“Look, I’m not trying to be difficult, but I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The tall one glanced past the bartender to the storeroom door; they’d seen him closing it behind him as they’d entered from the lobby. The agent nodded for his muscular partner to have a look.

“You can’t go back there.” Conrad felt a trickle of sweat feathering down his back.

“And why is that?”

“It’s hotel property.”

The tall man grinned. “And?”

The hefty one was behind the bar now. He gave Conrad a snide pat on the cheek, then opened the storeroom door.

His partner said, “It’s in your best interests to offer full cooperation. I’m a little disappointed I have to explain that.”

“You get out first.”

Middleton waved Marcus onto the sidewalk with the Beretta. Opening his own door, he sent one last shower of broken glass tumbling, the spiny fragments toppling down his sleeve. Closing the door behind him, he told Traci through the jagged maw where the window had been, “Wait here. There’s something I left behind. We’ll only be a minute.”

The young woman said nothing, just sat there gripping the wheel, seething.

Middleton plunged the pistol into his sport-coat pocket, taking Marcus’s elbow and gripping it tight. “Come on. We’ll make this quick.”

They were halfway between the street and the hotel’s revolving door when the car peeled out behind them. Both of them turned, watching Traci flee, Middleton feeling his jaw drop. The car reached the corner in one long burst of speed, then a squeal of brakes, a swerving turn. Gone.

Before Middleton could gather his wits, the youth shook off his grip and swept a cracking left across Middleton’s jaw, then darted off, running as fast as his stick-thin legs could carry him. Reeling back on his heels, Middleton gathered his balance but then just stared, rubbing his stubbled chin as the scrawny boy vanished down the wet street.

An hour’s gone by, Middleton thought, since I last stood here, this very spot. Nothing’s changed. Except, perhaps, everything.

He entered the lobby wiping his face with his handkerchief, hoping he didn’t look as raw and untethered as he felt. The desk clerk, recognizing him from earlier, smiled blankly. A well-dressed woman with a slim valise, possibly a call girl, waited at the elevator.