The Midnight Caller (Jack Widow Book 6) Read online

  The boots on his feet were the oldest part of his ensemble. They were a pair of black, quasi work boots, steel-toed. They reminded him of a pair of combat boots, only more stylish. He walked with the legs of his khaki-colored chinos pulled over them.

  Perhaps to someone with fashion sense, they weren’t very fashionable, but they were comfortable and clean. No reason to change them out.

  The doorman asked, “Good afternoon, sir.”

  He reached up for the door handle and pulled it open in a swift, flawless move like he had done a thousand times a day before.

  A rush of warm air brushed across Widow’s face. The Plaza was running a low heating setting.

  It wasn’t overly hot. Considering that it was November, the inside temperature felt just right.

  Widow passed through the doors and into the lobby, which felt like traversing through a gateway to another dimension.

  The word “grand” doesn’t do the interior of the Plaza Hotel justice.

  Widow had never been inside one of those royal Arabian palaces before, but minus the Arabian part, this was probably as close as he would get. There were giant crystal chandeliers, soft pastel tones, a high ostentatious ceiling, and huge pillars, opened up to a dining area.

  There was a huge skylight in the cathedral-style ceiling, along with good-size antique, Victorian-style tables and oriental rugs and striking Italian tiles.

  The restaurant was steadily full of travelers, eating late lunches before they headed out.

  Widow looked around the lobby, saw the desk to check in or check out. The air warmed up more around him as he approached the desk. To his right a crowd of people stood around a politician. Must have been someone important too, because Widow noticed the Secret Service agents before he saw the crowd. Sixteen years as a Navy SEAL will do that.

  There were only two visible. Maybe there were more, hidden in the small crowd. Maybe they were already on the street, waiting with a car to chauffer the guy around.

  One guy stood, obvious, near the politician, facing forward, through the crowd of people. The other was behind him, standing with his back to the wall.

  There were lights and a cameraman and a local reporter interviewing the guy.

  Widow wondered who it was.

  He watched for a moment until he could get a look at the guy. It was some gray-haired man, clean-shaven and polished. He wore a suit with no tie, as did the two Secret Service agents.

  The mass of people was on both sides of the journalist and the politician.

  After the journalist asked a couple of questions, which Widow couldn’t hear, the politician shook her hand and then the hand of the cameraman and then started to make his way to the exit, shaking hands, waving, and smiling for quick pictures with smart phone cameras.

  Widow did not recognize him. The guy was probably a New York congressman or a senator.

  The line to the lobby check-in desk moved up and Widow was the next person.

  A woman who looked more like a girl than a woman, with respect to age, waved Widow forward.

  The first thing that she looked at, blatantly, were the bottoms of his sleeve tattoos that shone from under his pushed-up sleeves.

  He wasn’t sure if she was checking them out because it wasn’t normal to see tattoos in a place like The Plaza, or if it was because she liked them.

  In a polite, slightly chromatic voice, like she had been programmed or something, she said, “Hello, sir.”

  “Hello.”

  “Can I help you?”

  Widow caught the crowd from the politician scattering, breaking up and moving on.

  “Yes.”

  She smiled and waited.

  “I was told that you might have a package for me?”

  “What room are you in?” the girl asked and moved her hands into the typing position over a black keyboard resting on a brown, polished countertop, behind the lobby desk.

  “I don’t have a room.”

  She paused, moved her hands away from the keyboard.

  “We only hold package for guests.”

  “Can you check anyway? I was told there’d be something here for me?”

  “What’s your name, sir?”

  “Jack Widow.”

  The clerk moved her hands back over the keyboard and typed in his name. She stared at a computer screen that Widow could not see.

  After a click of the mouse, a second click, and a pause, she said, “Here it is. Widow. Did you say that you don’t have a room?”

  “No room.”

  “It says you do.”

  Widow looked confused, said, “What?”

  “It looks like you have a Terrace Suite.”

  “I do?”

  “Yeah. It was booked for you this morning.”

  “It was?”

  “Is there a mistake?”

  Widow didn’t know what to say. Rachel Cameron got him a suite at The Plaza for his birthday. And it was called the Terrace Suite, which sounded expensive. Then again all the rooms in The Plaza sounded expensive. They could have called it the “Janitor’s Closet” and it would have sounded expensive.

  “The room is paid for?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then no mistake,” he said and smiled.

  The clerk smiled back and returned her gaze to the computer screen. She hit the return key a couple of times and clicked the mouse.

  She turned around, walked over to a counter behind her and opened a drawer. She came out with a key card and turned back to him. She swiped the card through a small, black machine and smiled.

  She took out a thin cardstock envelope and slipped the key card into a slit, folded it and took out a black marker. She handwrote something on the side of the envelope and handed it to Widow.

  “Take the elevator up to the ninth floor. Follow the signs. This is your room number,” she said and pointed to the number that she had written on the envelope.

