Blood, Ash, and Bone

CHAPTER Eleven

Back at the hotel, I found Trey engrossed in paperwork in the adjoining room. I hopped up on the edge of his desk.

He moved his papers to the other side of his work space. “You’re wet.”

“It’s raining again.” I ran a finger across his shoulders. “You’re perfectly dry.”

“Of course I am. I haven’t left the room.”

“Are you sure?”

He frowned at me. “Of course. Why do you ask?”

“Because somebody was following me.”

His expression sharpened. “Where?”

“On River Street.”

“Why?”

“Good question.” I shook rain from my hair, which earned me a reproachful look. “Do you know why anybody would be tailing me?”

“No. Are you sure you were being tailed?”

“Yes. Are you sure you don’t know?”

“Yes.” He narrowed his eyes. “Was that an accusation?”

“No. Was that an evasion?”

“No.”

I smiled. “You sure about that?”

He put down his pen. “Tai. I wasn’t following you. We had a deal.” He sat back in his chair, his expression razor-sharp, but no longer annoyed. “I had no reason to follow you. If I’d wanted to see what you were doing, I could have gone with you.”

“The whole reason for following someone is that you suspect they’re up to something they wouldn’t otherwise be up to if you were actually right there with them.”

“I don’t suspect you of anything. And even if I did, that’s not my job.” He gestured toward the paperwork on his desk. “This is my job. Which I have been doing since you left.”

I examined the desktop. It was smothered in complex dense reports, with his neat notes on the yellow pad beside. He’d obviously been hard at work.

“Could it have been Phoenix?” I said.

“Marisa was with me.”

“She could have sent one of her minions.”

“I’m her minion.” He shooed me off the desk and pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket. “She could have engaged another agent for the assignment. I don’t know. But that’s not my main concern.”

“Mine either. I’m concerned about a wild card stalker. That’s why I was hoping it was Marisa.”

He polished the wood dry. Handkerchiefs were such useful things, good for evidence collection, first aid, turning hot doorknobs during a fire. Trey was the first guy I’d dated who always had one in pocket.

“Did you get a description?”

“No. The most likely culprit is Hope, but how would she know where to find me?” I had a sudden rush of suspicion. “You think John told her? Somebody at the hotel maybe?”

“I don’t know. But I’m filling out a 302 regardless.”

Trey tucked the handkerchief in his pocket and returned to the computer. He tapped out a lightning fast sequence, and the Phoenix log-in screen appeared. I grabbed a towel from the bathroom and scrubbed at my damp hair. Trey was always filling out 302s, Phoenix’s version of an incident report. They were the first step to going full corporate agent bad ass on some troublemaker.

He typed in the date and time. “Do you have a recent photo of Hope?”

“Sorry. I burned them all.”

Trey typed no photograph available. “Can you give me a description?”

“About my height, coffee-colored hair, thick and straight and hanging to her butt. Fashion model skinny. She’s got puppy-dog brown eyes, a Barbie-doll nose, a rosebud mouth, and no soul.”

Trey rendered my description into concrete info: five-six, dark brown hair, slim build. He stared at the screen, his index finger suddenly tapping out a syncopated rhythm. Cognition gear. Some idea trying to find purchase.

“Trey?” I moved to look over his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

He held up one finger. Wait. I waited. Another thirty seconds of wildfire typing, and the screen divided itself into a foursquare grid. I recognized this set-up.

“Four-plex security footage,” I said.

He nodded, kept typing.

“Of this hotel?”

“Yes. The main elevator specifically, the one we took.”

Indeed, there we were, getting off the elevator. The time stamp confirmed that the footage had been taken two hours ago. Trey fast-forwarded a few more seconds, then slowed the footage to real time. He pointed at the upper-left square. “Watch.”

I followed his finger. The footage wasn’t high resolution, but it was clear enough to make out Trey getting back on the elevator, the bellhop with the clubs too. Trey pressed the button for our floor. A woman swooped in as the doors started to close, smiling an apology.

My stomach dropped. “Omigod! That’s Hope!”

Trey blew out a breath. “I suspected as much.”

Onscreen, Hope stood closer to him than the space dictated. She was dressed in business attire, a fitted dark jacket and a pencil skirt chopped above the knee. She looked at Trey and her lips moved. Trey made some reply, and she nodded. And then she reached over and patted his bicep, her mouth curved in a flirtatious smile.

I got a surge of anger. “Oh no, she did not just put her hand on you.”

“Tai.”

“And you let her get close enough to do it!” I threw my towel on the floor. “You keep a five-foot barrier around you, all the time, and yet—”

“Tai—”

“You tell me to be careful and there you are, letting her paw you! I cannot believe you fell for that simpering, come-hither—”

“Tai!” He shook his head, eyes on the screen. “I didn’t fall for anything. Look again.”

Onscreen, the elevator stopped, and Hope got off. She cast one last lingering look, but not at Trey. At the security camera itself. And I saw smug satisfaction shining there, like a warrior counting coup.

I swore fiercely. “I swear to God, I will claw her eyes out if she—”

“Pay attention.” Trey rewound to the moment she got on the elevator. “Watch it again.”

“Why? So I can get madder?”

“So you can tell me what you see.”

I refocused on the screen. As Hope got on, Trey took one step backwards to accommodate her. His feet remained shoulder-width apart, his eyes straight ahead in the disinterested pose of elevator riders everywhere.

Except that Trey’s seemingly casual posture was also neutral stance. Except that Trey’s body was a weapon, cocked and loaded.

“Tell me what you see,” he said.

I sighed. “I see you move out of range when she touches you. I see your left hand preparing for a block and strike. I see your right hand loose and empty and hovering near your gun, in case you need to draw.”

He waited. “And?”

I caught his drift and shook my head. He’d displayed not a single marker of sexual interest. And I knew what those looked like. I’d developed a handy playbook based on those.

“Nothing,” I admitted. “Not one iota of attraction.”

He blinked at me. “What?”

“Which means I owe you an apology. You’re not a libido-addled idiot.”

“No, I…I mean, yes, that’s true, but…that’s not…” He shook his head, frustrated, and returned his attention to the screen. “Watch.”

The scene played out, yet again. “She gets on, touches you, you back away, she notices the security camera—”

“No.” He tapped the screen. “She’s not looking for the camera. She’s looking at the camera.”

His point finally dawned on me. “She knew it was there.”

“Yes.”

“Which means she didn’t follow us here. She was already at the hotel, she knew we were coming.”

“And she’d already surveilled the premises.”

We sat there. Hope stared back, her black and white image mocking us, smarter than us, two steps ahead of us.

I whistled softly. “Damn. I need to up my game.”

Trey handed me the towel I’d thrown down, now folded into a neat square. “So do I,” he said.