It was a little strange. No other hotel had ever been booked in that name before. The admin team back at HQ made all hotel bookings, and none of them knew her middle name. She’d tried to phase her middle name out over the years. She was pretty sure her modern ID cards didn’t even have the name on it.
In fact, only one other living person knew Ella’s middle name was April.
And it was the person who was trying to kill her.
***
Mia Ripley flipped over her pillow and slammed her head down in frustration. She’d been struggling to sleep for what seemed like forever, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t clear her brain of intruding thoughts.
What she really needed was her own bed back at home. Everything in the hospital was too sterile, characterless. White on top of white. It was enough to paralyze her with boredom. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d read a novel, but she’d finished a 400-page soppy love story in the time she’d been here already. A Viking’s wife had fallen in love with an English blacksmith, and in doing so became torn between artist and warrior, sensitivity and ferocity. The blacksmith won, thus implying that love always conquered all. It was enough to make her sick.
How was Ella doing? she wondered. The girl had been perfectly fine during the cases she’d covered alone, but Mia could sense that both she and her partner were being trailed. An agent’s intuition was rarely wrong, maybe because they often saw the world through the eyes of the insane. If she was in Tobias’s shoes, now was the opportune moment to strike. Both Mia’s and Ella’s locations were fixed. If Tobias had any informants left inside the FBI, and she was sure that he did, it wouldn’t take long for him to uncover their whereabouts.
Footsteps came down the corridor. Someone gently opened the door and peered inside. One of the nurses.
“I’m awake. You don’t have to be quiet,” Ripley said.
“Just doing my rounds,” the nurse said. “How are you feeling?”
“Bored and alert. Any chance of a drink?”
“I’ll get your man to do it. I’m just in a hurry.”
The nurse’s head disappeared, replaced with that of her designated protector for the night.
“Coffee again?” the officer asked.
“Bang a little whiskey in there too,” said Mia.
“You wish. Back in five,” said the cop and disappeared. Mia lay back down and turned on her TV, deciding to numb her brain with some late-night reality trash. Apparently they said if you hadn’t fallen asleep within twenty-five minutes of hitting the pillow, then you weren’t going to drop off anytime soon. She might as well utilize this incredibly rare period of downtime for something, even something as futile as garbage television. Her screen flashed up with a close-up of an elderly man talking directly to the camera. Mia clicked the ‘info’ button on the TV remote and checked the show details.
The Hunt For Ted Bundy.
Mia groaned. “Jesus Christ,” she sighed. She’d been present for Bundy’s execution back in 1989, one of her first assignments on the job. Well, it was less of an assignment, more of a work outing for federal employees. Things were a lot less corporate back then, she remembered fondly.
Thirty years later, people were still exploiting his name. She wondered if in another thirty years, people would still be talking about Tobias’s crimes.
The thought chilled her, and if she was being truthful, upset her a little too.
Mia turned the TV off, lay back and closed her eyes. She ruminated on the idea, but footsteps down the corridor provided a welcome distraction. The person reached the door, then stood still.
She opened one eye. There was life on the other side of the room, and by her perception the person was standing directly outside the doorway.
Then a click. A creak, and the door opened.
A silhouette crept inside, too tall to be the nurse, too narrow to be the cop.
Someone new.
Her heart rate doubled in speed. She fumbled underneath the bed for her gun but couldn’t locate it. Rookie mistake. The nurse had placed it in her drawers when they’d taken a blood sample earlier. Mia silently cursed, keeping one eye barely open to give the impression she was asleep. In the darkness, the figure wouldn’t be able to tell.
The intruder shut the door behind him. He stepped closer to her bed. Mia gauged his height, weight, profile. This wasn’t anyone she’d seen in the hospital before, but something told her they’d definitely met at some point. Very recently.
Had he come back to finish the job?
Mia flexed her muscles to life. She ignored the throbbing pain in her stomach and shoulder. Both were stitched up but she could still move around providing she endured the constant stabbing pains. If any of the stitches popped, or if the wounds were re-opened, there was a chance she might bleed to death.
It was a risk she’d have to take.