Читать книгу Eternal Journey - Alex Archer - Страница 10

It’s probably nothing, Annja told herself. But the hairs on her arm prickled and indicated otherwise. She crept around Oliver’s room and this time eyed everything in a more careful light.

Yes, the bed was made. But there was a crease in the middle that a good hotel maid would have smoothed flat. The chair by the lamp had been moved from its usual spot because the depressions in the carpet showed where it usually rested. The lamp shade was slightly askew, too.

Annja sniffed the air, finding only the smell of cigarettes and a touch of flowery spray that the cleaning staff no doubt used to help mask the smell of cigarettes.

She looked in the bathroom. Not a single rumpled towel, and the glasses were turned upside down on doilies, as if Ollie hadn’t used them. No toothbrush by the sink, no razor, no toiletry bag. No smudges on the faucet or mirror. No heavy towel on the floor to act as a bath mat, and no spots of water anywhere that would indicate someone had used the room recently. She pushed aside the shower curtain and saw that the tub was dry. The sink basin was dry, too, evidence to her that Ollie hadn’t been in here for at least a few hours.

Annja sucked in a breath and went to the closet. It was empty, too, save for a fluffy white robe, an ironing board propped up against the back wall and an iron and extra feather pillow on the top shelf. Next she checked the drawers, not sure why she was doing this, and all the while trying to tell herself that indeed Oliver had caught the red-eye.

Telling herself that the blood spot was nothing.

“Oliver’s just fine,” she said. Then she noticed that one of the knobs was missing from the television.

“I’m operating on too wild an imagination and too little sleep. That’s all.” But her words weren’t working to quell her rising fears. She reached for the phone and called the front desk. “Hello. Has Oliver Vylan checked out? Room 312? No? Thanks.”

She slapped the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Just call Oliver,” she said. Annja knew his cell phone number by heart and quickly punched the buttons. One ring. Two. “C’mon, Oliver. Answer.”

If he was on the plane, maybe he couldn’t, she thought. At certain times some airlines wouldn’t let you use your cell phone. They’d flown American. She’d remembered using her cell phone all the time on American flights.

Eight rings. His voice mail message came on.

“Oliver, this is Annja. Call me.” She let her voice sound urgent, so he’d return the call right away. She’d have to go up to her room and grab her cell phone in case he did call.

She depressed the switch hook and started dialing Doug Morrell. Halfway through, she stopped. The time difference, she thought. “To hell with the hours.” She finished the number and let the phone ring, then left another message when an answering machine kicked in. “Doug, this is Annja. Has Oliver checked in with you? Call me, please.”

The blood spot could be something.

She called the front desk again. “Hello. Would you please contact the police.” Annja didn’t know the Sydney equivalent of 911, or she would have handled that herself. “Send them up here as soon they arrive. And send someone from hotel security now, to Oliver Vylan’s room. Yes, room 312. I believe something…bad…has happened to him.” She replaced the phone in the cradle, ignoring the questions of the now nervous front-desk woman.

Had Oliver gone pub-crawling? she wondered.

He’d mentioned that possibility at dinner last night. Had he gotten himself into trouble at one of the bars? Had he come back bloodied from being on the receiving end of someone’s fist? That might explain the blood spot. But it wouldn’t explain his absence. While her cameraman wasn’t the politest of fellows, she hadn’t known him to be the type to get into a brawl, nor was he the type to drink to excess. But then how well did she know him? They’d worked together for several months, but never socialized more than sharing meals after shoots. He had family in New York, she recalled from conversations, two sisters, and he had a fiancée he mentioned often. Annja didn’t want to have to call any of them to report bad news.

“Oh, think, Annja! Calm down.” He could well be in the restaurant having breakfast! And the lack of suitcase and camera equipment might mean that he left them with the concierge in preparation for checking out.

There might be nothing wrong at all.

She let out a tentative sigh of relief and called the restaurant and described Oliver. “Are you sure he’s not there? Check one more time, please. It’s important.”

