Page 79 of Secrets in the Dark
“Anyway, I’m here until François comes down. I’m keyed up and need to key back down.” He hesitated. “You two are main on this. Della, you...you saved Stacey’s life. We’ll knock on the door at 10:30. You get all the sleep you can.”
“We take turns,” Della said.
“Not tonight,” Sean said. “Humor me, please.”
“We won’t argue longer,” Mason told him. “Della, my love, let’s get some sleep.”
They were halfway up the stairs when they both heard him murmur to himself. “Sleep, right! If only my life were so...sleepy.”
Della grinned at Mason.
“I wonder if he knows we really do sleep sometimes.”
“Tonight?” he queried.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Shower first...as always. There’s just something about trailing a brutal and bloody killer...”
“Yep. You can wash and wash—and not always feel clean.”
“Okay, we’re just taking showers,” Della said firmly. “Sleep really is a necessity.”
“Right. You go first.”
“Well, we can still shower together.”
“I don’t trust myself with you and a bar of soap. Or... Wow. Liquid soap. Nope. You go first.”
Della set her Glock on the bedside table first, stripped quickly and headed into the shower.
She’d grown up in South Florida with heat and humidity. It was a wonderful place when you loved being in a pool—except, maybe, in the heart of winter—but it made the refreshing feel of a shower something really special.
It certainly wasn’t hot here. But she’d also discovered when she’d begun her career in law enforcement that while a shower couldn’t wash away the evil man was capable of doing, it helped wash away the struggle and intensity of a day.
She didn’t want to get out.
“Hey!” Mason said.
She smiled. And he stepped in beside her, reaching for the liquid soap.
She turned into his arms. “I have always been told that exercise, especially good physical and cardio exercise, really helps with a good night’s sleep.”
“Or morning’s sleep,” he corrected dryly.
“Whatever!”
She curled her arms around his neck and added, “I’m all into good exercise!”
“I’ll do my best to make it a real cardio workout, too,” he promised her.
In the end, they did sleep. And the few hours might have been more, but they did, indeed, turn out to be very good hours of sleep.
Mason had taken the last watch, started coffee and gone for the others. They’d gotten at least four hours sleep—not bad when morning had been cracking when they’d headed up to their room.
Edmund was on the phone with Scotland Yard while Sean and François Bisset made plans to continue investigating the movie and theater angle, seeking clues to Jesse Miller’s hideout—a hideout that might be in plain sight since few people were as alert to a face shape and possible variances on an appearance as Stacey was.
François was going to continue to head to makeup shops while also combing the streets of Whitechapel and the Spitalfields area.
“There is somewhere that he is going when he’s afraid that we’re close, and somewhere a person can sleep—even if it’s an unknown closet,” Della said, smiling her gratitude as Mason handed her a cup of coffee. “Last night, dozens of police and members of other British agencies were out with us, and he eluded everyone. That must mean that he has somewhere to go right in front of us where he virtually disappears. If we can just find out where—game over.”
