“I have called already. We will ring your room when an officer arrives.” He motioned to the door again, dismissing them.
“Ms. Harper will need a new room,” Luke pointed out, still not making a move to leave. The mugger would have access to her key card in her purse, so new security measures would need to be put in place. “And we’ll need transportation to a nearby clinic where she can have her injury taken care of.”
The officer hesitated for the briefest of moments before nodding. “I will arrange for transportation. Let us go speak with the front desk about the room.”
* * *
Despite the less than impressive security response at the hotel, the staff at the front desk were efficient and accommodating. Within minutes, Natalie and Luke were all set, new key cards in hand for side-by-side rooms on the seventh floor.
Luke wished he’d arrived just a little sooner that evening, but it’d been impossible to get an earlier flight. At least he’d gotten to the beach in time to intervene, or things could have been a whole lot worse.
Maybe it had been a crime of opportunity. Maybe. But Luke wasn’t going to take any chances. The woman wouldn’t leave his sight for the next seven days, except to use the bathroom and sleep. If he was honest with himself, he’d be a lot more comfortable with backup right about now. He felt a little out of his element since he’d been slowly cutting back his hours at Shield over the past several months in favor of devoting more time to the community center he was trying to get off the ground.
The project had been a dream for years, but after a gunshot wound on assignment last year, he’d decided it was time to make the dream a reality. Renovations were well underway on the building he had leased, and grant money had been flowing in. But when Roman had called to offer him the contract, Luke hadn’t hesitated to accept. Roman had been convincing enough—mentioning how short-staffed Shield was at the moment, as well as how handy Luke’s minor in Spanish would be. But when Luke heard the payout, he was sold. His sister, Triss, was heading into her last year of college, and he had the idea to use the paycheck to surprise her by covering her next tuition bill.
But first, the task at hand. They’d need to gather their belongings and transport them up to the new rooms. As they approached Natalie’s old room, Luke’s hand came to her elbow, keeping her close.
“Allow me,” he said, reaching over to take the key card from her.
“I can manage,” she responded, swiping the card in front of the lock mechanism.
Luke’s hand covered hers on the handle. “Someone has your old key. I’m not taking any chances.”
After all, Natalie had been entrusted to his care. Sure, guarding her was a job, and he was getting paid to do it, but he took the work as seriously as he’d taken raising his younger siblings after he’d won custody. His commitment. His responsibility.
“Fair point,” she said, her hand sliding out from under his palm. She didn’t stand back, though. Instead, she drew a little closer, and he caught a whiff of salty air and sunscreen mixed with a citrusy scent that could have been shampoo or perfume.
Her nearness triggered an unexpected attraction, Luke’s pulse surging double-time. He steadfastly ignored it. He’d learned his lesson two years ago, and he’d remember it. The workplace was no place for romance. Especially the private security workplace, where emotions often ran high and created a false sense of connection.
He pushed the thoughts aside and opened the door, flicking on the light as he stepped into the room.
A suitcase lay on the floor, clothes dumped beside it. The mattress had been tossed from the bed, sheets and pillows thrown into a pile. Balmy air billowed in from the open sliding glass door, dark shadows undulating on the balcony behind it.
An escape route for the intruder? Or a hiding place?
He wasn’t going to investigate. Not with Natalie stepping into the room behind him.
“What—” she started, but he grabbed her arm, tugging her back over the threshold and into the hall. The room was silent and still—no sign of an intruder lying in wait. He eyed the closed closet door and the one that opened into the bathroom, then fixed his attention back on the balcony. The perp had entered that way. Or he’d entered through the door and left that way. If he’d left. Luke reached into the room and flicked off the light, watching the shadows play on the balcony curtains.
“Do you—”
“Shhhhh,” he whispered in Natalie’s ear.
She stilled, and he knew she was watching the curtains, knew she was seeing what he did—a subtle shift in the shadows that seemed out of sync with the fluttering fabric.
A person? Or just the exterior lights playing tricks on his eyes? There. Gone. There again. He thought he heard a soft thud, a quiet rustle of fabric. Then the wind shifted, the curtains fell back into place and the balcony went still and silent once again.
It was closing in on midnight as Natalie finished sorting through her belongings. The police had taken photos and dusted for prints, and had been hovering with notepads ever since.
Luke didn’t hover.
He helped, lifting the heavier items, asking questions about what she’d brought and what she still had. So far, it appeared the thief had stolen her passport, her cell phone, the two-hundred dollars she had stored in the room’s safe and her small stash of jewelry. Everything else seemed to be accounted for, including her laptop, along with the barely-used bottle of Gucci perfume Kyle had given her for her birthday.
Natalie gave the room a final once-over. “I think that’s all.”
“Can you describe the missing jewelry?” Officer Perez asked. He’d been the first police officer on the scene, and his demeanor was empathetic and professional. His suit was a crisp clean tan, a contrast to the weathered lines on his face and his disheveled graying hair.
“Diamond studs.” Her dad had given them to her when she turned sixteen. “A few pieces of costume jewelry that aren’t worth much. A single strand pearl necklace.” Her great-grandmother’s. Aside from the earrings, it was the only thing she was really going to miss.
Natalie’s bottom lip trembled and she turned away, busying herself with collecting a few more articles of clothing from the floor.
“And the value of the items?”
“The earrings, under five-hundred dollars. We had the necklace appraised a few years ago for twelve hundred.”
“Everything else is accounted for?”
She remembered tucking a few pieces of jewelry into her makeup bag, and she walked into the bathroom to see if the thief had gotten to them, too.
“Yes,” she said, pulling out two silver-chained necklaces and a handful of beaded bracelets. Not valuable. “That’s everything.”
“We will need you both to come to the station for fingerprints in the morning.”
“How about we just drop by after we go to the hospital?” Luke suggested, looking to Natalie for agreement. “The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can deal with the missing passport and get you out of here.”
“Right.” Her passport. She’d need it to get home—and it went without saying that home was where she needed to be.
She grabbed a pair of sandals and snagged the first outfit she saw. “I need to change. Then we can go.”
The four officers in the room filed out the door and into the hallway.