She felt her chest growing tight with worry and her heart racing. She was used to danger and had come to accept being shot at and kicked, but she would never get used to people around her finding trouble. The fatigue she’d felt from lack of sleep rolled off her, and again her eyes locked on the blood spot. Her breath caught.

The maître d’ came back on the line and interrupted her thoughts.

“You’re certain he’s not there? Yes. Thank you,” Annja said dully, and hung up the phone. “Oliver, what’s happened to you? What sort of trouble did you manage to find?”

She could have gone with him on the pub crawl, hadn’t really needed to turn in so early to surf the archaeology Web sites. Should have gone with him, she admonished herself, stopped him from drinking too much, getting into a fight, getting blood on the carpet of his hotel room, from worrying her so.

She knelt at the foot of the bed, fingers hovering above the blood spot, senses registering the smell of nicotine that clung to the carpet and the quilt.

Leave the spot alone, she told herself. You’ve called the police. Don’t interfere. Let them…She touched the edge of the spot anyway, finding it congealed but not crusty. Maybe only an hour or two old, she guessed. Maybe Oliver had been here when she knocked the first time before going to breakfast. Maybe if she’d been persistent then she would have found him safe.

“Should have tried the door then.” She chewed on her lower lip. “Ollie, Ollie, what trouble did you—?” She heard the elevator open out in the hall. “Police can’t have gotten here this quick,” she muttered. She jumped up, thoughts brightening. Maybe it was Oliver, coming back to the room to make sure he hadn’t left anything. Annja darted outside and nearly bumped into a long-nosed man with a hotel security badge on his dark blue suit coat.

“You’re the one who—”

“Called the front desk? Yes, I—”

“Reported trouble with one of our guests? A Mr. Oliver Vylan from the United States?” He didn’t have as pleasing an accent as the archaeologists she’d spent the past few days with. He sounded more British than Aussie, though there were similarities to both accents.

“Oliver Vylan, yes. My cameraman. He’s gone missing,” Annja said.

She stood there only a moment more, looking between the open hotel room door and the security man, and then she stepped around him and to the elevator and thumbed the up button.

“He’s gone missing, I say again, and I’m worried,” she continued. “I found a spot of blood. It’s at the foot of the bed.” She was certain now that some harm had come to Oliver, and that despite her best thoughts the cameraman wasn’t ready to check out and head to the airport.

“Miss…” The security man beckoned, clearly wanting more information about the situation.

“Creed. Annja Creed, room 914. I’ll be right back. I have to go get my cell phone.” Annja slipped into the elevator and pressed the button for the ninth floor, shifting back and forth on the balls of her feet, her flip-flops making squeaky sounds. “After I call home one more time. Try to call Ollie again.” And after I worry some more, she thought. “Ollie, Ollie, Ollie, what’s happened to you?”

The airport? Maybe she should call American just to make sure that he hadn’t caught the red-eye flight to LaGuardia. One final time she told herself that all this worry was for nothing, and that she was wasting the hotel security man’s time and soon the police’s time. She prayed she was wasting everyone’s time and that Oliver was all right.

But he wasn’t all right, she confirmed when the elevator doors opened onto her floor and she stepped out. At the end of the hall, the door to her room was open, and a thumping, bumping, crashing sound came from within. Someone was ransacking the place.

Annja didn’t panic. Danger was nothing new to her. In fact, it had been her constant companion since she inherited her sword and began her battle against whatever the forces of darkness decided to throw at her.

She reached for that sword now, touching the pommel with her mind and calling it from the ephemeral pocket of nothingness where it resided. She felt her fingers close on it, then just as quickly she dismissed it. Assess the situation first, she admonished herself. Don’t let worry rule you. She sprinted down the hall, flip-flops slapping against the soles of her feet as she went. She vaguely registered a door opening behind her, and then another, heard the curious whispers of hotel guests poking their heads out.

A heartbeat more and she was in the doorway of her room, staring at three dark-clad men who were tearing her things apart.

“That’s the woman,” the tallest of them said. He was standing on her shattered laptop. “That’s the one who was with the photographer. Kill her!”