I balked. “I wasn’t putting her down. I was putting you down. You’ve turned into a big wuss since she came to the island.”
He was momentarily taken aback. “Oh. Well, that’s okay. You can put me down. Carry on.”
It was strange, but when I had an open invitation to bother him it was nowhere near as much fun. “I would rather find Hadley. Jareth went out with the models. He said he could handle things himself. Told them he has some skin problem that doesn’t allow him to be in direct sunlight.”
Galen cocked his head, considering. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
“Yes. What happens if he starts burning in front of them?”
“There’s a fire extinguisher out there and some of the props are beach buckets. The models can fill them with ocean water and dump them on him. Saltwater is supposed to have healing properties.”
That was the most ludicrous thing I’d heard all day … and yet I kind of wanted to see it happen. Hey, I have a curious mind. He won’t die or anything as long as they get to him fast enough.
“Let’s just find Hadley,” I suggested, turning back to the problem at hand. “Where do you think she went?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be chasing her, would I?”
“Geez, Louise. You’re like zero fun now. When did this happen?”
“I just … don’t like it,” he admitted. “There’s too much going on here. There are dippy models throwing themselves at a mortician. There’s a woman I used to date threatening to behead my girlfriend. I checked, by the way, and she hasn’t left her post.
“Then there’s the jerkiest concierge ever, and he’s apparently off somewhere with my girlfriend,” he continued. “That’s on top of June falling and hurting herself … and someone else bashing in the photo shoot director’s head with a bookend.”
“You forgot whoever is breaking into the storeroom and ransacking it,” I added helpfully. “When you put it all together like that, you’re right. It’s too much to be a coincidence.”
Galen stilled. “You think everything is connected, don’t you?”
“I don’t know about everything, but I would wager that a lot of this stuff is connected. Like … maybe the photographer wasn’t smacked over the head because he had something to do with the storeroom being ransacked. Maybe he sexually harassed one of the girls and they did it to him. But the rest … it’s starting to feel as if we’re cursed.”
Galen let loose a heavy sigh. “I thought you would think I was crazy if I brought that up.”
“I don’t tend to believe in coincidences,” I reminded him. “I’m a cupid. In my world, things happen for a reason. Usually we make things happen to certain people. This isn’t the same thing, but it’s starting to feel as if there’s a design to the madness.”
“Right.” He tapped his foot. “Right. What’s the design? You said June tripped and fell. You don’t think someone purposely managed to make that happen, do you?”
I gave the question serious thought. “I don’t see how,” I said finally. “She just seemed to go down out of nowhere. I think that is the sort of thing that happens when people reach a certain age.”
Galen grimaced. “I don’t like thinking of her as old.”
“She’s not old. She’s just older. She’ll live to be older still. We simply have to take better care of her. She has no family, so that falls on us.”
“Wrong. She has family. It’s us.”
“Does that make you my brother?” He cuffed the back of my head and frowned. “We need to find Hadley. It’s not like her to take off when trouble is afoot.”
Okay. Now that was the most ludicrous thing I’d heard all day. “Since she’s been here she’s found trouble at least six times that I can think of. I’m sure if I put my mind to it I could come up with a few more.”
“She’s an angel.”
“And you’re pathetic with love.”
His cheeks flushed red — and not from anger — at the words. “I … you … .”
“Oh, geez. You do love her.” It wasn’t exactly news. It felt fast in some ways, but not in others. “Have you told her?”
“Of course not. It’s too soon.”
“Good boy.”
“That doesn’t mean we don’t have to find her. I hear the ticking of a clock in the back of my head. I think that means we need to find her as soon as possible.”
I was understandably puzzled. “Do you really hear a clock or is that a metaphor?”
“It’s a metaphor … and yet I feel it here.” He tapped the spot above his heart. “It’s a sound I can’t ignore, which means something bad is going to happen. Something feels off.”
I’d learned to trust his gut a long time ago. “Then let’s do it. Where do you want to go?”
“I … .” This time when he trailed off something lit in the depths of his eyes. He had an idea. “Wasn’t Nick going on and on about a secret basement room earlier?”
“I heard him say something about the foundation of the first building not lining up with the construction of the second. I knew there was a fire at some point that forced renovations, but it was long ago.”
“Yeah, but Nick said that he loved June’s stories. How much do you want to bet he was talking about the pirate stories?”
I started catching on to what he was saying. “He did dress like a pirate and recite poetry.”
“Those were odes,” Galen shot back in perfect mockery of Nick’s voice. Then he sobered. “Maybe Nick is obsessed with Captain Seaver’s missing booty.”
“Oh, I can’t believe you said that when I don’t have time to mock you,” I complained. “I think you might be right, though. He could be responsible for ransacking the storeroom because he’s looking for an entrance to that secret part of the basement he mentioned. That doesn’t explain why he would take Hadley with him.”
“Doesn’t it? Hadley is a powerful witch. Paige has been drilling that into his head. He might think she can find that door for him. Then he can claim the treasure and make a run for it.”
