The Institute, Daddy Issues(74)

Salt threw up his hands in ap­par­ent ex­as­per­a­tion.

“Fine. Do as you please. I sup­pose I have no say in the mat­ter.”

“No, you don’t.” I glared at him and then took a deep breath, try­ing to re­gain con­trol. Fight­ing wouldn’t get us any closer to solv­ing this case and get­ting home. “Any­way, I think we should split up,” I said, straight­en­ing my blouse. “This dis­agree­ment is a good ex­cuse and we can cover more ground sep­ar­ately than to­gether.”

“And where do you wish to go?” he de­man­ded, plainly still pissed.

I shrugged. “Any­where we haven’t been yet. We’re still look­ing for the lab where the Please is be­ing made and the hid­den video view­ing room, right? If we find that room, I bet we’ll find a whole ass-load of evid­ence.”

“True.” Salt looked some­what mol­li­fied. “I will take cor­ridor where Dr. Lucy’s of­fice is loc­ated. Is too long to have only one door—some­thing may be hid­den there.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll look around the swim­ming pool and spa area. We can meet back at the din­ing room for lunch.”

“Very well.” Salt nod­ded shortly and I could tell he was still mad at me. Well, fine—I wasn’t his num­ber one fan at the mo­ment either.

Without an­other word, we par­ted ways.

Little did I know that next time I saw my part­ner I was go­ing to be in some of the worst trouble of my life.





Chapter Twelve

I wandered around the pool and spa area for a little while, still fum­ing. Part of me wanted to go an apo­lo­gize and make up with Salt but part of me—the Little part—was still too angry to do any­thing of the sort. So I tried to con­cen­trate on my in­vest­ig­a­tion.

The pool was huge and set un­der a series of arches that screamed “Greco-Ro­man wanna-be” al­most as loudly as the na­ked marble statues every­where. The spa had mas­sage tables with lots of dif­fer­ent oils and creams to choose from. There was also a bored-look­ing at­tend­ant on hand provid­ing spe­cial mas­sage tools like heated lo­tions and vi­brat­ors of all shapes and sizes. After es­tab­lish­ing that I didn’t want any­thing, how­ever, he went back to the game he was play­ing on his cell phone.

I went on with my visual in­spec­tion, do­ing my best to play an in­no­cent Baby­girl, just ex­plor­ing. Be­sides the mas­sage tables, oil, and vi­brat­ors, I saw all kinds of pleas­ure equip­ment, in­clud­ing some­thing that looked like anal beads in the glass case at the front of the spa—at least I thought that was what they were. They were big and round and linked to­gether on a string. I shuttered to think of some­thing like that go­ing up in­side me but then, I didn’t want any­thing in that area, un­like most of the girls in this place.

Nobody was swim­ming in the pool or get­ting mas­saged in the spa this time of day—all the Dad­dies and Baby­girls were prob­ably still at break­fast talk­ing about the scene I had caused. Or maybe caus­ing scenes of their own. Think­ing of that made me real­ize, I hadn’t seen Mandy at the din­ing table. I wondered if she was sleep­ing in.

As if my thoughts had summoned her, I sud­denly saw the blonde girl com­ing from a small, re­cessed door at the far end of the swim­ming pool. I hadn’t even thought to look there yet, as­sum­ing it prob­ably just held pool equip­ment. But there was some­thing about the sneaky, al­most furt­ive way that she looked around as she slipped out of the small door that piqued my in­terest.

I hid around the far end of the spa watch­ing as she left the swim­ming and spa area. Then, mak­ing sure that the at­tend­ant was still im­mersed in his game, I walked cas­u­ally to the other end of the swim­ming pool. I made sure no one was watch­ing and then slipped into the small door and closed it quietly after me.

I found my­self in a small, dark room stuffed with pool equip­ment and smelling strongly of chlor­ine. I was just about to as­sume that there was noth­ing else to see when a small sliver of light caught my eye—there was an­other door at the end of the crowded room.

There were stacks of tubing, floats, and in­ner tubes in the way. Be­ing care­ful not to knock any­thing over, I threaded my way through the piles of equip­ment un­til I got to the other door. The light was com­ing from un­der it—just a tiny sliver that I wouldn’t have no­ticed at all if the room hadn’t been so dim.