“That’s good! He probably hasn’t come back from dinner yet. We should go up and take a look.”
I pulled her up short. “This isn’t like hot-wiring a car, Vero. These places all use electronic keys, and there are probably cameras on every floor.”
Vero bit her lip, looking past me toward the elevators. “Come on. I have an idea,” she said, pulling me through the lobby to an emergency exit map mounted on the wall. She traced the diagram of the main floor with a finger.
“What are you looking for?”
“The stairs to the basement. This hotel is huge, which means they must have hundreds of employees. They probably hire new housekeeping staff every day. We’ll go to the housekeeping supply room and pick up some uniforms. No one will notice us snooping around if we’re dressed like we belong here.” She towed me into a stairwell. Against my better judgment, I followed her to the lower level, to a door markedHOUSEKEEPING. Inside, the place was bustling with staff, their conversations muffled by the rumble of laundry machines as crew members folded towels and sheets in one room and stocked cleaning carts in another. We moved quickly, keeping our heads down as we passed several groups of workers dressed in gray aprons and smocks. Vero snagged two uniforms from an open cabinet. She urged me into a small locker room and handed me one. “Put this on,” she said, shrugging out of her clothes and balling them under her arm.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” I said as I stripped off my clothes, too. “This is never going to work.”
“You only think that because the last time you put on a costume, you got caught.”
“Exactly!” I whispered as I tugged the smock over my head.
“We won’t get caught.” Vero turned me around and tied my apron behind my back, then handed me her clothes. “We’re just going to sneak into Marco’s suite and see if Javi’s there. If he’s not, we’ll look for cluesand figure out where they’re hiding him. We’ll be in and out before anyone realizes we were there. Here,” she said, handing me a pair of disposable gloves and a hairnet, “put these on.”
I donned my gloves and disposable cap and followed Vero out of the locker room. Freshly stocked cleaning carts lined the hallway outside. Vero walked with her head down, accidentally bumping into a member of another cleaning crew as we passed. Vero mumbled an apology, tucking something in her pocket as she grabbed the handle of the closest cart. “Help me with this,” she said in a low voice, pushing it toward the elevator. I stuffed our clothes inside it and took the opposite handle, backing it through the open service doors as Vero pushed. She smacked the button for the seventeenth floor, closing the doors on another cleaning crew before they could squeeze inside the elevator with us.
“Did you steal that woman’s key card?” I hissed once the elevator started moving.
“I did notstealit. Iborrowedit. We’ll return everything when we’re done. Just keep your head down and don’t look at any cameras.”
My stomach lurched as we hurtled upward and coasted to a stop. A bell chimed and the doors parted. Vero peeked both ways before steering the cart through the opening. I pushed it behind her, eyes glued to the floor as we rolled past a mirrored dome on the ceiling directly in front of the elevator. I peeped up through my lashes as we rounded the corner, but didn’t see any other cameras in the hall.
“I thought there would be more cameras up here.”
Vero raised an eyebrow but didn’t look surprised. “There are probably two hundred of them in the casino downstairs. These hotels don’t care what guests do in their rooms, as long as their casinos are safe.”
I glanced up as Vero stopped the cart beside Marco’s suite.
She knocked sharply on the door. “Housekeeping,” she called out.
“It’s eleven o’clock at night,” I whispered. “What if they’re sleeping?”
She looked at me likeIwas the one who’d lost my mind. “We’re in acasino.On aFriday night.InAtlantic City.Nobody goes to bed at eleven o’clock.”
“Nobody gets their room vacuumed at eleven o’clock either!”
“Maybe they need towels!” She knocked again, louder this time. When no one answered, Vero drew in a steadying breath and held her stolen key card over the sensor.
The lock opened with a soft click.
Vero cracked the door. “Hello?” Her voice echoed back to us as we slipped inside. An expanse of windows on the far wall reflected our skulking shapes as we tiptoed through the foyer, the outline of our uniforms silhouetted against the night sky. The door clicked shut behind us.
I slumped with relief when we rounded the corner into the suite and found it empty. It was huge, with a full-sized kitchen, a dining room, and a circular sectional sofa in the center of its massive living room.
“Let’s look for Javi and get out of here,” Vero said, moving quickly through the rooms. She opened the first door on the right side of the hall, revealing an empty bedroom. I checked the coat closet, then the kitchen, before following Vero into the master suite at the end of the corridor.
She jolted to a stop in front of an open door. A strange croaking sound escaped her. “Maybe we should come back later,” she said, stumbling backward into me.
“Why? What’s wrong?” I peered around her into a lavish bathroom. A pair of men’s loafers was visible on the floor beside the vanity. A pair of feet were inside them. The man’s legs were splayed wide. His cheeks were slack and waxy, his face turned away, his head resting at an odd angle, revealing a section of blood-matted hair on his crown.
“Finlay,” Vero asked in a small voice, “are you seeing this?”
“The dead guy on the floor? He’s kind of hard to miss.”
“No,” Vero said with a panicky lilt, “the naked one sitting in the bathtub.”
