If he returns, call them before engaging.”
Silas hung up.
Wren lowered herself into the chair.
Her knees had apparently made the decision for her.
“I told him it was over six weeks ago,” she said.
Silas sat across from her.
He did not ask for every detail.
People often treated suffering like testimony, as if assistance had to be purchased by recounting enough pain.
He only asked what mattered.
“Does he have a key to your apartment?”
“Not anymore.”
“Does he know where you live?”
“Yes.”
“Family nearby?”
She shook her head.
“Anyone you trust enough to stay with?”
Another shake.
That explained the 47th floor better than anything else could have.
Not recklessness.
Arithmetic.
She had counted doors, cameras and people until this hidden suite became the safest answer available.
Silas looked toward the clock.
3:31 a.m.
“Use the bathroom,” he said.
“Wash your face.
Get dressed.
Nobody is coming onto this floor.”
Wren looked suspicious.
“Then what?”
“Then you sleep.”
She almost laughed.
“I just got caught sleeping in the owner’s bed.”
“And somehow the building remains standing.”
“You’re really not firing me?”
Silas did not answer immediately.
Wren interpreted the silence the way frightened people often did: against herself.
She looked down.
“I understand.”
“No,” Silas said.
“You don’t.”
She raised her eyes.
“You entered a restricted suite through a broken maintenance panel.
That is a security problem.
We will address it.”
Her face tightened.
“You fell asleep because you were hiding from someone who followed you into my hotel while you had not slept in days.
That is a different problem.”
He leaned back.
“I don’t confuse them.”
Wren stared at him for several seconds.
Then she quietly went into the bathroom and closed the door.
The moment the latch clicked, Silas moved.
He opened his laptop, accessed the hotel’s internal incident system and pulled the maintenance history for the east stairwell.
The supposedly sealed panel had been reported defective four times.
Four.
Each ticket had been marked low priority.
