Snowbound

FORTY-EIGHT

Devlin stood outside room 429, the corridor empty, her right arm sagging with the weight of the gun.

The high twang of Reynolds’s voice passed easily through the door: “I want you to take that off right now and sit down. You know how much money I’ve made this year?”

“How much?”

There was a sound like a hand clap. “Don’t you fucking say one word to me. Eighty-four million. One year. That moisten you up?”

Devlin thought she heard footsteps coming up the staircase at the other end, hustled into the alcove for a moment to wait, but no one came.

When she returned to the door, she could hear the bed creaking, Reynolds making noise.

Winded, he said, “Feel free to moan or whatever the fuck.”

Her mother moaned.

“You know I could kill you if I wanted?” he said, breathless.

Devlin wiped the tears out of her eyes so she could see, tried but couldn’t stop herself from glancing through the peephole, saw it happening, knew instantly she never should have looked, that the sight of the small, fat man riding her mother was an image she would never expunge, and a deep seed of rage sprouted up in the pit of her stomach, swelling her throat, flooding her eyes.

She put her hand on the doorknob, turned it, the bolt retracting, the room unlocked.

A hairsbreadth from pushing it open and walking inside, she stopped, willing back the rage. She could shoot this man right now, but the gunshot would summon everyone to the fourth floor. There’d be no hiding out until nighttime, then slipping back to the tent to await the return of their bush pilot. It might save her mother in the short term, but it would kill them all in the long.

The bolt slid back into the door frame and Devlin leaned against the wall beside the door.

She wept soundlessly, praying her mother wasn’t present, that she’d managed to transport herself to another place and time—a childhood memory, her wedding day, perhaps a family holiday, like the Christmas they’d spent eight years ago in Tahiti, opening presents at sunrise on the beach.