Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 83961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
She smiles. “That, too.”
I smile back. There is something. Something real.
Damn.
“Hello, sir? Are you there?” Krasna’s voice crackles through the phone.
I pick it back up. “Yes, we are.”
“Thank you again for your patience. I had to sift through some old records which are not on our computer. We did provide stock for one hotel in the Chicago area up through the late nineties.”
“Great. Where was it?”
“It is still there, as far as I can tell. It was purchased by a third party in November of 1998, after which we no longer provided any product. It is in a neighborhood called Forest Park. The Caterpillar Hotel.”
The Caterpillar Hotel?
My phone clatters to the floor.
32
BIANCA
I pick the phone up off the ground—God, the screen is shattered—and wave a hand in Harrison’s face. “Harrison? You all right?”
“Not even slightly.” He takes the phone out of my hand, not even acknowledging the broken screen, and speaks into it. “Thank you, Krasna. We’ll call back if we have any more questions.” He ends the call and turns to me. “I was just there, Bianca.”
“Just where?” I ask.
“The hotel where the shampoo comes from. The other night, after we met.” He blushes. “I was thinking about all this, and I missed my exit by a couple miles. And I ended up using the hotel’s parking lot to turn around.”
“How on earth do you remember all that?” Dinah asks. “Do you have a steel trap for a memory?”
Harrison shrugs. “I guess so.” He turns back to me. “But here’s the thing. When I got there, there weren’t any cars in the parking lot. Like, literally zero. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, because my mind was…elsewhere.”
I frown. Harrison’s eyes are…haunted. I recognize haunted. I’ve seen the same look in the mirror when I’m reliving childhood trauma. Has Harrison been through something? I ache at the thought. “Was the hotel abandoned?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Lights on in some of the rooms. Maybe the people staying there take the train into the city. The Blue Line serves Forest Park.”
“Yeah, but that far out of the city, the L isn’t super dependable.” I pace around Dinah and Harrison. “In New York, you can live without a car. Sometimes, it’s actually faster to take the subway than to drive somewhere. The train comes that frequently. But it’s not nearly as good in Chicago. Here, having a car make a big difference, same as most other major cities in the US.” I scratch at my chin. “What was the name of the hotel again? I had a hard time hearing through the customer service rep’s accent.”
He swallows. “The Caterpillar Hotel.”
My jaw drops. “Oh my God. Rouge owns that hotel.”
“What?” Dinah asks.
I nod. “It’s where the waitstaff live when they’re not working at Aces. Rouge bought it years ago.”
“November of 1998?” Harrison asks. “That’s when they stopped using the shampoos from Temper Hair.”
I widen my eyes. “That sounds about right. Rouge’s birthday is in June, and ninety-eight is when she turned eighteen. November is about the time when she would have started learning the ropes, taking on responsibilities.”
“So she bought the hotel and refurbished it for mass housing?”
“I don’t know all the details. I was in middle school at the time. Rouge is six years older than I am.”
Harrison’s forehead wrinkles. “Is it just the waitstaff who live at the hotel?”
“I think so.” I pace the room. “Some of the other employees like DeeDee and Dudley probably hang their hats there as well. I’ve never been, but I’ve overheard Rouge talking about it on occasion. She scans the location once a week. In fact, now that I think about it, that’s what she was doing the night we met.”
Harrison sits down at Alissa’s table, runs his hands through his dark hair. “Do you think she was checking up on Maddox and Alissa?”
“If they’re alive, then it’s possible.” I cross my arms and sit down across the table from him. “But the waitstaff are bused there every morning and night. There’d be a lot of hustle and bustle every day. Surely they would have talked to someone.”
“Not if they were locked away somewhere,” Dinah says, her voice cracking.
“True,” I reply. “And the waitstaff are kept tightly under Rouge’s thumb. They’re instructed to get off the bus and go straight to their rooms. They can only speak to each other once they get to their rooms, and most of them speak different languages, so there isn’t a whole lot of communication going on.”
“Wow.” Harrison lets out a sigh. “So we’ll be checking out the Caterpillar Hotel first thing in the morning then.”
I shake my head. “Harrison, time is of the absolute essence. With each passing day, my sister makes another person disappear. Whether they’re being sent away or killed en masse, I don’t know. But what I do know is I don’t want to give her another second to hurt another person.” I draw in a deep breath, hardening my internal resolve. “We have to go there now. Right now.”