by Regan Black
Yes, he’d made his own way, had a good life and career, but he couldn’t give up. Not yet. There were still people to talk to. A coworker or friend might remember something else. Lara might actually answer one of his text messages.
“Mr. Butler?”
With a start, he glanced up into the friendly face of the woman who’d checked him in the day he’d arrived. He glanced at her name tag, Carrie from Illinois. “Yes, Carrie?”
“A note was left for you early this morning.”
He stared at the small square envelope embossed with the hotel logo. Fear curdled the bits of breakfast he’d managed to eat, his stomach clenching. “Who left it?”
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know. I wasn’t the one who accepted it.”
“No problem.” He reached for his coffee, inexplicably unwilling to take the note. “Thank you for bringing it over.” He hoped the smile he gave her was the friendly variety and not an expression that would give her nightmares later.
“You’re welcome.” She placed the envelope on the table. “I’ll leave it here for you.”
“Great.” What was wrong with him? He acted as if she’d offered him poison rather than possible information. “Thank you,” he repeated as she walked away. His coffee cup rattled as he lowered it to the saucer.
The small white square taunted him. It could be from Lara or Aubrey or someone from the soup kitchen. He didn’t recognize the writing on the outside of the envelope, but that didn’t mean anything. Someone from the front desk probably labeled it for the sender. He only had to man up and open the damn thing to find out, yet still, he hesitated.
Would it be relief to learn his sister was safe or his worst nightmare come true? He should take it upstairs and deal with this in the privacy of his room. Or he could just deal with it and ignore the potential for another public spectacle.
Irritated with his cowardice, he plucked the note from the table and slid a finger under the flap. The paper inside was a scrap, a partial page from a spiral-bound notebook, not the quality stationery of the hotel. The sketchy penmanship was smudged and ragged, as if the person’s hand had been dirty or shaking. The message itself sent a chill over his skin.
“Leave Lara alone. We need her. You don’t.”
The message left him reeling. She was his sister. Of course he needed her.
He lurched to his feet and his chair toppled back with a crash. Muttering apologies, he clung to the note while he righted his chair and hurried out of the restaurant to the front desk. He needed more information, a look at the security cameras maybe. If they wouldn’t cooperate with him, he’d call Officer Rawlins.
It wasn’t his worst nightmare, but it was close. Another lead he couldn’t quite see clearly. Who would need Lara more than he did? And how did that person know where to find him?
The rush of questions left him deflated and he veered away from the front desk toward a grouping of chairs on the opposite side of the lobby. There, in front of the windows that overlooked the street, he read the note again, forcing himself to analyze and assess.
It could be a prank. Mean and insensitive, but effective. A way to get even for his disruptions yesterday. It could also be another attempt to get him to stay out of whatever Lara was into. He couldn’t believe his sister would ask a friend to do this. She knew him better than that. This sort of vague threat would only keep him right here in Philly, hounding the police or her friends until he got some real answers.
Real or fake, the note was evidence that Lara was still close and someone knew more than they were sharing. He would hand this over to the PPD, specifically Officer Rawlins. With luck, the note would be enough to prompt a more active search for Lara.
He took a picture of the note with his phone and carefully tucked it back into the envelope as he walked to the front desk. Carrie looked up, smiling as he approached. “How can I help you, Mr. Butler?”
This was a longshot. “Is it possible to sit with your security team and look for the person who dropped off this note?”
“I can pass on your request,” she said, already making a note.
Leo knew she’d been trained to handle every guest request in a positive way, even those that couldn’t be fulfilled. “Thanks,” he replied, in kind. “You have my cell number if it works out?” No sense pushing the issue without even giving Aubrey a chance. Everyone but him would be happier if such a request came through the official PPD channels.
“Yes, sir.”
“Great, thanks.”
He almost headed right out of the hotel before he realized he didn’t even have his coat. Officer Rawlins would likely force him to sit down and have coffee if she caught him without it. He didn’t need that kind of delay, now that he knew for sure Lara was close. Too impatient to wait for the elevator, he took the stairs up to his room. Although it would be fantastic if the person who had delivered the note was also the author, Leo wouldn’t hold his breath waiting for helpful information from the security cameras. He would, however, keep looking for clues to Lara’s abrupt decision, starting with her mentor, Professor Whitten.
Tempting as it was to go to the campus first, he headed for the police station. The sergeant at the desk informed him that Aubrey and her partner were out on their beat. When the man offered to take a message, Leo opted to handle it directly, sending her a text along with a picture of the note. After a brief skirmish with his conscience, he decided not to let her know where he was going or why.
Back out in the elements, Leo noticed every detail and nuance of the weather around him. Faint shadows cast by the clouds scudding overhead, the nip of the wind across his neck and the gray-black slush gathered at the edges of the streets and sidewalks. As bad as his home life had been, he’d always had good food and a sturdy roof over his head. He couldn’t imagine how those who had neither fared on these streets through the winter.
