Sam stopped.
“You're needed at the entrance.”
Margaret took the towel.
“Thank you anyway.”
She walked to the elevator alone.
Room 214 was not an eight-thousand-dollar suite.
It was a standard king room on the second floor.
Ordinarily, it sold for just under three hundred dollars that evening.
Margaret knew because she had checked the rate herself before arriving.
She entered.
Closed the door.
Put her handbag on the desk.
Then stood in the center of the room listening to the rain against the glass.
For the first time all night, her composure slipped.
Not dramatically.
She simply closed her eyes.
“I can't believe they treated me like that,” she whispered.
The sentence sounded foolish even to her.
She had deliberately come to discover how strangers were being treated.
Now she knew.
The humiliation still hurt.
Knowledge did not make a person immune to contempt.
Margaret took out her phone.
Called Daniel.
He answered immediately.
“You all right?”
“They charged me eight thousand dollars.”
Silence.
Then:
“What?”
Margaret almost smiled.
“For room 214.”
“Margaret, I'm coming over.”
“No.”
“They searched your bag?”
“How did you know?”
“Your text said call me now and included the word security.”
“I'm fine.”
“I'm not.”