Kennedy
I have to admit. Rowena Rourke is pretty hot. She’s got all this hair, red as a maple tree, and kind of exploding out of her ponytail. And this long body. Body for days. Legs long enough to wrap halfway around the hemisphere. Nice face too. The kind of face that you wanna see make all kinds of expression. And that ass. Good lord, that ass. An ass round enough to make a man grateful he has teeth.
I staked out their dig site for the better part of the day. Made her nervous. She knew I was watching her. A woman who looks like that probably has a very strong radar for when a man is watching her.
The father, Pierson Rourke, on the other hand, doesn’t have an earthly clue of anything that is going on in the world outside what is directly in front of him. I’ve never seen focus like that before. The man knocked over two full coolers of water and stood on his own hat for an hour without noticing. Whatever they’re working on has him riveted.
I slip away from the dig site to head back into town. I want to check out their hotel rooms before they pack it in for the evening. I have to decide if it’ll be easier to take them from there or from their dig site.
The man at the front desk of their hotel is more than happy to chat about the guests currently staying there. Maybe he’s lonely. I don’t know. I don’t care. He tells me about the young couple in room seven who just eloped. About the family reunion that’s blocked off the entire second floor. And about the archaeologist father and daughter in room fifteen and sixteen. It’s too easy. I keep the front desk man distracted, asking him to point out sites on a map on the wall as I dexterously lift copies of their keys from below the counter.
I start with the father’s room. It looks barely lived in, though I know they’ve already been staying here for three weeks. There’s a small suitcase at the foot of the bed with a few pairs of khakis, socks, and button-up shirts folded a little haphazardly. There’s a toothbrush balancing on the sink and the sheets are wrinkled but still tightly tucked in, as if he didn’t take the time to pull them back.
No weapons, no back exits. Not even a window in the bathroom. Perfect. Easy as some motherfucking pie. Just the way I like it.
Rowena’s room couldn’t be any more different. The second I step in a female scent ricochets over me. It’s mouthwatering, floral and exotic. Coconuts and flower garden or some girly shit like that. Must be her perfume.
There are clothes everywhere. And I mean covering every inch. She wore a simple white t shirt and black yoga pants at the dig site today, but every color of the rainbow is represented here in the absolute tornado of her room.
There’s purple sweatpants cast over the television, mismatched socks littering along in a little trail to the bathroom, where there’s lacy undergarments drying over the shower rod. I raise my eyebrows at the sheer, emerald green bra. Picture it against her creamy skin. Yum.
Too bad she’s on the express train back to Esposito. Not that she’s my type in the first place. I don’t really have a type, sexually speaking. As long as she’s warm and willing, she’s my type. The more adventurous the better.
I start to lightly dig through her mountains of things. I’m searching for anything that she might be able to use as a weapon against me when I come to get her. I shift some books on her desk and pick up a journal that’s three inches thick. I flip it open to find notes on notes on notes. Rock type, soil level, history of the region, weather patterns, myths, legends. And diagrams. More diagrams than one eye should ever have to look at, let alone draw. There’s hand-drawn maps, overhead ones of the area and elevation maps of the dig site. There’s drawing after drawing of partial bones, fragments of pots and in one case an intricately shaded drawing of a footprint.
As I flip through the book, however, the drawings go from clinical and scientific to something much more creative. Dreamy almost. They take on a cloudy quality. There’s a few of a room, from the inside and the outside. A tomb? And then there’s a few of a coffin. If we were in Egypt, I would have called it a sarcophagus. But we’re in Greece, so I don’t know what the fuck to call it. The last drawings in the book are of what’s inside the coffin.
A child. A boy so peaceful and ordinary looking that he could very well be napping down the street at this very moment. But that’s not why she’s drawing him. She must believe that he’s there, at the dig site. Or whatever’s left of him.
Man. Our jobs are really fucking different.
I toss the journal back onto the desk. It skids along the surface and knocks against the lamp where she’s hung something. A necklace. A small gold locket in the shape of a heart. I flick it open and see that inside is a small pressed sprig of lavender. Snapping it closed, I step away from the jewelry as if it were magic. Maybe this woman is a romantic. Which makes her double-time not my type.
As for who IS my type in the love sense, there’s only one for me. The most beautiful woman on earth. Black hair down her back, golden skin, deep brown eyes and a body like an hourglass. Alessia Patrizzio. Well. Alessia Guinne. And she is downright good-and-married to Dare Guinne. One of the best, most loyal friends on earth. And not just legal married. Full on, light–of-my-life married. There’s no question they’re the right people for one another. But still. It doesn’t change the way I feel about her. She’s perfect.
Dare’s gotten me out of more than one jam. Actually he’s the whole reason that I finally got away from Greco. He took out Greco in order to protect Alessia. And after that, I ended up living with them for a while. He and Alessia basically talked me back into self-worth. Convinced me I was more than a murderer. That there was life stretching out in front of me.
All while he got her pregnant over and over. And they fell more and more in love and kill me. Just kill me.
For a second I sit down on Rowena’s bed and feel really fucking sorry for myself. And then I hear footsteps.
And fuck. A key in the door.
She’s back. And I haven’t even finished checking her things. She could have an automatic weapon stashed in her underwear drawer and I wouldn’t even know. I’m not generally worried about my chances against a women weighing in at about a buck twenty. But Alessia completely disarmed me once and she’s even smaller than Rowena. I’m not taking any chances. I’m never this sloppy when it comes to tracing a skip.
The doorknob turns and I go with my instincts. I roll off the bed onto the floor and then completely under the bed. It’s a tight squeeze, I’m not a small guy. I watch as her boots come tromping into the room, poofing out small clouds of dust from the dig site with each step.
I can only see her from about the knee down. I watch as she toes off one boot then the other. Next come the socks, and then her white t shirt hits the floor. She breathes a breathy sigh of relief as her light blue bra hits the floor and the noise makes my pants a little tight. Then her pants and underwear join the party on the floor. I watch as her bare feet walk around the bed and into the bathroom. She hums a little song as she goes.
The shower curtain slings back and steam starts to billow out from the bathroom. Her humming gets louder and for a second I strain to hear what song it is.
Until I realize what the fuck I’m doing and I’m out from the bed in one smooth slide. I glance back, see her shadow against the shower curtain, just an hourglass shape. And then I open her door and disappear into the night.