“That must have been scary,” Ruby says, her voice full of sympathy.
“Terrifying. You know what happens to pretty boys like me in prison? Let’s just say my smile wouldn’t last a week.”
The sun is touching the horizon now, turning the ocean into molten gold that looks like someone spilled liquid metal across the water. The cliffs glow like emeralds in the evening light, and the whole scene is so beautiful it makes you understand why people fall in love with islands and never leave, even when those islands come with murder and questionable employment situations.
“But enough about all that,” Dane says, shaking off his darker mood. “Tonight is about celebrating life, beauty, and the incredible women who make paradise even more perfect.”
He looks directly at Ruby when he says this, and she glows with triumph.
“Why, Dane,” she says, “you certainly know how to make a girl feel special.”
Even an eighty-year-old girl.
As the sun disappears into the Pacific, painting the sky in impossible shades of orange and purple, I can’t help but thinkthat we’ve learned more about our suspects in one sunset cruise than we did in all our previous investigations combined.
The question is whether any of it brings us closer to catching a killer or just makes the whole situation more beautifully complicated. And whether Dane’s charm is genuine or if we’re being seduced by a murderer with excellent abs and a thousand-watt smile.
Either way, the sunset is spectacular.
CHAPTER 18
The morning heat already has the resort sweating like a guilty suspect under interrogation lights, and evidently, every piece of equipment has decided this is the perfect day to stage a mechanical rebellion against the concept of functioning properly.
I’m standing in the lobby watching water cascade through a ceiling tile that’s given up all pretense of structural integrity, the drips creating a sad little puddle that’s spreading across the floor like my hopes and dreams. Somewhere behind me, an electrical outlet sparks with the enthusiasm of a small fireworks display celebrating its own demise, and I’m starting to think the universe has a personal vendetta against this place.
The breeze gives the scent of plumeria and desperation through the perpetually half-open doors, mixing with the aroma of whatever’s currently burning in the kitchen and the distinctly tropical fragrance of things falling apart in paradise.
“Is this place cursed?” I ask the universe at large, dodginganother drip from the ceiling that seems to be aiming for me specifically.
“Only since you arrived,” Melanie snaps from behind the front desk, where she’s trying to fix a computer that’s apparently decided to communicate only in beeps and electronic death rattles that sound vaguely accusatory.
“It’s almost as if someone is sabotaging this place!” Lani calls from the kitchen doorway, where she’s wrestling with what appears to be a rebellious blender that’s shooting sparks instead of making smoothies, which feels like a metaphor for my entire life right now.
Ruby emerges from the pool area looking like she’s been personally defeated by the laws of physics and maybe life itself. “The pool filter just exploded,” she announces, her voice flat with resignation. “Actually exploded. There are pieces of machinery in the hibiscus bushes and possibly in the next county.”
Before I can ask how exactly a pool filter achieves explosive status without help from explosives or divine intervention, the sound of purposeful footsteps on the gravel outside announces the arrival of a person who doesn’t seem to be falling apart at the seams.
Detective Koa Hale appears in the doorway, and I swear the temperature in the lobby rises another ten degrees, which shouldn’t be physically possible given that we’re already approaching surface-of-the-sun levels. The man is built like someone took the concept of a walking advertisement for physical fitness and decided to make it anatomically impossible to ignore without developing some kind of vision problem.
His uniform shirt stretches across a chest that coulddeflect small meteorites, and when he moves, you can see the suggestion of abs that have clearly never met a donut they couldn’t resist—or more accurately, have resisted every donut ever offered to them through what must be inhuman willpower.
In fact, I’m not sure I should trust a man who could resist fried confections.
His dark hair catches the morning light filtering through the palm fronds, somehow managing to look perfectly tousled despite the humidity that’s turning mine into wet noodles. High cheekbones and a jawline that could slice hard cheese complete the picture of a man who probably has to beat tourists off with a stick just to get to work in the morning.
Every woman in the immediate vicinity—including a hen that’s wandered in from the kitchen and two female cats that have materialized from whatever interdimensional space cats inhabit—stops what she’s doing and stares. Ruby actually grabs the front desk for support, her knuckles going white.
“Ladies,” he says, and his voice carries across the lobby with an authority that makes guilty people confess and innocent people wonder what they might have done wrong.
Even the electronics seem to behave better in his presence. The sparking outlet goes quiet, and Melanie’s computer stops making dying robot noises out of either respect or fear. Maybe both.
“Detective,” I say, trying for casual and probably achieving something closer to a woman who’s forgotten how vocal cords work and also how breathing happens.
His dark brown eyes sweep the lobby, taking in the water damage, the electrical mayhem, and what appears to be a smallgecko that’s fallen from the ceiling and landed on the reception desk.
“What’s that smell?” he asks suddenly, his expression shifting from professional assessment to something approaching dangerous interest. “It’s making me crazy.”
Ruby and Lani exchange glances that contain entire conversations. “Cinnamon rolls,” Lani says proudly, straightening her spine. “It’s a fresh batch. They actually worked this time without setting anything on fire or triggering the sprinkler system.”
