Page 113 of Twisted Redemption

“Burn your house down,” she mutters, this time loud enough for us to hear.

But we’re already pulling into the hotel parking lot. Brooke’s car isn’t here that I can see, but maybe she hid it somewhere and called an Uber. Who knows?

I park. Now for the hard part. “How are we going to convince them to give us her room number?”

“Leave that to me,” Willow says, already undoing her seatbelt. “Just let me out of the car.”

“If you try to run—”

“I won’t, Felix. You two obviously need my help anyway.”

He looks like he’s just been slapped. “Excuse me?”

She rolls her eyes. “This Brooke girl. Your girlfriend?”

I nod.

“You had to enlist Felix to help you, so she’s obviously smart enough to evade you. Probably booked a hotel room with no intention of showing up, and now she’s crashing at a friend’s place. Or a cash-only motel.”

“She hasn’t talked to any of her friends recently.”

“And you know that how?”

“Checked her phone.”

“Right. Because she’s incapable of deleting a couple text messages.”

Fuck. What Willow is saying makes a lot of sense.

“Just let me out of the car, and I’ll prove it. It’s what I’d do.”

Felix gets out and then opens her door, ready to grab her the second she makes a wrong move. But she just walks with us into the hotel, signaling for us to fall back as she makes her way to the front desk.

Whatever Willow says, we can’t hear it, but it’s clear by the way she’s batting her eyelashes and smiling that she’s flirting with the guy behind the desk. Felix goes stiff as he watches them interact.

Odd.

When she walks back toward us, it’s with a triumphant grin. “I was right. The guy said she never checked in.” She pats me on the chest and shoots me a pitying look. “Let’s go.”

And then we’re scrambling to keep up with her in case she tries to make a run for it.

“Did you flirt with him?” Felix hisses, his eyes fixed on Willow.

She raises an eyebrow, looking over her shoulder as she walks toward the car. “Jealous?”

“Absolutely not,” he snaps.

“Sure,” she croons before slipping inside the driver’s seat.

I frown. What the hell is she doing? I have the keys. Digging into my pocket, I round the car, about to tell her to get the hell out of my seat.

And then I realize that I, in fact, do not have my keys. They’re in Willow’s hand, and she’s inserting them into the ignition.

“What the hell?”

“Told you to watch out for her,” Felix mutters, yanking open the passenger seat. “Don’t bother fighting. She wants to drive, she’s going to drive.”

“What the fuck,” I whisper, but I slide into the backseat. I have no desire to manhandle a woman, and I think this one knows it.

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