Page 37 of Passenger Princess

I stare at her, her eyes shining while fighting a laugh, andnot for the first time, I wonder if she’s insane. This is not how a normal person responds when they realize their hotel room was broken into.

But then again, this is Ava.

I nod at her once more, squeezing her arms. Without thinking about the pros and cons or anything beyond her being in front of me, I press my lips against her hair. Then I step back, graze my fingers over the top of the orange cat's head in her arm, and move into the hall. I check the door once it clicks behind me, making sure it’s locked, and hear Ava put the chain on.

As I walk through to Ava’s room, I curse under my breath seeing the destruction—her things, thankfully, seem to be intact, though thrown everywhere, but everything else in the small hotel room is turned over, not like they were looking for something but just to make a statement.

They wanted us to know they were here.

I walk around for a few minutes, looking for any kind of clue but finding none, nor do I find some kind of culprit.

“Is there a note or anything?” a voice asks, and I jump, turning to see Ava behind me.

“What the fuck, Ava? I told you to stay in the room and call 911 and the hotel!”

“I did! Then I came in here when it was pretty clear no one was going to pop out and jump you. You needed backup.”

“Is itthatimpossible for you to listen to one instructionone fucking time?”

“No, but when the instruction is to stand in a mildly sketchy hotel room with clearly terrible security versus in this destroyed but seemingly empty room where my bodyguard is, I choose the one with my bodyguard.”

I glare at her, wanting to argue but knowing I can’t because, unfortunately, there’s some logic in her statement. “You could have at least said something.”

“And miss catching you off guard? Hell no."

“What if I thought you were the intruder and Iattacked you?”

She rolls her eyes like that’s insane and huffs. “As if you would ever make a mistake like that.” She waves a hand over me, saying a lot without saying much, then she looks around, letting out a low whistle as she does.

“Wow. This is kind of crazy, huh?” She moves in a circle, looking around, checking the destruction before starting to walk around, moving a coffee table on its side with the toe of her shoe, and then looking over her things. “Weird, they didn’t touch my shit, right? That’s weird?”

“I mean…” I hesitate to say anything, but I decide we’re long past playing games. “Yes, it’s strange. And there’s no note, not that I could see at least. Don’t touch anything though, okay?”

“I’ve seen enough CSI to know the rules.” She lifts Peach to her face, rubbing her cheek against the sleepy kitten before pressing pink lips to orange fur.

“Why aren’t you freaking out about this?” I ask, suddenly concerned because this isn’t a typical response to finding your room ransacked.

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll panic a bit once the adrenaline wears off. But right now, I’m just happy we were lucky enough no one was here, and Peach was with us,” she says, lifting the kitten. “Right now, I’m being delusional and telling myself it’s kind of funny, exciting, and interesting.”

I stare at her and shake my head.

“That’s not normal, you know that, right?”

“I enjoy living a life of delusion, thank you very much.” She pauses like she’s contemplating something. “Maybe that will be my next hyperfixation. I’ll become one of those true crime girlies, listening to podcasts and researching serial killers.”

“Well, maybe we don’t commit to that just yet. Plus, who said this is a serial killer, Ava? How did you even get from a ransacked room to a serial killer?”

“I mean, this is clearly not the work of a stable human being, Jaime.”

“But aserial killer?”

She shrugs then opens her mouth, probably to continue to argue her point, but a knock on the door frame comes, a hotel employee standing in the doorway with an officer behind him, and my attention is refocused.

NINETEEN

AVA

It’s long past dark when we pull up to the new hotel the pageant booked for us after it took almost two hours after the police let us leave, promising to keep Jaime up to date on any news. The previous hotel offered a new room for me, and I would have accepted because, honestly, once the humor of it all wore out, I realized I was exhausted and headed for a crash of monumental proportions.

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