Thankfully, the long chestnut hair currently was pulled back into a ponytail, and the blue-green eyes had dulled a little given her lack of sleep. The yoga pants and Michigan T-shirt she wore were actually kind of cute, but because of the aforementioned bitch factor, he ignored this.

“So when they woke me up the second time,” Cameron was saying, “that’s when I decided to call Guest Services.”

“I want to step back for a moment.” Jack’s interruption from the corner of the room startled Cameron; it was the first time he’d spoken since she’d begun giving her statement.

“Tell me what you heard right before you fell asleep. Before the noises next door started up again,” he said.

Cameron hesitated. He knew she didn’t want to answer his questions—she probably didn’t want to say anything to him at all, in fact—but now that she’d started cooperating, she didn’t have much choice.

“I heard the door shut, as if someone was leaving the room,” she said.

“Are you sure it was the exterior door you heard?” Jack asked.

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t check to see if anyone left at that time?”

Cameron shook her head. “No. Then the room went quiet for a while. For about a half hour or so.”

“Tell me about the noises that woke you up.”

Cameron turned to face him now that he had taken over the questioning. “What would you like to know, Agent Pallas?” she asked mock-politely.

“I just told you. I’d like to know what you heard.”

“Pretty much the same things I heard coming from the room the first time,” she said with an air of defiance.

Jack cocked his head. “Really? You said the first time around you heard the people next door having sex.”

“Yes, I think the ass slapping and the screams of ‘I’m coming’ gave that away.”

Jack stepped out from the corner to approach her. “So when you woke up the second time, did you hear any asses being slapped?”

“No.”

From her expression, he could tell she didn’t enjoy being on the receiving end of a cross-examination. “How about the ‘I’m coming’ screams? Any more of those?”

“I heard squealing.”

“But no proclamations of impending orgasms?”

She glared. “You made your point, Agent Pallas.”

He drew closer and stared down at her. “My point, Ms. Lynde, is that I know you’re tired, but that’s no excuse for getting sloppy.”

Cameron’s eyes filled with anger. But then she paused for a moment, and nodded. “Fair enough.”

She looked over at the wall she shared with room 1308. “When I woke up the second time, I heard the bed banging against the wall, louder than before. But only a couple of times. Then like I said, I heard squealing.”

“A man or a woman’s voice?” Jack asked.

“A woman. The sound was muffled, as if her face was covered by a blanket or pillow.” Cameron turned back to him with a look of sudden realization. “She was suffocated, wasn’t she?” she asked softly.

Jack debated whether to answer this but knew he eventually would have to fill her in anyway. “Yes.”

Cameron bit her lip. “I just thought they were trying to be quieter about it. I didn’t realize . . .” She took a deep, steadying breath.

“You couldn’t have known,” Wilkins assured her.

Jack threw him a look—enough with the good-cop already. She was a big girl, she could handle it. “You told Detective Slonsky that you called security and the room went quiet again?”

“And then I heard the door open, so I ran and looked out the peephole,” Cameron said.

“Just being nosy?”

The sarcasm seemed to reinvigorate her. “And thank goodness for that,” she said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have whatever information I know that I don’t yet realize I know.” She smiled ever so sweetly. “Besides, if I hadn’t been so nosy, Agent Pallas, you and I never would’ve had this lovely chance to reconnect.”

Wilkins coughed while taking a sip of his coffee. It sounded suspiciously like a chuckle.

Jack found her sarcasm laughable. Back when he was in Special Forces, before he’d joined the FBI, he’d interrogated foreign operatives, suspected terrorists, and members of various guerilla militias. He could certainly handle one cheeky assistant U.S. attorney. “I’m glad to see the coffee’s put a little fire back in you,” he said dryly. “Now why don’t you tell me what you saw when you were doing your civic duty and spying though the peephole?”

Wilkins held up his hand. “Um, I’m thinking maybe I should pick back up with this.”

Cameron and Jack answered simultaneously. “We’re fine.”

“I saw a man leave the room, which I’m sure you know,” she told Jack.

“Describe him.”

“I already described him to Slonsky.”

“Do it again.”

Jack saw her eyes flash. She didn’t like being told what to do. Too bad.

“Five foot eleven, maybe six feet tall,” she said. “Medium build. He wore jeans, a black blazer, and a gray hooded T-shirt pulled over his head. He had his back to me the entire time, so I never saw his face.”

“Didn’t you think the hooded T-shirt was a little odd?” Jack asked.

“I heard butt cheeks being slapped and walls that were banged so hard my teeth nearly rattled. Frankly, I’ve found this whole evening to be a little odd, Agent Pallas.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack could see Wilkins glance up at the ceiling while fighting off another smile.

“Are you certain about the man’s height?” Jack continued.

Cameron paused, thinking. “Yes.”

“How about his weight?”

She sighed. “I’m really bad at guessing that kind of thing.”

“Make an effort. Pretend this is something important.”

Another glare.

Cameron glanced over at Wilkins. “How much do you weigh?”

“Wait—how come Jack doesn’t have to answer that?”

“The man I saw seems closer to your build.”

“Oh, so he’s a smaller guy, then?” Jack suggested helpfully.

Wilkins turned around. “A smaller guy? I’m an inch above the national average. Besides, I’m spry.”

“Let’s try to narrow this down,” Jack regrouped. “I weigh one-eighty-five, Agent Wilkins is about one-sixty. Given that, where would you say this guy falls?”

She looked between the two men, considering this. “About one-seventy.”

Jack and Wilkins exchanged looks.

“What?” Cameron asked. “What does that tell you?”

“So just to make sure we’re clear on this, the man you saw leave the room right before security arrived was about five-eleven or six feet tall, and around one hundred and seventy pounds. Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” she agreed. “And I see that you’ve gotten whatever information it is you wanted out of me. So I would like some information in return.” She looked to Wilkins first, who looked to Jack.

After debating a moment, he leaned against the wall. “Okay. Here’s what I can tell you.”

“AND JUST SO we’re clear: everything I’m about to tell you needs to be kept confidential,” Jack told her. “In fact, if you weren’t with the U.S. attorney’s office, I wouldn’t be telling you anything.”

Cameron got the message: he didn’t want to tell her jack-shit, but his boss had ordered him to share information as a professional courtesy.

“Crystal clear, Agent Pallas,” she said.

“You’ve obviously put a few things together, so I’ll speed through the preliminaries,” Jack began. “You called hotel security, they found the dead woman next door, so they called the paramedics and the police. CPD arrived at the scene, saw there were signs of a struggle, and began their investigation.”

“What signs of a struggle?” Cameron asked.

“To save time, you should assume going forward that anything I don’t tell you is a deliberate decision on my part.”

Cameron looked up at the ceiling, biting her tongue. Of all the murder and she-had-no-friggin’-clue-what-else-but-something-that-apparently-involved-the-FBI crime scenes in all the hotels in all of Chicago, Jack Pallas had to walk into this one.