“I texted Andrea too,” she whispered. “She said no one’s come by looking for me.”
Tripp nodded, the lump in his throat too large to speak around. He got out of the car and to Hilary’s door before she exited the vehicle. When he held the door open, she rushed from one safe place to another, her hair streaming behind her. Tripp gave Blaine one last look and closed the door behind himself.
Hilary had run into the bedroom, but she returned within seconds, her purse bulging with a set of clothes. “Okay, I’m going.”
Tripp stepped in front of her. “I’m coming too.”
“You can’t.” Fire filled her gaze. “It’s too hard to conceal two people. And you’re a native of Redwood Bay. You should be here. It will be suspicious if you’re not.”
“Suspicious to who?”
“To Ethan.”
“Ethan?”
“That’s who that man was. He’s Dante’s best friend. Ethan King.”
“You recognized him?” For some reason, Tripp had hoped it was a nameless clone. Someone faceless, a phantom they could outrun and then ignore. Him having a name, being personal with Hilary, made everything seem scarier, darker, more shocking.
She glanced away. “I have to go now.” She stepped past him, turning only at the door. “I love you, Tripp. I’ll send a message to the new hotel in town.”
He swept her into his arms. “Please don’t go. Maybe it’s time to face him. Face them all. Stand your ground.”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“They’ll just find you in the next place.”
“Maybe.” She pressed her cheek to his chest, and he knew with absolute certainty that she’d never return to Redwood Bay. It would be too dangerous. She tipped her head back and he dipped his down, and he kissed her. Kissed her with the same desperation flowing through him. Kissed her with the same fear that had frozen his muscles.
She broke the connection quickly and tucked herself against him. “Do you know why I couldn’t leave Dante?”
“But you did leave Dante.”
“Not for a long time. Do you know why?”
“No.” He stroked her hair, hoping to hold onto her for just a few more minutes.
“Because when you’re in a relationship like that, one that’s abusive and unhealthy, you don’t believe you deserve any better.”
“You do deserve better.”
She tilted her head back. “So do you.” Hilary ducked out the door. Moments later, he heard her car start and drive away.
She just drove away.
Drove away from Redwood Bay. From him. From their future.
He glanced at his fist, where he felt something sharp digging into his fingers. He uncurled his fingers to find her amber engagement ring. He hadn’t realized when she’d taken it off, or when she’d given it to him.
As he stared at it, his heart cracked right in half, and he squeezed his hand around the ring again. The pain of the edges against his skin gave him the anchor he needed.
Numbly, he moved to her couch and sat down. He turned on the TV. He pocketed the ring. Her words—so do you—burned through his mind over and over again. He went through his contacts like wildfire, telling them about the stranger in town and how he had a picture of Hilary, but could they please say they’d never seen her before? Finally, the fact that Tripp had never left Redwood Bay was a benefit for him, and almost everyone texted back that they’d help him, help Hilary, by keeping quiet and spreading the word.
Ethan King showed up only three hours later, and he found Tripp on the couch, Food Network blaring, front door open.
“Hey, do you live here?”
Tripp’s life had been operating in slow motion since Hilary had left, but now everything rushed forward. He took in the man’s brown hair, the silly little goatee, the scar across his forehead. He looked overly tanned and overly drugged.
“Yeah.” Tripp stood. “Something I can help you with?”
“I was told a woman lived here.” Ethan glanced around, obviously confused. “A Hilary Finnegan?”
Tripp gave him a blank stare. “You were told wrong,” he said. “I’ve been living here for months.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, and he was glad his boots and jacket and wallet all sat in plain sight. Now, if Ethan went into the bathroom or the bedroom…. “Me and my girlfriend. But her name’s not Hilary.”
“Where is she now?” Ethan’s razor-sharp eyes came back to Tripp.
“Work. She owns the diner.”
“Lucy’s diner?”
“That’s right.” He wished he could text her right now. His fingers even flinched toward his phone, but he kept them at his sides.
