Killing Rain Read Free

started.”
    “Lot of nasty people in the world, man, that’s all,” he said,giving me the grin. “I mean a sheep is one thing, but an alligator? I’m surprised you’d think so little of me.”
    I didn’t know how Dox was able to maintain his constant good cheer even as he prepared to go operational. When I’m gearing up, I get serious, even dour. Harry, my martyred hacker friend, had always been nervous helping me with ops, and had often provoked an unfamiliar clownishness in me. But Dox and I seemed to polarize the opposite way.
    But he’d done well so far. I wasn’t yet confident in his social engineering skills. He was too consistently brash, too direct, and, I had to admit to myself, his style was just too different from mine. Getting Manny’s room number had been a test. I’d resisted the urge to tell him how to go about it, and he had come up with something close to what I’d thought of myself. More important, something that worked. It wouldn’t come easily to me, but I’d have to try to give him more slack as we went along, as he continued to prove himself.
    “Let’s see,” I said, closing my eyes. “He’s in nine-fourteen. That’s around the corner from the elevators. Unless the bodyguard is positioned at the elevators while Manny is in his room, I ought to be able to get some video in place.”
    “Yeah, nice having a way to know when he’s leaving. I hate hanging around in the open, waiting for someone to go out.”
    In the dark, though, I knew Dox could wait for days. He had the kills to prove it.
    I opened my laptop bag and took out a camera, a wireless unit about twenty millimeters square and weighing less than an ounce. I clicked it on, then worked the laptop’s keyboard for a minute, watching as the screen filled with input from the unit. “It’s transmitting all right from here,” I said, “but at nine hundred megahertz it’s only rated to about a thousand feet. I might have to install a couple of repeaters along the way. You wait here andmonitor the screen. Tell me if you’re getting reception and the right view of the elevators once I’ve got it in place.”
    “Roger that.”
    We took earpieces from the laptop bag and slipped them in place. I walked over to the door and checked through the peephole. The hallway was empty.
    I walked out, hearing a loud clack as the door closed behind me. “You there?” I asked quietly.
    “Roger that,” I heard back. Okay, the commo gear was still working.
    I took the elevator down to the lobby level, not wanting to go to Manny’s floor directly from mine. To satisfy anyone who might be watching through the dome security camera peeking down from the elevator ceiling, I got out and bought a pack of gum at the gift shop, then came back and headed up to the ninth floor. There were no stops along the way, and a minute later the doors opened on nine. I walked out and looked around. The hallway was empty.
    There was a wooden credenza against the wall opposite the elevators with a mirror behind it. I walked over, supported myself against the credenza with my left hand, and ran the fingers of my right through my hair. There was another dome camera mounted on the ceiling in front of the elevators, and if anyone was watching right then, all they would see was a man concerned with his appearance. In fact, I had slipped the adhesive-backed unit underneath the left edge of the credenza, where it would have a wide-angle view of the approach to the elevators.
    “How’s the image?” I asked quietly.
    “No go. Too grainy. Signal’s falling off before it reaches the receiver. I think we need the repeater to boost it.”
    “Okay. Hang on.”
    I walked down the hallway for a few paces, then returned to the elevator, just another hotel guest who’d absentmindedly gotten off on the wrong floor. This time, I stopped on six. As I got off, I checked my room key and looked around in slightly theatrical confusion, thinking, Gosh, these floors all look the same,