Those storm-fueled eyes found their way to hers.
They were grounding, an anchor that kept her still.
Oh, yeah, she thought. That’s why.
“The one fact that we have to work with is that you don’t remember what you did yesterday,” he said. “I’m trying to cover all of our bases. Even the personal ones. Remember that, other than Cody telling us you made him breakfast and took him to school, no one can account for you yesterday. I’m just double-checking there isn’t someone who could and you haven’t brought it to our attention.”
Maggie’s dichotomous emotions of anger and, dare she think it, latent desire started to dissolve. Maybe she was reading too much into one look. Matt was just doing his job. She took a small breath.
“No, the list I gave you in the hospital contained the only people who I might have talked to or seen on a normal day. Even abnormal, if I’m being honest.” Maggie handed Matt the hotel manager’s business card that she’d found in her purse. “I think I came here because someone asked me to. There’s no other reason I would be here or take a card with me and write down a room number. I’ve never been here before. I wouldn’t have picked this as a meeting place unless someone else picked it.”
Matt held her gaze for a bit longer. He must have believed her. He nodded.
“Then I want you to stay here while I go talk to the manager and staff.” Maggie opened her mouth but Matt hurried on. “We have no idea what went down here yesterday. Your presence might distract them. Plus, I can’t imagine you’d stay quiet long enough for me to even ask the right questions.”
“That’s insulting,” she tried, knowing it really wasn’t. Because that was exactly what she would do.
Matt pulled out his phone, clicked a few buttons and held it up in front of her.
“That’s the truth and we both know it. So I’m going to take a picture of you and show it around instead.”
Maggie narrowed her eyes at the phone.
“Now, smile for the camera, please. We don’t want to scare them. We just want to question them.”
Maggie changed her frown into what she hoped was a smirk to end all smirks. A click sounded as the picture was taken.
“How’d I do?” she asked, half sarcastic, half curious.
The detective snorted.
“You look like a pain in my side.” He cut her a quick grin. “And I wouldn’t have expected it any other way.”
* * *
TECHNICALLY, MATT WAS off duty but the hotel manager named Luca, a small man who appeared to be in his fifties, didn’t know that. He looked up as Matt walked in and his eyes immediately went to the badge around his neck. Matt rarely wore his credentials like that but he’d found that when the badge was hanging in view that most people remained pleasant during questioning. Luca, however, looked at the badge once before his eyes glued to Matt’s face. He was already fidgeting by the time Matt walked up to the front desk.
“Hey there. I’m Detective Matt Walker from the Riker County Sheriff’s Department and I’d like to ask you a few questions, if that’s all right,” he greeted, cutting out any pleasantries.
Luca nodded his head so hard that Matt was afraid it would come right off.
“Yes, sir, whatever you need!”
The way he spoke was an immediate red flag. He was nervous. Really nervous. Matt had gone from asking some simple questions to mentally preparing for the fact that he might have to unholster his gun. Something wasn’t right. And he was about to find out if it had to do with a brunette ex-reporter currently confined to the sheriff’s car.
“Were you working yesterday?” Matt started off.
Luca nodded. “I run the hotel during the weekdays.”
“And did anything out of the ordinary happen here yesterday?” Matt followed up. “With any of your guests? Or staff?”
“Out of the ordinary? I don’t—I don’t think so. Can you give me an example?”
Luca’s eyes widened but he seemed not to have expected the question. Which was good news for Maggie. She apparently hadn’t done anything that was outrageous during her time there. At least, not publicly. Matt pulled out his phone and the picture he’d just taken of Maggie.
“Have you ever seen this woman before?”
Luca squinted his eyes. He nodded a few seconds later.
“Yeah. She was in here yesterday.”
“She checked in?”
“No, she bought a sandwich.”
He pointed to the corner of the lobby. A counter containing a coffee maker and foam cups stood next to a vending machine and a small display refrigerator. Prewrapped sandwiches, cups of fruit and bottles of orange juice and water lined the three shelves. It was more than Matt had expected to see in the place.
“She bought a sandwich,” he deadpanned. “And that was it?”
“She asked if she could have a Ziploc bag,” Luca tacked on. “She said she wanted to save one half for later because she wasn’t that hungry.”
Matt kept from rolling his eyes. It was hard.
“No, I mean, did she check in or out or talk to anyone else while she was in here?”
Luca didn’t have to think about it long at all.
“When she paid she said she was meeting one of the guests.”
“Did she give a name?”
“No, and I didn’t ask for one. To be frank, usually when a pretty woman like that meets someone here during the workweek there’s a spouse, or two, out there who have no idea. I try to keep out of it.” Luca’s eyes widened. That nervousness that had greeted Matt came back in full force. “Is that your wife?”
Matt had done his fair share of interviews during his career with the sheriff’s department. He’d been called names, insulted, questioned and even physically attacked. In each instance he’d kept his cool and responded without issue. However, the hotel manager’s simple question had an unforeseen effect on him.
Was Maggie his wife?
