Саманта Сильвер: A Grizzly Discovery

“It’s not going to be here, Andrew, you moron.”

“Well I didn’t see you coming up with any better ideas.”

“I can’t believe he managed to blindside us like this. The hard part was supposed to be over.”

“And now Claire says her man in New York is starting to get cold feet because we haven’t brought him the goods yet.”

“Yeah, well, Claire can just make her man be patient, can’t she? After all, it’s her fault we’re in this situation to begin with.”

“And now Kevin is thinking of ditching us all and running back down to whatever hole of a town he crawled out of and laying low.”

“Never trust the getaway man. They’re babies. Every single one of them. Now come on, give me a hand moving this fridge.”

“Hold on, Jack. Give me a minute here. I’m going through his stuff in the suitcase.”

“It’s obviously not going to be in the suitcase, you idiot. He hid it. And damn it, he took the location to his grave. I never thought he had it in him, the arrogant jerk.”

I instinctively looked over at where I knew Sophie was and raised my eyebrows. It seemed as though Jeremy Wallace had stolen something, and these men were trying to get it back.

The sound of furniture moving came from the other room, giving me a chance to try and think about what we’d just heard. What had Jeremy Wallace stolen? Was it related to his death? It absolutely had to be.

“There’s nothing here,” I heard the man who’d been called Andrew say finally.

“Fine, check the bathroom,” Jack replied. Sophie suddenly gave my hand a squeeze as my eyes widened. This was less than ideal.

The door to the bathroom squeaked open. In front of us stood two men: one was lanky; he must have weighed one hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet. His black hair was greasy and plastered to his forehead. The other was the same height, both a little under six feet tall, but with brown hair and at least an extra fifty pounds on him, much of it in the potbelly of his stomach. When they spoke, I realized the first man was Andrew, and the second Jack.

“Geez man, how are we going to find anything in here?” Andrew asked.

“Stop whining and look around. You never know.” Jack went over to the toilet and lifted up the lid, looking inside of it, while Andrew bumped into him looking through the two drawers under the sink. It wasn’t exactly a big bathroom. Suddenly, I noticed the towel, still covered in blood that Sophie and I had used to staunch the bleeding. I wasn’t the only one.

“Ewww, there’s a bloody towel here,” Andrew complained.

“Probably because Jeremy was such a girl,” Jack replied, but I was too terrified to even roll my eyes.

I had basically stopped breathing. I was pressed up against the far wall of the shower as far as I could, as if I could become part of the wall. I was sure Sophie was doing the same thing. I didn’t think it was possible for my stress level to go any higher, but then it did.

“Why don’t you make sure there’s nothing in the shower?” Jack asked Andrew. This time I squeezed Sophie’s hand as hard as she squeezed mine.

“Seriously? You can see straight through it; it’s not like he’s hidden anything there.”

“Check the drain. Pry it up. You never know. Stop whining, you know what’s at stake.”

If I’d been visible right then, I know I would have looked like a ghost. I could practically feel the blood draining from my face. There was nowhere for Sophie and I to go. The shower was a typical hotel room shower—about four feet long, with a two foot long door at the end. No matter how you cut it, there was no way Sophie and I could slip out of here undetected if Andrew came into the shower stall. And that was exactly what he was doing. I had to stop them. I did the only thing I could think of and reached into my pocket. There was the burner phone, yes. I had to hang onto that. But there was also a tube of chapstick. Perfect.

Anything that was in my clothing when I set the spell to make us invisible was also invisible. Andrew was just opening the door when I lobbed the chapstick out into the main room as hard as I possibly could.

To my delight, it hit the dresser in the other room and made enough of a sound that both Andrew and Jack stopped for a second.

“What on earth was that?” Jack asked, and Andrew shrugged. “I’ll check it out. You finish looking in here.”

Crap. That definitely wasn’t what I was going for. Andrew reached for the bathroom door, and I realized we had literally zero options. I grabbed Sophie’s hand even harder, hoping she realized what I was about to do. As soon as Andrew stepped toward the shower I did my best football player impression and ran into him, shoulder first. Seeing as Andrew wasn’t much bigger than I was, the force of it knocked him down and he let out a yelp as I pulled Sophie behind me and we rushed past him and out of the bathroom.

“What’s the matter now?” Jack asked as Sophie and I ran to the opposite side of the bed. We had enough space now that if either man came toward us we could move around them and to the other side of the room without touching them.

“I don’t know, something knocked me over when I went into the shower.”

“What, the soap dispenser? Geez, it’s a wonder Kevin even trusted you for this job. You can’t even walk into a shower without falling over.”

“Hey, my job normally involves sitting in front of a computer screen, ok? Not sneaking through hotel rooms like some common criminal.”

“Well, if you want your share of the money, you’d better learn quick,” Jack growled, and the two of them went back to looking for whatever they were after. I kept hoping they’d give us more of a hint, but after that there was minimal talking. About ten minutes later, they realized whatever they were after wasn’t there, and they left.

“ Videroa, ” I said twice, and Sophie and I reappeared. Sophie’s face was about as white as mine felt.

“I can’t believe that just happened,” she said to me, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“I know,” I replied, looking at the door. We had to get out of this hotel room, but at the same time I knew I needed a bit of a breather, and I was sure Sophie did as well. My heart was pounding a million miles a minute. Thank goodness Jack had simply blamed Andrew’s clumsiness for his fall. I pulled the burner phone out of my pocket and looked at it. We had to take this back home and have a look at it.

“Ok,” I told Sophie after a minute. “Let’s get out of here.”

“I’m fully down with that plan,” Sophie said. “That was the scariest thing I’ve ever done, and one of my dumb exes managed to convince me to go on the Hellevator when we went to that fair in Vancouver one summer. This time you have to be the first one through the wall, though.”

I supposed that was fair. Still, I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

“What? No way! I’m the one doing the magic, that means I get to pick who goes through the wall first.”

“Fine,” Sophie said, making her way to the door and opening it normally. I gasped. She’d just broken the police seal! Sophie rolled her eyes when she saw my face.

“You’re such a goody two shoes. Those other two guys didn’t have any magic abilities; they already broke the seal. Obviously .”

My face flushed red as I realized what Sophie said made perfect sense. “Fine,” I muttered as we walked out the door and headed back to the vet’s office.

We decided to look at the phone while we were still at work; no one else was here, and we didn’t want to wait the five-minute drive until we got back home. I flipped the phone open and pressed the button to read the texts.

Sophie and I huddled over the screen. There were texts from four other phone numbers, all with a 415 area code. None of the phone numbers had been saved as contacts, so there were no names attached to the numbers. I opened the uppermost message and read. Jeremy’s phone hadn’t replied to any of the texts, which were exclusively threats.