Ahri had never lived anywhere with snow. She wondered if she’d still be there in the winter.
Rafe stopped at a door and unlocked it. She followed him inside, and her jaw dropped. He’d called it a suite, but it looked like an apartment. To the right and left were doors but straight ahead was a little living room with a couch and a couple of chairs. It even had a small kitchen and a dining table with six chairs.
“Wow,” she said.
“I understand your feelings,” Rafe said from beside her. “Thefirst time I ever stayed in one of these was before our first game went viral.”
“You haven’t always been rich?” She glanced up at him.
“No. I was a scholarship boy. My mother worked two jobs to make sure I had the right credentials to get into Harvard.”
Ahri’s admiration for Rafe hitched up even more, and she felt an unexpected sense of connection with him. He’d grown up poor too. Why hadn’t her brother ever mentioned that to her?
“Where’s Bill going to sleep?” she asked.
“He and I will share that room. There are two beds in there.” Rafe pointed to one of the doors as he sat on a couch. He opened his laptop.
“It’s really nice of you to put me up in a hotel overnight, but I feel kind of?—”
“Don’t worry about it.” Rafe interrupted with a raised a hand as though to cut off anymore argument about it. “I turned it into a business trip, so it’s a tax write-off, and I’d have gotten a suite anyway.”
“I’d like to ask Mrs. Meisner some questions before I walk around the hotel,” Bill said. “You mentioned that you recognized a man today as the one who followed you. What did he look like?”
“A middle-aged Hispanic man, pretty commonplace around here. If I hadn’t been so spooked by what Zed told me, I might not have noticed him.”
“Anything else descriptive?”
“He looked fitter than I’d have expected for a man his age.” She shivered at the memory of when she’d realized the guy who’d been standing near the corner of her apartment complex had also been outside her office. “He was buff.”
“Really buff?” Bill was writing in a notebook.
“Buff enough I could tell. You know how, even if a guy is wearing a dress shirt, it’s still obvious that he lifts weights a lot? He looked like that. Besides that, the only other thing that caught my attention was his dangling earring—just one—like a pirate.”
“Was it a hoop?” Bill asked.
“No. It looked like a dragon. Or maybe a scorpion. That would have fit his appearance better.” Ahri rubbed her forearms, unwilling to explain how that earring and the way the guy’d watched her had freaked her out. Her emotions were too close to the edge, and she didn’t want to cry in front of them.
“Interesting.” The security man stared off in the distance and nodded before jotting down something else. He stood. “I’m going to check on some things.”
“Just order whatever you want from room service,” Rafe said to Ahri, looking up from his laptop.
“Yes, order in.” Bill glanced at her. “I don’t recommend you go to the restaurant for dinner, in case someone followed us here.”
“Are you going to work here tonight?” she asked Rafe.
“No. I’m visiting a place we’re partnering with.” Rafe turned his laptop so she could see the browser he’d opened. “It’s called The Gaming Den.”
“What’s that?
“A place for gamers to gather. It used to be one of those dollar theaters that closed. Our partner had the idea to convert it into rooms where people who play REKD can meet in person and compete on the big screen. It’s been surprisingly successful. One of our professional teams even moved to Phoenix so they could use one of the rooms.”
“I love the idea.” Ahri thought of the LAN parties her brother’d had when they were growing up, where his friends had brought over their computers so they could connect them via a router to play together.
“The owner recently converted one room for virtual reality. And where the old theater had video game machines, they have tables for people who want to play things likeDungeons and DragonsorMagic, and there’s room for board games.”
“Did they keep the concessions?”
“That’s where he’s really making his money. Just like movie theaters.”
