Her smile faltered.Good.
I stepped closer to the counter.“Anchor and I are both taken, and neither of us is interested.You’re barking up the wrong tree with both of us, so stop looking at us and answer her questions.”
Silence hit the little office.
McKayla slowly turned her head toward me.
Anchor chuckled once, low.
The girl’s face went red.“I wasn’t-”
“You were,” I said.
McKayla’s eyes sparkled with amusement, but she kept her mouth shut.Barely.
The girl looked flustered now, but she still tried to recover.“I can’t let people into rooms for free.”
Anchor finally pushed off the counter.The whole energy in the room shifted.
He didn’t flirt.Didn’t smile.Didn’t soften his voice.Anchor was so gone for Pearl that pretending interest in anyone else would’ve probably made him physically ill.Instead, he leaned one hand on the counter and stared at the girl until she swallowed.
“We’re not asking to rent the room.We’re asking for ten minutes to look at it because a woman is missing and that room might matter.”His voice stayed calm, which somehow made it worse.“You can hand us the key now, or I can start asking why this place doesn’t keep better security records when missing women might be tied to it.”
The girl’s mouth opened.Closed.
Anchor kept staring.
She finally grabbed a key card from a drawer and shoved it across the counter.“Ten minutes.”
McKayla picked it up.“Thank you.”
“If you go over, I’m charging you for a night.”
McKayla smiled sweetly.“Put it on my tab next to emotional damage and bad customer service.”
The girl glared.
McKayla turned and headed for the door.
I followed her out before I laughed in the woman’s face.
Anchor came behind us, shaking his head.“You make friends everywhere you go.”
McKayla held up the key card.“It’s a gift.”
Room eleven sat exactly where it had the first time we came.Same cracked sidewalk, same faded door, same sad little number screwed crookedly into the frame.
McKayla stopped outside it for a second.
“You good?”I asked.
She looked up at me.“I hate this room.”
“Yeah.”
“I hated it before I knew my sister might have been photographed in it.”
“That makes sense.”
