Page 140 of Our Last Resort

I have maybe a minute until they realize William Brenner is not in the entrance lounge, and not asking for help.

Quick.

I look on the table, riffle through balled-up napkins, check under an abandoned lunch box. There’s a pen and a notebook. I flip it upside down and wait for a master key card to tumble out.

Nothing.

Come on.

The row of lockers. I try a door, then another, then a third one. They’re all locked.

I listen for the sound of footsteps. How long have I been in here?

More important: What am I missing?

At the back of a door, hanging from a coat hook I didn’t see when I first walked in, is a jacket.

I grab it by the collar with greedy hands. There’s a badge pinned at chest level. In the hotel’s custom font, it spells out a familiar name:Catalina.

Yes.

Yes.

My hand ransacks the pockets. Nothing on the right-hand side. I try the left. Nope. I’m about to put the jacket back on its hook when I feel it: something rigid, tucked in an inside pocket.Please, please, please.My fingers slide in, clutch a rectangle of plastic, and pull out—

Well, just that. A rectangle of plastic. It’s completely blank. Doesn’t sayMaster Key 1orFloor Key 3or anything at all.

I put the jacket back where I found it, leap out of the room, and slam the door behind me.

Catalina and her two colleagues are absent from the lobby. Most likely, they’re in the entrance lounge, looking for William, or maybe checking his suite. I keep my gaze down, avoiding a guest here, another person there, on my way out.

Back to the magnolia I go.

I press Catalina’s key card against the lantern so hard I worry the glass will fissure.

But it doesn’t. Instead, the ground rumbles.

Yes.

The secret door lifts through the air.

Slowly.

So slowly.

Come on. Come on.

Any minute now, Catalina will come running.

I pick up a rock. If I’m about to do what I think I’m about to do, then I’ll probably need a rock.

The door is still moving when I crawl into the garage.

It’s dark inside. I blink and wait for my eyes to adjust. Even the Ara can’t do anything about the smell of fuel and motor oil that permeates every parking garage in the world. The structure around me is subterranean, with cement walls and the same kind of squeaky flooring I recognize from the storage unit of my early adulthood.

“Hello?”

No one’s here.

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