“She said her boyfriend had to go pick up some extra potatoes.”
“Yeah.” Tripp watched him scan the house again, every muscle in his body set to fight! “I took ’em back over and then came back here.”
Ethan frowned, but wiped away the emotion almost before Tripp saw it. His dark eyes nearly cut through Tripp. He had the kind of eyes that had seen things Tripp couldn’t even imagine. He’d done things Tripp couldn’t understand. He seemed sharp in places he shouldn’t, and a bolt of fear struck Tripp’s heart.
“Well, I’m staying at the new hotel in town for a few days,” Ethan said. “It’s really important that I find this woman.” He held out a slip of paper and Tripp took it, willing his fingers to stay steady.
It was the newspaper picture of Hilary, the one with the haunted eyes and limp hair. “Never seen her,” he said, handing it back. He couldn’t swallow, and he thought sure Ethan would be able to see his heartbeat galloping underneath his skin and bones.
“Have you lived here long?” Ethan asked.
“My whole life,” Tripp said. “I own a fishing and furniture company on the wharf.”
“So you must know a lot of people in town.”
“I know everyone in town.”
“And this woman never lived here?”
Tripp reached for the picture and pretended to study it again. “I’m certain that woman has never lived here.” He managed a tight smile as he passed the paper back.
Ethan swore. “Nothing in this town makes sense.” He turned back to the front door. “Thanks.”
Tripp hurried to follow him. “What doesn’t make sense?” he called after him.
“One person said she went by Hilary Finnegan here. Everyone else says they’ve never seen her.”
Tripp shrugged. “Who was the one?”
“Shawn Loveland. He’s a Realtor.”
“Yeah, I know Shawn.” Tripp sighed. “He’s a bit…well, he drinks a lot.”
Ethan cocked his head and studied Tripp. “Great. I get the town drunk.” He glanced around, seemingly taking in all of Redwood Bay in one swoop. “I hate towns like this,” he muttered as he slid behind the wheel of his rental.
Tripp watched him back out and drive away, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He wondered if Ethan would set fire to the next house he saw, what with the heat of anger in his voice. Tripp lunged for his phone, dialing Shawn as fast as his fingers would allow.
* * * *
A week passed with Ethan King in town, but everyone kept their mouths shut. Tripp didn’t dare leave Hilary’s house, and thankfully, Shawn held up his end of the promise and drank too much every night.
Tripp checked at the hotel every day, but nothing had come from Hilary. He went every day for a month, and Dylan Ruckland, the hotel’s manager, simply started texting him to save Tripp the burden of coming in.
He still went in once a week—every Sunday after his family lunch at Polly’s.
“Nothing,” Dylan said when Tripp appeared in his doorway at the end of the second month. “You know, maybe she’s not going to send anything.”
Tripp had grown to like Dylan, despite his job at the ten-story building that should represent everything Tripp didn’t want in Redwood Bay. “Yeah, okay.” His chest had been so tight for so long. He wasn’t sure how much more he could t
ake.
“Do you have any idea where it would come from?” Dylan asked.
Tripp nodded, the movement of his head tight and quick. “From one of the Russell hotels.”
Dylan frowned. “We never get packages or transfers from the Russell hotels.”
“No?” Tripp entered the office and sat in the only guest chair, his emotions on a perpetual roller coaster. The hope every Sunday. The devastating crash that night. The slow build throughout the week. “I was told hotels shipped to each other.”
“Well, that’s true, but there would be no reason for a Russell hotel to ship to us. We use different towels, different brands of soap. I only get shipments from our parent company out of Seattle or from other Overnight Success hotels.”
“So not from just any hotel?” Confusion needled him. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t had this conversation with Dylan before. He hadn’t wanted to explain what he was looking for, what the message might say. He honestly didn’t know. He just asked every day if they’d gotten any message in their packages.