  Widow looked down at the number. It was nine-eleven, which made him think of the terrible terrorist attack that had happened over a decade earlier. A natural thing to think of. In fact, he thought of it often because there had been many, many times that he would look at a watch or a wall clock and see that the current time had been nine eleven. An unfortunate, constant reminder.

  He made no remark to her about it. Instead, he reached down and took the envelope and the keycard and thanked her and turned to the elevators. He walked through the lobby, casually glancing. Looking left. Looking right. Making no clear sign that he was interested in any particular thing.

  The Secret Service guys and the reporter and the politician, whoever he was, had gone. But there was still a pair of guys left, sitting on a pair of expensive, antique leather chairs. They sat facing the entrance and the lobby front desk.

  They wore similar clothes. Expensive Oxford shoes. Expensive chinos, one brown, one black. The guy on the left had a black knit sweater, sleeves brushed up like Widow’s. The other guy had a white polo shirt under a black blazer. Both looked expensive.

  They wore silver watches, one with a traditional face, and the other with a digital face and loaded with buttons and probably diver features that were completely useless to the guy in real life.

  Both guys were built a lot better than most of the men who walked through the lobby.

  They spoke casually to each other. Looking around. Checking the entrance. And checking the elevators. Checking the fire door.

  These guys were staking out the place. Widow knew that for sure.

  They obviously weren’t Secret Service, nor were they FBI or NYPD. Their outfits were too expensive for NYPD. And FBI wouldn’t stick two guys in the lobby, not so obvious. Not so close to each other. They would’ve had only one, if that. Maybe they would’ve had a whole team outside, on the street. That would’ve made sense. They would’ve surveilled from a fake utility truck or a delivery van. They would’ve had a chopper in the air for a serious bust.

  These guys looked government or former governm
ent. Widow considered CIA or NSA, which didn’t seem legal since neither is supposed to operate on American soil, not in the stake-out sense.

  And these guys were not street thugs. Not in here. Not like the Irish guys that he’d already run into. No way.

  They would never come into a place like this. Not in a million years.

  The only other option remaining was private security, which made sense to Widow. A couple of clean-cut, rough guys with blatant military backgrounds. That was a high probability.

  Then again, maybe they were just a pair of veteran army buddies. On vacation. Hanging out in the lobby of a hotel in New York City, waiting for their wives. Could be true. Maybe the wives ran off to a local spa. Getting their nails done. Getting back massages. Doing vacation things.

  Widow was in The Plaza, led there by his former boss. She had led him astray before. She had manipulated him to do work for his old unit before. Had she sent him here for something other than a friendly birthday gift?

  That was highly plausible.

  And what were the odds that he had seen Secret Service in the lobby and now a pair of private-looking security guys, trying to blend in. Coincidence?

  Could be. Stranger things had happened.

  And really, was it that unusual? New York City is a major hub of all kinds of activity in North America. Just this summer, he had been there. He had been to the FBI headquarters.

  Anything was possible.

  Widow glanced at the two former military guys. If these two were some kind of private security, they weren’t armed. Not that he could see.

  There were no visible gun bulges in their waistbands. Not at their ankles. Not their pockets. No signs of holsters. No signs of handguns.

  The one guy wearing the blazer might’ve had a gun tucked into his inside pocket. There was definitely no shoulder rig. Widow would’ve seen it because of the way the guy moved, checked his watch.

  Widow’s best guess was that they might have been sitting on their guns. They could have been tucked neatly away behind them at the smalls of their backs. Might have been carrying small handguns, the easily concealable kind.

  Widow looked forward at the elevators. He reached them, stopped in front and pressed the button and waited.

  He did not look back at the lobby.

  After a long moment, the right-side elevator came down to the first floor and stopped. The doors sucked open and Widow waited for the occupants to unload.

  Two young ladies stepped off.

  Widow stepped on.

  The elevator smelled of fresh daisies and perfume, and maybe a little cologne mixed in, that likely cost more than his whole wardrobe, which was not to say expensive because he had spent less than fifty bucks on his whole outfit.

  Back in the United Kingdom, a long, long time ago, Widow had dated a Dutch model. Not of the Victoria’s Secret, famous runway variety, but certainly on her way. And she had tons of perfume. Most of it probably free to her. A perk of the industry, Widow supposed. Kind of like how he got free bullets for being on a SEAL team.

  Even though the stuff came to her free to use, Widow had looked at the price stickers, slapped on the boxes that the bottles came in, a force of habit.

  Some of the prices on the perfume boxes were frightening.

  Jack Widow had never really been a man with low self-esteem. Life had enough tribulations without walking around feeling bad about yourself. But having seen the prices of things that that model was used to getting for free sure did make him feel like he had been put in his place.

  At the time, they were basically just having fun. But there was no future between them. He would have never been able to provide her with the luxuries that she had grown accustomed.

  He remembered having those kinds of doubts. The right thing to have done would have been to talk to her about them. Maybe she was above all that. Maybe she would have told him that he was crazy for thinking she only cared about her lifestyle.

  He never did talk to her about it.

