The White Gold Score (A Daniel Faust Novella) Read Free Page A

the words that came out of my mouth. I
thought
them, but they got twisted and tangled on the way to my throat and what actually burst from my lips was, “Don’t hurt her. Promise me you won’t hurt her.”
    The shadow raised his gun and pulled the trigger twice. The first shot went wide. The second punched through my rib cage, splintering bone, and sent a jagged chunk of metal slicing into my heart.
    I collapsed to the floor. My back to the hot tub, clutching my chest as I struggled to breathe through sudden, roaring agony. My hand came away wet and smeared a trail of crimson across the tile. The man with the gun stood over me, impassive.
    My phone. My phone was on the nightstand. I tried to get up. Couldn’t. So I flopped onto my belly and pulled myself one burning inch at a time toward the bathroom door, every strained breath feeling like a serrated knife twisting in my chest. I left a slug trail of blood behind me. My vision went red, then gray. Then it went black.
    The last thing I felt was my cheek against the cold, wet tile, and my final breath shuddering free of my body.

3.
    Daylight.
    Daylight pushed through the heavy curtains, drifting through the silent penthouse and resting its gentle hands upon my skin.
    I opened my eyes.
    I lay where I had fallen, sprawled naked on the bathroom floor, and I pushed myself to my knees with a groan. No blood. No bullet, though I poked at my chest with questioning fingers to make sure. I ached all over—ached about as much as I’d expect after falling on a porcelain floor and sleeping there—but the wounds I’d suffered only lingered in my mind.
    No
, I thought, stalking into the bedroom and reaching for my pants,
not just in my mind
.
    I’d heard two shots. Felt one. I pulled on my clothes and dug a penknife from my pocket, turned around and marched right back into the bathroom. I paused on the threshold, where the shooter had stood, raising my hand with my fingers pointed like a gun. Squinting at the far wall behind the hot tub.
    I climbed into the empty tub, crouched down, and ran my fingers along the wall. There. A fresh square of plaster and paint, the color a near-perfect match. I dug in with my knife, scraping away chunks of plaster to get at the ugly truth under the penthouse’s skin.
    A crumpled slug nestled in the wall, the tiny chunk of metal standing as a mute witness to the murder that had been committed in room 2804. A crime, I was damn sure, that Greenbriar hadn’t bothered reporting to the police. Bad press was worse than homicide.
    “Died of a heart attack, huh?” I muttered as I dug out the slug and pocketed it. “You son of a bitch.”
    Out in the lobby, a new receptionist was working at the check-in desk. She gave me a smile as I walked over.
    “Good morning, Mr. Faust. Mr. Greenbriar said I should be expecting you, and that I should call him as soon as you, um”—she nodded up the hallway—“finish taking care of things.”
    “We’re not quite there yet. The night the occupant in twenty-eight-oh-four died, who was working the front desk?”
    “I was,” she said with a furtive glance over my shoulder. “But please, can we keep it down?”
    I rested my fingertips on the desk, leaning in.
    “Do you remember anything at all about that night, anything that struck you as unusual? Any unexplainable sounds, or people who shouldn’t have been on this floor?”
    “No, not really.” Then she frowned. “Now that you mention it, there was something. Around eleven o’clock I heard two quick, loud slams, like someone having trouble getting their door shut. I poked my head up the hall, but I didn’t see anything so I just forgot about it.”
    Two slamming doors. Like the sound of two bullets from a nine-millimeter with a cheap silencer.
    “And when was the body found?”
    “The next morning. One of the housekeepers found him. We called in Mr. Greenbriar right away, and he took care of…the arrangements.”
    “Can I talk to this