CHAPTER Eighteen
“I’m buying a car and I don’t have a clue where to start.”
Dean shook his head and stared at Katie across his desk. “A car?”
“Yeah. I’ve driven plenty. But I realized that I’ve never bought one before. Yeah, my dad picked out the little black number I drove around in high school…but…”
She didn’t have to continue that story. She’d ditched it in a waterless aqueduct while showing off to her friends before her eighteenth birthday. After that, Gaylord paid a driver most of the time. Then she started renting cars. Convertibles, sport cars…anything flashy to get noticed.
Now Dean watched the girl turn into a responsible woman…a mother before his eyes. She waved several brochures at him like a flag. “Safety and reliability are paramount. I can’t have Savannah flying out a window or through a soft top because some a*shole pulls out in front of us.”
Dean sat back in his chair, smug in his thoughts. “Where did this come from?”
Katie waved him off as if he hadn’t said a thing. “Monica. She suggested it before she left.”
“Monica left?”
“Yeah, some nurses without borders thing. She’ll be back in a week or so.”
Dean’s smug smile fell. “You’re alone at her apartment?”
Katie rolled her eyes. “I’m not alone. Savannah is there.”
“Oh, that makes me feel so much better. Nothing like a dirty diaper to deter unwanted guests.”
“Are you suggesting I can’t take care of myself?”
“No.” Yes.
“Yes, you are!”
“No, I’m not.” Yes, he was. Damn…and Katie saw right through him. The daggers sprang from her eyes with sparks of anger. He diverted her attention. “So Monica’s gone and she suggested you buy a car before leaving, to where exactly?”
“Florida.” Apparently, Katie’s grudge wasn’t going to last long. As was expected when her mind was centered on something else. Dean scooted forward when she moved around the desk and placed the brochures in front of him. “My first thought was one of those big numbers. You know, an old Lincoln or Escalade. They hold up in a crash…right?”
“They do.”
“But I’ve never driven one of those. They’re big.”
“Very big.”
She leaned forward letting her tight silk top gape in just the right place, reminding him of the creamy skin he’d find underneath if given the chance.
“Are they hard to drive?”
He licked his lips. “Not hard.”
“There are smaller cars, more agile.”
Dean pushed lust from his brain and attempted to concentrate on Katie’s words. “You need to test-drive the bigger cars…see if you’re comfortable with them. Did you drive a truck on the ranch?”
“Dusty two lane roads with only one car…yeah, but it’s been years.”
“You’re not old enough for it to have been years.”
“You know exactly how old I am. C’mon, Dean. I need direction here and I’m not afraid to ask for it. I’d ask Jessie, if she knew about Savannah. But she doesn’t, so I’m asking you.”
Dean concentrated on the pamphlets on his desk. “Keep it American,” he said as he tossed two brochures in the trash. “Your daddy would kick your butt if you arrived in anything made outside of Detroit.”
“He never said a thing about the Italian cars I drove home.”
“You rented those. Doesn’t count. Let’s look up crash reports on these models.” He narrowed his search to midsize SUVs, something he though Katie could drive without worry of crashing into guardrails.
“Oh, look…that has a TV in the back. Savannah will love it.”
“Savannah’s what?…Two months old? I don’t think she’s thinking of a TV.”
“But she will, someday.”
Dean smiled and pushed away from his desk. “Let’s go.”
“Go? We have work to do.”
He grabbed his keys and tucked his cell phone into his pocket. “Perks of being the boss. C’mon. Let’s shop.”
“Are you sure?”
It tickled him that Katie contemplated staying at work instead of shopping for a car. He leaned in and surprised her with a kiss. A simple pass of his lips over hers…and it felt entirely too right. “I’m sure.”
He walked through his office and told Jo to call him if there was fire or blood on the site and to take messages for everything else.
Katelyn’s sparkling new Cadillac crossover fully loaded was sleek, sexy, powerful, and American.
For some reason Dean wasn’t quite clear about, Katie sent a picture text to Monica who was apparently in the air en route to Florida.
Katie had grown up somewhere when Dean wasn’t looking.
He liked it.
The hotel loomed in front of him. His gazed settled on the people milling in and out of the hot, moist Texas heat completely oblivious to anyone around them. When called on to act as a witness, no one would be able to give any distinct identification about him at all, which was part of his problem. He’d found no one, not one soul, who’d seen a woman or man walk into the hotel where Katelyn lived, and drop off a baby.