“No.” Dylan leaned his elbows on his desk. “There would be no reason to get a shipment from a Russell hotel.”
Hilary had been gone for sixty-two days. Two months. She could be anywhere, even a different country, by now. He knew she’d taken well over three thousand dollars with her. A red purse she’d likely ditched within an hour. And one change of clothes.
He’d contacted everyone he could think of, from Glenn out in Bedrock to his parents in Seattle. But Hilary knew how to disappear. He just hoped not for good.
“Okay.” Tripp took a deep breath. “Well, do you have a list of the Overnight Success hotels in the United States and Canada?” He wasn’t sure what he would do with it, but he had to start somewhere.
Because he wasn’t giving up on Hilary.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hilary ran her thumb around her left ring finger, the absence of her engagement ring a constant reminder of Tripp.
“You ready?” Lois, a woman a decade older than Hilary, touched her shoulder. Her eyes were the color of the ocean Hilary had left behind and filled with kindness.
Hilary sighed and finished buttoning her uniform. “Yeah.”
“Hey, at least you got floor fourteen.” Lois gave her the grandmotherly smile that pinched against Hilary’s heart.
“Oh, yeah,” Hilary put her hands on her cart and put her back into it to get it rolling. “Never any high-rollers partying in the executive suites.”
Lois joined her laughter to Hilary’s and they left the basement restocking room. They could both fit in the elevator, and Lois got off on floor ten, leaving with the comment, “Come to dinner with me and Jay tonight, Scarlett.”
Hilary smiled and nodded before the elevator doors slid shut. She’d go to dinner with Lois and her husband. Lois had a quaint, cozy apartment closer to the bay in a tiny town called Fisher’s Island. There were a lot of small towns between New York City and Boston, and Hilary lived in one to the north of the hotel where she cleaned up after gamblers, remade beds after romantic evenings, saw things in bathrooms she didn’t know people were capable of.
Every day, she was risking her secrets, her freedom, by coming to this hotel, because it belonged to the Russell Resort group. Every day, she longed to cross the Thames River to the Overnight Success hotel and send a cleverly disguised message to Tripp.
Every day, she resisted the urge.
She would not put him in danger. She would not put anyone in Redwood Bay in danger. Not Lucy, whom she’d never been able to ask about her past. Not Millie, who had so easily invited Hilary to her girls’ nights. Not Jared, who’d once whispered her scars were beautiful.
Never Tripp.
If Ethan King could trace her to Redwood Bay, he could find her here. She still wondered how Ethan had found her in Redwood Bay. Why then, after almost three years?
She hadn’t done anything different, besides her relationship with Tripp. Everything always came back to Tripp. She could start a simple thought about how it was so much colder in Connecticut and end up at Tripp. She could grab a granola bar from the break room and end up at Tripp.
She would not weigh him down, rob him of the business he’d built from the ground up, expect him to run with her every time someone new showed up in town.
He deserved better than her, and he didn’t even know it.
He’d come if he knew where she was, and she simply couldn’t put him in danger.
Sighing, she knocked on the last door on floor fourteen, a couple who should’ve checked out that morning. It was almost two o’clock in the afternoon, and if she could get this room done in an hour, she’d get off work on time for the first time since she’d started a month ago.
No one answered and she used her universal key to open the door and enter the room. But it wasn’t empty. A figure stood from the armchair deep in the room, near the window. She couldn’t see his face, but the boxy set of his shoulders suggested it was a man, and Hilary automatically fell back. Her cart blocked the door from closing, but at least it stood between her and the man.
“Hello,” he said, and she didn’t recognize the voice. Didn’t matter. Everything inside her screamed at her to flee, and she’d learned to listen to that instinct above all else. She spun and ran toward the service elevator, which only her key would operate. She heard the man shout behind her, but she didn’t turn back, didn’t even look over her shoulder.
She’d made that promise to herself when she’d left Redwood Bay. No going back. Only moving forward.
