“Come in,” Allie’s voice calls out. I crack open the door slowly, not sure whether I’m going to see the two of them ignoring each other, crying, or what. What I’m not expecting is for them to be sitting cross-legged on the bed grinning like fools.
“Well, I guess you guys are okay,” I say lamely.
“Yep,” Drew says smiling.
“Yep,” Allie says, throwing her arm around her brother’s shoulders.
“Oookaay. Ummm, I was going to order breakfast. You want any?”
Allie bounces from the bed. “I’m starving! I’ll grab the menu!” She bolts from the room.
“I’m starving too,” Drew says, getting up and putting his arm around my waist, walking me out to the living area.
“You two are weird,” I mumble, shaking my head.
We end up ordering a ton of food because Allie can’t decide what she wants and she says ‘everything sounds good so I’m just going to get one of each’. Drew tells Evan to get Steve and Sal and have them join us for breakfast.
We’re all hanging out in the living area, joking around and pretending to have British accents. Of course Drew’s is the best, having studied with a dialect coach for a film he did a few years back.
A sharp rap on the door lets us know that the room service has arrived. Steve gets up and answers the door, opening it wide for the two employees to push in two separate carts loaded down with trays. It looks like Allie really did order one of everything on the menu.
As the carts enter the suite, all hell breaks loose. The secret-agent bug detection thing starts lighting up like Times Square and emitting a loud, piercing wail. Steve slams the door shut, trapping the hotel employees in the room. Evan and Sal leap from the couch and are in the foyer in a heartbeat, pinning the two men to the ground.
“What the heck is going on?” Allie yells, covering her ears with her hands to block out the high-pitched sound from the device.
Drew stalks over to the table that holds the gadget and flicks the off switch, stopping the ear-splitting noise. He motions to Steve who grabs the smaller handheld detector and brings it over to the room service carts. Steve turns it on and sweeps it back and forth in front of the first cart and it squeals wildly.
Drew walks over to the cart, lifts the white linen cloth that covers it and looks underneath the shelf. Reaching in, his hand jerks and he pulls out a small silver rectangle about the size of an iPod.
“I told you this was going to get all cocked-up!” one of the men on the floor yells to his companion.
“Shut your bloody noise hole!” the other one screams.
“Both of you shut up!” Steve roars, shocking everyone in the suite. I’ve never heard Steve raise his voice, hell, the man barely speaks, so when he yells it’s a big deal. Even Drew looks shocked, and that’s not easy to achieve.
“I’m going to call agent Wilson,” Drew says, fetching his phone from the bedroom and dialing.
Allie leans in and whispers in my ear. “The fucking room service carts, Sydney. That’s how they were doing it.”
“But how? Three different hotels with lots of different employees, plus they had to count on us ordering food.” I’m trying to wrap my mind around the situation.
She stares at me for a minute before speaking. “I guess they figured that people tend to talk over meals and took a chance. Something is better than nothing to them, I’m sure. And money always talks Syd, they probably bribed them to do it.”
Drew ends the call and walks over to where Allie and I are standing. “Agent Wilson contacted the guys from Home Office and I called Sam, they’re all on their way here. Fuck! The Goddamn room service!” I see him struggling to contain his temper as he watches Sal and Evan lift the two men off of the floor and walk them over to sit on the couch.
“Drew, don’t.” I place my hand on his arm before he can follow them.
He exhales and squeezes his eyes shut. “I want to fucking kill them,” he says under his breath.
“Remember, they’re not the only employees involved and someone from the outside had to have been paying them to do it. We need them to tell us everything they know, so we can’t do things that may keep them from cooperating.”
“Right.” He smashes his lips together in a hard line.
“Hey,” says Allie. “Can we still eat the food? I’m still starving.”
I laugh and uncover a plate, revealing an enormous stack of strawberry pancakes. “Why not?”
I call Leah after we eat and tell her to come down to our room because we caught the people who were recording us. Ryker is still sleeping because of the late nights filming, but she comes right over.