Cavanaugh Undercover

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Sure, anything you say, just please don’t shoot,” he begged.

  Still holding the weapon for insurance, Tiana pulled out the photograph she’d put in her pocket. “Have you seen this girl?” she asked.

  The manager squinted myopically at the photograph. Pipe-cleaner-thin shoulders rose and fell. “I might have,” he said, then added a very shaky “Maybe.”

  “You either did or you didn’t,” Tiana ground out. “She would have been here in the last couple of days. Checking into a room with the guy you have in room thirteen,” she added.

  The manager’s eyes widened, further perpetuating the impression that his eyes resembled loose brown marbles. He never took them off her weapon.

  “He came in alone,” he told her, barely refraining from stuttering. “I never saw no girl with him. Maybe she coulda been in his car, but I never looked. Why don’t you go and ask him?” he suggested nervously.

  The manager’s suggestion, added to the fact that there were no police cars converging in the immediate vicinity and equally important, there was no yellow tape stretched across the motel door, barring entrance, told her that no one had discovered Wayne’s body yet.

  But it couldn’t be that much longer.

  “Take another look,” she urged, pushing the photograph toward him on the dusty, scarred desk until it was right in front of him. “You’re sure you haven’t seen her anywhere? Not in the parking lot or going to the ice machine?”

  “I don’t know,” the man whined. “People come and go here and they don’t like being noticed, so I make it my business not to look directly at them if I can help it. They pay their bill, that makes them okay. They don’t pay, then I notice them.”

  There was some sort of action taking place on the show he had flipped to just before she had commandeered his attention. Tiana could see that his focus was already divided between talking to her and trying to make out what was happening on the TV screen.

  Her mind scrambled around for anything else she could ask the manager; anything that could actually help find Janie and not just take her off on another wild goose chase.

  “How far in advance did he pay for the room?” she asked.

  It was evident by the expression on the manager’s face that his brain, limited at best, had ceased functioning altogether.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “The man in room thirteen,” she snapped. This man needed to borrow twelve IQ points to qualify being labeled a moron, she thought angrily.

  He began to wave a dismissive hand in her direction, his eyes darting back to the TV. “I’m not supposed to give out that—”

  “How far in advance did he pay for the room?” she repeated, resting her hand on the hilt of the weapon she’d tucked into the front of her waistband.

  Glancing in her direction, the manager was thrown into instant terror again and gave up the stance he’d taken, which had been a wavering one at that. It was clear that he wasn’t about to protect anyone if it meant he was going to get hurt in the process.

  “I’ll look, I’ll look,” the little man cried, scrolling through the data on his small computer screen. “Here he is, right there,” he practically sobbed, jabbing at the screen with his broken fingernail. “He’s checking out tomorrow,” he announced, reading what was on the monitor.

  Finished, his head bobbed up immediately and he watched her fearfully. “Is that what you needed to know?” he asked, swallowing. His Adam’s apple moved up and down as if it were precariously tied to a string and was all set to dance.

  No, it wasn’t, she thought. What she needed to know was where Wayne had left her sister and what had happened to her since then.

  Wayne’s checkout date told her that he expected to have business wrapped up by tomorrow.

  And, in a way, she supposed he was right. Just not in the way he’d expected. But Wayne was not her concern. Her sister was.

  “Thanks for your help,” she said sarcastically to the manager. She put her hand in her pocket and the man cringed and ducked, obviously expecting her to make a grab for the weapon in her waistband and discharge it in his direction.

  His eyes almost fell out when she threw a twenty down on the counter in payment for his information.

  Grabbing the bill as if he were afraid it would suddenly sprout legs and walk away, the motel manager appeared slightly less tense. He clutched the twenty and raised his voice, calling after her as she opened the door to leave.

  “Anything else you need to know?” he asked, obviously hoping for more money to be thrown his way.

  “Nothing you can help me with,” Tiana retorted, sparing him a last withering look.

  The man had the common sense to step back, as if he knew that he had come precariously close to paying for something he had no way of knowing about.

  “Good luck finding her,” he added just as the door closed.

