Page 16 of Maneater (The Mavens #1)

TEN

JOSIE

I’m pacing when the door finally opens, almost an hour after I get back to the room. “Where have you been?” I ask like a worried mother, moving toward Rory as soon as she walks in, looking relaxed.

“At my massage…?” she asks, clearly confused. “I told you that’s what I was doing. Why do you look like you’re in the middle of a full-blown panic attack?”

I throw my hands up in frustration.

“How could you get a massage at a time like this?”

“Because we have to look like real guests here? And it gave me a chance to talk to the people there? Isn’t that the point of day one?”

She’s right, of course: day one on an assignment like this is all about meeting people, finding leads, and assimilating as best as we can.

“Yes, but… Ugh!” I say, covering my face with my hands. “I’m panicking! And you deserted me!”

“Okay, cool the dramatics. I did not desert you. You had things covered, and I didn’t think you were going to get anywhere with both of us there. ”

“Okay, well, I really could have used the backup, Rory.”

Suddenly, her face goes from amused confusion to concern.

“What happened? Did something go wrong? Did he say something? Does he know about us? Gabriel said no one at the company knows about our being hired, but?—”

I shake my head to ease her concern. “No, no. It’s not that. It’s just…I know him, Rory.”

“Well, yeah, I figured that out. I already talked to Gabriel—he doesn’t care. As long as you don’t let it mar your thoughts, he’s fine with using whatever connections you have to make this happen quicker.”

I pause for a moment on the fact that she called our boss but decide to glaze over it, knowing we have bigger issues to worry about. I would have done the same if I were on assignment with someone who knew one of our targets.

“It’s not just that some guy from my past is here, Rory. He works for the company. He’s the VP of Operations!”

Her head tips as she takes in that information. “The VP of Operations?” I nod, and she continues after letting that information sink in. “I guess that explains why he wasn’t on our list of resort employees we should consider. Why is he here?”

I know she’s asking because the list we received from Annette, which included all employees we may encounter, was quite thorough but didn’t include corporate management since they weren’t expected to be here, and Annette believes this is a localized issue.

But here he is.

“I don’t know!” I say, throwing my hands into the air. “He said he had a work emergency when his phone rang at the bar, so I’m assuming the same reason as we are.”

She nods as if that makes sense before posing her next question. “Is he a suspect?”

“I…” I think about that for a long moment before shaking my head. “My gut says no. But…” There is really only one rule in the first few days of an assignment.

“Everyone is a suspect until they aren’t,” she confirms.

“Exactly.”

My logical partner nods once more, then begins thinking.

“Okay, so you use your knowledge of him to get close to him. Hell, you already hooked up with him, so it shouldn’t be hard to spend some time with him. Sounds like a slam dunk.”

My face scrunches up with my next admission.

“He doesn’t…” I sigh, looking at my hands in what feels akin to embarrassment. “He isn’t interested,” I murmur.

Rory releases a loud laugh at my words before finally responding with a shake of her head. “That’s bullshit.”

“I’m serious! I offered! He said he doesn’t fraternize with guests.” I groan, putting my hands to my head.

She pauses then, understanding clearly washing over her. “So, wait, what’s his issue with you? I don’t really get it.”

“Me neither!” I say, shoving my hands up in the air. “He was getting his master’s when I was in college, and I was at a lot of the same parties and whatnot as him because I was running my side business.”

In college, I began using my talent for flirting to coax the truth out of just about any man to help my friends.

Sometimes, it was to find out if their boyfriends would cheat when tempted.

Others wanted to determine if someone had stolen something from their room or just to get us into the most exclusive parties.

But quickly, friends of friends started coming to me, asking for these favors and actually paying me for it. I was about to graduate and head to the FBI academy, figuring I would use my skills for good there, when Gabriel approached me with an offer I couldn’t refuse.

And now, six years later, I’m a Maven.

“I didn’t see him for years after he graduated, but then last year, he started showing up at the same places as me while I was on assignments.”

“Okay. Okay,” Rory says, pacing the way I was, but in a much less frantic and frazzled way, as she understands how things are a bit more complicated than she thought. “First things first, did you tell him what you do at any point while you were at the bar? Or in previous conversations?”

I shake my head quickly.

“No. You know that. I never tell anyone what I do.” In the nearly impossible case something like this happens, none of the Mavens talk about who or what they’re assigned to with anyone the moment they’ve been given an assignment.

Some of us, including myself, don’t even tell people exactly what we do until it becomes absolutely necessary.

“We didn’t really get into getting to know you kind of things.

He was an ass, and I was, well, me, and then the flirting started, and then…

” My mind goes back to him grabbing hold of my hand and pulling me into the office.

“This is fine. Actually, this is good. We can work with this,” Rory says, her mind clearly working on some new plan.

Where I’m the one who executes and gets what we need from our targets, Rory is the planner and organizer, constantly tying up loose ends and figuring out the next steps.

We’re a good team, and it’s why we’re often paired together for assignments.

“Can we?”

“Yes. First, we need to figure out what exactly he does here,” she says, opening her computer. “Name?”

“Rowan Fisher.”

She nods, then goes quiet as she spends a few moments doing God knows what before a wide smile splits her face, and she turns the screen to me. On the screen is a professional headshot.

“That’s him!” I say excitedly, always impressed when she can do something like that.

“Don’t look at me like I’m some kind of savant; I literally just googled Daydream Resorts and Rowan,” she says with an eye roll, and I shrug, impressed nonetheless. “Vice President of Operations,” she confirms under her breath. “Thirty-three. Youngest one they’ve ever had.”

“Is he single?” I ask, and her gaze snaps to me with a glare. “What? I’m just curious. ”

“Josephine.” That’s when I know Rory means business; the full name comes out.