In an instant two threads of thought wove together. One was of the wife he’d had for two years. The one he’d met in a grocery store in Carpenter. The one who laughed at all of his lame jokes, loved pineapple on her pizza and would fight anyone who disagreed, and who promised to love him always in front of a church full of people. The one who had called to remind him to do the laundry because she needed a fresh pair of scrubs for work the next day. The one who, an hour after that call, was gone.
The other thread, the one that caught him wholly off guard, was of a woman who had entered his life at its lowest. A woman who had ambushed him time and time again during that lowest part, trying to convince him that what he knew was a lie. A woman whom he’d denounced in front of a county’s worth of people and publicly hoped he’d never see again. A woman who, years later, was still not giving up. A woman who had grabbed his hand and pulled him out into the world to chase a suspect, despite the obvious danger. A woman who had driven him crazy but now was surprising him more than he thought was possible.
Was Maggie Carson his wife?
No. But she was turning out to be much more than an ex-reporter running after a story.
In fact, Matt was starting to see that maybe he’d misjudged her all along.
* * *
MAGGIE WAS BORED. Or, rather, impatient. While the detective did his detecting inside the lobby, she kept her word by staying put in the car. From her seat she’d taken in everything in her view from the rocks lining the flower beds to the flagpole that needed a good deal of repair. She’d even watched as a giggling couple dressed in workday best made out next to their cars before getting into them and driving off in separate directions. After that Maggie realized her listening to Matt Walker’s commands wouldn’t last.
She opened the door, got out and quietly shut it back. Instead of going into the lobby, she decided to pass through the breezeway that led to the courtyard that
all room doors faced. Since it was a weekday and barely afternoon to boot, there was no one lounging in the pool or on the slightly rusted-out patio furniture around it. She turned around in the courtyard and read the second-floor room numbers until she saw 201.
“I hope there’s something in there that will make sense,” she mumbled to herself, rounding the deep end of the pool to head for the stairs beneath an awning.
However, two steps along the pool’s side, something caught her attention in the water. Thinking it might be trash, or maybe just her imagination, she paused and bent over the edge to get a better view.
The pool probably wasn’t the most used part of the hotel but it was still kept up enough that the water wasn’t cloudy. Something was at the bottom of the pool, resting near the drain in the middle of the deep end. Whatever it was it looked to be the size of her palm, maybe a little bigger, but the depth and water warped the image. She couldn’t tell what it was but it didn’t look like trash.
It looked like something in a bag.
A jolt of adrenaline made Maggie stand tall.
“No way,” she said to herself, glancing up at room 201 and then back at the breezeway that led to the lobby. She would have had to cross right by the pool to get to the room and to leave it. Her heartbeat sped up as she looked back down at the object in the pool, but she already knew she’d made up her mind.
Now she needed to be fast.
Chapter Ten
Luca conveniently couldn’t find the guest book. He also had a hard time remembering who the man who’d checked into 201 was. The only details he could cobble together were that he walked in the morning before six, paid in cash and left his key at the front desk while Luca was in the bathroom around ten. When Matt pressed for anything else, the hotel manager began to sweat. The man nearly seemed to have a heart attack when Matt asked if he could see the security footage for the hotel.
“Do—do you have a warrant?” he asked. “Because I—I don’t think you can unless you have a warrant.”
That was when Matt figured out why he was so nervous at law enforcement being in the hotel.
“Listen, I’m going to level with you, Luca,” he started, leaning on the counter, trying to appear casual. “I’ve been on the job long enough to know what kind of establishment you’re running here. On the outside this hotel looks normal, a little run-down but still good for a night or two. A good place, as you said, for cheating spouses to meet secret lovers. I get that. I do. But considering how nervous you seem to be, I’m pretty sure you play to the rougher crowds rather than to unhappy men and women in business suits. Maybe drug dealers or buyers? Sex that’s paid for? You might even be in on the action. Either way I’m sure all your loyal customers pay in cash while you conveniently lose the guest book a lot. Am I right?”
Matt’s hunch was confirmed. Luca’s face went beet red. He opened his mouth like a fish out of water but Matt didn’t have the time to listen to lies.
“If today were any other day I wouldn’t be standing here, asking for your cooperation. I’d be telling you,” Matt continued. “But today’s timeline is a little tight. Instead of calling in my friends at the local office, who maybe even know you already, I’m going to leave. Only after I get to look at the security tapes for yesterday. I’m looking for one man and one man only. You can keep your tapes afterward. So what do you think? Are you going to help me out or is this place about to be swarming with black-and-whites?”
Matt wasn’t planning on calling in anyone if Luca refused to let him see the security footage. He couldn’t just waltz in and demand them without a warrant. But if you said something with enough confidence then sometimes that did the trick.
And it sure did it on the hotel manager.
“I—uh—I’ll get them,” he said after a moment. “It might take a minute.”
Matt pushed off the counter and smiled.
“Good. While you do that I’d like to go ask your staff about the occupants of 201.” Matt paused and dropped his smile. “If that’s okay with you?”