Patrick had sent word to Katelyn about his progress. She was understandably unhappy that he didn’t have a name yet. The mother had done a very good job at hiding who she was. Not that he wouldn’t find her out…but these things did take time.
He’d been unsuccessful at infiltrating the hospital records where Savannah was born. Although he was working on a hack to find the information anyway, he didn’t want to go to jail to determine who the birth mother was. The best option was to get back into the hotel and attempt to access Katelyn’s room without a key to the elevator or her room.
He cased the outside of the hotel like a thief. He watched a pair of window washers with a shrug. A new mother wouldn’t dare that route. But a fire escape wasn’t unthinkable. Twenty-four floors might be a little much for a new mom. But then who said the mother dropped off the baby? It could have been someone hired to do the job.
Patrick’s gut said differently.
This mom, the one who took so much care leaving Savannah outside a door without any chance she’d be left there for long, had been close by when Katelyn and Monica stumbled upon Savannah. This mom wouldn’t have given someone else the chance to f*ck that up.
But how?
That was what he struggled with.
There were service workers moving in and out of the hotel without notice. Food service, linen service, florists, and the occasional man or woman that appeared anticipated. The ebb and flow of the hotel was like water flowing through a river, expected and sometimes forceful.
Patrick made a note: Mom could have easily penetrated the building through service entrance if dressed appropriately.
Inside the hotel lobby, he moved to an arrangement of chairs and sat with his cell phone in his hands. No one bothered him, noticed him…spoke to him.
After thirty minutes of sitting, he picked himself up and moved to a coffeehouse inside the hotel and ordered a simple coffee, black.
He noticed a service hallway alongside the restaurant, a passage he’d found the first time he’d spent time wandering the hotel, and walked toward it. The cell phone in his pocket made noise right on time and he lifted it to his ear.
In the receiver was nothing but static. He walked through the service door talking into his phone and acting distracted. The plain tile floors of a back corridor, which none of the hotel guests ever saw, met his feet as he marched down one hall to another. Soon there were extra folding beds lining the halls and carts used to carry any number of things throughout the building.
“I thought you were meeting me here!” he all but hollered into the phone to no one. “I’m at the hotel now.” He twisted down another corridor and found two elevators.
Service elevators.
He turned in a circle and looked around him, acting confused. “What the f*ck?” he said aloud in case there were cameras with audio watching. He punched the up button on the elevator and talked into the phone. “Upstairs? Where?”
The deserted hall wasn’t surprising. It wasn’t check in, check out, or mealtime. If there was a quiet time in a hotel, it was now. The service elevator made a noise and opened. He acted as if he were still talking on his phone and stepped inside. He pressed the uppermost floors and took a seamless ride to the top.
He stepped into a similar bare corridor and twisted around until he found a stairwell. The door opened easily and he shuffled up…toward the penthouse.
“Bingo!” he said as he stepped into the short hallway of Katelyn’s hotel home.
He tapped his pockets and put his phone away.
The mother didn’t make it inside the room. Only the corridor. He once again looked at the adjacent door to the vacant penthouse suite.
The mother could have rented it. Yet according to the online files he’d hacked into, it was vacant the night of Jack and Jessie’s wedding.
So where had the mother hid?
In the service hall.
Patrick let himself into Katelyn’s suite for a second time in a month.
Fresh flowers met his nose.
But that wasn’t all.
There, in the middle of the room, was a man wearing a cowboy hat and a frown.
“Who are you?” The stranger all but yelled the question.
Patrick plastered a smile on his lips and met the somewhat familiar man’s hostility with a smile. “A friend of Katelyn’s,” he said, using the same excuse he’d done before.
The man glared beyond him to the door. “She’s not here.”
Patrick thought of removing his jacket, but his service revolver was holstered and visible so he simply smiled. “Yeah, I know. She said I could crash here when I’m in town.”
The other man pushed up his Texas-issued cowboy hat on his brow and crossed his arms over his chest. “She did, did she?”
“She did. Who are you?” Patrick decided to act like a lover.
The man wasn’t dressed as a hotel employee and he acted as if he owned the place. Katelyn had made it clear Patrick wouldn’t encounter anyone in her room.
“Who are you?” The question was a shout.
“Ben Sanderson. Who the hell are you?” Best to act the pissed lover.
“Jack Morrison. Her brother!”
Oh, f*ck!