The Hunt by Jennifer Sturman

nearly identical except for the pattern of the silk—Hilary had bought several of them in Thailand years ago and given them to her friends as gifts. The silk was pretty, and the pouches were useful, but she was mostly excited by a special feature each had: a fake bottom that could be pried out to reveal a small secret compartment below. Of course, with the exception of the occasional murder, my life was too dull to have much call for secret compartments, but perhaps Hilary had made use of hers.
    I spilled the jewelry out onto the marble counter and tried to work a fingernail into the inner seam where the silk-covered cardboard at the bottom met the edge of the bag. Unfortunately, Page 20

    this was a job for a long tapered fingernail rather than the sort of fingernails I had. I rummaged through the items on the vanity but found nothing suitable until I saw the small sewing kit supplied by the hotel. I would never have used any of its contents to actually sew—such matters were better left in the hands of those less accident-prone than myself—but the kit included a needle that worked perfectly to pry open the false bottom. It lifted out easily to reveal the compartment below, and nestled within was a piece of folded ivory paper. “Aha,” I said again, pleased with my success.
    “What have you got?” asked a voice behind me.
    I nearly screamed but managed to strangle the noise to a muted yelp. I’d been so absorbed in the task and so busy congratulating myself on my cleverness that I hadn’t heard Ben come in or even glimpsed his image reflected next to mine in the mirror. “I didn’t realize you were here,” I said, recovering with an embarrassed laugh. “You scared me.”
    “Sorry about that.”
    “No problem,” I said, although my heart was still racing. I showed him the jewelry pouch and its false bottom before withdrawing and unfolding the piece of paper.
    It was a receipt, on Four Seasons letterhead, dated two days earlier and made out to Hilary for an item she’d left in the hotel safe.

    The obvious next step was to retrieve whatever it was Hilary had considered sufficiently important to require such high-security treatment. However, it was unclear whether the hotel would release the safe’s contents only to Hilary. I could try to impersonate her, but that wouldn’t work if I was asked for identification. Even if we did have her driver’s license, and even if a short blond wig and green contact lenses had been readily available, Hilary was more than a half-foot taller than me, and there wasn’t any practical way for me to impersonate that.
    We discussed calling downstairs to ask about the procedure for redeeming an item from the safe so we could plan accordingly, but we quickly discarded that idea. It would only make the staff think twice when someone actually showed up a few minutes later to redeem something from the safe. Nor, for similar reasons, did we call to ask if the same staff members were on duty as on Friday. Instead we decided to brazen it out and headed for the lobby. If I was asked for ID, we would try to talk our way through any challenge with Ben’s identification since he was registered to the same hotel room.
    Peter hung back as Ben and I approached the woman behind the front desk. Her hair was pulled into an elegant knot at the nape of her neck, and a tag on her suit jacket lapel told us her name was Natasha. I resisted the urge to make any Rocky and Bullwinkle jokes and rested the hand holding Ben’s room key and the receipt on the counter with what I hoped was a proprietary air.
    “Hi,” I said. “We need to pick up something we left in the safe.”
    “Of course,” Natasha said smoothly. “You have the receipt?”
    “Of course,” I answered, equally smoothly. I handed her the piece of paper and prepared myself to lie about not having any identification with me. But the good news was Natasha didn’t ask for it. Instead, she led us to a discreet side door and used a