Page 82 of Meet Cute or Your Money Back

Allie Larsen is hiding something. And hell or high water, I’m going to find out what.

Chapter 23

Allie

I push open the heavy, ornate door of the Russian bathhouse, my heart doing a salsa routine against my ribs. Even though it’s only the lobby, humid air greets me like a warm, damp hug, cloaking the nervous tremble in my hands as I hand over my credit card for a day pass.

“It’s an extra five dollars if you want to get our water-safe phone covers,” the woman offers me.

“Meaning…we’re allowed to keep our phones on us?” I ask.

The woman nods, smiling. “Many of our customers like to listen to music while they relax,” she says with a knowing smile, her accent rolling thers into a melody.

“Thanks, I’ll need all the relaxation I can get,” I quip, sliding my phone into the protective embrace of the waterproof case.

She runs my card and hands it back to me with a slip and a pen.

I pause with pen in hand as she also hands me an intake sheet to fill out. Should I have paidcash? Used a fake name? Maybe they won’t be able to trace the credit card I used back to this specific intake sheet? Oh well. Maybe it’s a little late now, but nonetheless, I scribble a fake name down on the intake sheet, then with my phone secured, I go through the doors into the women’s locker room. Even though most people apparently choose to go through the bathhouse only clad in their birthday suit and robe, I brought my bathing suit to wear. And I snuggle into the lush robe provided to me at my locker.

Feeling like a detective in one of those old black-and-white films, I slip out of the locker room and make my way down the silent hall. Except I’m about as stealthy as a cartoon character on a covert mission. My eyes sweep across the dimly lit corridor, every shadow and whisper an invitation to uncover secrets or a potential pitfall.

“Okay, Allie, you’ve got this,” I mutter under my breath, channeling every Nancy Drew cell in my body.

I hear laughter and low conversations ahead through a door marked “Gender Neutral Common Room.”

With a deep breath, I open the door and enter the room. Lounge chairs are set up surrounding a steaming pool with a waterfall at the far end. I pretend to ignore the conversation as it ebbs and flows around me, the Russian syllables weaving through the air like an exotic dance I can’t quite follow. I strain my ears, trying to catch a thread of meaning, but it’s like listening to a radio station just out of range—mostly static with the occasional clear note.

“Spasibo,” someone says, and I latch onto the word like a lifeline—it means “thank you,” one of the few phrases I picked up from a fling with a language app. But that’s where my understanding ends, the rest of the chatter slipping away from me, elusive as the steam that coils around my ankles.

I move closer to a group perched near the heat of the sauna, their voices a low hum. If I can just pick up something, anything useful... But no, it’s all whispers and the hush of heated air swirling through the space, wrapping around my skin and urging me to let go, to breathe and forget why I’m really here.

I lower onto a lounge chair close enough to the group to eavesdrop, but not so close to look like I’m creeping on them.

As I sit down on the lounge chair, the wood snaps beneath me and the whole chair collapses. It’s a sound that’s too loud in the quiet buzz of the bathhouse, a quirky hiccup of sound that has no place in this clandestine setting.

One of the men, a hulking Russian man with a black cropped beard and beady dark eyes, comes over, offering me a hand.

Nervously, I take it and immediately notice the press of a large, gold thumb ring against my hand. Three little rubies press into my palm as he pulls me to my feet and I can’t help but remember what Thatcher had told me about the mark on his wife’s neck.

I gulp as he points to a sign that’s on the now broken chair. “Out of Order,” he says. “The chair was broken already.”

Unfortunately for me, the sign is written in Russian, so even if I had been paying attention, I wouldn’t have known not to sit there.

I shrug and give him the only response I can think of…the truth. “I don’t speak Russian.”

“Then what are you doing in a Russian bathhouse?” the man asks, his Russian accent thick like molasses.

“A friend of mine told me about this place. Said it was…very relaxing. I thought I’d give it a try.”

His gaze skims over me, assessing and I’m not sure what it is about this man, but he’s unnerving to my core.

His touch on my arm is gentle, but it’s firm. Firm enough for me to realize this isn’t a man to be messed with. He could crush me with his thumb if he wanted to. “Here,” he says, leading me to a lounge chair near their group. “This one is not broken,” he says.

Before I can say thank you, he’s turned his back to me and is heading back to his group.

I’m a sore thumb in a sea of subtlety, but I square my shoulders and press on. Because somewhere in this fog, there’s a clue waiting to be found and something tells me this man holds the key to the mystery.

I pull out my phone and open Google Translate, hoping for some digital espionage assistance. The screen’s soft glow illuminates my face as Russian words float through the air, snagging on the app’s net.

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