  Even as the words registered, she could feel her heart sinking just a little further as she fought off a hopelessness that threatened to completely consume her whole.

  No, damn it, you’re not letting it get to you. You’re made of stronger stuff than that. You know that, Tiana lectured herself sternly.

  Later, after she found Janie and brought her home, after this whole dirty business was behind her, then she would have time to break down and sob—but not now. “Now” was for moving heaven and earth until she found her sister’s trail.

  With slightly renewed energy, Tiana got into her car and put the key in the ignition. But she hadn’t even turned the key to start the engine when she became aware of someone walking up to the driver’s-side window. The person tapped lightly against the glass.

  Her heart rose in her throat before she realized that the person standing just outside her window was “Bruce Wayne”—or whatever the hell he had decided to call himself now.

  For a second, Tiana thought of gunning her engine and peeling out of the lot, but something kept her where she was. Besides, she wasn’t much of an expert on cars, but she knew enough about them to know that his vehicle was a great deal faster than hers and once he got back behind the wheel, he’d catch up to her in no time flat.

  And she had no other connection to finding her sister besides this man.

  So instead, she remained where she was, rolled down her window and snapped, “What?”

  “Find out anything useful?” Brennan asked mildly, as if this were just another everyday conversation they were about to engage in.

  Chapter 6

  It took a second for her heart to stop beating wildly. She hadn’t even realized that the man who called himself Wayne was approaching her until he was literally at her window, tapping on the glass. At this point, he wasn’t even supposed to be anywhere in the immediate vicinity.

  So why was he?

  “What are you doing here?” Tiana demanded. She hated being caught off guard like this.

  He gave her an easygoing smile. “Standing next to your car, asking you a question.”

  She could feel her temper rising. The answer he’d given her was far too literal and she felt he was being condescending to her. Why was he playing games like this with her?

  Just what was his game?

  “You couldn’t have gone to see Roland and come back in such a short amount of time,” she pointed out, daring him to lie.

  But he didn’t. “No,” he agreed, “I couldn’t.”

  “So you never went,” she concluded.

  “Nope.”

  Once he’d cleared the lot, he had pulled over to the side and then seemed to wait for her car to leave the lot. When it didn’t, he’d doubled back obviously to see what she was up to.

  “Why are you following me?” she asked bluntly.

  His mouth curved in a smile that would have, under possible other circums
tances, curled her toes—or at least given her a lengthy pause. But right now he was the enemy, most likely tied in somehow to Janie’s disappearance, and she needed to remember that—and keep her guard up at all time.

  “Let’s just say I have an inordinate amount of curiosity about certain things,” he told her.

  “And satisfying that curiosity—or hoping to—is worth running the risk to alienating Roland and irritating the hell out of him?” she asked. Tiana didn’t believe him. It just didn’t make any sense. Something else was up; she could feel it.

  Brennan laughed. “I have a lot of money to spend. Roland likes to collect a lot of money. It’ll work itself out,” he promised her, dismissing her supposed concern. “So, did you find anything out?” he asked her again.

  Since she sensed he was being far from truthful with her, she was determined to return the favor and not volunteer a shred of any sort of information.

  “About what?” she countered stubbornly.

  “About what you came back to ask the motel manager about—” His eyes met hers and she could almost feel him penetrating her innermost thoughts. “That strawberry blonde you’re trying to track down. Did he tell you anything?”

  For a second, Tiana felt herself freeze inside. This man standing at her car window was so accurate in his assumptions, it was as if he’d found a way to hack into her brain. But that was just an illusion he was trying to create so that he could pump her for some real information.

  She’d run across a psychic or two during her time with crime scene investigations and they all operated the same way. They were intuitive people who knew how to read others. They picked up on clues other people unintentionally gave off and they watched intently for any sort of “tells.” If the person shifted or seemed suddenly more alert, or his eyes widened at the mention of something personal, then a correct guess had been made and he’d start to expand on that “guess.”

  This “Wayne” was just good at making guesses, that was all.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said harshly. “I’m not looking for a strawberry blonde, I’m looking for lots of strawberry blondes because right now my clients have all expressed an interest in that ‘type.’ I’ve already told you that once. How many times do I have to say it?”

