“Manny is done with grown-up talk,” his mother said. “Gotta go. Nice meeting you, Kayla.”
“Yes. Great to meet you,” Harry said. “We look forward to seeing more of you.”
The couple hustled off after their son. James grimaced, covered his face with his hands and peeked out at her. “Well, that sure was embarrassing.”
She laughed. The church was emptying and people were having conversations all around them, but for some reason she couldn’t take her eyes off James. He really was quite charming.
“I thought it was flattering,” Kayla said.
He dropped his hands from his face. “You didn’t mind?”
“No,” she said, smiling at him. “I didn’t mind.”
“Hot damn!” he exclaimed, drawing some sharp looks from the people around him.
Trying not to laugh, Kayla put a finger to her lips. “Shhh. There are church children around.”
“I’ll try to do better,” James said. “I can normally control what I say, unlike Silvana. She gives good advice, though. She’s the one I asked about that photo of the Santa statue that ran in the newspaper today.”
Kayla groaned and put up a hand. “Don’t remind me.”
His brows knit and his eyes narrowed. “Have you seen it?”
She released a heavy sigh. “I don’t need to. I already know how Santa looks wearing devil horns.”
“I really think you should take a look at it,” James said. “I’ve got a copy of the paper in my car. Come on. I’ll show you.”
Kayla would have to look at the paper sooner or later. Grimacing, she followed James to a shady side street where he’d parallel parked his car, one of those eco-friendly hybrids. He unlocked the car remotely, pulled open the passenger door and took out a newspaper. He flipped to the second section and held it out to Kayla.
Just as she’d suspected, the statue of Santa was dressed in the tropical-print guayabera shirt with the sunglasses perched on his plaster nose.
However, he wasn’t wearing devil horns.
Her eyes flew to James. She felt her mouth drop open. For a moment, she couldn’t form words.
“I think Santa looks better in tropical wear,” he said. “Don’t you?”
She did, but that wasn’t the issue. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t your editors run the other photo?”
“I didn’t give them another photo,” James said.
“Why not?”
He gave a low laugh. “Seriously? You think I’d blow my chance to get on your good side?”
She blinked at him as the depths of his feelings for her started to sink in.
“I know there’s another guy in the picture,” he said.
“Doesn’t it bother you that I’ve got a thing for Alex?” she asked.
“Alex Suarez?”
Kayla almost clamped a hand over her mouth. Why had she blurted out his name like that? She was still working on getting the restaurant owner to think of her in a romantic light.
“Yes,” Kayla said. Now that she’d brought it up, she could hardly backtrack.
“Alex Suarez is the guy you told me about?” James asked. “The one you said you had something going with?”
Kayla cleared her throat. “I might have exaggerated.”
“You do know he’s dating Vanessa King?”
Vanessa was the name of the woman who was Alex’s regular dart partner, the one Alex had claimed wasn’t his girlfriend.
“How do you know that?” Kayla asked.
“I saw them together last night,” James said. “And he brings her to our family get-togethers.”
“You’re related to Alex?”
“We’re cousins. He and Silvana are brother and sister.” James must have noted her puzzled expression. “You thought I was related to Harry, didn’t you?”
Kayla nodded. “You don’t look anything like Alex or Silvana.”
“I should have said they’re my stepcousins, although it’s never felt that way. My parents got divorced when I was a kid. I use my real dad’s name, but I was raised by my stepdad. He’s Alex and Silvana’s uncle.”
The sun came out from behind a cloud and peeked through some trees, shining down with ferocious intensity. James took a pair of sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. They had black frames and gray lenses, their aviator style reminiscent of the sunglasses Santa had been wearing. Only the ones the prankster had put on Santa had silver frames and black lenses, exactly like a pair Kayla had seen recently.
“Oh, my gosh,” she exclaimed while suspicion dawned.
“What is it?” James asked.
“I think Maria was right about who’s been messing with Santa.”
* * *
THE SUNDAY MORNING SUN beat down on the park bench where Logan sat next to Maria in Mallory Square, illuminating the droop of her mouth and slope of her shoulders.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say I told you so,” Maria said.
“Why would I do that?” Logan countered. “It was my suggestion to go back to those local breakfast spots.”
They’d spent a fruitless morning popping in and out of restaurants, going table to table with the age-progression image of Mike and the new information that he had a tattoo of a ruby serpent on his left forearm. Logan had finally suggested they walk down to the harbor and take a break, which was how they’d ended up in Mallory Square. A fair number of people milled about, even though it was far less crowded than it was for the sunset celebrations.
“Yeah, but you didn’t actually believe we’d hit pay dirt,” she said. “You only suggested it because you know I need to be out doing something or I’ll go crazy.”
