the frozen carpet on hands and knees, ignoring the ceramic tea set that scattered beneath his shins, lunging straight for the open closet.
The ragged hole in the closet’s back wall yawned open—a jagged rectangle where the dry lath had been snapped away to expose the building’s central pipe chase.
A draft of sub-zero air billowed out from the dark void, smelling of rusted iron, mouse droppings, and ancient pine tar.
Behind him, the exterior door shuddered violently under a second blow, wood cracking along the strike plate.
The hollow clatter of Mona’s heavy boots retreated down the exterior corridor, accompanied by the dull rattle of brass keys against her canvas vest.
Julian stayed frozen on his stomach, pressed against the unfinished subfloor until the vibrations died completely in the timbers beneath his chest.
The crawlspace was narrower than a grave and twice as cold.
Exposed lath slats lined the corridor walls like brittle ribs, showing slivers of peeling wallpaper and dead plaster on the far side of each partition.
He pushed forward on his elbows, the salt-stained soles of his leather dress shoes scraping against exposed wiring and dry wood shavings.
The charcoal wool of his coat snagged on an unbent finishing nail, tearing a seam near his collar with a quiet, sickening rip.
He didn't stop to examine the damage; the freezing draft whistling through the wall cavity pulled at him like an undertow, smelling sharply of calcified rust, rodent droppings, and camphor.
Ten yards down the shaft, the ductwork dipped under a low support beam, opening into a recessed hollow nestled between the plumbing stacks of Room 214.
Julian pulled his penlight from his inner pocket, thumbing the switch.
The beam landed not on cobwebs or bare studs, but on a milk crate turned on its side to serve as a bedside table.
Tucked into the shadowed recess was a narrow pallet made from flattened cardboard boxes, topped by three layers of water-stained wool blankets stiffened with frost.
Julian drew his breath in through his teeth, his hand instinctively going to his wrist to turn the silver cufflink over and over between numb fingers.
Someone had made a home in the walls.
[[AD]]
On the surface of the milk crate sat a cluster of small amber medicine bottles, their plastic caps coated in a fine layer of gray dust.
