Page 21 of Maneater
Rory stares at it for long moments, coming over the area with a thorough glance. “I’d love to know the make and model. I bet their interior cameras and exterior ones are different styles so they’re more durable to the elements. Maybe this one kept the footage internally, like a secondary recording? If it caught our culprit, they’d want to take it just in case the footage was salvageable.”
I nod at her rationale. “But someone would have to know that, right? That’s not knowledge some random person would have.”
She nods. “They’d have to know cameras pretty well if they were making assessments just by looking at them.” She stares at the space once more, but I know we only have so much more time here, and there’s a lot of area to take in.
“Let’s check the outside,” I say, and she nods as we make our way out of the other external structure. It’s slightly less charred, though clearly destroyed, and I turn to ask Rory if she remembers anymention of there being a door before the fire when we’re interrupted.
“You’re not allowed in there,” a familiar voice calls, and I freeze, my eyes going wide. I look at Rory, who is on the other side of the structure and now in my line of sight. Her body is frozen the same way mine is, our eyes wide and locked. Barely a beat passes before I give the smallest nod to her and put on my fakest smile, moving to where the voice came from.
Finally, I put a hand up to shade my eyes to get a good look at who I’m talking to against the blinding sun behind him. It hits me why the voice sounded so familiar. His hazel eyes lock on mine, showing the barest hint of shock before hiding once more beneath his annoyed mask.
“You,” he says, low and assessing, and I feel the single word coast along every inch of my body like cool flames licking over my skin.
“You,” I reply, my voice breathier than I mean for it to be, but that usually works in my favor. Unfortunately, it simply seems to annoy Rowan further.
“What are you doing here?” A moment passes, and I catch Rory moving closer out of the corner of my eye, but I refuse to break eye contact with this man. Just two days ago, he had me pinned to the wall in a bar, fingering me. And now, he’s at the same location as my current mission.
“I work here.” He pauses, and I try to run through the names and faces of the resort employees because I would have recognized his name before he adds, “Well, I work for Daydream Resorts. I’m here because…” Another hesitation, and then he shakes his head, but my mind is reeling. We have a file with all the resort’s employees, from landscaping to housekeeping to restaurant staff to the general manager, and I know he wasnoton that list. “It doesn’t matter. Are you… Are you staying here?”
I nod.
A work emergency.I suddenly remember his words, a chill of understanding running through me.
You have got to be fucking kidding me. How much do you want to bet he’s here because of the incidents that we are actively investigating?
This would be my luck: finally finding a man in Hudson City that I’m actually attracted to, and he ends up being…a suspect? He’d be a suspect, right? Our motto is that everyone is a suspect until proven otherwise, after all. And everyone who works for the resort and has access to cameras, maps, and security information would be a suspect from here on out.
“Yeah. I’m here with my friend,” I say, throwing a bit of a flirt in my voice and tipping my head toward Rory. My long brown hair tied in a ponytail swipes along my shoulders as it does, and I don’t miss Rowan tracking the movement. Maybe there’s hope of saving this.
“Hey,” Rory says, stepping out from around the corner. “I’m Rory.”
He looks at her as she smiles and waves before meeting my eyes, part confused, part very much amused. I’m a little bit of both myself.
“Rowan,” he says, and because the only thing I’ve talked to Rory about in the last forty-eight hours is the night in the bar and our current mission, she instantly knows who he is. His gaze moves back to me, heating me. “What are you doing here?”
I shrug. “I told you, we’re guests here. We got in this morning.” I step forward and brush sand from my hand on my hip, along where the high-rise bottoms lay across my full hips. I’m grateful for the revealing bikini I’m in, but for once in my life, I don’t know if it’s going to work.
Rowan has always been immune to my charm.
“You’re not allowed in this area. It’s a crime site.”
I smile wide and flip my hair over my shoulder, pushing my chest out a smidge, but his eyes don’t avert at all, locking on my face with indifference.
“Oh, is it really?” I ask, looking over my shoulder at the charred structure as if it weren’t obvious. “I didn’t realize.”
“There’s crime scene tape around it,” he adds, like I’m an idiot, and in his defense, I am playing the part right now. It’s not myfavorite mask to put on, but I’d rather be perceived as an idiot than suspicious. It’s why the Mavens work so well, specifically when it comes to men: they’d rather see a gorgeous woman with nothing between her ears than a woman on a mission.
It’s also something I quickly learned after my glow-up in high school: we live in a society where someone sees a pretty face and a killer body and decides she’s an airhead. I simply decided to use their assumptions against them. They want to think I’m some kind of idiot with a nice rack and let their guard down because of it?
Let them.
It works in my favor, after all.
“Oops. I thought it was just construction tape,” I say with a giggle and a shrug. He blinks at me a few times before shaking his head as if he’s decided arguing with me on this topic wasn’t worth his time, just as I hoped he would.
“What are you doing over there? Construction site or crime site, it’s obviously not a safe, appealing place to be.”
Thankfully, despite this man throwing me for a loop, I always have an excuse for being where I’m not supposed to be at the ready at any given moment.
