Page 82 of Maneater
“So, what you’re telling me is I should go find him and tell him everything and hope he’s still into me after?”
Gabriel chuckles then.
“I’m telling you to trust your gut, Josephine. You have a great one;it’s why I hired you. You only trust it when you’re on a job. Try trusting it off the job. If you didn’t trust him, didn’t think he would respect you and your career, you wouldn’t have even gotten close to this far into something with him. You wouldn’t be upset at the possibility that he wouldn’t believe you’re telling him the truth. You wouldn’t be as tangled up as you are.” I lift a lip in a sneer that he can’t see, but he laughs as if he can. “You know I’m right.”
“What if he doesn’t want to hear it?” I ask in a nervous whisper.
“That’s the first step, right? Try?”
“Right now?” I ask, nervous, and Gabriel laughs. The man laughs.
“I mean, considering you just left him, maybe give it some time. Sleep on it, decide how you’ll phrase things, and talk to Rory. But soon. Don’t let it simmer.”
I scrunch my nose and then ask my next question, feeling now like I’m talking to a parent who is giving his teenage daughter advice rather than my boss. “What do I… What do I say?”
He lets out a soft, kind sigh. “That’s all up to you, Maven. If you’re comfortable with it, you can tell him whatever you’d like—at the end of the assignment, he’ll be made aware of the company, anyway.”
I sigh, then nod. “Okay. Thanks, Gabriel. So I’m not fired?”
“No, you’re not fired, Maven.”
“Okay. Thanks, Gabriel.
“Anytime, Josephine.”
Then the phone clicks off. As I hang up, somehow both more conflicted and more confident, I wonder if Gabriel is secretly a romantic at heart.
THIRTY-THREE
ROWAN
She’s lying.
She has a tell, and I don’t think even she knows, but she has about a dozen tells that I see every time she tells a mistruth, and she islying.
About what, I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.
That’s all I’m thinking as I let Josie walk away from me, the look of hurt and panic bright in her eyes. The look hurt, but I also knew I needed her to leave, to give me space to get my thoughts together before I said something I couldn’t take back.
That’s why I’m in my office before the sun rises after what felt like the longest day of my life, one where I spoke to numerous reporters and police officers, and investigators trying to figure out what the fuck happened. I spoke with the sauna manufacturer, who informed me that the issue was that the wires were cut in a way that allowed the sauna to function still, but the safety feature wouldn’t activate. This is not common knowledge; someone would have to know exactly which wire to snip in order to manage it.
At this point, I don’t trust a soul here. Everyone is a suspect in my mind, everyone is worthy of further investigation, and no one can be fully trusted. It’s why, when I should be getting ready for a full day ofmeetings, I’m sitting at my desk reviewing all the different security feeds from the past two weeks. Our guy seems to know the angles to avoid, and when they can’t avoid them, they can break into our system and mess with the feed. But I have to believe they aren’t good enough to catcheverything, so I’ve decided to spend as much time as possible watching every single minute of footage I can to find something. Anything.
Starting with yesterday, in the spa.
According to the time stamp, it’s an hour after their scheduled treatment ended, but Josie and Rory are still in the spa area. That’s when they walk into the main lobby area, looking around as if checking for people before entering a supply room that I know is marked “Employees Only.” Josie tries the door and fails, but then pulls something from her bag: a keycard. I bet if I check the recent scans, I’ll see it’smykeycard. The door opens, and she steps in before looking around. Similar to the night I caught her in the bag room, she takes out her phone, snapping photos of what I think is the sign-out sheet as well as the supplies in the room. Rory moves in quickly and does something further that the cameras don’t catch while Josie stands out front, seeming to be on lookout.
It reminds me of the time I found her in the hallway, and she wouldn’t tell me what she was doing.
Whatisshe doing? If I went by what it looked like, I’d say she was plotting or planning some kind of sabotage and that she and Rory are the culprits we’re looking for, but it just doesn’t make sense. My gut can’t accept that as the truth.
Especially not when she hears something and starts moving toward the sauna. I switch the cameras to watch her enter that room, watch the look of genuine panic as she investigates the problem before her, and as if it’s her last resort, she pulls the keycard out of her bag and overrides the sauna.
She looks panicked and concerned, but the way she and Rory jump in, calm and cool-headed like they’ve encountered emergencieslike this before, tells me this isn’t a simple case of right place, right time.
That’s when I start making a list of all the places I’ve caught her and how many of them align with incidents that’ve occurred at the resort, both before and after her arrival.
She arrived after the rental shack was destroyed, but that’s where I found her on her first day at the resort, checking it out. Investigating? Looking for something? She told me she was there because she saw a turtle and walked to take a picture of it, but it doesn’t add up.
