Page 38 of Sirens
“Jesus Christ, McGarvey, you’re like a Hemingway hero but, like…less hilarious,” she groused as she wrenched the helmet out of his hand and stuffed it over her curls.
She should have looked ridiculous rather than sexy.
He swallowed hard, heat pooling low in his belly at her teasing. “Don’t hate. I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them.”
She rolled her eyes, jamming the hat down even further to keep it from slipping off her head. “Whose hat is this?” she bitched. “It smells like someone vomited it out of a roughneckass factory. Can hats give you, like…scalp chlamydia? If I get scabies or leprosy or something, I’m coming to rub mynarsty, peeling skin all over your anal retentively clean house.”
“Fair,” was all he said before donning a helmet and fetching the borrowed keys to the building from his pocket. “See? No need for a B&E if you know the right people and do the right thing.”
“Ugh.” She shoved past him into the gloom beyond the entry. “You’re such a dork, I think my virginity grew back.”
The last thing either of them expected was his boom of laughter that sounded too warm and too dark to be paraded out in the daytime. “From Albuquerque to here, I’ve been called many,manynames, Ms. Michaels, but I think I was today years old before ‘dork’ was ever added to the litany.”
“Well, add it and put an asterisk next to it, because I have receipts.” Trent could swear she put a little extrasashin hershaybefore disappearing into the shadows of the building.
With a sharp inhale, he silenced the warning bells clanging from his head all the way down to his more sensitive bits.
Inside, he surveyed the grand foyer of the old hotel. Intricate woodwork, high ceilings with ornate crown molding, a spiraling staircase leading up to the mysterious second floor. Trent broke out his duty flashlight, the strong beam necessary even in the stormy gray light from the windows. By the time he’d blinked the daylight out of his eyes and adjusted to the dark wood interior, Maggie had flipped on her phone camera with an attached light and filmed her way up the staircase, her palm gliding along the smooth wooden banister. At the top, a long hallway stretched out before them, rooms branching off on either side.
“So…what exactly are you looking for?” Trent asked, peering into one of the bedrooms. A large brass bedframe,sansmattress, dominated the space, and the dusty velvet curtainshanging from an oval-framed window had long since faded to an indeterminate color.
“Best-case scenario? A smoking gun that solves the mystery of Madame Katz’s disappearance and that of the thirty-three men who were last seen at her establishment. Worst case? Some kickass footage I can edit into whatever story unfolds.” Maggie grinned at him, her eyes glinting with mischief.
“Without the proof, do you just take…creative liberties to tell the story?” he asked, idly testing the fortitude of a discarded bench and losing all faith in the structural integrity of anything nearby. Forget leprosy—they were in real danger of tetanus.
She whirled on him. “How very dare you question my journalistic integrity, sir,” she said, clutching imaginary pearls. “The truth is often entirely too weird to water down with fiction. What’s the point of telling a true story if you leave out the truth? Might as well make all the shit up and not lurk around haunted old whorehouses with a man so wholesome he’s basically a sentient pile of quinoa.”
“Hey, I like quinoa.”
“I already knew that, McGarvey.Everyonealready knew that.”
Scowling, he followed her, ripping down spider webs and clearing detritus before she haplessly tripped.
“A cell camera makes for a bad navigator, Michaels.” Trent almost killed himself kicking aside a metal pipe and slipping on dusty old papers strewn on the ground.
“You’re doing the Lord’s work, McGarvey,” she quipped. “At least you’re making yourself useful. Also, stay out of the shot—your butt is too distracting.”
Trent didn’t try terribly hard to fight off a self-satisfied smirk. “If I had a dollar for every time…”
“You’d still have to work for the government. Now go through those three rooms on that side and tell me if the light is any good for a wide angle, or if I need to come back during golden hour.”
Trent set off to obey before he realized what the fuck she’d said and pulled up short. “This is your one-time access to this hotel, Michaels,” he said with the appropriate amount of gravitas. “There is no coming back after this.”
Not with you,she might have grumbled.
“What?” he said.
“What?” She peeked out from behind the camera to bat her Betty Boop eyes at him.
“I’m serious. If you’re caught here again, you might actually do time.”
“Don’t worry, Dudley Do-Good, you won’tcatchme here again…” Her beatific smile hid a diabolical intent.
“It’s Dudley Do-Right,” he said without thinking.
“Oh. My. Gawduh.” Flashing him a look that might have threatened to drown theCalypso, she pointed across the hall in silent directive. “I’ve never bullied anyone, but I want to give you the worst wedgie right now.”
With a cheeky grin, McGarvey made himself scarce, surprised at how much he was enjoying himself. Each room whispered secrets of scandal, the faded opulence still clinging to the walls. Trent couldn’t help but admire the intricate woodwork, the ghostly remnants of luxury, even as his mind kept wandering back to the woman exploring across the hall. On the labyrinthine second floor, he still felt tethered to her. To the sounds of her shoes on the old floor. The small exclamations she made to herself. The pauses she took to presumably touch something she shouldn’t.
