The clock on the nightstand ticked toward zero and the heat from the last few hours was gone, like it had never existed at all.
Wes and Colleen lay on the wrecked sheets with sweat drying on their skin and neither of them said a word, because there was nothing left to say that the night had not already said, and the champagne had burned off hours ago leaving Colleen staring at the ceiling with wide empty eyes like a woman trying to gather the pieces of her life off the floor and failing.
BZZT!
The Ledger lit up on the nightstand.
[Appointment 714 complete. Performance rewards have been processed. Please return to your assigned suite.]
Before either of them could move, the room’s intercom crackled to life with a voice that was smooth and cold and completely inhuman.
“Guest 714. Your reservation has ended. You have thirty minutes to vacate the premises. Please ensure all personal belongings are removed.”
The silence after the voice was worse than the voice.
Twenty minutes ago this room had been the most human place Wes had ever stood in, and now a machine had swept through and declared it over, like flipping a light switch.
They did not look at each other.
They did not talk.
Wes stood up with his joints aching in places he did not know could ache and gathered his clothes off the floor while the expensive suit turned back into a costume somebody had forced onto him.
He wanted to say something, anything, but his throat was locked shut, so he shoved the charcoal card and the Ledger into his jacket, stepped into the hallway, and heard the door click shut behind him like a cell.
He made it two steps down the corridor before his back found the wall and his legs quit.
He slid down the wallpaper until he was sitting on the carpet with his knees up and his hands over his face, the cold of the wall pressing through his shirt and the whole floor smelling like carpet cleaner and money.
“What the hell did I just do?” said Wes.
Nobody answered.
At the end of the hall a housekeeping cart sat staged with fresh linens and folded towels, already waiting, like the floor had known the exact minute the appointment would die.
Somewhere down the corridor an elevator chimed and swallowed somebody’s laughter.
His aunt.
The only person on the planet who had ever slipped him bus fare without making him beg for it and he had just…
He pressed his palms into his eyes until he saw spots, then made himself stand up and straighten his jacket, because the machine had given him thirty minutes and apparently even guilt had a checkout time.
Inside room 714 the shower was already hissing.
Colleen stood under the spray with her forehead against the cold tile while the hot water hammered her shoulders and did absolutely nothing about the marks.
She caught her reflection in the fogged mirror and wiped it clear with one hand, then went completely still.
Bruises.
She pressed her palm flat over them and remembered exactly how every single one had gotten there, and her stomach turned over, warm and slow, which was the part that scared her most.
“It was a mistake,” said Colleen to the mirror.
Her voice cracked on the second word.
“I wish that were true,” she whispered.
She turned away from the reflection because she could not stand looking at herself hoping the words were not a lie, and the steam swallowed the whole room behind her.
Back in his suite the door clicked shut on empty quiet, and Wes stood in the middle of it while the Ledger buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out and the bank screen was already open.
[Deposit received: $2,500.00]
He stared at the number and did the math without wanting to.
“$1,320 from this morning, $2,500 from tonight.”
” $3,720 in a single day.”
His whole month of slinging energy drinks and lottery tickets behind the register did not add up to that.
“Holy shit,” said Wes.
“That’s a month’s pay in one afternoon.”
Something strange happened in his chest while he stared at the screen.
The guilt was still there, sitting behind his ribs like a swallowed stone, but it was getting quieter by the second and the adrenaline was getting louder.
His hands had been shaking in the hallway and they were not shaking now.
He watched the number sit there glowing and the stone dissolved a little more, and a grin crawled onto his face before he could stop it.
Then a second notification slid down.
[Congratulations, 714. You have passed the recruitment assessment. Your membership is now official. Suite 714 is yours indefinitely, for as long as you remain in service.]
He read it three times.
Membership, indefinitely and the number.
The same 714.
He fell backward onto the king bed and watched the ceiling fan spin slow circles while his whole life rearranged itself around a number.
One afternoon and he had gone from a line in a budget that didn’t balance to a man with a suite and a ledger and a balance that made Walt’s whole year look like pocket change, and something ugly and hot moved through him at the thought.
His conscience was still screaming somewhere under all of it, but running away was not an option with that kind of money sitting in his pocket, so he got up and took the fastest shower of his life and got dressed while the Ledger started ringing in his hand.
“Hey, you passed, congrats man,” said Reggie the second the call connected.
“Yeah, I just got the text. Where are you?”
“Same building, bro, I live here. This is the life, right? Room 911, get up here, best number in the place, if there’s an emergency you just call 911, haha.”
He found the door ten minutes later and Reggie swung it open with a grin so wide it looked painful, went straight in for a hug, and Wes just stood there stiff as a plank until Reggie pulled back and squinted at him.
“Whoa. What’s wrong? I thought this was what you wanted.”
“The client,” said Wes.
“The one in 714. Do you know who she was?”
“Um, yeah. She’s a regular, goes by Dana,” said Reggie while he wandered back toward his kitchen in his socks.
“I’ve handled her a few times, why?”
The blood rushed so fast to Wes’s head that the whole room tilted.
“You’ve handled her before? Many times?”
“Yeah, a few. Why, is she someone you know?” Reggie laughed and tossed him a beer from the fridge.
“Last I checked you only had that aunt of yours and Paige, so why the face?”
Wes stared at him while the room spun, because Reggie thought he had spent the afternoon with Dana Whitlock, and Reggie had no idea Dana had handed her card to somebody else, and the Company had no idea either.
They had sent a kid up to room 714 on the strength of a name on a ticket and never once asked if the name was real.
“You think it was Dana in that room.”
“Wasn’t it? That’s whose name is on the ticket,” said Reggie.
Wes looked down at the beer in his hand and understood the shape of his new life in one clean second..
Reggie was standing there laughing about Dana’s tips while the woman he had actually been with sat two floors down in her own shower staring at bruises Wes had put there.
The Company didn’t know.
Reggie didn’t know.
Nobody in this whole building knew a single true thing about him, and the one thing he knew could never leave his mouth, not tonight, not ever, because the truth came with a price tag and he had just learned exactly how much he was willing to pay.
“Hey,” said Reggie, misreading the silence completely as he bumped the fridge shut with his hip.
“First night’s always the weirdest, trust me. Drink. You hit the jackpot your first time out.”
He raised his bottle across the counter.
“To 714. Welcome to the family, man.”
Wes lifted his glass, and on the counter between them the Ledger buzzed, the screen lighting up the dark kitchen.