Her heart battered her ribs on the long ride down to the basement. She didn’t clock out. Didn’t tell anyone about the man in the last room on the fourteenth floor. She fumbled the lock on her locker but finally got it open. Grabbed her backpack and her coat and headed for the exit.
She left her car in the parking lot and sprinted up the steps to the street. A plethora of cabs waited around the front of the hotel, but she couldn’t go that way. At the same time, she needed to be in a heavily populated place, and fast.
Choosing the lesser of two bad things, she hurried toward the hotel’s nearest entrance. She glanced around as she entered, her backpack strangely out of place at this resort location. She entered the hotel to shops and casinos in every direction. Unlike her escape from Redwood Bay, which she’d done as quickly as possible, Hilary wondered if somehow, some way, she could find some sense of a normal, stable life. Somewhere she didn’t have to leave at the drop of a hat, didn’t have to wonder who every male voice belonged to.
That man could’ve been anyone. Didn’t have to be one of Dante’s crew. But something writhed in her bloodstream, and she couldn’t shake it. She knew what she needed to do, she just didn’t know if she could go through with it.
As she sat at the slot machine, feeding quarter after quarter into it, she thought through the hard things she’d done. They flashed through her mind like a flip book, still scenes painted with extreme emotion. She slowed the pace when she got to the images of Tripp, and a single tear tracked down her cheek.
She wiped it quickly, very aware of the cameras in places like this.
All at once, her heart seized as if shocked by lightning. Cameras.
That was how Dante’s men had found her. He must have them watching the major feeds all over the country. Ethan had shown up in Redwood Bay only after she’d gone to San Diego with Tripp.
Cursing her own stupidity, and with her mind and resolve set, she marched to the check-in counter. Her fingers fumbled over her wallet and her tongue bumbled the name when she said, “I’m Jillian Russell, daughter of Robert Russell.” She flashed her ID and slid a card across the counter to the woman. “I own this hotel, and I need a private room with security posted outside the door.”
The woman looked at the card, her eyes widening. “Yes, ma’am,” the receptionist said, lifting the phone in front of her and saying, “Baby bird.”
Hilary relaxed at the sight of the two men who approached mer
e seconds later. They wore suits the color of midnight and radio pieces in their ears. “Right this way, Miss Russell.” Once they’d entered a private elevator down a hallway behind a secure, steel door, one said, “We’ve called your father.”
“Can you do me another favor?” She fiddled with the collar of her coat, feeling the ridges of the scars just under her fingertips. “I need to get a message to Dylan Ruckland, a hotel manager in California.”
The two men exchanged a glance. “Your father and mother are on the next plane here,” the taller of the two men said. “Your father can get a message anywhere.”
Hilary shook her head, her insides shaking like gelatin with the movement. “I need the message to go out immediately. My parents won’t be here for several hours, at least.”
“We can arrange a private line.” The guard stepped away and spoke into a cell phone. “One of our team members is bringing up a burner cell.” The elevator doors opened. “Thirteenth floor. Private to staff and VIPs.”
Tremors ran through her body. “Thirteenth floor? Isn’t that bad luck or something?” She didn’t want to mention that the man who had scared her into using her real name for the first time in almost three years had been just one floor up.
“Someone would need a key to get through the door, and a code to get on the elevator we took. Jerry and I will be right outside your door.” The man swiped a card over the high-tech reader and motioned for her to stay back while he checked the room before he waved her inside. “When the cell phone arrives, I’ll knock three times and pass it in to you. You can make any calls on it you want. No one will be able to trace or tap it.”
She swallowed and nodded. “What’s your name?”
“Mike.” His eyes could bore holes through solid wood, but when they met hers, they held a hint of compassion. “If you need anything, just let us know.” He nodded his chin toward the mini-fridge. “Bottled water in there. Some snacks in the shelves above.” He stepped out of the room and let the door settle closed.
Until Autumn Falls Page 19
