by Cindi Myers
“As soon as I’m sure she’s safe, I’ll go back home to Madison.”
“What’s in Madison?”
“What do you mean, what’s in Madison? My life is in Madison.”
“I just meant, what do you do there?”
“I’m an assistant to the city manager.”
It sounded like a dull job to him, but he wasn’t about to say so. “How long have you lived there?” he asked.
“Five years.”
“Are you married? Any children?”
“That is none of your business.”
Of course not. He was just trying to make conversation. He focused on driving, both hands gripping the steering wheel. The silence stretched between them.
“I’m not married, and I don’t have children. I’m not even dating anyone in particular,” she said after a long moment.
“You were right,” he said. “It’s none of my business.”
“What about you, Officer Knightbridge? Are you married?”
Was she asking because she was truly interested, or merely to even the score? “The only woman in my life right now is Lotte.” It was a line he’d used before; if the woman he said it to smiled, he figured they might hit it off.
Sophie didn’t smile. Instead, she glanced back at the dog, who sat in her usual position, facing forward, ears up, expression eager and alert. He understood that Lotte could be a little intimidating, if you didn’t know her. After all, part of her job was to intimidate, even subdue, criminals. “She’s really a sweetheart,” he said. “And she’s had years of training. She’d only hurt someone to protect me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” But her grim expression didn’t ease.
“Why are you afraid of dogs?” he asked. He knew such people existed, but he didn’t understand their fear. He liked all dogs. And Lotte was his best friend, not merely his working partner.
“I was bitten as a child. I had to have plastic surgery.” She indicated a faint scar on the side of her face, barely visible alongside her mouth.
He winced. “I can see how that would be traumatic, but I promise, Lotte won’t hurt you. Think of her as an overly hairy officer with a tail.”
As he’d hoped, the absurd description made her mouth quirk up almost in a smile. “What kind of dog is she?” she asked.
“A Belgian Malinois. A herding dog, like a German shepherd, but smaller. She only weighs sixty pounds.”
“She looks huge to me.”
“By police-dog standards, she’s on the small side, but she’s an expert tracker.”
“Too bad she can’t track down my sister.”
“She might be able to, if we knew the right place to look.”
She stared out the window at the passing landscape of open rangeland and scrubby trees. “Where do we start?”
“Like the captain said, we’ll ask around at the local motels and hotels, see if anyone remembers her.”
“Why didn’t you do that before?”
A reasonable question from someone to whom the missing person was one of the most important people on earth. “I don’t want to sound callous,” he said, “but with no sign of foul play and no one pressing us on the matter, your sister’s whereabouts weren’t a high priority. We’ve had murders and drug cases and even suspected terrorism to deal with. We only have so many people and so many hours in the day.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing I came down here,” she said.
“Don’t think no one cares about your sister,” he said. “Remember, that reporter has been trying to find out what happened to her. But she hasn’t come up with any new information, either.”
“How do you know she hasn’t come up with any new information? Maybe she didn’t bother telling you because she thought you wouldn’t pay attention.”
“Oh, she knows we’d pay attention. She’s engaged to the captain. If she found out anything important, she wouldn’t give him any peace until he followed up on it.” He glanced at her. “So you see, we’re on the same side here. And maybe we’ll find out something useful today—provided your sister wasn’t staying with a friend, or camping out.”
“Lauren definitely isn’t the camping type, and I couldn’t find that she knew anyone here in town— except Mr. Prentice.”
“We’ve been watching his place pretty closely and we haven’t seen any sign of your sister there.”
She tensed, and leaned toward him. “Why are you watching Mr. Prentice? Is it because he’s...what was the word the other officer used—an agitator?”
Prentice liked to agitate all right, but Rand didn’t care so much about that. Part of wearing a uniform was knowing some people didn’t like you on principle. “Mr. Prentice’s estate is an inholding, completely surrounded by public land. It makes sense for us to keep an eye on his place.” He hoped that was enough to satisfy Sophie’s curiosity. He couldn’t tell her they suspected the billionaire was using his wealth for more than investing in real estate and businesses. Their investigations had linked him, albeit tenuously, to everything from drug runners to foreign terrorists. Sooner or later, the Rangers were going to find the evidence they needed to make him pay for his crimes.
“How many motels and hotels are there in the area?” Sophie’s question pulled Rand’s attention back to her, and today’s search for her missing sister.
“A bunch,” he said. “But we can narrow the field by focusing on the most likely places for your sister to stay. She strikes me as a classy woman, so we can move the obvious roach motels to the bottom of the list. Where do you think she’d be?”
She considered the question for a moment, brow furrowed and lips pursed. “She’d probably pick the first nice-looking place she came to when she drove into town. She wasn’t the type to spend a lot of time driving around, looking.”
“That would be either the Country Inn or the Mountain View.”
“No chains?” she asked.
“Would your sister prefer a chain? There’s a Holiday Inn and a Ramada closer to the center of town.”