“Don’t I get credit for figuring that out?” he asked.
“You’d get more credit if you actually believed we’re going to find my brother.” Her chin lifted and her voice gained confidence as she spoke. No matter what happened, Logan thought, she kept shaking off the disappointment and believing in the impossible.
Her fortitude was admirable, really. It was what had attracted him to her in the first place.
“Do you remember how we met?” he asked.
She seemed surprised by the question. “Certainly I remember. It was the summer before senior year when we were both counselors at that camp.”
They’d gone to different high schools on opposite sides of Lexington, so it wasn’t all that unusual that they hadn’t run into each other before that point.
“Did I ever tell you when I fell for you?” he asked.
“It wasn’t the first day of camp, I can tell you that much,” she said. “I thought you were cute right off the bat. You didn’t even notice me.”
“Oh, I noticed you, all right,” he said. “I just wasn’t going to do anything about it.”
“Why not?”
“Senior year was coming up, I was about to take the SATs and I was determined to get into a good business school,” he said. “I couldn’t let anything get in my way.”
“What changed your mind?” she asked.
He smiled. “The Banana Olympics.”
“I remember that,” she said. “All the counselors had a team of kids who competed in these wacky relays. Holding a banana under their armpit and hopping on one foot down a field and back. Placing it between their knees and jumping.”
“Yeah,” Logan said. “That’s right.”
“But I don’t get it,” she said. “Why would the Banana Olympics c
hange your mind about me?”
“Your kids were the least athletic,” Logan said. “They came in last in every event by a mile. Yet you kept cheering them on, telling them they could get a win.”
“They did get a win!” she said. “They won the last event. The banana roll!”
“Against all odds,” he said. “You were jumping up and down and hugging all the kids. And that’s when I stopped resisting you.”
She tapped her knuckles against her lips. “I don’t know what your point is, Logan.”
“I’m not sure, either. The quality that lets you keep believing even when the odds are stacked against you drives me nuts sometimes, but it’s what got to me in the first place.” Something struck him that had never occurred to him before. “Maybe it’s because I don’t have that trait.”
“You could develop it,” she suggested.
She was right. Take the case of her brother, for example. Instead of continuing to insist Mike was dead, Logan could concede a chance existed that her brother had blown off work and seized the day to disappear.
He could entertain the possibility that Mike had sent Caroline Webb those nude photos, that Mike had made the telephone calls, that Mike was the man with the tattoo of the ruby serpent.
Who was Logan to tell Maria she was wrong to believe?
“The only way I could change,” he said, “is if you were around to show me what’s possible.”
That was as close as he intended to come to the subject of the long-distance relationship. Her arguments of why it couldn’t work made no sense to him. He hadn’t given up on the idea, not by a long shot. His strategy was to show her that he could meet her halfway. That was the reason he’d suggested revisiting those breakfast spots.
He took it as a positive sign that Maria didn’t discourage the inference of them being together after they left Key West.
Small steps, he thought.
“What do you want to do next?” He was all out of ideas.
“We need to get on a computer,” she said. “Remember how we promised Kayla we’d look at the security camera recording from yesterday morning?”
With everything else that was going on, it had slipped his mind. “Should we go back to your hotel or mine?”
“Neither,” she said. “There’s an internet café a few blocks from here. We can rent a computer.”
“Why would we do that when we both have laptops that work perfectly fine?”
“A couple of reasons,” she said. “We need a bigger monitor so we can take in more detail on the screen.”
“Makes sense,” he said. “What’s the other reason?”
“If we go back to a hotel room,” she said with a wry twist of her mouth, “we’ll probably end up in bed.”
“I’m in favor of that,” he said.
“I know you are.” She should know. Making love to Maria after fantasizing about it since he was a teenager hadn’t satisfied his craving for her. It had intensified it.
“What if I promise not to distract you?” he asked.
“You distract me by breathing,” she said.
Logan took that as a good sign.
There was nothing distinctive about the internet café. Once inside, they could have been anywhere in the United States. Tables for patrons who’d brought their own computers were scattered throughout an open area. A young man with a shaved head and an earring in his nose stood behind a counter decorated with red bows and holly, selling coffee and snacks. Along the back wall was a row of six desktop computers. None of them were occupied.
After paying a fee and getting a password for internet access, Maria and Logan pulled up two chairs next to the computer with the largest monitor.
“Before we watch the surveillance recording, would you mind if I checked my email?” she asked. “I didn’t get around to it this morning.”
“Go ahead.” He leaned back in his chair, intending to give her privacy while she read her messages.
“I’ve got an email from Caroline Webb,” she exclaimed after a few seconds. She clicked through to it and was silent for a moment, presumably as she read. “Oh, my gosh!”
“What is it?” he asked.
“Listen to this.” She read from the screen. “‘If you find your brother, tell him to go to hell. I let Austin know about those photos. I’m no longer engaged.’”
“So Caroline’s fiancé broke up with her because she’d be bad for his political career,” Logan surmised.
“Looks that way,” Maria said.
“If that news trickles back to whoever sent the photos, there won’t be a ransom demand. There’s no point anymore.”
“Maybe Mike’s already accomplished what he set out to.” Maria sounded thoughtful. “He had it bad for Caroline, no matter how rotten she treated him. He might not have wanted anybody else to have her.”
Logan remembered how heartbroken the teen had been when he’d arrived in New York. Logan had known his discontent was over a girl. He hadn’t known how cruelly Caroline had treated Mike because he hadn’t said a word against her. “That makes sense.”
Maria started. “What? You mean you’re willing to concede the person who contacted Caroline might have been Mike?”
“I think so,” Logan said slowly.
She squeezed his hand, her expression tender.
“Let’s watch that surveillance video,” she said. “Then maybe we can put our heads together and figure out how to get Mike to surface.”
Maria explained how the security camera could transmit recorded surveillance material over the internet. Kayla had purchased a model with a higher image resolution, something that proved invaluable while they watched.
“This is great,” Logan said. “I can see the faces of the people in each shot clearly. But what are we looking for, exactly?”
“I backed up the recording to about an hour before someone covered the camera,” she said. “We’re just supposed to look for anything out of the ordinary.”
Even though Key West could be a wild place, it had been pretty tame that Friday morning. Most of the people who passed by the statue were nondescript except for a tourist wearing plaid shorts with a polka-dot shirt. He probably thought he matched, because both the shorts and the shirt were red and green, Christmas colors.
“Whoever covered the camera was probably careful not to come near the statue,” Maria said. “I doubt we’ll spot anything.”
Not even a minute had passed when Maria stiffened, her entire body on alert. She leaned forward, putting her hand over the mouse. “I need to back up the recording.”
She’d gone so white that Logan suspected the impossible had just become a reality. His heart hammered. She must have seen her brother passing by the statue.
Maria stopped the recording and then reversed it before letting it run forward again.
“There.” She pressed a computer key that froze the image. “Oh, my gosh. I was right. That is him.”
Logan leaned forward to get a better look. A lean young man about six feet tall with brown hair was walking past Santa, his hands shoved in his pockets. Even though it had been years since he’d seen him, Logan recognized him, too.
“It’s Billy Tillman.” Maria supplied the name of Mike’s best high school buddy, who she’d spoken to mere days ago. He evidently wasn’t in California, as he’d claimed. “We need to have a talk with him.”
“How will we find him?”
Maria pointed to the monitor. “See the monogram on the shirt
he’s wearing?”
Logan leaned closer to the computer until he could make out the stitching. “I’ll be damned. Billy works at Alex Suarez’s restaurant.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
KAYLA PRESSED ON THE doorbell of the gorgeous two-story home on Stock Island, a pricey enclave within the city limits of Key West that boasted some of the area’s only waterfront neighborhoods.
Evergreen wreaths with showy red bows hung from white balustrades, contrasting nicely with the house’s pale yellow stucco. The landscaping was to die for, with colorful, fragrant flowers interspersed with green foliage.
Even the doorbell was fancy. It was shaped like a dolphin. Kayla pressed on it again and waited, tapping one of her feet. She was primed for a fight and now she might need to accept that nobody was home.
Except maybe that wasn’t so. The showpiece of a house backed up to a quiet canal that led to both the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. She’d bet anything there was a waterfront pool in the backyard and a private dock with a boat slip.
She circled around the house, navigating her way through the lush landscaping. A gate separated the front yard from the back. It was unlocked. She swung open the gate and stepped through, finding exactly what she thought she would. The pool was tear-shaped and rimmed by lounge chairs with thick blue cushions. It was also empty.
The boat ramp wasn’t.
Kayla squared her shoulders and walked determinedly on her high-heeled wedge sandals toward the man who was lifting a cooler onto a sleek motorboat that was at least twenty-four feet long.
Alex Suarez turned, straightened to his full height and watched her stride toward him. With his black hair, olive skin and long nose, he was undoubtedly a handsome man. Her heart gave one of those leaps it had been experiencing for the past two years whenever she spotted him.
“Stop it, heart,” she muttered under her breath.
“Kayla,” he called when she was close enough that he didn’t have to shout. “What brings you here?”
She marched up to him and held out the sunglasses she’d taken off the Santa statue.
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