  Turned out it would not have made a bit of difference anyway.

  One day she had told him she was going to Paris for work. She never came back. He remembered reading about her later on. She had married some rich German guy with a famous last name. Not a celebrity name in the Hollywood sense, but rather in a wealthy family sense. They had old money, a lot of it. And this guy stood to inherit all of it.

  Widow pressed the button for the ninth floor.

  The doors paused for a long second and then closed.

  CHAPTER 17

  THE HOTEL SUITE had a set of French windows that faced out over a courtyard. Not a Central Park view, but not bad either.

  Soft music played low from the speakers of a smart television. Widow had searched for the music channels and left it on the first thing that he found. Which had been either a station that catered to the light jazz crowd or simply the softer music people. He wasn’t sure.

  He was not an expert on music. Jazz was a type of music that no one claimed to like because most of the people who “liked” jazz always said that they “loved” it.

  Jazz fans were mostly collectors and zealots. To Widow, it was okay.

  The music might’ve been soft lounge music as well.

  Whatever, he let it play. It was perfect for a quiet, tranquil mood.

  He opened a French door and looked out at the balcony. There were two chairs and a little patio table.

  He stepped outside with a bottle of champagne that he took from a small refrigerator and a rocks glass. No ice.

  He popped the cork and poured a nice glass, stared out over the interior courtyard and the reflecting pool, left the bottle out on the table top. He did not use the ice bucket.

  It had been a long couple of days. Except for his run-in with the Irish mob wannabes, it had been a great two days. He had actually enjoyed himself quite a bit.

  The thought of going out for his birthday had occurred to him. He had not had anything to eat since breakfast. He should have gone out to eat, since a birthday only comes once a year. But he wasn’t hungry. He felt more tired than anything.

  Widow decided to drink a glass of champagne and people-watch.

  Across the courtyard, four floors down, he saw a handsome couple. They drank to the bottom of a red wine bottle and laughed and kissed every few minutes. They exchanged loving, soft touches and looks with each other between kisses.

  The whole affair made Widow experience a sensation that he hadn’t felt in a long, long time—loneliness. His was a life of solitude, a life uninterrupted. He couldn’t imagine feeling beholden to someone else.

  Widow enjoyed the company of other people. Especially the fairer sex, but he had never felt that need that he saw in couples, from time to time. He saw it in them. It was that obvious bond that lovers had. The kind of can’t live without someone sort of thing.

  It was a beautiful thing. He admired it as much as any other lonely person did.

  It was that thing called love.

  On the flipside, that kind of thing was fleeting. He saw it every day, on trains, on buses, in parks, on the sidewalks, even in the company of the drivers who picked him up from the sides of American interstates.

  The commonality of the thing called love that he saw in each and every one of them, and in the couple, across from him, was that they were almost always in a honeymoon phase with another person.

  Widow had never really been in love, not the imagined, storybook version of the concept. Not the kind of thing where two people meet, fall in love, and wind up marrying until they grow old and die.

  That sort of thing seemed almost impossible nowadays because of technology and culture. Widow knew that.

  Still, seeing this couple did make him a little envious.

  Widow looked away from them and stared around the interior of the hotel.

  He saw two men sitting a couple of rooms down from him. They two were on a romantic weekend in New York City. He saw that right off the bat. They kissed each other on
the lips. Not a loving, lustful, romantic embrace, like the two lovers across from him. It was more of the traditional they had been together for a long time kind of kiss.

  Afterward, they peeked over at him. He nodded at them in a quick, polite gesture and turned his attention back to gazing around.

  He drank half of another glass of the champagne and decided to stay in and head to bed.

  Widow got up from the chair, grabbed the half-empty bottle, and climbed back in the room. He slid the bottle back into the door shelf of the mini fridge and left the glass on top. There was no sink or kitchenette in the room.

  He left the window open. Even though the breeze that swept in was technically artificial, he liked it. It was enough to blow the curtains around in a slow-moving wave.

  Widow turned down the bed, which was tucked very tight. He stripped off his clothes and switched off the lights and dumped himself down.

  In seconds, he was fast asleep.

  CHAPTER 18

  HER WRISTS WERE BLOODY and bruised and hurt like hell. They would be black and red for days, maybe weeks, after she got free. If she ever got free.

  Her vision was blurry and she was dazed. It wasn’t from being slugged in the face, but she had been, a couple of times.

  She was dazed because they had injected her with something. She remembered that.

  They had only gotten her twice, two days ago and last night. Both times were around midnight, but she did not know that. She only knew the first night was midnight.

  They had ambushed her in her hotel.

  She had checked into the hotel under a fake name, one of many that she had been assigned.

  She was not sure what was going on. The only thing that she knew for sure was that she had been betrayed. Had to have been.

  No one else knew where she was.

  There was a slim possibility that her kidnappers were her own countrymen, dangerous guys from the agency that sent her, but she doubted that.

  They would not have ambushed her like this. Certainly, they would not have locked her up in the bathroom of her hotel room.