“No, she wouldn’t care about that, as long as the place looked clean.”
He drove to the Country Inn first. Red geraniums bloomed in window boxes against rows of white-framed windows trimmed in white shutters. A water wheel turned in a flower-lined pond near the entrance, splashing water that sparkled in the sun. “Lauren would have liked this,” Sophie said.
Rand parked, but left the car running, with the air-conditioning on, to avoid overheating the dog. “Lotte, wait here,” he said. “We’ll be back in a minute.”
“You talk to her as if she understands you,” Sophie said as they crossed the parking lot.
“Of course she understands me. Do you have a picture of your sister with you?”
“Yes.” She took her phone from her purse and flipped to a shot of Lauren Starling seated in a restaurant booth, smiling at the camera and holding up a colorful cocktail. “I took this when she visited Wisconsin for my birthday last year.”
He didn’t miss the sadness in her voice. “It’s a great picture,” he said. “We’ll need it to show to the clerk.”
The lobby of the motel was busy, with a couple flipping through brochures at one end of the counter, a pair of tweens choosing sodas from a machine and a businessman checking in. The clerk behind the counter was probably a college student from the local university, Rand decided. She had long blond hair, dyed bright pink at the ends, and half a dozen earrings in each ear. When she was done with the businessmen, she smiled at them. “May I help you?”
He showed his badge and the clerk’s eyes widened. “We’re looking for a missing woman,” he said. “Lauren Starling. She may have stayed here about a month ago.” He nodded to Sophie and she held out the phone to show Lauren’s picture.
“I’m her sister,” Sop
hie said. “This is Lauren.”
The clerk’s eyes widened. “You say she’s missing?”
“Yes. Do you remember her, or could you check your records?”
“I don’t have to check the records. She was here. I remember.”
* * *
SOPHIE FUMBLED WITH the phone, almost dropping it. “Lauren was here? Are you sure?” Her voice shook. Rand put his hand on her shoulder, steadying her.
The clerk nodded. “I recognized her from the TV, but she was obviously trying to hide her identity. I mean, she registered as Jane Smith or something like that, and paid cash for the room.”
“You didn’t think that was suspicious?” Rand asked.
“Well, yeah, but people do weird things all the time, and you learn not to ask questions.” She tucked a strand of cotton-candy-colored hair behind one ear. “Then she met up with a guy, and I figured they were having an affair.” She shrugged. “It happens.”
“A guy?” Sophie leaned across the counter. “Who was the guy? What did he look like?”
Rand squeezed her shoulder to quiet her. She was going to scare off the clerk, who looked alarmed. He double-checked the girl’s name badge. “I promise you won’t get into any trouble, Marlee. Just tell us what you remember.”
She shrugged again. “He was just a real ordinary-looking guy—early forties, maybe. Light brown hair cut short, not too tall, not too big.”
“Did he register also?”
She shook her head. “And that’s really the only reason I remember him. I was getting off my shift and I saw him standing with Jane Smith outside her room. Then he took a suitcase—one of those little overnight bags—from his car and went inside with her. That’s against the rules—to have someone staying in the room who isn’t registered, but it was no skin off my nose, you know? I was in a hurry to get home and I wasn’t going to take the trouble to go back inside and report her. Like I said, it happens.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to the police?” Sophie asked. “Didn’t you see the story about Lauren being missing?”
“I knew she wasn’t doing the news lately, but they said something about her being on vacation, and then I just kind of forgot. I don’t watch a lot of TV and I mean, I wasn’t a hundred percent certain it was her, and I didn’t want to look stupid—and you’re the first people to come around asking questions.”
Rand didn’t have to look at Sophie to know she was glaring at him. Maybe she was right. Maybe they should have taken her sister’s disappearance more seriously and made it a point to ask questions before now, but there was nothing he could do to change the past. All he could do was try to do a better job going forward.
“Had you ever seen the man before?” he asked. “Or have you seen him since?”
Marlee shook her head so hard her earrings jangled. “I don’t think so. But like I said, he was nothing special.”
“Was it this guy?” He pulled up a website on his phone that featured an article about Richard Prentice and turned the phone so that she could see it.
She squinted at the photo of a man in his late forties, with thick dark hair, graying at the temples. “The guy I saw was younger, with lighter hair. That’s not him.”
“Thanks.” He pocketed the phone once more. “You’ve been a big help. We might have more questions for you later. In the meantime, could you tell us when Ms. Starling checked out?”
She went to the computer and began typing. “The reservation was prepaid and she did express checkout,” she said. “The next morning. So she was only here for the one night.”
“Express checkout meaning she left the key in the room and you never saw her?” Rand asked.
“That’s right. I wasn’t on duty the next morning, but the record shows express checkout.”
“We’ll want to talk to whoever was on duty that morning.”
“That would be Candy. She comes on at three today if you want to come back.”
“Someone will stop by. Thanks.”
He could tell Sophie wanted to say more, but he ushered her back to the car. “Maybe they have surveillance pictures,” she said. “We could ask to see them.”