“Aurora,” I mock in return. Her glare continues, and I roll my eyes once more before explaining. “Just so I don’t feel guilty about flirting. That’s it.”

She gives me a disbelieving look, and I can’t blame her.

“Sure it is.” I ignore her as she does her work, clicking a few more times before shaking her head. “Yes. From what I can see, he’s single. Doesn’t even bring dates to the company events.”

A slight warmth runs through me, and I tell myself it’s simply because I’m happy I didn’t potentially fuck with a relationship.

It’s the only real time I feel guilty about this job: when my target is someone who is happily in a relationship, and I have to prove, once again, that men are pieces of shit.

While I’m lost in my thoughts, Rory continues typing, her near-platinum blonde hair spilling over her shoulder as her face scrunches with confusion before clearing.

“He was the main advocate for this location. An article that was published around the grand opening has an interview with him.” She spins the computer my way, and a photo of Rowan standing in front of the resort’s main attraction, the miles of pristine beach, is on the screen. I begin reading the article below.

Rowan Fisher tells us he was the leading champion for Daydream Resorts, choosing this location.

“They wanted somewhere further from home, more of a destination. But I knew we’d have some great luck in this place. I knew it down to my soul. And now look at it—it’s gorgeous. Perfect, even.”

“I think your gut is right. I can’t imagine he’d be behind sabotaging a location he was rooting for. It would put his entire career on the line.”

I refuse to give in to the confusing relief running through me.

“Everyone is a suspect until they aren’t,” I say, more of a reminder for myself than anything else.

If you knock anyone out too early, you lose context.

Sometimes, people do things that make no sense until you dig deeper.

“But at the very least, he wouldn’t have been able to actually set the fire himself since he wasn’t here.

He would have to have had an accomplice. ”

Rory nods, continuing to click and type, probably making notes in the file she creates for every assignment we’re on. “Maybe someone is trying to pin things on him? Or ruin it to prove a point?” she asks after a moment or two.

“I mean, it wouldn’t be a bad idea if they didn’t like this location.”

We sit in silence, both of us mulling over the thought, before finally Rory breaks it.

“Okay, well, regardless, he’s obviously into you. Maybe that’s a good place to start. Butter him up, see what you can get from him.”

I sigh and shake my head. “I told you: I don’t think he’s going to be into that.”

“I saw the way he was looking at you, Josie.”

A rush of warmth slides through me since Rory doesn’t say anything just to blow smoke or to make someone feel good about themselves. If she says he was looking at me in any kind of way, she means it. Regardless, I shrug, not wanting to cloud my mind in the least.

“Yeah, and I felt the way he was into me when he was fingering me in a bar office, but now, when I asked if we could get dinner, he said no. He doesn’t hook up with guests.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Rory says with a smile, and I laugh.

“True, but I don’t want to put my efforts where they won’t be useful. We only have two weeks here.”

She looks at me like she’s not buying it. I’m not really either, but I can fake it with the best of them.

“If anyone could crack him, it would be you.”

I stare at her before I take a deep breath. “Maybe. But can we focus on what we have control over right now? Who do we have on our shortlist?”

She stares at me assessingly and must see my desperate need for a subject change, because she nods and reaches to grab our list.

“The GM is an obvious suspect just because of his broad access to things. His job would be on the line, but maybe there’s something more happening there,” she says, and I start to pace the room. I work best when I’m moving.

“And that redhead who got jealous. I want to figure out who she is and what her connection is to the resort.”

Rory nods, then types. “That article said an investment firm was trying to purchase this location, but Daydream Resorts bought it out from under them preemptively. The island never went to auction. We should add them to the list of potential suspects. Do we know who was heading that project?”

More clicks and a grimace that means she’s not getting the info she wants before she continues her search. Finally, she gives me a satisfied smile. “A Horace Greenfeld.”

“God, that’s a shit name,” I grumble, and she lets out a laugh. Still, I add the name to my mental list, hating how long it’s getting. At the beginning of an assignment like this, the list always looks so daunting because just about everyone is a suspect.

“We need to check out the other incidents and see if he was here for those,” I say. “And if not, where was he?”

“We need to do that for all of the employees of the resort,” Rory says.

“Find out who was on the clock, who was off.” I nod, and she continues.

“The cameras were clearly tampered with around the time of the fire since they all went down for about ten minutes. I want to know who has access to those. Annette won’t give us access to them since that would raise alarms, but she said if I can find access myself, that would be fine.

” Rory smiles, and I return it, knowing how much she loves hacking into camera and computer feeds.

“A great time to also test their cybersecurity, I suppose.”

Not being given access to computers and cameras isn’t unusual when we enter a corporate setting.

Employees talk and whisper, so in order for our job to be done as seamlessly and as secretively as possible, it often makes more sense for no one to know why we’re really here.

Giving two random women that kind of access would set off alarm bells.

“While you do that, I’m going to look at the calendar of events and see what we want to focus on first. We already checked out the rental building—you grabbed your own pictures of that to look at later, right?

” I ask, and she nods. We like to have our own evidence file whenever possible because, again, you never know who is a suspect or a friend of a suspect.

Once, we had a fire chief who was friends with an arsonist and doctored photos to hide evidence.

You’d be shocked at how deep deception can go.

I pick up the pamphlet we were given at check-in, and remembering what the GM told us at the pool, I start scanning for times and opportunities.

“There’s a meet-and-greet dinner tonight. We should definitely go to that. There were a few mishaps with food deliveries that might be related to the issue at hand. Maybe we can try and talk to some of the staff there, do our thing.”

Rory nods and jots it down on our schedule before continuing to look through the pamphlet with me and making our plan.