Sebastian gave it to her and immediately lost interest in it. He went back to watching the road, enthralled.
She reached for her go bag, intending to stuff the souvenir inside, but she paused when she realized there was something off about the weight and the balance of the mirror. Cautiously she rezzed her senses—and caught a familiar trickle of energy in the handle. It lifted the hair on the back of her neck—not in an alarming way; just enough to confirm that the object had a small vibe.
“I think you owe Sebastian an apology,” she said.
Owen glanced at the mirror and then returned his attention to the road. “Why?”
“This is no ordinary dust bunny souvenir. I think it’s actually a concealed video camera.”
Chapter Eight
Anticipation dumped another dose ofadrenaline into Owen’s veins. “Are you sure?”
“It’s not an ordinary mirror. I can sense the energy from a small amber battery in the handle. Pretty sure it’s a recording device of some kind.”
He caught the barely suppressed excitement in her voice and almost smiled. He knew she was thinking the same thing he was: they might have gotten very, very lucky, thanks to Sebastian.
There were, however, less hopeful possibilities. He felt obliged to point out the obvious.
“Maybe someone on the staff of the Hotel of Dreams runs a little side business videoing people in the privacy of their rooms,” he said. “A perv or a blackmailer.”
“I don’t think there’s much of a staff at the hotel. The clerk at the front desk was the only person I saw, and you said he was a fraud.”
“That doesn’t mean there isn’t a regular staff. Maybe they were told not to come to work tonight.”
“I can’t imagine why anyone would want to work there at all. So much negative energy in that place.”
“I wouldn’t give it five stars, either. But not everyone would pick up the vibe. That kind of sensitivity varies greatly from one person to another. The immediate question is, what was the mirror doing on the floor of the bathroom not far from the body in the shower?”
“Carl Voyle,” Alice said, her voice very tight. “Maybe he was the one I was supposed to meet tonight, the person who was going to sell me the proof of my innocence. But if he was part of the plot to kidnap me, why kill him?”
“Maybe because he knew too much. Or he tried to blackmail someone else, in addition to you, and the target murdered him.”
“But didn’t take the mirror, either, because he didn’t see it in the wastebasket or didn’t realize that it was a camera.”
“That fits,” he said.
She was silent for so long that he started to get an uneasy feeling. Maybe she was more anxious about entering into an MC with him than she admitted. Probably afraid he would try to take advantage of her. She had lived a very sheltered life at the Ballantine Academy, and she had been out in the world for only about a year before the whirlwind courtship and marriage to Travis Poole.
As far as he knew, the Ballantine Method had no issues with sex. It was considered a normal, healthy part of a well-balanced life. But those who practiced the method were encouraged to view it as a transcendent form of communication between two people who were attracted to each other and had already established a strong bond. The method did not approve of hookups, one-night stands, or, for that matter, Marriages of Convenience.
The Travis Poole disaster had undoubtedly traumatized Alice whenit came to sex. He needed to find a way to assure her he wasn’t going to use their MC as an excuse to press her for a physical relationship.
She spoke before he could find the right words.
“If you’re who you say you are—if you help hunt down sociopaths who possess dangerous psychic talents—you’ve seen some awful things,” she said. “I can’t imagine what your dreamscapes are like.”
The observation blindsided him. She was right. Sleep did not hold much appeal when he was working a case, or for weeks afterward. Even when he had put distance between himself and a successfully closed hunt, he still occasionally got slammed. Some things could never be unseen, never be forgotten.
The blowback from the unsolved cases was far worse. But he never talked about the bad dreams and the restless nights, not to anyone. There was no point. He knew what a therapist or a friend or a para-psychologist would say:Stophunting the monsters. But that was not an option. He had found ways to cope—mostly. He had been doing all right—achieved what the self-help gurus liked to call a work-life balance—right up until the Gatley case. Admittedly, that had thrown him down a dark hole for a while, but he had crawled out. Mostly.
Regardless, his nightmares were his personal business. What in green hell had prompted her to go there, and what was up with the empathy for a virtual stranger? She was in the middle of her own waking nightmare. She should be focusing on her problems—not his dreamscapes.
Belatedly he recalled the first part of her comment and took refuge in defending himself. “I told you the truth. My name is Owen March, and I’m a forensic consultant who specializes in the inheritance patterns of paranormal traits.”
“And you just happen to carry a spare fake ID.”
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and checked the monitors again. “I know that looks suspicious, but I can explain.”