It was all too easy to see Lara diving in to help at the soup kitchen or any other way she could to make life better for someone else. He thought about the brief, cryptic note in his pocket. Was the author someone Lara had helped? Someone who worried that Leo would interfere with a particular effort Lara was involved in now?
Lost in those thoughts, Leo almost walked right past the building that housed Professor Whitten’s office. Fortunately, when he did get inside and find the right floor, the door was open. A trim man dressed in jeans and a button-down was at the filing cabinet, his back to the door.
Leo knocked. “Pardon me. I’m looking for Professor Whitten.”
“You found him.” The man closed the file drawer and turned around. “How can I help?”
Leo was momentarily dumbstruck. Based on Lara’s description of Whitten, the man was a font of wisdom and insight. Leo had expected white hair, a suit with a bow tie and thick glasses. Dowdy. Scholarly. Old. This guy, young and fit, didn’t even have a tweed jacket with patches at the elbows. How did a man without a wrinkle or crease on his face have any life-changing wisdom to share with students?
“You’re Professor Whitten? Dean of the poli-sci department?”
“That’s me.” The man’s smile was flawless, the close-trimmed beard on trend and the knowing sparkle in his eyes suddenly irritating. “Not what you expected?”
Leo was starting to think maybe his sister didn’t talk much about Whitten for reasons completely unrelated to the curriculum. As a big brother, he would’ve fought to keep this guy away from his sister. “No.”
“Happens all the time. Poli-sci profs don’t have to be stuffy. It’s my mission to make politics sexy again. Only way to keep students engaged.”
“Uh-huh.” Brotherly urges to put a fist through the professor’s arrow-straight nose were hard to suppress. He finally recovered his manners. “Pardon me.” He stepped forward and extended a hand. “I’m Leo Butler.” At Whitten’s quizzical expression, he added, “Lara Butler is one of your students
. More accurately, she was one of your mentees.”
The professor frowned. “Was? I’m not sure I follow.” He gestured to the chair. “Please have a seat.”
Leo sat. Either the guy was also an asset to the drama department or he didn’t know what was going on. “You didn’t know Lara withdrew from all of her classes for the semester?”
“I did not.” The professor took the chair next to Leo rather than the one behind his desk. “She’s an excellent student and a good mentor to others in the department. I was counting on her. What happened?”
While the compliments were appreciated, Leo was here to get answers, not give them. “I was hoping you could tell me. Several days ago she stopped answering my calls and texts, she’s moved out of her dorm room—”
“But isn’t she an RA?”
“Yes.” Leo didn’t need another recitation of Lara’s contributions to life on campus. “From what she told me during previous semesters, she enjoyed her work in the dorms, in the library before that and in her classes.”
“I’d agree with that assessment. As I said she’s an asset. She was on my short list for teaching assistants this semester.”
For the first time Whitten sounded like the stuffy professor Leo had expected to meet. And a potential TA post was news to Leo. Just how much had Lara been keeping from him? Yes, part of college was personal growth and increasing independence, but she’d never hidden anything before—that he knew of.
“Is there a reason you didn’t hire her?”
Whitten fidgeted in the chair. “Well. Several, really.” He cleared his throat. “In the end it came down to someone else being better for the job and needing it for the résumé as well as the work-study benefit.”
Leo didn’t like the way the man shifted, his gaze skittering around the office. Maybe the professor had hired someone willing to go above and beyond the job parameters. He reeled in that ridiculous leap of something other than logic. He could practically hear Lara accusing him of being an overprotective big brother. There was a difference between wanting to interfere and actual interference. In Leo’s mind he usually stayed on the right side of that line and let Lara live her life.
“Her tuition was covered,” Leo said. “So she didn’t withdraw over finances. I’m sure a post as your TA would have looked good on her résumé, too.”
The professor nodded. “I always have more qualified candidates than openings.” His gaze fell to his hands. “She and I had discussed her joining me on a research project here this summer.”
Again, news to Leo. “I take it you’re having second thoughts about that?”
“If she’s no longer a student, it’s a moot point.” He gave a halfhearted shrug.
Leo bristled. Whatever was going on, he wouldn’t let a lapse in judgment cost Lara a good opportunity. “According to the enrollment office, she’s only taking a semester off.” Hell, they were still holding her tuition hostage, though it wasn’t any of Whitten’s business.
“Then I guess I’ll remain hopeful.”
The reply, along with the slanted smile, grated against Leo’s frayed and raw nerves like gravel imbedded in a scraped-up knee. He couldn’t point to any one detail or reaction, but he was sure the professor was holding back. Of course, he’d been sure the people in the soup kitchen were holding back and that assumption had ended poorly. He pulled himself together.
“Well, give her my best,” the professor said, standing. “I’ll look forward to her return in the fall.”
Leo didn’t budge. Wasn’t this guy listening? “I thought you might know where to find her. As I said, she isn’t returning my calls or text messages. Her things are gone from her dorm room. She has, effectively, vanished.”
The professor slowly sank back into his seat. “If she withdrew from classes, wouldn’t she go home?”
