ALICE Ch 387

The elevator doors close. Now Julieta looks serious.

Aki watches the floor numbers tick upward. “Orlova reserved a larger number of rooms in advance than is typical for her entourage. Some of those rooms are in use by her personal guests. Others are in use, but the timestamps on people coming and going do not match up with what is typical.”

“Like someone is hiding there?” Ingrid asks, lighting up.

Aki’s reply is to fold her arms. “Two rooms have no movement at all. The doors have not been opened. One has been opened, but only at six-hour intervals.”

“Like if someone was having food delivered,” Ingrid says, smacking her fist into her palm. She lights up brighter still.

Aki doesn’t reply to that.

The doors open, and Aki unbuttons her jacket as she steps out and looks in either direction. A man supports a very drunk young woman in a short, glittery dress, who really ought to take her heels off. She giggles as they stumble toward a room. Aki turns the other way.

Julieta and Ingrid follow her to a door, where Aki does not hesitate for a second to swipe the card she created at the front desk. She pushes through into a room like every other one.

Julieta and Ingrid bump into her as she stops short.

Before them stands a woman wearing khakis and a tank top. Her biceps bulge and her eye makeup is spectacular for someone cutting such a butch figure. This is one of their predecessors as the FUTA pit crew: one of Irina Orlova’s amazons.

“That is not Lotte,” Ingrid whispers helpfully in Aki’s ear.

“We’re looking for our friend, Lotte. Can you help us?” Aki asks.

The amazon replies by pulling a stun gun from her pocket.

Julieta’s eyes pop open, and Ingrid clutches Aki’s left arm.

“Let go, please,” Aki says. Ingrid does so.

“We should go,” the blonde says, backing toward the door.

“Don’t move,” the amazon orders in thickly accented English.

Aki chews her lip for a moment, then draws a pistol from the small of her back and levels it at the amazon. “Kneel against the wall with your hands behind your head. You’re big, but that just means my people get a sore back when they dump your body.”

The amazon hesitates, clearly not expecting to find herself outgunned.

Wearing twin expressions of disbelief, Ingrid and Julieta edge away from Aki.

Slowly, the amazon goes to the wall and kneels. She tosses her stun gun aside. Aki flicks Julieta a look, and she scurries forward to grab it.

Aki takes it from her. “Ingrid, look in the bathroom.”

Ingrid opens the bathroom door and gasps, then rushes in. Aki backs up two steps to look for herself. Lotte is handcuffed to the fall bar in the tub. One of her eyes is swollen shut, and her shirt is bloodstained.

Aki grimaces. She was afraid of this.