Kal might have been hiding in the hotel itself!
Nine minutes.
And how many front rooms were in the hotel? A twelve storied welter of windows, and he might be behind any one.
Nine minutes.
Automatically she was running for the hotel.
(Not the lower floors, she thought, or the Oholos would have had him sooner. They must have come down and then gone back up or else the whole time element was wrong.)
One of the upper floors then?
She would have to chance that.
She was in the deserted lobby. As she ran across it she marveled at the panic of a few hours ago. She saw a busy looter in the shadows, and there were not, certainly enough soldiers to be everywhere.
In her headlong rush she did not see the human form on the second landing before she crashed into him. She gasped as the breath went out of her lungs.