“But Hadley left willingly with him,” I pointed out. “She wouldn’t have done that if he was threatening her.”
“So maybe he convinced her to leave some other way.”
Realization dawned on Galen’s face. “Maybe he said he was taking her to us because we needed help or something.”
“She would come running if she thought we needed her.”
“So we have to find where he took her. It has to be the property, which isn’t all that large. The only problem is, I have no idea where to look.”
I was right there with him. I was officially out of ideas.
Ten
We started outside. If there was a sub-basement, the odds of finding it were incrementally better we’d find a trace of it from outside.
“It can’t be that way,” Galen said, pointing toward the restaurant that shared the hotel’s parking lot. “There’s no way there’s a hidden trapdoor or anything. It would be paved over.”
“No.” I ran my hands over the exterior wall and frowned. “It has to be somewhere.”
We started walking. As much as he probably wanted to run, Galen kept his pace slow. We would miss something if we went too fast.
When we reached the back of the building, the area that looked out on the beach, we took a moment to watch the photo shoot. Jareth apparently had things well in hand. He stood in the shade of the umbrellas, directing the women to roll around in the sand with the shark inflatable.
“I kind of want to take that inflatable home tonight,” Galen offered out of nowhere, causing me to hike an eyebrow.
“Is that because Hadley is obsessed with meeting a shark shifter?”
He shrugged, noncommittal. “It just looks fun.”
“You can have it as soon as the shoot is finished. Think of it as my gift to you.”
“You don’t want it?”
“All I want is a shot – or eight – of bourbon and a good night’s sleep.”
“Yeah. That would be nice.”
We resumed our search, covering all four sides. Then we returned to the patio because it was the only place we hadn’t checked.
“I don’t like this,” Galen muttered as we felt around the walls. “We have to find Hadley right now.”
I knew rolling my eyes wouldn’t help, but I couldn’t stop myself. “What do you think we’re trying to do here? It’s not social hour.” I recognized that snapping at him wouldn’t make things better, but I was starting to worry, too. Hadley’s habit of finding trouble was worthy of the occasional panic attack. Er, well, if you’re prone to those sorts of things.
Once the patio was clear, we stomped through the door and found ourselves back at the storeroom. On a whim, I pushed open the door. It was empty.
“She’s not in there,” Galen snapped. “We’ve already been in there.”
“Do you have a better idea? Seriously, either float an idea that leads us to your girlfriend or stop your bellyaching.”
“I’m not bellyaching. I’m … .” He trailed off, his eyes moving to the ceiling.
I followed his gaze, frowning. “I don’t think she’s in the ceiling tiles.”
“No, but what’s right above this room?”
“I’m not sure.” I walked through the open door again and lifted my eyes, frowning when I realized what I was looking at. “The lounge where Jay was attacked.”
“Right. So, maybe there’s something in that lounge that we didn’t notice because we were too busy staring at Jay.”
I hadn’t considered that. I strode toward the stairs. “I guess it’s worth a shot.” I took the steps two at a time. I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know that Galen was following.
I used the keys in my pocket to open the lounge, which had been shut off after we’d found Jay, and pulled up short when an odd odor struck me. “What is that?”
Galen growled as he started sniffing. “It’s … musty. Hadley has been in here, though.”
“How can you be sure?”
He shot me an incredulous glare. “I think I know what my girlfriend smells like.”
“Sarcasm and butterflies?”
“Coconuts and limes. I smell her body spray. She put it on before we left the lighthouse this morning. She’s been in here.”
There was no reason to question his instincts. He was a shifter. Heightened smell was one of his abilities. If he believed she’d been in the room, I had no choice but to agree. “Okay, so where did they go?”
The lounge was more of a hospitality suite. It looked to be a small office, complete with a conference table and ten chairs. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the room.
“This way,” Galen barked, drawing my attention back to the main room.
When I slid into the spot where we’d found Jay, I discovered that Galen was somewhere else. It didn’t take me long to find him. He was in a breezeway of sorts with wicker furniture and a ceiling fan. At the end of the rectangular room, someone had punched a large hole through the plaster and lathe.
“Son of a … .” In my head, the only thing I could think is that I would need to fix the hole. It would be a labor-intensive job for a hole this big. It would take a whole afternoon. Then, when you added the mudding and sanding that would be required, ugh. Just … ugh. Then I remembered Hadley.
“Do you think she’s in there?” I asked.
Galen’s head was already poking through the opening.
“Man. I guess we know where the smell came from,” I groused, waving my hand in front of my face. “I think whatever is back there has been closed up for some time.”
“Years,” Galen agreed, his eyes somber when they locked with mine. “I also smell coconuts. She’s down there.”
That wasn’t all that surprising. “I’m sure Nick is with her. Do you want to call for backup?”
He looked insulted by the suggestion. “Are you saying that you and I can’t take Nick?”
“Forget what I said earlier. Let’s kill him.”
Galen managed a strangled laugh and then turned serious. “We’re going in quiet. Hadley’s safety is our biggest concern.
