"No tricks," he told her grimly. "I'll be right here." He glanced over his shoulder at Andrew. "Call Information for me, will you? Verify that number of that pay phone in the hotel's lobby."
Andrew nodded, gave Bryn an encouraging grin, and stepped over to the phone. Lee turned back to Bryn. "Have the valet park your car. And as soon as you've dropped those pictures, you walk out the front door, give the valet your ticket and get into your car as soon as he drives it up. I mean it, Bryn.
Don't take any chances. Don't be anyplace where there isn't a group of people around, okay?"
She nodded numbly. It was going to work out, it was going to work out,it had to work out.
Andrew hung up the phone and handed Lee a piece of scrap paper.
Lee accepted the paper, glancing at it,then stuffing it into the pocket of his knit shirt. He nodded to Andrew. Bryn thought that the two men exchanged a strange glance, but she was too distracted to really know or care. "I'm going," Bryn murmured. "Aren't you forgetting something?" he asked. "What?"
"The pictures," he said quietly, handing her the packet that he had set on the counter. She paled. She hadn't even remembered to bring them from his house; he had been the one to do so.
"Thanks," she said swallowing nervously. "Bryn, I mean it. Calm down or you'll get into an accident before you get there." His soft tone negated the tension between them and the anger that had sparked. It gave her a sense of security, of his caring, of his strength. "I'll be calm," she promised.
He touched her lips with a light kiss. It was warm and giving and reassuring. Again, it was as if he filtered his own strength into her with his touch, with his subtle male scent. More than ever she wanted to cry, but she also felt as if now she could go on with her mission competently. "See you soon," she murmured and stepped out the door.
It didn't seem to take twenty minutes to reach the lush new Mountain View Resort Hotel; it seemed to take twenty years. And as she fumed at the traffic, Bryn worried herself into a state of nausea as one refrain kept going through her mind. What if something went wrong? What would happen to Adam if something went wrong? What if--what would happen to Adam--if something went wrong?
Her teeth were chattering as she drove up to the impressive portico of theMountain View. A cordial valet stepped up to open her door, and she tripped climbing out of the van. He steadied her; she thanked him in a confusion of monosyllables,
andstarted to leave him before taking her ticket. He called her back, and she could see in his eyes that he thought she was a crazy tourist as she thanked him again for the ticket.
There must have been half a dozen conventions going on in the hotel. People were everywhere. Bryn hurried to the large red couch that was set attractively before the forty-foot glass windows that looked out on a panorama of greenery and fountains. She saw the phone booth; it was an elegant,paneled nook in the wall, not ten feet from the red couch. She stared back toward the reception desk at the large clock Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
on the wall. She had ten minutes to wait.
Bryn took a seat at the end of the couch. She could see the phone booth, and by slightly twisting her head, she could keep an eye on the clock.
Tiny beads of perspiration were breaking out all over her body. Nervously she fumbled around in her purse for a tissue and dabbed at her forehead, then tried to dry her palms. She gazed at the clock again.
Only two minutes had passed.
Her eyes began to follow people through the grandiose lobby. Businessmen, theirattache cases in their hands, walked to the elevators, alone and in groups. In a group of chairs near the couch, a threesome of affluent matrons sat discussing their husbands' golf games. A lone man in a dark trench coat paced behind the chairs. Bryn studied him. He had the stiffest black hair she had ever seen, and an absurdly curled mustache .
She heard footsteps behind her and almost jumped in a panic. They passed her by. She turned, ostensibly to stare at the clock, but in truth to see who was behind her.Another man, in a nondescript, very average dark suit. But the man wasn't average. He was taller even than Lee, about six foot six or seven. Bryn felt her limbs begin to stiffen in fear. He turned, walking the length of the couch once more.
She bit her lip and gazed at the clock. Six minutes to go. She heard the creak of a door and snapped her head back toward the phone booth. One of the affluent matrons had sat down in the elegantlypaneled little booth and was making a call.