Storm Rising: A Thriller by Chris Hauty

Author:Chris Hauty [Hauty, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thriller
ISBN: 9781982175856
Google: gB9oEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B091BDY7DB
Goodreads: 57553130
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Published: 2022-05-02T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

THE MOTEL MANAGER’S Suzuki Forenza occupies its usual spot behind the office. Jerry Fishbaugh has covered the skeleton shift for the last several days, his regular guy delayed while visiting family in Fort Worth. Something about a sick grandmother. Hayley received this information from the motel manager two days ago when stopping by the office to pay for an additional week’s stay. His chattiness was too obviously a ploy to keep her at the counter for longer than necessary, Fishbaugh’s gaze baldly rapacious. Hayley tolerated the motel manager’s leer only as long as she needed to gather intel. She devised an action plan then and there.

Pulling into the property at the first driveway, Hayley parks behind the office and exits her rental car. She opens the driver’s-side door of the Suzuki, using a slim jim she fashioned from the bracket of a hanging file folder. Popping the trunk lid with a release button on the driver’s door, the deeper state operative stows the Taco Bell box inside and locks up the car again. The El Paso Police Department receives her anonymous tip before she pulls into the parking space in front of her motel room.

Lina Campos, thirty minutes into her shift, pushes a cleaning trolley up the walkway. Hayley gives her a friendly wave as she exits the rental car.

Entering her motel room, Hayley instinctively drops to a half-crouch upon seeing April Wu in the reclining chair between the bed and front window.

“Goddammit!”

“What?” asks April innocently.

Hayley knows better.

“You’ve got to stop doing that. Seriously.”

April, wearing the same cargo pants and black Army Knights hoodie as before, shrugs. Even in the bad light, her sickly pallor is pronounced.

“Gotta admire the tradecraft, right?” she asks.

“No one should take any pride in defeating the security measures in place at the Beverly Crest Motor Inn, April.”

“I do.” Her cocky grin is proof.

“You would.”

Hayley turns to pull open the blinds, flooding the room with the first, unimpeded rays of the morning sun. The dinginess of the motel room is hardly alleviated.

“What are you doing here?” she asks without warmth.

April gestures toward Jerry Fishbaugh’s heap across the parking lot. “A better question is to ask why you’re breaking into cars.”

Hayley releases an exasperated sigh she wishes she could have back.

Her friend’s mocking grin is savage. “Save yourself the heartache, slugger. Assume I know and see everything.”

A police cruiser stops behind the Suzuki, visible through the motel room’s window. Two El Paso patrol officers exit the vehicle and give the motel manager’s car a good walk-around.

Hayley, distracted by April’s intrusion, can’t fully observe the conclusion of her mission to rid Lina Campos of her abuser.

“Let’s get back to what you’re doing here.”

“I’m not the only one who’s concerned about you.” After a pause, April adds, “Looking like shit, by the way.”

“I look like shit?”

April says, “I’ve got the gold-plated excuse, Chill. Never forget that.”

Outside in the parking lot, the two cops leave the Suzuki and walk toward the office door, disappearing from view.

The deeper state operative experiences another surge of weariness.

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