Wade left about a half hour ago, sir. Or maybe a little more than that. Let me see, I came on at midnight, and then I had a cup of coffee at two-thirty, and then your wife left the hotel just as I was finishing my coffee. It must have been a quarter to three, I would guess.” It was just three-thirty now. Forty-five minutes, he thought. Jill had been gone for forty-five minutes. “Is anything wrong, Mr. Wade?” “No,” he said. “Nothing’s wrong.” He forced a smile. “She probably couldn’t sleep,” he said. “Probably went out for coffee.” He went back upstairs and sat in the room and smoked another cigarette. Jill was gone. Jill had gotten up in the middle of the night, alone, and had dressed and left. For coffee? It was possible, he guessed. But for three-quarters of an hour? She had left the hotel by herself. The immediate fear, the automatic reaction once he realized she was gone, was the worry that someone had come to take her away. But that was senseless. No one knew about either of them, no one knew where they were staying.