Leo felt sorry for the entire department if this guy was the anchor. He wasn’t seeing anything to back up the famed wisdom, insight, or hard-ass reputation. “If she’d gone home, I wouldn’t be here,” Leo said, pointing out the obvious. “Do you have any idea where she might have gone in the city?”
Whitten folded his arms over his chest. “Girls—I mean, young women—her age can be headstrong.”
The change in tone made Leo edgy. He assessed and recalculated. This might be his only chance to speak with the professor; better to go all in. “She spoke with you before deciding to withdraw,” Leo accused.
The declaration hovered between them.
The professor’s mouth pulled into an imposing frown, framed by his beard. After several tense moments, his expression eased. “She did. I encouraged her to think it over during the winter break. I expected her to talk with you about her choices before she made a decision.”
What choices? “She didn’t mention anything other than how well things were going here and how eager she was to come back.”
The professor dropped his arms, his hands landing on his knees as he leaned forward. “I encourage all of my students to think for themselves. Your sister has an excellent, limber and creative mind.”
Leo’s fingers curled into his palms. Something about those adjectives, or the way Whitten said them, didn’t seem wholly academic. The professor knew more than he was saying. Hell, he might just know more about Lara than Leo wanted to contemplate.
“Lara has a gift for analysis and problem solving. Something she claims she learned from you,” Whitten said.
When would Lara have cause to share anything like that with her professor? Leo held his tongue, preferring to give the man enough rope to verbally hang himself.
“If she decides to withdraw—”
“She has withdrawn,” Leo snapped.
“Right. I don’t know her like you do, of course, but I know she wouldn’t make such a decision lightly. Whatever her reasons for taking such a drastic action, I’ll respect her choice. I’m sure she believes you’ll do the same.”
“I’m sure she knows me well enough to know I require a full explanation,” Leo said. None of this was adding up. There was something far more personal than student and mentor going on here. “Did you seduce my sister?” Leo demanded. “Is that why she withdrew?”
Whitten reared back as if he’d been struck. “That’s absurd. You’re out of line,” he said in the stuffy voice. “She is a student I value.” He stood, glaring down at Leo. “Whatever reasons she had for withdrawing, I hope she returns to complete her program.”
“Nice speech.” He gave a slow, unimpressed round of applause. “I assume you’ve practiced that.” Leo came to his feet. “You know something. Better to tell me now.”
“I know you’ve overstayed your welcome.” He moved toward the door, gestured for Leo to walk out.
At the door, Leo held his ground. “When you hear from her, tell her I’m worried.”
Whitten shook his head. “You’re mistaken. Please go.”
Leo stepped into the hallway. “I’m going to look up your track record with undergrads,” he said, allowing his voice to carry. He pulled a business card from his pocket. “I suggest you put my number in your contacts list because you and I are far from done.”
The professor tried to close the door, but Leo was quicker, shoving his foot into the gap. “Holding out on me isn’t smart. Think that through.”
“Mr. Butler?”
The office door closed behind him with a hard snap as the voice of Officer Rawlins caught his full attention. She had a tone that blended authority and compassion in a way that smoothed out his rough edges.
He turned, enjoying the view as she approached. In uniform, her winter coat open, she looked boxy and official. The part of his brain—or rather his anatomy—eager to be distracted overlaid the current view with the memory of her in civilian clothes last night. She hadn’t exactly been softer last night. More accessible, maybe. More relaxed. Something about the contras
t made him think he could be more open, more at ease around her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “My next stop was your hotel.” Her clear blue eyes turned wary. “For information about the note you received,” she added quickly.
Had she heard her words the way he had or had she noticed his immediate reaction? Leo dialed down the interest and desire that wanted to take a more personal and inappropriate angle to this relationship. This was some misplaced loneliness in search of a connection that wasn’t Lara. Attraction or not, he needed this woman—this police officer—to help him find his sister.
“I could ask you the same question.” He didn’t want to, though. No, he wanted to take her hand in his and walk away from the worry in his heart and the noise in his head. Away from questions no one would answer clearly. Guilt swelled, crashed over him. How unfair was it for him to long for a respite when he didn’t even know where his sister was? “Did campus security call you?”
“No.” She stepped away from the office door. “Calvin and I were working the search for Lara into our daily routine.”
Leo rolled his shoulders, but it didn’t help to release the tension. “One of Lara’s friends mentioned Professor Whitten. I guess he was her academic mentor.” Had Lara been crushing on him? Leo shoved the thought aside. He couldn’t dwell on anything more personal. “I’d hoped she’d talked with him about taking the semester off since she apparently didn’t talk to me.”
Aubrey’s gaze softened. “Did she?”
“Yes.”
Her golden eyebrows rose at the curt response, but she didn’t press for more details. “Does he know where she is?”
“He claims he doesn’t,” Leo admitted. Implying otherwise would only backfire and he’d made enough missteps with the one person who seemed to sympathize with him. “You want to take a crack at him?”