Ignoring his partner, Brit took off to the office, pulling his badge out as his feet pumped against the asphalt. As he entered, Brit got a whiff of someone’s fast-food lunch and cigarette smoke. He approached the desk and slapped his badge on the counter. “You got a guest in room 103. We’re going to need to clear out the two adjoining rooms.”
The woman’s eyes went big. She dropped her hamburger on its foil wrapper. “Oh, I.... Wait. Room 103?”
“Yeah.” Brit heard Quarles walking in with Duke and Mark.
“The man in room 103 just checked out,” the woman said. “Another guy was in looking for him, ten minutes ago.”
“Fuck!” Brit swung his hand out, accidently knocking off the woman’s hamburger and a crystal bowl filled with jelly beans. The meat, bread, crystal bowl, and colorful candy smacked the wall. The bowl shattered. It became a race to see which hit the white tile floor first, the shards of glass, the multicolored candy, or the dismembered hamburger. The hamburger won.
~
“We’ll get him,” Quarles said five minutes later, standing by the bed in Stan’s former room. “At least we know he’s still trying to contact her. He’ll show up tonight, and we’ll be ready.”
Brit cut his gaze around the cheap motel’s furnishings. The room didn’t offer one clue to where Stan could have gone. They still called CSI for prints. The clerk’s description of the man looking for Stan sounded like Nolan Bright. If they’d been five minutes earlier, they would have caught Nolan.
Fifteen and they could have had them both. “Fifteen minutes,” Brit growled.
Quarles kept watching Brit as if he might explode. Brit waited for the moment right along with him. Why the hell hadn’t Cali contacted him immediately? Part of him defended her, telling himself she’d tried to call him. But damn, why hadn’t she left a message, or called him back?
Did she have some perverted loyalty to the bastard? Didn’t she want Stan caught? Brit pushed a hand over his face and remembered how she’d pleaded for him to be safe as he’d stormed out of her classroom. But for whose safety had she been more concerned—his or the man who’d vowed his love for her over the phone?
His cell phone chirped, and he snatched it out of his pocket. “Yeah?” His tone matched his mood—dark and threatening.
“Lowell. It’s Garcia. I just spotted the truck parked out in the back of the school. I think he’s—” The line went dead.
“Damn!” He looked at Quarles. “He’s at the school.” Brit tore off to his SUV.
“I’ll meet you there.” Quarles darted to his own truck.
Brit had made trips across Texas that felt shorter than the eight-mile drive to the school. He had to remind himself to breathe. His body throbbed with tension. Images of Cali flashed in his head—of her smile, of her resting her head on his chest.
If Humphrey had put one finger on her, Brit intended to beat the man to a pulp—no guns, no handcuffs, no badges. This would be personal.
Flipping his phone open, driving like a man who dared the devil, Brit hit the redial button.
The line rang. And rang. The knots in Brit’s belly tightened. He slung the phone down, and swerved to avoid hitting a car that hadn’t heard his sirens.
He drove up to the front of the school. As someone walked out, he snagged the front door, ignoring the stares from teenagers. His gaze cut to the front office, but he rushed past and headed straight to Cali’s classroom.
He swung open her door. The noise of five or more conversations pierced his ears. Silence suddenly fell. The students stared at him. Brit scanned the room, desperate to see Cali.
His gaze landed on the empty desk.
“Where’s Miss McKay?” he asked.
“She was called to the office,” a girl said.
He left, storming down the hall. “She’s okay. She’s okay.” He kept repeating the words like a speech he needed to memorize. His anger at her for not contacting him about Stan’s calls took a backseat the moment he thought she could be hurt. Right now, he wanted to see her—hold her. Get her friggin’ out of the school before Stan came back.
He slapped open the office door and faced the first woman who looked up from behind the counter. “Where’s Cali McKay?”
The woman stepped back and every eye in the room stared at him as if he carried a pitchfork instead of a badge. “Who are you?” another woman said, her tone only an octave short of panic. One thought zipped through his mind—something had happened. Chills ran a course up his spine and down both his arms.
“I’m police.” He jerked out his badge. “Where is she?”
“Nurse’s office,” the woman said. “We’ve called for an ambulance.”
“How bad?” he asked.
“It looked bad.”
Brit’s heart became a throbbing mass of hurt. “Where is the nurse’s office?”
“Four doors down on the left.”
He turned and went.
Seconds later, he shoved open the door to the nurse’s office. Voices bounced from one of the back rooms. “We’ve got to stop the bleeding first,” someone said.
Then the smell hit him. His gaze dropped to the white tile where a trail of blood led to the voices. “No.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven