by Beverly Long
And they would hopefully find Lou, who would lead them to Charity, and then Jules’s eyes would no longer look bleak.
They went through the side door and walked all fourteen floors. He opened the stairway door, checked the corridor to make sure it was empty, and then they walked quickly to her suite. He unlocked the door, pushed it open and entered.
And immediately saw the mailing envelope that was on the floor, just inside the door. Scrawled across the front in blue ink was JC Cambridge, CEO.
He heard the breath leave Jules’s body and knew that she’d seen it. “Don’t touch it,” he whispered.
Then he pulled his gun and motioned for her to stay by the door while he did a quick sweep through the suite. Nothing was out of place.
When he got back, Jules was standing where he’d left her, simply staring at the envelope. He expected her to look terrified, and there was some of that, sure, but she mostly looked very angry.
“Whoever is sending these was here,” she said. “They put it under the door.”
He was pretty sure she was right. The other envelopes had been addressed to JC Cambridge, CEO, and they’d had the street address for her office and a postmark.
This one didn’t have either because it hadn’t come through the mail. He bent down and touched it with the tip of his finger. It was almost flat, likely with just one sheet of paper inside.
He opened it, being very careful to touch only the edges. Pulled out the sheet. Read it quickly and felt a hot ball of fury ignite in his gut.
Smarty, in your blue suit
You’re top drawer.
But talk is cheap
Actions mean more.
All of you liars and cheaters
Know that the truth will be heard.
Written by my hand, in your blood
Not a single word blurred.
I am almost ready
So filled with joy.
For I am the hunter cat
And you are the little mouse toy.
Royce pulled his phone off his belt, punched in Detective Mannis’s number. “Sit down,” he said to her as he waited for the man to answer. She had absolutely no color in her face.
“Mannis.”
“It’s Royce Morgan. Jules got another letter. We think it was slipped under her suite door while we were out.”
“Did you open it?”
“Yeah. Carefully. The idiot’s poetry isn’t getting any better,” Royce said. Damn it. Who was this guy? “In it he mentions a blue suit. That’s what Jules was wearing this morning when she did her panel presentation.”
“Was there news coverage?”
“Not that I saw. But anybody with a cell phone is a newsmaker these days. Social media is the biggest network out there.”
“You’re right. I’m on my way. I’d like to get it into our lab, see if we can get some prints, or maybe there’s some residue on the paper that will give us a lead. I’ll call the hotel manager, too, to have them pull video of that hallway. It was gutsy to shove it under the door.”
Nothing more dangerous than a bad guy who thought he was invincible. They did stupid things and innocent people got hurt.
Royce put down his phone. “Detective Mannis is on his way.”
“I don’t think it’s that big of a deal that the person figured out I was staying at the Periwinkle. After all, it is the conference hotel. It’s the most likely place for a presenter to stay.”
“But to know which one is your room, that takes inside information. Like somebody who has access to registration data. Who made your reservation?”
“My administrative assistant. She made my reservation and Barry’s. She got suites for both of us. When we arrived together, I picked the fourteenth floor so he took the twelfth.”
“Okay.” He looked at his watch. “I’d like it if you could get packed before Detective Mannis gets here.”
“Packed?” she repeated. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re not staying here. Not now that we know that whoever is behind this knows the location of your room.”
“I can’t go to another hotel. What if Charity comes back? I need to be here.”
He didn’t think Charity was coming back. But he didn’t want to tell her that. “We’ll leave contact information for Wingman Security with the hotel manager.”
“Where will I go?” she asked.
Home. He wanted to say it. If there was danger here, he wanted her as far away from it as possible. But what he didn’t know was whether home was safe for her. Would the danger simply follow and he wouldn’t be there?
The idea of that was simply not acceptable.
He had evidently been quiet for too long because she put her hands on her hips. “I’m not leaving Vegas. Not until I find Charity.”
“Well, the only way you’re staying is if you relocate to my house,” he said, the words falling out of his mouth.
“What?” She looked appropriately shocked.
“My house. I’ve taken certain...precautions, let’s say, to ensure that it is very secure.”
“What? You say that like it’s some fortress.”
No. A respectable brick ranch with steel entry doors, bulletproof glass in the windows and a safe room that they could live in for several weeks without much trouble. “Please, just get packed. Take off your disguise but make sure you put it in your suitcase because you’ll need it tomorrow. I’d like to get out of here as quickly as possible.”
“I need to call Barry and let him know what’s going on.”
“No,” Royce said.
“What?”
“Once we’re out of here, you can tell him that you’ve changed hotels but that’s it.”
“Are you suggesting that Barry has something to do with this?” she asked, pointing at the letter.
“As far as I’m concerned, nobody gets a free pass. And nobody gets to know any more than we tell them.”
“Don’t you think Barry will simply look you up? You’re not the only one who has resources.”
“He won’t find me,” Royce said. He was very careful. Used the office address for all his bills. His house had been purchased by a Nevada corporation, the same one that paid the real estate taxes.
“Why are you doing this, Royce? Why are you making this your problem?”
Because I never stopped loving you. “Because you hired me to provide security. Money was exchanged. Commitments were made. I take those things seriously. Now, you’ve probably only got a few minutes before Detective Mannis arrives. Maybe you want to make good use of it, because when he leaves, we do, too.”
* * *
She was hauling her suitcase out of her bedroom when she heard a sharp knock on the suite door. She saw that Royce had changed back into his suit and his suitcase was also in the kitchen. He motioned for her to stand back before he looked through the peephole.
Then he opened the door and ushered Detective Mannis inside. “Ms. Cambridge,” the man said.
“Thank you for coming, Detective Mannis. Here’s the letter,” she said, pointing at where Royce had dropped it on the table.
The detective did not touch it. Read it, then used an ink pen to flip it over. There was nothing on the back. Then he inspected the envelope. “It’s three stanzas,” he said.
It gave her some comfort that the detective was smart enough that he’d quickly identified the difference between this letter and the others. They had only had one stanza each.
“I’m not sure what that means,” Royce said.
“Maybe it means the sender is getting more intense, feels the need to express himself more fully,” Detective Mannis said.
“Or maybe,” JC said, “he thinks this is going to be his last letter and he just wants to
get it all out.”
Her words hung in the air, little bits of flotsam, like the cat hair when she’d shaken Charity’s beach towel. If she was right, then it meant that the sender thought things were coming to an end.
Which likely wasn’t good for her, JC thought. She didn’t say it, however. Both Royce and Detective Mannis looked as if they were chewing on nails already.
There was a knock on the door. “That should be the manager,” the detective said. “She was going to pull the tape of all activity in this hallway since you left here approximately two hours ago.”
Royce answered the door and Sonya Tribee entered. Her face was pale. JC expected her to hand over the information and leave. Instead, the woman said, “I’ve copied all the activity onto this DVD. If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay while you view it.”
“Are we going to see something on this?” Detective Mannis asked.
Sonya licked her lips. “I pulled it immediately after you called. And I only had a chance to look at it once but... I would just feel better if I’m here when you see it.”
The two men exchanged glances. JC could practically read their minds. There was no real harm in allowing her to stay. After all, she was the one who’d pulled the data. She knew what was on the DVD.
“Fine,” Detective Mannis said. He opened the cabinet that housed the television and DVD player. He inserted the disk, and in seconds they were looking at the hallway. It was a clear image, better quality than the pool.
Like they were reading each other’s minds, Sonya said, “We upgraded our internal video about a year ago. We use it,” she added, somewhat apologetically it seemed, “to monitor associate productivity. You know, how long a housekeeper is in the room. How many trips they have to make back to the cart. Whether they spend too much time chatting with other staff.”
Detective Morris operated the controls. There was a clock in the upper right-hand corner. It said 20:20. They watched as the video captured Royce and JC leaving the suite and using the stairwell. Neither he nor Sonya showed any reaction to the fact that she and Royce looked very different. Trey had been right. In Vegas, nothing was out of place.
Detective Mannis fast-forwarded until there was activity in the hallway. Then he quickly stopped the speed so that they could easily see what happened. Clock in the corner said 20:44. The suite door past JC’s had opened and a middle-aged couple came into the frame. They walked past JC’s door without pausing. They got into the elevator.
There was no other activity on the floor for another forty minutes, which took them six minutes to view. But then at 21:29, or almost 9:30 p.m., a housekeeper pushed a cart off the elevator. The video slowed. They watched as she went directly to suite 1402. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a white envelope. Then bent and slipped it under the door.
After that, she pushed her cart back to the elevator and disappeared from sight.
“I want to talk to that housekeeper,” Royce said. “Now.”
Sonya Tribee looked him squarely in the eye. “I’d very much like to do that same thing. Unfortunately, she doesn’t work here. I’m afraid someone was impersonating a Periwinkle associate. I’m very, very sorry.”
“What?” JC asked. “How can you be so sure? There have to be hundreds of associates employed by this hotel. You probably don’t know them all. Maybe it’s somebody who was recently hired.”
Sonya shook her head. “As I mentioned, we use video for productivity tracking. To ensure that we know exactly which associate is demonstrating which behaviors, as part of the hiring process, we scan their faces. It’s entered into facial recognition software to ensure that our productivity statistics are one hundred percent accurate. The woman who slid that envelope under your door matches no one in our database.” She paused, looking at each person in the room. “I do not know how this has happened. And it is certainly inexcusable. But it appears that someone successfully infiltrated our hotel and was able to pose as one of our employees.”
JC gave her props for not trying to make excuses.
Detective Mannis cleared his throat. “I’m going to assume that neither of you recognize the woman in the video?”
Royce shook his head. JC did the same even though something nagged at her. She was confident that she’d never seen the woman before and yet, there was something oddly familiar about her. She’d been overweight, at least thirty to forty pounds, mostly carried around her middle. She had coarse dark brown hair that hit her shoulders.
“We need to track her movements out of the hotel,” Royce said.
“I was able to do that,” Sonya said. “She got out of the elevator on the second floor, left her cart in the hallway and took the stairs. She exited out a side door. From there, our cameras lost her when she melded into the heavy nighttime pedestrian traffic.”
Royce looked at Detective Mannis. “Will you be able to pick her up?”
“We’ll give it our best shot.”
Sonya stood. “If you have any other questions for me, do not hesitate to call. Again, I’m sorry.”
Royce shook his head. “No. That’s not good enough.”
Sonya didn’t look as if many people ever told her that. “I beg your pardon.”
“The cummerbund and the bow tie that the woman wore are very distinctive. You can’t simply pick those up at a department store.”
“We special order them,” Sonya said.
“Exactly. I’m willing to bet that our impersonator got them from somebody who works here. I want to talk to your employees.”
“We have hundreds of associates. And with all due respect, I couldn’t possibly authorize you talking to them. That might be very upsetting for them.”
“Ms. Tribee, I’ll tell you what’s upsetting for me is that somehow in the span of a couple hours, a twenty-four-year-old woman goes missing from your pool area and you allow a stranger to successfully impersonate hotel staff.”
Sonya Tribee no longer looked so confident.
“I want every employee questioned,” Royce said. “We need to know if they know this woman.”
Sonya probably realized that arguing about it wasn’t going to make a difference. “Fine. I’ll start an internal investigation tomorrow. But I want the human resources staff here at the hotel to do it.”
“Tell them to work fast,” Royce said.
Sonya gave him a tight smile and walked away.
“I’ll report back when I’ve had a chance to check our other cameras,” Detective Mannis said, rising from his chair.
“Call my cell,” Royce said. “We won’t be here.”
“Where will you be?” the detective asked.
“Someplace safe,” Royce said.
She could almost see Detective Mannis’s internal struggle. The question: Should he attempt to force the location from Royce? And then the decision: No, it wouldn’t be worth the effort. Royce Morgan was not a man easily forced to do anything.
And it hit JC like the proverbial ton of bricks. That’s what had been bothering her for eight years. Royce Morgan had simply gone away.
So easily. Too easily.
Because he hadn’t loved her enough.
When this was over, he was going to run again.
She was sure of it. That’s why he’d thought this afternoon was a mistake.
* * *
“I go first,” he said. He knew Jules wasn’t crazy about relocating, but she’d stopped protesting.
He led her down the stairs and out the side door. Then he flagged down a cab and they were off. “Why aren’t we taking your car or the truck?” she asked.
“We have to assume that the vehicles may have been compromised.”
“So we cab it from now on.”
“I have another vehicle at my house.” He had two more. In addition to the BMW, he
had a Jeep and a Volvo station wagon. The Jeep was especially helpful when they used a particular safe house that was fifteen miles out of town, in the desert. The Volvo was more practical when he was trying to blend into an upper-crust neighborhood.
She didn’t answer and he thought she was perhaps trying to reconcile the man he was now with the poor ex-airman he’d been just eight years earlier. He directed the cab to the intersection of Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard, one of the busiest on the strip. They got out and quickly crossed the street, using the overhead sidewalk. On the other side, he picked up another cab.
“What are we doing?” she asked.
“Just making sure nobody is following,” he said. He was watching the traffic all around them and it didn’t appear as if anybody had any interest in them. But still, when they got close to his house, he had the cab stop a block away. He waited until it drove off and was out of sight before directing her to his house.
It irritated him that he was so damn needy that he wanted to see her reaction to the place he lived. Why should he care? She was certainly used to something much grander, although he was proud of his place. In Vegas, to have a yard meant to have a commitment to watering every day. That wasn’t practical with his travel schedule and not eco-friendly. Instead, he’d gone for plants native to the desert climate, big rocks and substantial pieces of outdoor sculpture.
It suited him. And at night, with the low-level lighting that he’d installed, he thought it was especially cool.
Who cared if she liked it?
“Interesting,” she said as she looked at the yard, after he pointed out his door.
What the hell did she mean by that?
“Did you do this yourself?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She turned to him. “It’s really lovely.”
The compliment floated on the night air, warming his heart. Threatening to make him be a fool and admit that her approval was indeed important. “Why don’t we just get inside,” he said, his tone impatient.
He opened the door, heard the beeping of his security system that assured him that no systems had been breached and ushered her inside. The design was a split ranch, with the master bedroom and bath on one side of the house and the guest bedrooms and baths on the other side. In the middle was a great room filled with comfortable leather furniture and a fireplace that took up one wall, a dining room that could seat eight but never had and a kitchen that looked like something out of a magazine, or so his partner Seth had said, not making it sound like a compliment.
