Chapter 2 - THE WALL THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN COLD
Nobody spoke.
The projector hummed behind Trent Bole.
Josie kept one hand on the green-blue notebook and the other lightly against the back of the empty chair Emmett had offered her.
Emmett leaned forward.
“What else?”
Josie glanced at Warren.
Not for permission.
For confirmation that she was not imagining how strange the room had become.
Warren nodded once.
“The east-wing alarms happen after the steam has been running two hours,” she said. “But the detectors that trigger aren’t always near the pipes.”
Trent exhaled sharply.
“We’ve already established—”
Emmett lifted one finger.
Trent stopped.
Josie opened the notebook again.
“Three weeks ago, room 1816 alarmed at 2:14 a.m. There was no smoke. No guest complaint. But the wall behind the wardrobe was hot.”
“How hot?” Cormac asked.
“I couldn’t keep my palm against it.”
Trent frowned.
“That could be normal radiant heat.”
“In a wall with no steam riser behind it?”
Warren’s expression changed.
Josie noticed.
“So did I,” she said.
She turned a page.
“Room 1916. Same wall. Eight nights later.”
Another page.
“Room 2016. Same line upward.”
Cormac stepped closer to the screen.
“Stacked rooms.”
“Yes.”
Emmett looked at Trent.
“What’s behind that wall?”
“Service chase.”
“For?”
“Electrical conduit. Low-voltage systems. Some old communication wiring.”
“Steam?”
“No.”
The room became very quiet.
Emmett looked back at Josie.
“What made you touch the wall?”
“A guest asked me whether the hotel had heated walls.”
Cormac almost smiled.
Josie did not.
“He was eighty-three. Mr. Larkin. Nice man. Complains about pillows but tips everybody.”
Warren looked down.
“He called maintenance too.”
Trent turned toward him.
“I don’t remember that call.”
“You weren’t on nights.”
“I receive reports.”
Warren met his eyes.
“Apparently not all of them.”
That landed harder than shouting would have.
Emmett stood.
“Show me.”
Trent immediately objected.
“Mr. Kavanaugh, we can have engineering inspect it during scheduled access.”
Emmett picked up his coat.
“I’m scheduled now.”
Ten minutes later, they were riding the service elevator to the eighteenth floor.
Josie stood near the back.
Her prosthetic clicked softly once when the elevator shifted.
Emmett heard it.
He said nothing.
Trent watched the floor numbers with the expression of a man calculating.
Room 1816 was unoccupied.
Cormac had front desk clear it before they arrived.
Josie walked straight to the wardrobe.
“Here.”
She placed her palm against the wallpaper.
Then removed it.
“Not hot now.”
“The boilers have been cycling less than an hour,” Warren said.
Trent folded his arms.
“Which proves nothing.”
Josie crouched carefully.
Emmett saw the slight tightening around her mouth as her prosthetic shifted.
Then she pointed at the baseboard.
“Does that?”
A narrow strip of wallpaper had browned along the lower edge.
Not enough for a casual guest to notice.
Enough that Emmett did.
Warren knelt beside her.
He touched it.
Then smelled his fingers.
“Insulation.”
Trent’s face changed for less than a second.
Josie caught it.
So did Emmett.
“Open the wall,” Emmett said.
Trent straightened.
“You can’t just tear open a guest-room wall.”
Emmett looked at him.
“It belongs to me.”
“It could create code issues.”
“Then we’ll discover those too.”
Warren fetched tools.
When the first section of drywall came away, dust fell across the carpet.
Behind it ran several lines of conduit.
One was discolored.
The insulation around another had hardened and cracked.
Warren aimed his flashlight deeper into the chase.
“Jesus.”
“What?” Cormac asked.
Warren reached inside.
He pulled out a short section of wrapped cable.
The outer coating had partially melted.
Josie did not look triumphant.
She looked frightened.
“That’s why the alarms are reacting?”
“Maybe,” Warren said. “Heat buildup can affect systems nearby. But this—”
He turned the cable.
A printed manufacturing code appeared beneath the dust.
Emmett crouched.
“Read it.”
Warren did.
Then he went still.
“That batch was recalled.”
“When?”
“Years ago.”
Trent spoke too quickly.
“That doesn’t mean this installation was part of the recall.”
Warren looked at him.
“The code does.”
Cormac took out his phone.
Emmett stopped him.
“Photograph everything. Don’t send it anywhere yet.”
Josie’s eyes moved toward him.
“You think somebody knew?”
“I think somebody signed something.”
Trent stepped toward the door.
“I need to contact legal.”
“No.”
Emmett’s voice remained calm.
Trent stopped.
“No one contacts anyone until I understand how recalled wiring ended up inside a hotel renovated under my company’s name.”
Warren stared into the wall.
“The east-wing renovation was seven years ago.”
Josie’s fingers tightened around her notebook.
Seven years.
The same year she had started at the Ardmore.
Emmett saw the movement.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Miss Malloy.”
She hesitated.
Then opened the notebook to the back.
There were several pages she rarely used.
Not maintenance observations.
Personal things.
A grocery list.
A doctor’s appointment crossed out.
Measurements for a replacement prosthetic socket she could not afford.
And, between two pages, the corner of an old envelope.
Emmett recognized the handwriting before she had even fully removed it.
He had seen that handwriting on birthday cards.
On notes left beside breakfast plates when he was a boy.
On the last Christmas gift he had received before his father died.
His expression changed.
Cormac saw it first.
“Emmett?”
Josie looked from him to the envelope.
“What is it?”
“Where did you get that?”
She instinctively pulled it closer.
“From my father.”
“What was his name?”
“Patrick Malloy.”
Warren closed his eyes.
Emmett stood slowly.
Patrick Malloy.
A name from twenty years of company records.
A name attached to engineering inspections.
A man who had worked for Kavanaugh Corporation until his death seven years earlier.
Emmett had attended the funeral.
For twelve minutes.
He remembered rain.
A dark church.
Patrick’s widow thanking him for coming.
But he had never met Josie.
Or had not remembered her.
“My father worked for your family,” Josie said.
“Yes.”
“He told me to give you this if…”
She stopped.
“If what?”
“If the hotel ever started doing something it couldn’t explain.”
Nobody moved.
Trent’s face had gone pale.
Josie looked at him.
Then at Emmett.
“My father gave me this three days before he died.”
Emmett extended his hand.
Josie did not give him the letter.
“Why didn’t you send it?”
“Because he told me not to.”
Emmett’s eyes narrowed.
“He wrote it to me.”
“He wrote your name on it.”
“That usually means the same thing.”
“No.”
Her voice remained quiet.
“My father said there was a difference.”
Trent moved again.
Just one step.
Toward the hall.
Cormac noticed.
“Stay where you are.”
Trent looked offended.
“Excuse me?”
Cormac did not repeat himself.
Josie turned the envelope over.
The flap had never been opened.
Across the back, Patrick Malloy had written one sentence.
Josie read it aloud.
“Give this to Emmett Kavanaugh only after the east wall gets hot.”
Warren stared at the exposed wiring.
Cormac looked at Emmett.
Emmett looked at Trent.
Then Josie broke the seal.
Inside was one sheet of paper.
And a photograph.
The photograph fell first.
It landed faceup on the carpet.
Four men stood inside an unfinished hotel corridor.
One was Patrick Malloy.
One was Warren, fifteen years younger.
One was a contractor Emmett did not recognize.
And the fourth man was Trent Bole.
May you like
On the back, written in Patrick’s handwriting, were six words.
HE KNOWS WHAT THEY PUT INSIDE.
