Page 123 of Double Down
She’s just a woman, I remind myself. A woman we’ve decided to bring in and hold onto for a while. Too bad I still see the girl who stole my heart.
I don’t like her scared, though, so I wrap the barbs in silk. “If you wanted to be spanked and fucked to within an inch of your life, all you had to do was ask for it. You didn’t have to be a brat and hide something like this.”
Heat blooms across her cheeks and I see the fear crack until it’s not consuming her.Good.Her hunger is stronger than her instinct for self-preservation.
I release her hair, my hand stroking over her head, and straighten. “Breathe. Don’t move. And don’t say a fucking word.”
She nods. I unmute the call and put it on speaker. “Okay, what now?”
“Mrs. Langford claims she bought products from a spa staffer—faux-tox, filler, and an offer of injectables. Since the spa doesn’toffer injectables, we had a chance of making this go away.” He sounds as tired as I feel. “Now, however, she has produced proof that she purchased from staff in your hotel.”
“Proof meaning…?”
“A video. From your internal cameras.”
Ice hits my spine. “How? We don’t even have that footage because it was deleted.”
“I’m aware. She ‘obtained’ a copy of the footage that, by your account, no longer exists. It’s time-stamped two nights ago and shows a man meeting her near the private treatment rooms with a Titan-Wynn tote. He’s in a spa polo with a badge.”
“How did she find vanished CCTV?” Atticus demands, voice scraping. “Who handed her the drive?”
“Anonymous, naturally. She says it arrived through the concierge with no sender listed.”
“Send everything,” I order.
“It’s in your inbox. One more thing: her husband’s office has already reached out. If this isn’t ‘corrected’ and it gets louder, his committee will be forced to ask questions about your licensing.”
“Of course they will.” I swallow the heat. “I’ll call you back.”
I kill the call and drag my laptop across the table. “Sit. We watch once, then we plan.”
The screen fills with the spa corridor I know too well—the dim sconces, the idiotic water-wall my mother insisted on all familiar sights. But the angle is wrong, the camera set too high. It’s not one of ours. Another pinhole lens, like the ones Atticus pulled from vents this morning.
A man steps into frame: dark hair tucked under a cap, resort polo, badge lanyard tucked into his collar, gray tote the size of a weekend bag. His head is angled carefully down. He plants himself by a private-room door like he belongs there.
Two beats later, Mrs. Langford swans into the frame wearing sunglasses at night and another wide-brimmed hat like a shield. She gestures and opens the door, and together they vanish inside.
We fast-forward through seventeen minutes of empty hallway. No one else goes in. Eventually they emerge together, and we watch and she presses an envelope into his hand. He tucks it into his pocket and walks away.
He never once gives the camera a full profile.
I freeze on the best angle we get—a cheek, jaw, and a quick flick of the eyes. He’s not one of mine.
“Do we recognize him?” I ask the others, just in case.
“No,” Atticus grinds out.
“He’s not front-of-house,” Maverick says, leaning in.
Phoenix shakes her head. “I’ve never seen him. But I’m rarely at the spa.”
“It’s one of our uniforms,” Storm says, too calm. “Uniforms are costumes, though. He could be anyone in Savannah who stole a shirt.”
“Wait…check out his wrist,” Atticus says, rewinding frame-by-frame. “Is that a tattoo?”
I squint. There…ink… or shadow. “Maybe.”
“We finally have a face—even if it’s garbage,” I say, grabbing stills. “I want someone at the spa before it opens. We interview everyone—managers, front desk, laundry, back-of-house, vendors. We check badge logs against laundry pulls. If a badge was stolen, I want the report. If it wasn’t, someone printed an extra. We find him; we find who sent that video.”
