Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 321(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 214(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 321(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 214(@300wpm)
She was on her own and did not want to be found.
Dallas uses the pass key to access her suit. Only Mason and Nat have a whole floor to themselves since there are the two who usually stay at the Hotel all the time. Their jobs as the manager and the decision maker demand all of their time. We step into her apartment, and right away, the familiar scent of Natalie’s perfume overwhelms me. Vanilla with notes of orange, cinnamon, and sandalwood. It’s subtle, something I’ve smelled a million times and never consciously connected to her. Smelling it now sets off a bitter pang deep in my gut. Loss. Regret.
Could I have stopped this from happening somehow?
Big surprise, no such emotions burden Dallas. I’m fairly sure he swore off genuine human emotion before I was born. “Let’s split up. I’ll take the bedroom, bathroom, and office. You can have the rest.” As usual, his word is law, and he marches off to the bedroom without missing a beat.
Fine. I would rather work without him hovering over me, anyway. I start by searching under furniture, tipping the sofa and chairs backward in case there’s something taped beneath them. Anything—an extra device, a notebook, a flash drive. I go through the kitchen cabinets, taking the drawers out, searching for false bottoms. She’s not some innocent rookie. She knows her shit. She knows how to cover her tracks.
I would normally appreciate that—it might even have turned me on in the past. How capable and shrewd she is. Right now, though, it’s a pain in the ass.
“How’s it going?” Dallas asks from where he is going through the bathroom vanity by the sounds of it. I have to bite my tongue rather than announce I totally cracked the case, and simply didn’t feel like filling him in before now. He irks the shit out of me with his superior attitude, but Natalie could be in trouble. She needs us. I can swallow my pride and let this old man think he’s top dog for a little while.
“She’s not lazy. She’s too disciplined to leave anything behind that we could use.”
“You never know,” he insists. “There’s got to be something around here. She was in a hurry when she left—she couldn’t have thought of everything.”
If that’s what he needs to tell himself. “I thought you figured she had Beverly coaching her through all of this. Pulling the strings and all that shit. She would’ve prepared for possibly having to run.”
He’s quiet for a long time. We don’t agree on what we think her motive was for running. He thinks her twisted-as-fuck mother somehow roped her in. I think she was completely in the dark, and Beverly framed her to distract us from what she’s doing behind the scenes. Why she would throw her own daughter under the bus is a mystery, but it’s a mystery why she would try to kill Mason, too. Some things can’t be explained. It’s a waste of time trying.
I look up when Dallas exits the bathroom, standing between it and the kitchen. “Let’s get one thing straight. I wouldn’t put it past Beverly to use Natalie if she is dead set on hurting Mason. It would not only give her insight into Mason’s daily life and how to best get to him, but it would be fucking with him up here.” He taps the side of his head, looking grim. “That doesn’t mean I think Natalie’s guilty. Parent shit… there’s no black-and-white when it comes to that.”
I find it hard to believe Natalie could know her mother was alive and not tell Mason, but I’ll keep that to myself. He can’t know her the way I do if he is willing to entertain that theory.
It’s fucking wrong and unprofessional to let my personal feelings color my interpretation of this, but some things can’t be denied. Nothing matters more to her than family. After losing both parents and their older brother, all Mason and Nat had was each other. Unless Beverly managed to get in her head and poison her, I can’t believe Natalie would do anything to hurt him. I can’t force my imagination to entertain that possibility.
I stare at the backsplash behind the stove, silently going back and forth. Telling myself I need to be objective, but unable to let go of the image of who I believe Natalie to be.
As I stare, I see something I’ve never noticed before. I never had a reason to. Who fucked this up? I ask myself, reaching out and running a hand over a section of slate gray and black tile that’s slightly out of alignment with the surrounding tiles. Everything else about this suite is perfect—they spared no expense in upgrading, retrofitting, and making certain that even someone with the most discerning taste couldn’t possibly have anything to complain about. Yet this tile was left all sloppy and off-center?