“A vault?”
Ben nodded as he worked on his phone, “Yeah, we can’t leave the artifacts in the car, right?”
“I didn’t think about that either,” Tara’s eyes darted around the parking lot.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah?!” she snapped as if he pulled her out of a dream.
“How prepared are you for this trip?”
“I’m kind of winging it,” she bit her bottom lip as it quivered with reality setting in. "I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what to do. I spent the last two days drunk at my best friend's bar, hoping that this wasn't happening, or that it would happen successfully and I'd be able to come back home and have everything feel normal again!”
“Why don’t we do this?” Ben walked to her, taking her hand into his. He could see the surprise on her face and tipped his head gently to let her know it was okay. “Let’s go get our rooms. We can order food and plan out the rest of this trip. The hardest part is done, Tara. We have the artifacts. We can figure the rest out.”
5
"I'm sorry, Miss Samuels, if you'd called ahead of time, we would have had two rooms available, but at the moment, we can only offer you the one room. The next motel is only a few miles away, but I'm not sure about the vacancies available. If you're up to traveling another hour or so, depending on traffic, we have a sister hotel with more than enough rooms available."
Tara tapped her foot against the counter, staring at the young woman who'd tried her best to accommodate her and her security guard. The woman's eyes shifted from her screen to Ben then to Tara and back to Ben. It stirred something irrational inside of her.
“We’ll take it!” Tara said with defiance, garnering an inquisitive look from Ben. “We can make it work. How big is the room again?”
The woman smiled and glanced at Ben, who nodded with a slight rise in his shoulders.
"Excuse me!" Tara moved Ben out of her way, flashing her credit card, “I’m booking the room for us. I need you to answer my questions please. What size is the bed we’re going to share?”
The woman blushed, “It’s, uh, a queen-sized suite with a balcony. There are some chairs-”
“And I’ll take it, thank you,” Tara insisted with a deliberate slide of the credit card across the counter. She hadn’t any idea where the attitude came from and didn’t want to examine it any further.
“May I see the vault?” Ben interjected before Tara could say anything else.
“I’m sorry, what?” Confusion rode the woman’s face.
“The vault,” Tara repeated for him, “Your website advertises a vault in the manager’s office. May we know the measurements?”
“Um,” the woman held her hand flat about five inches above the counter, “It’s about yay high and about a foot wide.”
“That’s not a vault,” Ben snapped.
“Yeah, that’s barely a safe,” Tara added.
“I apologize, but we’re really just a mid-sized hotel. The closer you get to Vegas, the more likely you’ll find a hotel with a vault, most likely a casino hotel.”
Tara glared at Ben.
“So, do you still want or not want the room?"
Ben huffed, “Give us a second.”
Tara pulled Ben away from the counter, “We can’t leave the artifacts in the car.”
“You’re right about that, and the more I think about it,” Ben scrunched his eyebrows together, "The less I want to leave them in a hotel's vault. How about we order in, take some showers, rest up, and hit the road? We don't have to spend the night. As a matter of fact, we can hash out the details for the rest of our trip, maybe even find a few places I picked out to find out the dimensions of their safes?”
Tara laughed, “I’d like that. Let’s do that.”
Ben and Tara spent the next few minutes checking into their room and lugging the rest of their bags to a suite that left much to be desired. Everything screamed beige.
“This is luxury?” Tara whispered to herself as she made her way to a door toward the back of the room.
“It’s more like oatmeal,” Ben joked. “Oatmeal colored everything.”
"Oatmeal sucks. It's the worst of all the hot cereals," she said, opening the door to the suite's balcony. Tara took a quick peek outside and called back to him, "It doesn't suck as much as that balcony, though."
"Is it that bad?" Ben asked, placing the artifacts case on a table in the corner. He made it a point to hold it the same way she'd told him earlier.
Tara moved her head up and down slowly, “Yes, because it overlooks the parking lot, and it's not so much a balcony as it is a two by four slab of concrete with a rickety iron railing that probably couldn't stand up to… well, it just looks fragile."
Ben paused with his eyes darting from the balcony door to Tara, “I kind of want to know where you were going with the sturdiness of the balcony, but I’ll settle for a choice on what to order for dinner.”
“Order whatever you want, I really just want a drink right now-”
Ben cut her off, “Vodka isn’t the answer.”
“Vodka is almost always the answer, and when it isn’t, I'm sure that gin and tequila work just as well."
“Your best friend is definitely a bartender. I wonder what would happen if we were best friends.”
Tara giggled, shaking her head side to side, "The way you look and what you do, I'd order a slot at the shooting range.”
“I can arrange that for you.”
“No, don’t!” She laughed, “The way that woman down there looked at me while looking at you, she’d be right in my sights.”
“Really?” Ben cocked his head to the side.
“Yeah, really! The way she dragged her eyes over you, I thought she'd ask you out. She was extremely judgmental like you wouldn't want to share a room
