Ruin Falls Read Online Free PDF Page A

throat, Liz reached the barrier in a single step and looked over. Her stomach did a slow, sick roll, but everything was quiet down there, save for a scatter of people wheeling suitcases.
    A fall would’ve produced pandemonium, not this orderly buzz of the workaday starting. Liz looked in every direction, willing some nook or hidey-hole to reveal her kids.
    Paul dashed out into the hall behind her, his chest bare, wearing only pajama bottoms.
    “Liz?”
    She turned to him, shaking her head back and forth, unable to summon a word.
    “Take it easy,” Paul commanded, instantly making sense of things. “We had two episodes of wolf crying yesterday.”
    Paul didn’t even know about the third episode: Liz’s irrational reaction to the bellhop.
    The bellhop, she thought.
    “Reid’s probably got someone else in his sights, and Ally’s trying to keep him from getting arrested,” Paul added.
    The likelihood of that scenario soothed Liz a little. Surely this would again turn out to be nothing, as fleeting a scare as the pickup truck. But as Paul walked Liz back into the hotel room, picking up the phone to call security before tossing clothes out of the suitcase for both of them, the order of his actions belied his seeming calm.
    Hotel security arrived within what felt like seconds, although Liz didn’t have a good handle on time by then. Either hours had passed—days—or else no time at all. She looked at the men who had come into their suite, and found herself utterly unable to command speech. A helpless spill of tears left her eyes, and she pressed her hand brutally against her face. It throbbed from the pressure she was applying, and she felt Paul remove it, heard him offering a description of the children’s ages and looks.
    Two men in uniform left the room, talking into radios.
    The head of security was dressed in a suit. He informed them that all access points to the hotel—automatic entrance doors, side doors, kitchen, even the overhead riser in the supply area—now either had a guard stationed beside them or had been locked.
    It came to Liz as soon as the head of security mentioned the kitchen. How hungry two kids who’d eaten mostly snacks and some candy all day would be. And suddenly her usual persona of practicalityand acceptance reasserted itself. There was no reason to panic. Reid and Ally were used to going off by themselves, and they had found this hotel a wonderland last night. They had simply chosen to do some exploring on their own this morning.
    “You serve breakfast, right?” she asked. “Downstairs?”
    She didn’t wait for the man to nod before opening the door. She already recalled being given four tickets for a complimentary meal, which the kids had used to play carnival before Liz finally got them to bed last night.
    She covered the length of hotel hallway, then banged open the fire exit at one end and took the four flights of stairs at a run.
    Paul arrived beside her as she was trying to parse the chaos of the dining room. Her eyes felt like laser beams programmed to identify her children, and yet the clumps and clusters of people eating at tables, or waiting in the waffle and juice and coffee lines overwhelmed her. The combination of smells brought on a nauseating pang. Liz shoved hair away from her face, then spun in Paul’s direction.
    “I’ll look here,” he told her. “You check the lobby.”
    Liz turned, biting back a sob. All thoughts of playful exploration had been snatched away. Reid and Ally were children—country kids at that—in a hotel in an unknown town. They had hardly ever left home before. Who could say how many people passed through here, and what they might make of two children alone? A parade of strangers marched through her mind, and she brought hooked fingers up to her face as if she could claw them away.
    Stop it .
    Liz must’ve hissed the words aloud; she heard their reverberation in her ears. But she couldn’t halt the flood of fear. What if Reid and Ally