“Let me show you something,” Scarlett said. “Wait right there…”

“How did you get rid of her?” Spencer asked.

He was the last to arrive and hadn’t quite gotten the full story as he was ushered into the living room for a family conference about the stranger. He sat on the floor on the side of the room, eating a container of Chinese food. Scarlett sat in the middle of the sofa, the others gathered around her. She was the witness. The unharmed victim.

“I showed her a picture of you in a dress from…whatever show that was where you had to wear a dress,” Scarlett said. “She didn’t think you were scary after that, and I convinced her that Sonny would want her to go.”

“I think I looked nice in the dress,” Spencer said, nodding. “I had really good hair, too.”

“You did,” Scarlett said. “But you also looked a little cheap.”

“I resent that. It was the fake boobs, right? I kind of couldn’t help that. I’m not exactly blessed in that department. Don’t judge me. And I could have gone bigger, but I said no…”

“Enough,” her dad said tiredly. “This is serious. There are a lot of weirdos out there, and they’ve clearly figured out where you live.”

Spencer fell silent and poked at the noodles, looking unhappily puzzled by whatever he saw in the depths of the container. Outside, the pigeons on the window ledge cooed soothingly.

“Sorry,” Spencer said. “They must have just traced it back to the articles about the show. And I talked to a reporter in the lobby the other day, but that article’s not out…”

“It’s not your fault,” their mom said. “We just need to rethink how we do things. It’s obviously not enough to lock the lobby door when no one’s at the desk. We’ll either have to make sure someone is sitting there around the clock…”

Scarlett heard her father groan lightly.

“…or we stop giving keys to guests. We have the buzzer wired up to this floor. We do something to keep people out.”

“But this is a hotel,” Lola said, stating the obvious. “We let people in for a living.”

“People who pay to stay here.”

“How do we know they won’t start coming just to see him?” Lola said, flicking a hand in Spencer’s direction.

“You say that like having guests is a bad thing,” Spencer said.

“It is if they’re insane.”

“Insane people have credit cards.”

“Why won’t you take anything seriously?” she snapped.

And then she left the room, followed closely by Marlene. Spencer sighed, pushed his chopsticks into the noodles, and set the container on the floor next to him as if he was setting down a great burden.

“It’s not your fault,” their mom said again. “We’ll figure something out. Lola’s just…”

“I know what Lola is.”