Plus One

Chapter Twenty-Two

It started as a rumble at dawn that woke Sophie up, a nausea-inducing movement that had her up and running toward the bathroom until she realized that it wasn't morning sickness--the whole room itself was in the throes of wild motion, as though a giant had picked up the hotel and started to shake it.

An earthquake.

She stood in the bathroom doorway—wasn't that what you were supposed to do during earthquakes, stand in a doorway? She watched in horror as the room went into gradual disarray. Photographs falling off the walls, a glass of water turning over, a lamp crashing to the floor. And then the outer glass wall of the hotel shivering, then cracking, then imploding. Sophie screamed as shards of glass exploded everywhere, little daggers that she narrowly missed.

Sophie was from LA—she knew earthquakes. But nothing like this. From the way the room bucked and swayed, Sophie knew it had to be at least a seven or eight magnitude. It went on and on, an endless swaying and all she could think was that she was on the twenty-sixth floor. It would be a long way down. Sophie clutched the doorway, praying to every god she knew of.

When it finally stopped, the room was in shambles and there was broken glass everywhere. She looked out the window just as the skyscrapers of Hong Kong's skyline blinked out one by one in the early dawn light.

She tried the lights in her room, but they were out. A small red emergency light near her bedroom door clicked on. She waited until she was sure the shaking had stopped, then gingerly made her way to the other end of the room, stepping around the glass, and put on clothes before the aftershocks started. Jeans, a blousy shirt, a sweater tied around her waist, a pair of Keds. She grabbed her camera bag and purse and threw them across her shoulders, then took a bottle of water from the fridge. Finally, she slipped her cell phone into her pocket.

She opened the door and in the dim glow of the emergency lights, she saw the doors of other rooms opening.

"Are you okay?" she asked the woman across from her.

She nodded. "It's a bloody mess in there, but we're fine. You?"

Sophie nodded. "Yeah. I just want to get the hell out of the building."

Now that the shaking had stopped, she was aware of the ominous creaks and groans of the building, as though a heavy weight had been put on it. As she started toward the stairway, she realized she was walking on a slight incline--the building was now tilted.

She had twenty-six flights of stairs to go down—there was no way she'd get in an elevator, even if it was working. She started down and the further she got, the more people were in the stairwell, their panicked voices reverberating off the concrete. They seemed to be moving so slowly and her own panic mounted--she didn't want to die in this stairwell. Sophie had to resist the urge to scream at them. She knew they were going as fast as they could, but she'd been in one of the top floors and there were nearly a thousand people staying in the hotel. It'd be a while before she was out of this death trap.

Her phone rang: Ian. She pressed the talk button.

"Ian?" she whispered.

"Oh, thank God," he said. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, I think so. Wait, how do you know about this already? It literally just happened."

"I'm in Hong Kong."

"What?"

"I came for you," he said softly.

Sophie stopped to catch her breath. What did it mean that he came for her? To take her off the story? To tell her about Elise in person? Because right now she couldn't imagine any scenario in which he came to her.