Chapter Fourteen
Alice clutched Sebastian and watched Owen rez the lock on the door of the suite.
She was still a little stunned. Visions of disaster danced in her head.
She saw thousands of dollars’ worth of very expensive booze being swept off the shelves and crashing to the floor.
That would most likely have been followed by getting arrested and thrown in jail for damaging valuable casino property.
And once in jail, she would have been easy prey for Kelbrook and his fixer.
Not to mention that she would have owed the Amber Palace a fortune she would probably never have been able to repay.
She had lived in Illusion Town long enough to know that it was never a good idea to owe money to one of the big casino moguls.
“I don’t even want to think about how much that bottle of Alien Dream Absinthe alone would have cost,” she said, trying to pick a less disastrous vision.
“Stop obsessing about what might have been,” Owen said.
Gallantly, he stood aside and allowed her to stalk past him into the room.
“You’re a trained practitioner of the Ballantine Method.
You’re supposed to think positive. The bottle was not dropped on the floor, therefore there is no financial issue. ”
“Pure luck,” she muttered.
“I wasn’t aware that the Ballantine Method allowed for the factor of luck. I thought it was all about balancing negative and positive energy.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Right,” he said. “In hindsight, it was an interesting evening. I don’t know about you, but getting kicked out of a bar was a first for me.”
“Talk about embarrassing.” She set Sebastian down on the bed, slipped off her high heels, and flopped into a plush chair. “At the rate we’re going, we’ll be fortunate if Sebastian doesn’t get us booted out of the hotel.”
Sebastian chortled at the sound of his name and bustled across the bed. From there he launched himself forward, alighting nimbly on the table. After that it was onward to the windowsill. The crystals on his new necklace sparkled through his fur.
“Think of Sebastian as our personal public relations agent,” Owen said. “Trust me, the Amber Palace will be thrilled with the media attention. I can see the ads now. Come play the slots the lucky dust bunny plays. You can’t lose.”
He took off his jacket, tossed it over a chair, and loosened his bow tie so that it draped around his neck.
“As if we needed any more publicity,” Alice said, trying to ignore the bow tie. What was it about a tuxedo that made a man look so sexy? “The headline in the Curtain this afternoon was bad enough. The one tomorrow morning will probably be worse.”
“How about a real nightcap? We never got to finish the one we started downstairs in the Amber Lounge.”
“Okay.”
She watched, fascinated, as Owen undid the top two or three buttons of his crisp white shirt and crossed the room to the minibar. An unsettling mix of tension and excitement stirred her senses.
There was something incredibly intimate about the casual way Owen was relaxing. It was almost as if they were returning from a date and getting ready to go to bed together.
Not a very innocent thought, is it, Mr. Consultant?
She considered making the observation aloud—telling him just how hot he looked and how she was wondering what it would be like to go to bed with him. It would serve him right. Talk about punching a very large hole in his ridiculous theory of her innocence.
But would such a bold acknowledgment of her emotions come under the heading of calculated risk or dumb move? She was trying to decide when the memory of his cold observation about himself stopped her. Turns out it’s easier to recognize innocence in another person if you’re not innocent yourself.
The self-accusation made her sad. Only a good man would conflate hunting the monsters with a loss of innocence.
And why was she trying to analyze Owen March in the first place? He was not a client. Not a lover. Yes, they were sharing a room, but that was a practicality. The only actual bond between the two of them was a mutual desire to defang Dunstan Kelbrook.
Evidently oblivious to the heated undercurrents that she was struggling to suppress, Owen emptied two small bottles of brandy into glasses and carried them back across the room. He handed one to her and sat down across from her on the sofa.
“Here’s to us,” he said, raising his glass. “We survived a night at the Hotel of Dreams.”
She raised her glass. “To us.”
She swallowed too much of the brandy. The stuff burned all the way down. When she could catch her breath, she coughed and sputtered.
Owen watched her with some concern. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” she managed. “I usually drink wine.” Embarrassed, she sought for a way to change the conversation. “Speaking of that nightmare of a hotel, don’t you think it’s weird that there has been absolutely nothing in the news about what happened there last night?”
“No.” Owen settled against the sofa cushions.
“It was a meticulously planned operation from start to finish, which means Kelbrook had the full cooperation of the hotel management. They drew you out of hiding with the promise of providing proof that you didn’t kill your husband.
You showed up right on schedule, but the team they sent in to grab you ran into technical difficulties. ”
“Thanks to you.” She risked a cautious sip of brandy. This time she was able to savor the warmth. “And Sebastian.”
“And yourself. Don’t ever forget that you participated in your own rescue.”
“After getting myself into trouble in the first place.”
Owen moved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “No one in your situation would have been able to resist what they were offering.”
She frowned. “The question is, out of all the places they could have used, why did they choose to lure me back to that ghastly hotel? I would have gone anywhere in the four city-states to meet with someone who promised to provide me with proof of my innocence.”
“Best guess is that they stuck with the Hotel of Dreams because it had worked the first time. Criminal minds use the same logic as everyone else. If it ain’t broke—”
“Don’t fix it? Yes, but there has to be a reason why Kelbrook thought it would work both times. What is it about that hotel that convinced him it was the ideal place for a hushed-up kidnapping?”
“Location, location, location,” Owen mused. “It’s remote, isolated, and obviously management can be bribed to look the other way.”
“But how did Kelbrook discover the hotel? The company’s headquarters and the family compound are in Cadence. That’s a long way from the coast. I’ve been thinking about this since I woke up in that locked ward at Serenity Gardens. Why use the Hotel of Dreams?”
“Great question. I haven’t had much time to think about it. For the past two weeks I’ve been hunting you. Have you come up with any theories?”
“Maybe.” She swirled the brandy in her glass. “What if Kelbrook has a personal connection to the hotel? Perhaps he owns it through a shell corporation. Or he might have incriminating evidence against the owner and used it to blackmail the person into helping him?”
“Both are possibilities,” Owen said. “I assume you looked into that angle?”
“A little. To tell you the truth, I’ve been afraid to do much deep research online for fear of drawing the attention of Kelbrook’s security apparatus.”
“That was a smart precaution. What do you know about the hotel?”
“Not much more than what comes up on the rez-net. There have been a few articles about it in the various online travel magazines. It was constructed about four decades ago by a wealthy, eccentric recluse. He made a fortune in high-tech games. He retired young and built the hotel.”
“I got that much from my own research,” Owen said.
“His name was McIntyre. He disappeared about thirty years ago. There was no family to claim the hotel. It was listed as abandoned and eventually picked up at auction by a small company. A shell corporation. It is currently managed by a woman named Rose Ash. I haven’t had time to try to trace the ownership. ”
“There are some local legends that claim that in the old days, when the original owner operated the hotel, some of the guests checked in and didn’t check out.”
Owen’s brows lifted. “That’s interesting. I didn’t come across that information.”
“I couldn’t find any police reports that mentioned anyone disappearing at the hotel, so the stories are probably just that—stories.”
“We need more information about the current ownership of that hotel.”
“I thought you were all about following the bloodline,” she said.
“Businesses and corporations have bloodlines, too.”