tugging them on. “But we need to be vigilant. If someone’s giving out our information, we can’t be sure who to trust here.”
“Smart idea,” she said. “Also we should both be much less naked.”
Which was when I finally realized she was wearing a white sleep shirt that barely skimmed her thighs. Every swaying movement bared the curve of her ass. Her legs were strong, toned. The polish on her toes was a mysterious purple.
“Yes,” I said.
“Would you mind waiting outside my room while I put on real clothes?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said. We left my room, and she opened hers—an odd echo of our moment earlier this evening when I’d kissed her neck and asked to come inside.
My cock hardened again, and I gritted my teeth. Sloane went to step inside her room, but I grabbed her wrist. “Wait. We should… check first.”
Blasting the room with light, we checked her bathroom, beneath her bed, inside the closet. Convinced she was safe, I waited with my back turned in the doorframe.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
A snapping sound of elastic and shuffling. Then, “I thought a man was trying to get into my room.”
My fingers tightened painfully on the wood of the doorframe. “I think a man was. Or at least wanted you to feel fear.”
More muffling, the sounds of water being turned off and on. “I hate… admitting… when I’m afraid.”
I turned my head to the side and kept my eyes lowered. “Fear is our most important sense.”
“Or weakest sense,” she countered. “And you can turn around now.”
I did, slowly. Her hair was now in a side-braid, and she wore black leggings beneath her sleep shirt. Toes were still bare, face still scrubbed of makeup. Face still effortlessly, startlingly beautiful. My desire for her nearly incapacitated me.
“Fear keeps us alive,” I said, voice rough. “Fear is our survival instinct. I’ve known plenty of agents and trainees and PIs in my lifetime who didn’t trust their fear. Didn’t develop a relationship with their fear. And once that sense is deadened, you’re much more likely to take risks, be reckless, put your life on the line when you shouldn’t.”
She stayed silent. Her body was tensing, flexing.
“You’re the furthest thing from weak,” I said.
Sloane nodded and looked behind me where two hotel security guards were approaching. We spent the next ten minutes relaying what happened to the guards, who were more distressed than we were.
“Do you keep security footage of who enters and exits?” Sloane asked.
The guards exchanged a look. “We can take a peek at it for you. They’d have to have used another guest’s room key to access the elevators or the stairwell doors, though.”
“Could a member of your staff have given out this information?” I asked.
The guards exchanged another long look, both grimacing. “We’ve both worked here for years. I’d like to believe our staff wouldn’t do that, but we do have hundreds of employees, some recently hired.”
“Just let us know what you find,” I said.
“And you’ll be fine for the rest of the night?” the guard asked.
“As long as no more terrifying men try to bust down my door,” Sloane said with a sardonic lift to her chin.
“Of course, ma’am, we’ll keep an eye on it,” the guards promised.
The second they left, she turned to me, tugging on her braid. She held up the picture, tapped the message written on it.
“You and I both know who sent this,” she said. I rubbed the back of my neck, leaning against the wall. Acceptance was settling over me, washing away the fear of being attacked in the middle of the night.
“Bernard Allerton,” I said, the name heavy in the room.
But Sloane was smiling—sly, almost excited. “If he’s handing out threats, my guess is he’s scared.”
And before I could stop myself, I returned her smile. “My guess is this means we’re hot on his trail.”
Her brow arched. “We?”
I placed the pictures together, side by side. They were the exact same, down to the handwriting. “We both got these threats. At the very least, we should talk.”
She sat on the end of her bed cross-legged, watching me carefully, like I was a rare butterfly about to float off for good. Silent. I wondered if it was obvious I was fighting my own internal battle, right in front of her. Behind her, I noticed she’d taken over every single flat surface in the room for various laptops, screens, files, and whiteboards. It was like a mobile PI’s office—the only thing missing was a corkboard