“Where you’re concerned, Ky, yeah. I do.”
I touch the base of my throat, watching him as he heads to the door. “You’ll be in your room?”
He glances over his shoulder, swallowing. “I’ll be there.”
“Cal’s not going to show up, is he?” I ask as he steps out into the hallway.
Wyatt scratches a hand through his wheat-colored hair and cocks his head to the side, grinning. “Not if he doesn’t want his f**king fingers broke.”
I’m smiling to myself as I stuff my laundry, which is still slightly wet, into the bag and take the elevator back to my room. Heidi’s standing outside of our door with her arms crossed over her chest, scowling.
I stop in my tracks. “You okay?”
“Finn bailed on me, but I’m alright.” She stretches her arms out over her head, and yawns theatrically. “I just want my bed.” As I dig in my back pocket for the keycard, she tilts her head to the side. “You look way too happy for having just done laundry.”
I bite my lip to suppress a grin as I unlock our door. I’m contemplating whether or not I should tell her, but then I flip on the light switch.
And my heart sinks.
Every inch of our room has been rummaged through. There are clothes, both mine and Heidi’s, thrown all over the place and all the dresser drawers have been pulled out. “What are you—” Heidi begins, sliding past me to get inside. Like me, she stops in her tracks. She sums up exactly how I’m suddenly feeling in the single word she says next.
Shit.
CHAPTER FIVE
Over the last several years, I’ve gotten used to dealing with cops. Not because of myself, but due to the notoriety of the band—there’s the loud and completely out of hand hotel parties, Sin’s drunken habit of dropping his pants and pissing on the side of the street (or wherever else he happens to be standing at the time), and of course my brother’s foul temper, which has gotten Lucas into trouble time and time again. Still, I’ve got to admit that going through the motions of filing a report with the police officer who shows up at the hotel is energy draining.
Since we can’t go back into our room, the staff at The Veranda is nice enough to set us up in one of the smaller event rooms located on the main floor. There’s still a “Happy Anniversary” sign hanging at the front of the room and a stack of napkins congratulating Moira and Tom on reaching 25 years together beneath the table the manager leads us to.
“They’re probably more worried about losing guests due to a break-in than us,” Heidi says once he leaves the room, and I roll my eyes.
It was all I can do not to say something that I’ll later regret. For starters, Heidi’s keycard had mysteriously gone missing while she was out with Shiner Bock. Then, as we stood outside the door of our wrecked room, the person across the hall had wandered out. He had drunkenly told us, through sloppy bites of loaded nachos that made my stomach turn, that the guy from last night had just left.
It didn’t take a detective to figure out that Heidi had been royally screwed over by Finn, the so-so one-night-stand.
“Mrs. Martin—”
“It’s Kylie,” I quickly correct the officer standing next to the table. Out of habit, I run my thumb over the last name tattooed around my ring finger. “Or Ms. Wolfe works, too. I never got around to changing my last name after my divorce.” Which was more than seven years ago, but I’m not about to tell him that.
A deep flush spreads around the crown of Officer Townsend’s balding head. “I’m sorry about that ma’am.” There’s no need for him to apologize for calling me by my legal name, so I manage a ghost of a smile and shake my head. When I drop my attention down to the sheet of paper sitting on the conference table, Townsend adds, “You’ll want to call your credit card companies and let them know your cards have been taken. You’ll need to keep a copy of the report for your bank, and because it has your case number on it.”
I slump down in the folding metal chair. For a long time, I simply stare at the police report, letting the typed words blur together into a dizzying cluster of black and white. My brain is such a catastrophic mess from what happened in the laundry room with Wyatt and then finding that my room had been robbed that I haven’t even thought about taking precautions to make sure my bank account, and my brother’s business account, won’t be wiped out.
“Mrs. Ma—Kylie?” Officer Townsend takes the seat directly across from me, and I lift my face to his. “Do you need help filling out the report?” His heavy-accented voice is gentle, but I shake my head.
“No, I’m fine, thank you.” I pick up the pen to begin writing out my statement. It won’t be much, considering I was bent over a running dryer with my jeans pulled around my knees while my room was being ransacked. After I scribble my signature and the date across the bottom of the page, I work my bottom lip between my teeth. “Can you show me what I’ll need to do to follow up on this?”
Officer Townsend spends the next few minutes showing me where my case number is located and what phone number I’ll need to call in order to check the status. When he’s finished, he asks, “Will you be in the area for awhile?”
I rake my hands through my blue and black hair, pulling it up into a stubby ponytail on top of my head before letting it fall around my face. “No, I’m heading back to Los Angeles in the morning.” The moment those words fall from my lips, though, I cringe. Townsend doesn’t seem to notice. He’s speaking to Heidi, explaining everything to her now.