“We could—and we will. But chances are they’re on a tape loop that gets wiped every twenty-four to seventy-two hours. Otherwise the databank fills up with hours and hours of images of empty parking lots.” He started the car. “Does the man she described sound like anyone you know? A boyfriend of your sister’s? Her ex-husband?”
“Her ex was a big blond, and she wasn’t dating anyone. She would have told me if she was.”
“Maybe not if he was married, or she had some other reason to keep the relationship secret.”
“She would have told me.”
She sounded so certain. But how could she know another person so well? Then again, he was an only child. Maybe some siblings were closer. “Everybody has secrets,” he said.
“Lauren and I don’t have secrets from each other. We’re the only family we have left, and we’ve stayed close.”
The fervor in her voice struck a faint, almost forgotten longing within him. Growing up as an only child to older parents, he’d often wished for a brother or sister—someone who would share his background and upbringing, and always be there. “I hope if anything ever happens to me, I have someone like you fighting for me.” He meant the words. As much as he still thought they were wasting time searching for her sister, who was probably off in Cancún with her boyfriend, he admired Sophie’s determination to find and help Lauren.
The soft strains of classical music rose from the floorboard near her feet. “That’s my phone,” she said, reaching for her purse. She fished out a pink iPhone and glanced at the screen. “I need to get this.”
“Go right ahead.” He focused on driving the cruiser through heavy traffic near a school zone, but he couldn’t help overhearing her side of the conversation.
“Hello?...Yes, this is she...Oh! Thank you for returning my call...Yes...Yes...Well, as I tried to explain in my message...All right...Yes...That would be fine...Yes...Goodbye.”
She ended the call and rested the phone in her lap, her expression troubled. “Everything okay?” he asked.
“I think so.” She turned to him, her determined expression once more in place. “That was Richard Prentice. He wants to meet with me to talk about Lauren.”
Chapter Three
Sophie clutched the dash to steady herself as Rand swerved the cruiser to the side of the road, tires squealing and gravel popping as they skidded to a stop. He shifted into Park and turned to face her. From the back, the dog let out a bark of protest. “Sorry, girl,” he called. He gripped the steering wheel tightly, radiating strength and more than a little anger. “You told us you didn’t know Richard Prentice,” he said, his voice low, almost a growl. “That you’d never heard of him.”
“I don’t!” she protested. “I hadn’t.”
“Then how does he have your cell number?”
“After I found his business card in Lauren’s apartment, I called the number and left a message. When he didn’t call back after a couple of days, I figured he wasn’t interested.” She was not going to let him make her feel guilty about something anyone in her position would have done.
“And you conveniently neglected to tell us any of this,” he said.
“Because I didn’t think it mattered.” She retrieved her purse from the floor and stuffed the phone back into it. “Why are you upset, anyway?” she asked. “Now you don’t have to trouble yourself to talk to the guy—I’ll do it.”
“He wants to meet you somewhere?”
“He invited me to his house.”
His glower was enough to make her flinch. All right, she’d had second thoughts about meeting a man she didn’t know at his home, but she wasn’t going to admit that to
Rand, who seemed to think he could order her around.
“I’ll go with you,” he said.
“Excuse me, but you weren’t invited.”
“It’s not a good idea for you to go to his house by yourself.”
She sat up straighter, as if physically stiffening her spine would somehow increase her courage. “Why not? He’s rich, not a criminal—or are you the one who’s not telling me the whole story now?”
He rubbed his hands back and forth along the steering wheel. They were big, powerful hands, the nails cut short, the skin bronzed. They looked like hands that would be equally at home punching a guy or caressing a woman.
Okay, where had that thought come from? Obviously, all the testosterone this guy gave off was affecting her, and not in a good way.
“We have no proof Prentice is involved in any crimes, but he’s a very powerful man and we suspect all his money doesn’t come from legitimate sources.” Rand glanced at her. “And he’s a jerk.”
That was all he could come up with? “Being a jerk doesn’t make him dangerous.”
“It doesn’t make him safe, either.”
“You’re going to have to tell me more than that to persuade me he poses any threat.”
The muscles along his jaw tightened, and she could hear his teeth grinding. After a few seconds, he released his death grip on the steering wheel. “This goes no further than this vehicle, all right?” he said.
She nodded. “All right.”
“Last month, right after your sister disappeared, we broke up an illegal marijuana-growing operation and human-trafficking ring. The guy in charge had once worked for Prentice, though he swore they had no connection now. We think Prentice was overseeing the operation, but we couldn’t prove it. Then, shortly after that, a pilot was murdered after he flew a weapon that had been stolen from the US military onto public land near Prentice’s place.”
“A weapon?”
“I can’t elaborate, but Prentice had links to that, too. Again, we didn’t have any proof to tie him directly, but if we’re right and he’s behind these crimes, we’re talking about somebody who’s proven he won’t let anything—or anyone—stop him from getting his way.”
