Monster

Chapter 14 - On the Way to Madrid

It was on day 4 of my stay in Bucharest when I realized that it was time to move on. I was awakened very early by the notification on my phone that the motion sensor on one of the cameras had been tripped. Blearily, I sat up, dug around on my nightstand for the new bottle of eye drops, and used it. Then I grabbed my phone and pulled up the feed. I made sure the sound was high and hit play.

The video showed the door to the suite opening and a neatly dressed and groomed man stepping into the room. He was followed by a man with brown hair and beard, both liberally sprinkled with grey. "Here you go, Dr. Von Stein," the first man said in a thick French accent. "I'll wait here until you've checked that all of your belongings are untouched. If your other key card was stolen, then we need to make sure that no one used it to break into your room."

The second man, clearly impersonating me, took a quick look around, his eyes pausing on the camera in the corner, then he turned back to the first man. "No thank you," he said and I recognized the voice. "Everything is just where I left it. Please charge the cost of the new key card to the room."

The first man smiled, relieved, and handed the imposter a new key card. "Good. If you do find that you're missing things after all, please call down to the front desk immediately." At the other man's nod, he stepped out and closed the door.

Walt came over and looked directly into the camera, his grin like a wolf's. "You're not very clever, are you, Victor?" He taunted. "Using your known alter ego to travel." He shook his head and clicked his tongue, then reached over and shut off the camera, ending the feed.

The notification for the other camera dinged, and I hit play on the new video. It showed Walt walking into the bedroom, inspecting everything. He rifled through the open suitcase I'd left on the bed. He ran his finger on the dresser, looking for dust. He went into the bathroom and I heard the shower curtain open, and the squeak of his hand rubbing the inside of the dry tub. He came out and sat down in front of the camera, again looking directly into it.

"Apparently you are cleverer than I thought," he told the camera. "You must have come here under the name of Henry knowing that I would look up your credit card records. But you've already left, haven't you? And by the look of it, you left right after arriving." He smirked.

"But I'll find you again, Victor. If you're in this city, I'll have found you by the end of the day tomorrow. And if you're not, then by the end of the week." He shut off the camera and the video went black.

I smiled my own wolfish smile. He didn't know about Justin Moritz, though it was only a matter of time before he did. Thinking of the time, I looked at the clock on my phone. 5:48 a.m. Suddenly I stopped, a frisson of awareness running down my spine. It was 4:48 a.m. in Paris, but the video showed sunlight coming in through a crack in the curtain. I sent the videos to my email and opened them on the computer. This time as I watched them, I blew them up to fill the screen and looked at the time stamp in the bottom right corner. Wednesday, 03/06. Today was Friday.

My wolf grin fell as I realized that Walt had entered the room two days before and somehow managed to delay the videos' delivery. I sat back and thought. The cameras must not have had a chance to upload the recordings to the cloud server before he shut them off. Now that the videos had been uploaded, that meant the cameras were back on, probably so he could reprogram them.

I grabbed the room phone and dialed the hotel's concierge. "This is Justin Moritz in room 421," I said when he answered. "Could you please book the shortest and soonest one-way flight to Madrid for me? I'll be checking out this morning."

After the concierge assured me that he'd do it, I hung up and began packing my things. Then I booked myself a flight online from Madrid to Milan for the following morning, using a different identity.