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“What about the two bodies next door? Are they related to whatever happened in Phoebe’s room?” I asked Ivey, facing him again.
“Don’t know yet. Do you really believe that Watson is involved?” Ivey asked, lowering his voice.
I frowned.
“Don’t you? It’s not a coincidence that he’s here. He was here before us. I don’t buy his reasoning that he was coming to check on Phoebe. No… something smells, and it’s more than the fucked-up cologne he bathed in. There’s more to this. More to—”
“Boss…” Danny interrupted, a huge smile on his face, carrying his laptop in his hand. Derek and Sol came up behind him, both looking as happy as a kid in a candy store.
Danny signaled me closer to him, and he set up his laptop on the counter of the hotel’s front desk. He opened it and waited for me to approach.
“What’s up? What do you have?”
“The couple next door was watching Miss Gates,” Danny revealed through the smile on his face.
“What do you mean, watching?”
“I mean, they were watching her. Keeping track of her whereabouts, who came to visit her, who stayed…” he let that last part drag on and both he and the two idiots behind him broadened their smiles.
I ignored the idiots and asked, “How do you know they were keeping tabs on her?”
“They were hiding it very well. I’ll give them that. Wireless cameras in the hallway by her door, at the elevator and the staircase. But they weren’t complete professionals. They hid the flash drives with video evidence of invading Miss Gates’s civil rights to privacy in a place a blind man could find. And I’m sure they didn’t have a warrant either. The flash drives didn’t have much on them, people coming and going, so I thought these cameras must have a source to feed the footage into. So I did my thing and found it.”
I perked up.
“Found what?”
“The source of the cameras. They belong to none other than…” he paused and turned his laptop towards me, and I read the name on the screen. Rage boiled in my veins as I glanced up and locked eyes with Reed, fucking, Watson. He knew whatever it was we were talking about had to do with him. His back straightened and I could see tension in his shoulders and balled up fists. His partner, Garrett Tyler, stood next to him. He also looked as if he was just as fucking guilty as his partner.
We watched Tyler lean into Watson before heading in our direction. Watson stayed where he was, which was smart on his part. I was liable to lay his fucking ass out if he parted his lips to say anything to me.
“Detectives,” Tyler greeted as he stood in front of us. He breathed in and out before saying, “I take it you’ve discovered that the couple staying next to Miss Gates worked for us.”
“Yes, but it would have been nice to have heard that shit from you,” Ivey chastised, his arms folded in front of his chest. “Would you mind explaining why you had Miss Gates under surveillance? I’m assuming she had no clue about the couple.”
Tyler smiled at us and I had to say, I wanted to wipe it clean off his face with my gun.
“No, she didn’t know about it. It was our way of keeping tabs on her. Making sure she was safe. She insisted on staying at this hotel even after we put in the efforts of making sure her house was secure. Mr. Watson and I wanted to be sure of her safety, so we hired the two you’ve, uh, met upstairs.”
“Do you have any idea who would want to hurt them?” Derek asked.
“No clue. They reported in that Sergeant Mills dropped off Phoebe tonight around eight. He left about an hour or so later. That was it. Not even thirty minutes later, they reported that Phoebe left her suite and headed downstairs to the bar. There she met her friends, and we assume they had drinks or something.”
“What about the person who broke into Miss Gates’s hotel room? Did you get any information on who it was?”
Tyler blew out a breath and folded his arms against his chest. He was about the same height as I was, muscular, with blonde hair and blue eyes. He looked as if he should be a surfer and not some computer genius. Although the genius part was debatable in my opinion.
“No, that’s the problem. It’s why Reed and I made our way to the hotel. I reviewed the recorded camera footage after their report and saw a figure approaching her door. He stood by it, studied it, then left. We called our team to investigate the situation.”
“What time was that?” Ivey asked.
“Oh, let’s say after nine, about fifteen minutes after Miss Gates made her way downstairs. Anyway, Larcy, that’s the woman’s name, she said she’d check it out and get back to us. I saw her leave her hotel room and disappear down the staircase. Fifteen minutes later, Lee followed. I called them both about fifteen minutes after that, but there wasn’t an answer. I didn’t see them return either. I have no idea how they ended up back in their rooms. I didn’t see anything on the camera feeds. There wasn’t anything showing someone entering or leaving Miss. Gates’s room, either.”
“And you have no problem sharing the footage you have?” Danny asked, typing away on his laptop.
“Of course not. I’ll send you the footage now.” Tyler brought out his cell phone and began typing away.
I looked once more over at Phoebe, making sure she was okay. She wasn’t sitting next to Ayana or Noelle. I searched the room, my body tensing, fear gripping the fuck out of my heart. But I relaxed, only slightly, when I saw her off to the side talking to Reed. I kept my eyes on her, checking for any signs of distress. So far, she seemed okay. She wasn’t completely one hundred percent. I could tell she wasn’t over the effects of her panic attack, but I didn’t see any indication that she was uncomfortable or in distress while talking to Watson.
