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I gave him an incredulous look. “Youthink?”
“You can always fire me,” Gunner smirked.
“Oh, but we’re having such fun already,” I griped sarcastically.
“You can put that in the Yelp review,” he replied. “Anyway, I think I’m going to go shower the blood off. Why don’t you go order some food and then we’ll go over the game plan for everything and how we’re going to move forward? I’m still pretty confident the answer about where to find the piece is in the house, but your late fiancé may have made this more complicated than I originally thought.” He looked at me with a bemused expression. “This was a lot easier when I thought you were just hiding it somewhere.”
“I wish that were the truth. It would be a lot quicker.” I waved him on. “Go ahead and shower. We’ll talk afterwards.”
While Gunner showered, I ordered an obscene amount of food from room service, figuring that I might as well put my potentially illegally-earned riches to good use. It also took up some of my time alone, and at the moment, I was going to take advantage of anything that would keep my mind occupied.
It also gave me a second to really take in the hotel suite. Trevor and I had stayed in quite a few similar places during the beginning of our relationship, but there had been no more romantic weekend retreats once we moved to Lace Elm. It seemed like Trevor was avoiding being in the city or anywhere too populated towards the end of his life, and with everything Gunner had revealed to me, it made a lot more sense.
It was a lovely suite with a subtle eclectic vibe; fun but still soft and comforting enough to not be too obnoxious. It would be an acceptable home away from home for now, and it was nice to be staying in Dallas again.
Quit looking for a silver lining in this ridiculous situation!the logical portion of my brain insisted.Who cares about the hotel, or room service, or the city? There are criminals–ARMED criminals, after us!
It was tempting to dissolve into that sort of thought process, but I knew it would only be a detriment. So for now, I suppressed, suppressed, suppressed.
I really needed therapy.
Gunner came out of the shower smelling like hotel soap and something enticing that I guessed was just Gunner Stone in his most natural state. It evoked images in my mind of leather and something warm and the slightest bit sweet. He had changed into a nearly identical set of clothes, black on black, with the sleeves pushed up to reveal his defined forearms.
I was still lounging on the bed, so he took a dining chair instead, sitting down and pulling out his phone.
“My tech guy called while I was in the shower. I figured I would wait to call him back until I had you in the room, in case there's something you can answer that I can’t.”
My pulse kicked up a notch. “You really think he could have gotten into the laptop already?”
“If anyone can do it, it’s my guy. I’m fairly well versed in things like that, but this guy is a savant.”
Gunner made the call, turning it on speakerphone so I could listen in.
“Hey boss,” the voice on the other end answered, sounding younger than I had expected.
“Kevin,” Gunner greeted. “Any luck with the computer?”
“Yes, and no. The post-it note password wasn’t to the laptop itself, so I had to crack that, but once I was in it was a pretty disappointing sight. Seems like this guy kept a lot of his things in actual, physical written format and not electronically. The stuff on the post-it opened an encrypted folder that has something a bit more interesting.”
“Go on.”
“It has schematics for a security safe built into the wall. Does the girl know anything about it?”
Gunner glanced at me, and I shook my head.
“No,” he said. “Don’t open the safe yet, Kevin. I want to do it myself in case it’s rigged.”
“Understood. The only other weird thing I’ve found so far is the blueprints for that creepy-ass giant urn in the office, but I didn’t look into it very much. Who designs their own urn? Just a waste of our time. I’ll keep trying to get into the email and any cloud storage he might have had set up and let you know later.”
“Got it.” Gunner scrubbed his face with his hands. “Everything else going smoothly over there from what you can tell?”
“Seems like it. The other guys are guarding the perimeter, and they haven’t had trouble so far.”
“Great. Feel free to take the computer home with you tonight if you want to. I’ll pay you for any extra time you need to spend on it.”
The call ended and Gunner looked less than thrilled. “Damn,” he muttered under his breath. “I really thought that would go further than it did.”
“What about the safe? Couldn’t the artifact be there?” I asked, sliding to the end of the bed and hanging my legs over the side.
