“Enter that room at your own peril.”
The unexpected and dire pronouncement startled me. I jerked my hand from the greasy, fragile-looking doorknob and spun around. My alert eyes hunted the penthouse hallway, lit by only a single, dust-laden light bulb glowing directly above me. Apart from the ancient and tarnished cage elevator from which I’d just exited at the end of the long corridor, I could see no other doorways from which the voice might have originated.
My mind was playing tricks on me, I decided. Yeah, that had to be it, damn it to Hades. A lingering effect from last night’s binge of tequila shots and Corona beers, I told myself. A lethal combination for certain if wielded by an inexperienced boozehound…
But then again, a nagging inner voice reminded me, my vast training in that
