“Coffee Liz?” Ressler asked though it wasn’t much of a question, because he was already handing her one. She looked at him curiously.
“That was the first time you didn’t call me ‘Keen,’” She noted taking a sip of her freshly made coffee.
“Sorry Keen,” He mocked. “Guess this little case we’re on is making me trust you more.”
She smiled at his comment. “I couldn’t agree more.” They both took another sip of their coffee before getting to business.
“So I went online last night,” Liz said pulling out a map of their area with pen marks and highlighting all over it. “ I figured if the average person walks 3 miles in a half hour, I’d use a 9 mile radius for our area of search. So I looked at all of the hotels in the area, and highlighted them in yellow. But with Red’s unpleasable standards, I circled the higher rated hotels in pen. I figured we’d start with those, then come back and hit the others.”
She stood there in silence as Ressler stared at the map, nodding slowly. “Alright, I think that’s great. But one thing.”
“What is it?” She asked trying to figure out what she’d forgotten.
“I thought you were going to try and get some sleep.” He said giving her a look.
She rolled her eyes, taking back the map. “I tried, but the fact that we’re so close gave me anything but peace. It just made me feel like there was more I could be doing.”
He nodded understanding. “I knew you wouldn’t sleep. I honestly didn’t sleep much either.” He paused glancing at the map once again. “So where do we start?”
“The first hotel is just down the block. We’ll start there, then go up to this road here,” She pointed at her drawn in path on the map. “Cross over here, then continue down this road.”
“Alright. Let’s get to it.” He said and they grabbed their belongings, leaving the shop, on their way to the first hotel. Thought it was highly unlikely to find him at the first hotel they checked, Liz still let her mind wander to best case scenarios, playing out the scenes in her head. She knew it wasn’t good to get her hopes up like this, but she couldn’t help herself. As they approached the front desk of the first hotel, she found her heart was racing. She took a breath unsuccessfully trying to slow it.
“How may I help you?” The overly happy woman at the desk asked.
“I’m Agent Ressler, this is Agent Keen, we’re with the FBI,” he said showing his badge. “We’re looking for this man,” he paused showing the woman the most recent picture of Red they had. “And we have reason to believe he is staying in this area.”
The woman looked closely at the picture, and began to shake her head slowly. “I’m sorry I don’t recognize him.”
“Can we have a list of all guests that have stayed here in the past week?” Liz asked.
“Yeah, of course.” The woman paused. “It might take a while though to compile a list. We’ve had a lot of guests.”
“We’ll be back later this afternoon to pick it up.” Ressler said, then handed her a sheet of paper with both his and Liz’s number. “If you see him, please call us immediately.” And with that, they left the building and went back out into the cold of the city. Liz pulled out the map again and pointed out the next hotel.
“The next one is just a block down here.” She said pointing down the road.
The next 2 hours were full of “I’ve never seen him.” responses, and honestly it was starting to drag Liz down. She wasn’t expecting to find him straight away, but as each hotel turned up as a no, their chances went more and more down the drain. By noon, they’d checked 25 hotels, and their were only 5 left on the list. It was getting more intense now. Either she’d be face to face with Red within the next hour, or they’d lost him, and have to start from ground zero again.
