They didn’t laugh. Something unwritten about the decorum that was appropriate for what was happening up the hall kept them from doing that. But they did enjoy Ochoa’s barb, all silently bobbing their heads and smirking.
Rook explained that he had just finished reading the chapter and gone to the kitchen to get his cell phone to call Nikki. He had just picked it up off the counter when he heard the elevator groan to a stop. Rook wasn’t expecting visitors, and when the picks started shimmying in his lock he ran back to the office, figuring he could get out the fire escape. But his window wouldn’t open and he was trapped in that room. Knowing there was a good chance it could be Wolf coming for the chapter, he didn’t know where else to hide it, so he jammed it down his pants.
Ochoa shook his head. “That’s amazing.”
“I know,” said Rook, “I’m surprised there was enough room for it.” When the others groaned, he added, “What? It’s a big chapter.”
By that time, all of them but Nikki had read Cassidy’s climactic pages, so Rook filled her in on the broad strokes of the narrative. If nothing else, it explained the zeal with which Jess Ripton and Rance Eugene Wolf pursued getting their hands on it. The final chapter was the smoking gun that busted Ripton’s client Toby Mills as well as Soleil Gray for a debauched evening culminating in the apparent OD of Reed Wakefield and their cowardly flight from responsibility. The druggy night, celebrities running off and not even calling 911 to get basic medical aid for a companion—that was shocking and sensational by itself. Cassidy had plenty of fireworks right there to guarantee a best seller plus create devastating legal and financial ramifications for all concerned. But the gossip writer took that exposé and shouldered it to the next level. And that level was murder.
Her key was the concierge. Popular with hotel guests, not just for his service but his discretion, Derek Snow was a handler of sorts in his own right. Jess Ripton knew the story of his shooting by Soleil Gray, and therefore saw Derek as a man who took his money and kept his mouth shut. So when Snow came back up to the hotel room from delivering Toby and Soleil to the street, Jess Ripton had reasonable expectation that, for an agreeable sum, Derek Snow would pretend like that night never happened. And Snow, upon accepting the terms, assured The Firewall he needn’t worry about him.
When the slim man in the Western wear arrived to assist with the cleaning, Ripton reinforced the need for silence by having the man from Texas plainly threaten to find him wherever he hid and kill him if he talked.
Things got more dicey when the Texan opened his black bag and took out a stethoscope. Derek was in the living room, wiping down knobs and switches with some special wipes they’d given him, when he heard the cowboy’s voice from the bedroom say, “Shit, Jess, this man’s still alive.”
The concierge said at that point he almost fled the room to call 911. But he was frightened by the chilling threat from the Texan and so he didn’t. Derek Snow continued his fingerprint wipe-down but moved closer to the bedroom door. He looked in once, and they almost saw him so he stayed back, positioning himself so that he was hidden but could see their reflection in the vanity mirror in the bedroom.