Page 49 of Fierce

Scavenger Hunt

I woke up on Friday morning in what was surely the smallest room the Best Western possessed, edged my way quietly around my bed to reach the tiny bathroom so I wouldn’t wake Kasey, and hurried to finish so she could get in there.

She had a plane to catch, after all. And I didn’t.

I dressed in low, tight gray jeans, soft low-heeled western ankle boots with tooled silver buttons, and a close-fitting, stretchy hoodie with a wide neckline in swirling blues and greens. If it tended to slip off to one side and show a ribbon of pale-blue bra strap, I could hardly help that. Suitable clothes for a student-budget visit to Paris, I hoped. My protective camouflage, and maybe just a little bit sexy, too. In case anybody was looking.

“Cute outfit,” Kasey said when she came out of the bathroom. “Wish I could afford to stay here for two more nights. Do you have a secret sugar daddy or something?”

I laughed, wishing it sounded more natural. “I wish.”

“Well, maybe you’ll meet a cute French businessman and never come home, huh?”

“Maybe,” I said. “We can but dream.”

I had breakfast with her and the rest of the marketing and publicity staff—except the important people, of course, who had breakfast meetings—then went to the front desk with the others and waited in a long, slow line to check out. And when the desk clerk handed me my receipt, he gave me a white envelope along with it.

I didn’t open it, not in front of everybody. Instead, I gave Kasey a hug.

“Bye, roomie,” she said. “See you back at the salt mines.”

I said goodbye to the others, then escaped to the café in the corner of the lobby, where I sat down and opened my envelope with trembling fingers.

A car is waiting for you outside,I read in a neat handwriting that I couldn’t imagine was Hemi’s. I turned the piece of paper over, but that was it.

To take me where? It was like a scavenger hunt.

I wheeled my black suitcase back through the lobby and peered cautiously outside. No Te Mana employees lurking about, so the airport bus had come and gone. I walked through the revolving door, then hesitated long enough that the doorman approached me.

“Puis-je vous aider?”he asked me. “May I be of service? A taxi, perhaps?”

Even as he spoke, a black car rolled to a stop in the middle of the semicircular drive, and a driver in a black suit emerged and approached us. “Madame Sinclair?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, and he nodded and took my suitcase. “Thank you,” I said to the doorman, and followed the driver, feeling more excited—and more confused—than ever.

The driver hoisted my bag into the trunk and shut the lid, then held the rear door for me, got back behind the wheel, and rolled out into Parisian traffic that nearly had me shutting my eyes.

I considered asking him where we were going, but didn’t. It would certainly sound odd. In any case, I figured it out quickly enough. Most of the events during the week had been held at the Carousel du Louvre, the underground mall adjoining the huge museum, and that was the direction we were headed.

Sure enough, the driver slowed fifteen minutes later and pulled into another entryway, but such a different one. The French flags flying over stone columns topped with gilt, a stately edifice of warm stone rising above them, and all around us, everything that most said Paris. The Avenue de l’Opéra, the heart of the city. And the Hôtel du Louvre.

I didn’t have time to stand around and gawk. I slid out of the car, waited while the driver retrieved my suitcase, and fumbled in my bag for the appropriate French tip.

“Non, Madame,”he said with a waving-off gesture that had to be Hemi’s influence again, and I stepped forward to encounter a splendidly uniformed doorman, infinitely more magnificent than the plebeian specimen at the former hotel, and a soaring lobby, all white marble floors, ornately carved furniture upholstered with velvet, glittering chandeliers, and black marble columns.

Black-suited clerks, so urbane and discreet they were more like headwaiters, stood behind a reception desk of polished wood. No standing in line this time. Straight to the desk. “I’m Hope Sinclair,” I said, trying for an assurance I didn’t feel, trying to pretend that I knew what was coming next.

A few taps of computer keys, directions to the elevators, and the next part of the scavenger hunt was on. And if I’d worried, somewhere in the back of my mind, that Hemi would simply have installed me in his own hotel room as if that were my only choice, I’d been wrong,

“Oh, boy,” I breathed as the door closed softly behind me. “No fair.”

I guessed this was what they meant by “Empire furnishings.” Soft rose carpeting, a plush couch and side chairs in the same hue, and sweeps of red draperies framing floor-to-ceiling windows, set against gold walls hung with light sconces. On the coffee table? A vase of lavender roses, of course, and a basket of fruit on the square dining table. And, through a doorway, a king-sized bed covered with crisp white linens and huge, fluffy pillows, with a magnificent chandelier overhead.

The whole thing was a giant boudoir, and I felt sexier just standing in it. And if this had been a scavenger hunt, I’d surely won the prize.

And then, of course, my phone rang. Did the man have spies everywhere?

“You know,” I said when I’d pressed the button, “just a room would have totally worked on me.”

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