The question seemed to ease the man a little. It gave him the illusion of control. It made him stand taller as he nodded.
“Yes, sir.”
He saw him out and told him that housekeeping might still be in the laundry room preparing the new towels before they made their rounds. The handyman wouldn’t be in for another hour.
Matt took off his badge and placed it in his back pocket. If there were any guests with an aversion to cops he didn’t want to find out by being ambushed. He’d rather blend in. Maggie, on the other hand? He almost laughed at the idea of telling her to try to keep a low profile.
And then he cursed under his breath.
Maggie wasn’t in the Bronco and he didn’t know why that surprised him at all. He sighed, turned on his heel and headed through the breezeway. Knowing her, she was either already asking the staff questions or trying to break into room 201.
Matt scanned the courtyard, ready to be annoyed when he found her, but was distracted by something that turned his blood cold. There was something in the pool. Someone in the pool.
He waited a beat to see if the person was moving, stilling every instinct he had to dive in, when he saw it. A cloud of brown hair.
Maggie.
Every part of his body seemed to react at once, leaving only thoughts of the woman behind. He tore off his holster and phone and was in the pool in what felt like a second flat. Diving into the deep end, Matt opened his eyes beneath the water.
And indeed confirmed it was Maggie.
However, she definitely wasn’t in distress. In fact, she wasn’t even in her clothes.
Oh, hell, he thought just as her eyelids lifted. Two forest green eyes found his moments before she pushed off the bottom of the pool. Her body flew upward past his face. He followed her. He could already hear her yelling at him before he even broke the surface.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she yelled, wiping water out of her eyes. “You scared the heck out of me!”
“Me?” he responded just as loud. “What are you doing? And why aren’t you wearing any clothes?”
“I didn’t want them to get wet,” she countered. Like he was looking at some picture book, trying to find Waldo, he spotted her pants, blouse and shoes on the other side of the pool. “And I do have clothes on! I’m not crazy!”
Matt didn’t know which part of her statement he wanted to dissect to try to make sense of the maddening woman treading water in front of him in nothing but her underwear.
“Then what are you doing in the damned pool?”
She raised her hand out of the water only to point down. On reflex he followed the silent order but his gaze got caught on a black lace bra he’d definitely not planned on seeing that day. It pushed up a fair amount of cleavage; even beneath the water it was distracting.
“There’s something at the bottom of the pool I was trying to grab before you scared me half to death,” she answered, unaware that his gaze and thoughts had strayed for a moment. “What are you doing in the pool in all of your clothes?”
Matt strung together a series of curses, his frustration at the woman almost a tangible object.
“I was trying to save you,” he defended. “I thought you were drowning. One second you’re in the car and the next I see you floating in the pool. Forgive me for jumping to an illogical conclusion.”
Where he was sure Maggie would kick up a fuss or, at the very least, goad him, she instead seemed to lose her initial anger. Her expression softened. Somehow it had seemed to ease his anger, too. He looked back down at the object she’d pointed to, this time avoiding looking at her body.
“It’s a clue,” she said, answering his unasked question. “I think I threw it in here yesterday on purpose. To hide it. Or keep it safe.”
Matt didn’t need another word. He held his breath and went under
. This time his descent didn’t have his heart slamming against his rib cage. Instead, he scooped up the bag at the bottom of the pool and pushed while relief settled through him.
Maggie was okay.
Maddening, but okay.
“Well?” she asked as soon as he sucked in air. “What is it?”
A door shut somewhere behind them. Matt whirled around, trying to shield Maggie’s body from view. A young man paused, eyes widening at the sight of them, before going to Matt’s gun on the side of the pool.
“Take this,” Matt muttered, pushing the bag back to her under the water. He misjudged where she was and his knuckles touched bare skin. She didn’t make a fuss, though, and took the bag.
It freed up Matt’s hand to pull his badge from his back pocket.
“Police business,” he said loud enough to break the young man’s gaze from his gun.
The man hesitated. Matt didn’t break eye contact.
“Move along,” he commanded. Even to his ears Matt heard the hammer drop in his tone. The young man didn’t say anything but hurried past them and out of the breezeway.
“We need to get out of this damned thing,” Matt muttered. “Come on.”
Maggie didn’t argue and together they waded to the shallow end of the pool. It wasn’t until Matt was standing on the patio, picking up his gun and cell phone, that he remembered that he had been the only one fully dressed. He glanced back across the pool and froze.
He’d seen half-dressed women before. Lacy bras, sexy panties, bare stomachs, legs and more. But looking on as Maggie stood next to her clothes and stared down at the bag in her hands, Matt felt like he was seeing something new. Or, really, feeling it. Her face was angled downward, her wet hair dark against her sun-kissed skin. The little makeup she’d put on that morning had washed down her cheeks. Her brows began to knit together just as her frown deepened. Still, he couldn’t ignore one truth about the woman any longer.
Matt might have thought a few bad things about Maggie throughout the years but he realized he’d never once thought she was anything other than beautiful.
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