He took the lead because that was his way. She was his girlfriend, after all, so he had dibs on making Nick cry like a Real Housewife forced to forego cocktail hour. We’d been in a fight or two before – and not just against one another, but also as allies – and we knew how to be quiet.
There was very little light, but Galen apparently didn’t need it. I was a little more careful as I descended the ancient stairs. It seemed to me that we’d been walking forever and then it occurred to me that we were descending so far because we really were going into a basement. The stairwell bypassed the first floor – which meant it was probably located between two rooms – and we entered a chamber no one had seen for decades.
I had a million questions but I buried them until later. Hadley was more important than anything we might find down here … and that included pirate treasure. Wow. There’s a thought I never believed I’d have. I’m talking about the pirate treasure, not Hadley. I’m genuinely fond of her, even if she can’t turn off her mouth.
A dim light beckoned from the bottom, and we were careful as we continued to the end of the stairs. Once there, we found a lantern in the middle of the floor, its light flickering but illuminating nothing around it. Other than the lantern, the room was empty.
“What do you think that means?” I whispered. “Are we supposed to take it?”
“Do you want to take a lantern that was left by the guy who kidnapped my girlfriend?” Galen shot back. “It will probably blow up … or sound an alarm or something. I’m not touching it. Now … shh.”
We moved toward the next room, both halting when the sound of Hadley’s voice wafted through the stale air.
“I don’t know what you want me to do,” she whined, though I welcomed the sound of her voice. At least she was okay. “There’s nothing down here. You can see that for yourself.”
“I can see that,” Nick agreed. “You can see beyond that, though. I know. You’re a witch. You can see things others can’t. I want you to find the treasure.”
“I don’t think there’s any treasure down here.” Hadley sounded practical more than terrified. “Besides, I don’t really want to help you. I think you’re a dink.”
“Now you listen here … .” Whatever Nick was going to say died on his lips as Galen stormed into the room. He was so fast I had to scramble to keep up with him.
What I found waiting for us was something straight out of a Scooby-Doo cartoon … and not in a good way. The room was tiny, probably five feet by five feet, and Hadley and Nick stood in the center with another lantern, glaring at each other.
“Don’t touch her,” Galen seethed as he moved to pull Hadley away from Nick. “Don’t even think about it.”
Instead of being grateful that we’d arrived to rescue her, Hadley was annoyed. “Don’t kill him,” she admonished. “He only threatened me with a box cutter. It wasn’t a real knife or anything.”
Galen was incredulous. “Do you know how much damage a box cutter can do?”
“Yes, but he didn’t even get it near my face. He cut himself on it and then got really upset at the small amount of blood. He’s a total baby.”
“I am not!” Nick stomped his foot as I slid around Hadley. Now she was positioned behind both Galen and me. I was looking forward to beating the snot out of Nick. He’d had it coming since I took over the hotel. Sure, it had been only about twenty-four hours, but it felt like an eternity.
“Simmer down,” I admonished him. I wasn’t in the mood for him to turn into a mass of moods. “What do you think you were doing taking Hadley the way you did? Did you think we wouldn’t come for you?”
“I knew you would. I didn’t think you would find us. I didn’t even know this room was here until today. I had a hunch yesterday when I was in the lounge and realized it was hollow behind that one wall. I couldn’t risk
entering until everyone was busy today.”
“Is that why you trashed the storeroom again?” I asked.
He nodded. “I thought it would distract you and Sheriff Hero here.” He jabbed his thumb in Galen’s direction, earning a scowl for his efforts.
“Did you mess it up the first time?”
“Yeah. I was convinced the stairwell had to be accessible from in there and I took everything off the shelves to check.”
“You mean you threw crap around the room like a spoiled ninny,” Galen corrected.
“Oh, please.” Nick’s eye roll was so pronounced I had to bite back a laugh. “You act like the twenty minutes you spent cleaning up the mess somehow ruined your life. Get over it.”
I sensed trouble from the way Galen puffed out his chest. I put my hand in front of him to make sure he didn’t inadvertently slam Nick’s head into the brick wall. “If you kill him down here we’re going to have to carry the body up those stairs,” I warned him. “Whoever kills him has to carry him.”
“Since when is that the rule?” Galen complained.
“Since now. Besides, I want to hear what he has to say. Aren’t you curious why he did all of this?”
“I can answer that,” Hadley volunteered, smirking at Nick. “We’ve had a long discussion in this musty and gross basement. There are spiders, by the way. Big ones.”
Galen looked over his shoulder, causing Hadley’s grin to widen.
“Anyway, he’s been looking for Captain Beaver’s treasure since he started working here. That’s the only reason he applied for the job in the first place.”
“Seaver!” Nick corrected. “Captain Seaver. Why do you keep calling him Captain Beaver?”
“Because she has the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old boy,” I replied. “I don’t think she can help herself.”
“Definitely not,” Hadley agreed. “He found an old map that showed the location of Captain Beaver’s treasure room – or what he determined to be a treasure room – but couldn’t figure out how to find it because the map was of the older hotel. He’s spent years narrowing it down.”
Cupid in Crisis Page 9