Page 2 of Stalked By the Navy Seal

I stand there, tugging at my fingers and trying to figure out how to ask Maggie what I’m about to ask her. Finally, I gather the courage. “Hey Maggie, can I talk to you for a second.”

“I’m really busy. I literally have only a second, so spill.”

“Do you think you could borrow some money? Please, I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t really need it.”

“How much do you need?”

“Like two or three hundred.”

“Two or three hundred what?”

“Dollars.”

She looks at me in disbelief and then shakes her head. “I make twelve dollars an hour, my husband’s a janitor, and I have five kids; I don’t have two to three hundred dollars lying around.”

“Of course not. Thanks anyway.”

“You could ask Kevin for advance pay if you really need the money.”

No thanks, I’d rather chew glass.“Yeah, no problem.”

I make a mental note of all the orders as I push the cart out of the staging area and down the hallway.

I start at room 103, deliver their food, and move from room to room. When I get to 109, my last delivery, I announce myself, and when there’s no response, I knock.

“The door is open; come in,” I hear a deep voice say, so I push my cart past the door and into the room.

The moment I step into the room, a unique blend of sandalwood and citrus hits my nostrils, and I take a deep breath to savor the pleasant smell.

The shower is running. I’m happy when I don’t have to interact with the guests, so I quickly place his tray on the table and turn to leave before whoever is in the shower comes out.

I’m just about to leave when I hear a loud crash, so I turn around to see what it is, and my eyeballs almost pop out of their sockets.

Spilling out of the black briefcase lying on the ground are wads of cash. I have never seen that much money in my entire life, so it momentarily snatches my breath away.

When I regain my composure, my brain goes into overdrive. I need money desperately, and a briefcase filled with cash just so happens to fall on my way out of the room. This must be the universe giving me a way out. Right?

It has to be, and I’d be a fool not to grab it. The money seems to be quite a large sum, so I’m sure the owner won’t even notice a few wads missing.

Biting down hard on my nails, I quickly weigh my options. It’s either I turn around and walk away from this room, ask Maggie for a couple of dollars, which will probably sustain me only for a few days, or I risk going back to my house to grab my savings, or the third and worst option, I go back home, allow Deadeye Dante to take me with him when he gets here, and be ready to face whatever hellish plans he has in store for me.

And then there’s the fourth option—grab a few wads of cash from the ground and run as far away as possible from Misty River.

The universe makes my decision for me because at that moment, the shower stops running. It means that whoever is in there is done having his bath and will come out any second now, taking any plans to escape with him.

With my heart pounding loudly in my ears, I do the only thing anyone with a survival instinct would do. I run over to the open suitcase on the floor, grab about three wads of cash, and run.

Chapter Two

Chase

I step out of the shower, my hair still dripping with water. The first thing I notice is my briefcase, the one filled with the money I just got paid for my latest job as a private investigator, lying open on the ground.

Without a second glance, I can tell that some of the money is missing. From the tray sitting comfortably on the wooden table in the room, it’s no mystery who might have been in there and what they had done. But before I go pointing any fingers, I need to be absolutely certain.

Whoever had been in here must have been either really stupid or really desperate to not have bothered zipping up the briefcase and at least given themselves a slight chance to get away with their theft.

They won’t get far, of course, because if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s finding whoever I want to, whenever I want to find them.

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