“Maybe.” She swirled the brandy in her glass. “What if Kelbrook has a personal connection to the hotel? Perhaps he owns it through a shell corporation. Or he might have incriminating evidence against the owner and used it to blackmail the person into helping him?”
“Both are possibilities,” Owen said. “I assume you looked into that angle?”
“A little. To tell you the truth, I’ve been afraid to do much deep research online for fear of drawing the attention of Kelbrook’s security apparatus.”
“That was a smart precaution. What do you know about the hotel?”
“Not much more than what comes up on the rez-net. There have been a few articles about it in the various online travel magazines. It was constructed about four decades ago by a wealthy, eccentric recluse. He made a fortune in high-tech games. He retired young and built the hotel.”
“I got that much from my own research,” Owen said. “His name was McIntyre. He disappeared about thirty years ago. There was no family to claim the hotel. It was listed as abandoned and eventually picked up at auction by a small company. A shell corporation. It is currently managed by a woman named Rose Ash. I haven’t had time to try to trace the ownership.”
“There are some local legends that claim that in the old days, when the original owner operated the hotel, some of the guests checked in and didn’t check out.”
Owen’s brows lifted. “That’s interesting. I didn’t come across that information.”
“I couldn’t find any police reports that mentioned anyone disappearing at the hotel, so the stories are probably just that—stories.”
“We need more information about the current ownership of that hotel.”
“I thought you were all about following the bloodline,” she said.
“Businesses and corporations have bloodlines, too.”
Chapter Fifteen
The ding of the textmessage brought Alice out of the first night of solid sleep that she had experienced in a very long time. For a moment she thought she was back in her cozy little cottage on the campus of the Ballantine Academy, protected by high walls and surrounded by colleagues who respected her abilities and students who needed her skills.
In the next beat of her heart, reality lanced through her. Cadence Ballantine was dead, and the Academy was buried beneath the high-rise towers of a tech company.
She opened her eyes and discovered that Sebastian was hovering over her. He chortled a greeting. The lenses of the glamorous sunglasses and the crystals of his necklace sparkled in the morning sun. She reached out to give him a hug.
“I know,” she said. “It’s time for breakfast.”
“Breakfast is on the way.” Owen emerged from the bathroom wearing a pair of khaki trousers and a partially buttoned long-sleeved white shirt.His severely cut dark hair was still damp from the shower. “I ordered room service. It will arrive in about twenty minutes.”
“Sounds good.”
She sat up, instinctively clutching the sheet to her throat, and stomped hard on the glorious little thrill of intimacy that was making her senses zing. Technically the morning marked the end of their second night together, and they hadn’t even shared a bed last night. But she was still a long way from being able to think of Owen as a partner and colleague. When he was in the room, she was aware of him in ways that were new—and invigorating.
She liked having him around, she realized, and not just because he was on her side in the battle against the Kelbrook empire. She liked it because it felt right. There was something satisfying about his energy.
Sexual attraction,she reminded herself. Powerful and stimulating, yes, but nothing a mature adult steeped in the Ballantine Method could not handle.
Core Principle Number Five:You control your talent; your talent does not control you.
Wait. That principle did not apply. This wasn’t about controlling her psychic senses. It was about dealing with sexual attraction.
This was a situation that required Core Principle Number One:Do not mistake impulse for true intuition.
So, was this attraction driven by impulse? Or was her intuition trying to tell her something?
Damn. Talk about complicated.
“I think I heard a text come in on your phone,” Owen prompted.
“Oh, right.” She grabbed her phone. “Unknown number.”
“Click on it. Probably spam, but we can’t risk missing any new info.”