  Instead of answering, he surprised her by rounding the hood of her car and opening the passenger door. Slipping into the seat, he fixed her with a look for a long moment before asking, “Who are you?”

  Did he think he was going to wear her down by asking the same things over and over again? Well, he was going to be sorely disappointed if that’s what he thought. “I already told you—”

  “What you told me was a story.” He glared at her sternly. “None of my contacts have ever heard of you.”

  Digging deeply into her bravado, she pretended to be on the verge of losing her temper with this man who might or might not be Roland’s minion.

  Whatever or whoever he really was, he was making her nervous in a very bad way.

  “That’s because I’m good at keeping under the radar. I told you that before, too.”

  “It was a lie then, and it’s a lie now,” he informed her. He’d done some very quick checking with Brenda while this so-called madam was inside the rental office, most likely intimidating the manager. Brenda found no information on this woman, which in turn was information in itself. “None of my contacts’ contacts have heard of you, either—and nobody’s that good at erasing their trail,” he told her in case she was going to harp on that being-under-the-radar thing again.

  Tiana raised her chin. “I am,” she told him, never wavering.

  He laughed softly to himself. The lady had guts, he’d give her that. She was trying to face him down when she had to know that if he so chose, he could easily have just eliminated her with a twist of his hand. Her neck was long and slender and a relatively easy target for someone with a short fuse and accustomed to taking matters into their own hands. Literally.

  “Maybe you are at that,” he conceded for the time being. He didn’t want to waste any more time going around and around about this one point. He was positive she was just posing as a madam. The question remained as to why and if the answer would in any way impede his finding where the new “talent” was being kept and, just as important, who was actually calling the shots. He was fairly certain that it wasn’t Roland—although there was an outside chance that he might be wrong about that.

  “Where are you staying?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “Where am I staying?” she repeated, trying to understand why he was asking.

  Was he just interested in getting into her bed? Or was it so that he could eliminate her when her guard was down? Granted she’d decided that he didn’t look like a killer, but then, a lot of killers didn’t look as if they were capable of the deed.

  “Yes, ‘staying,’” he repeated, his expression unreadable. “As in a room with a bed, a shower, four walls, that kind of thing.”

  Maybe he was just interested in sex. She knew of several women who would have been more than willing to accommodate him and would probably have thought she was crazy for not jumping at the chance to encourage him. But there was no way this was going to go that route. “I’m not your type.”

  “No, you’re not,” he agreed purely for the sake of argument because, under different circumstances away from this job, she might very well be his type—at least for a night or two. The lady looked very capable of making intense sparks fly for a recreational couple of hours. Or days—and not because she was professing to be a madam. She was a knockout and her looks were a definite distraction, but he had a mission, his first in this new situation he and the rest of his family found themselves in.

  Failure was less of an option now than it ever had been before.

  Tiana stared at him. Had she just received a put-down? “Then why do you want to know where I’m staying?”

  “In case I want to talk to you.”

  “I’ll let you in on a little secret—that’s why phones were invented.”

  Brennan slowly moved his head from side to side, dismissing her point. “Yeah, maybe, but I’m a face-to-face kind of guy. I like to see a person’s eyes when I talk to her.”

  Suspicions rose again. Paranoia was becoming a way of life these past few days. She began to wonder if she was ever going to feel whole again—and on firm ground. “Why?”

  “Because you can tell a lot about a person by looking into his eyes.” Just the way he was looking into hers, he thought. Maybe he was crazy, but what he saw there told him that while she was definitely on some sort of mission or crusade, making arrangements for the purchase of new “merchandise” was not really part of it.

  “Is that anything like reading a person’s palm?” she mocked.

  “Not even close,” he replied with a perfectly straight face. “When a person lies, there’s a very slight hesitation in her eyes.”

  “What about a career liar?” she challenged. “Like a politician.”

  Even there, a person could tell, he thought, if he knew what to look for. “The eyes shut down, which is just as good because you don’t shut down unless you have something you want to hide.”

  “You can bend the facts like a pretzel to suit your purposes, can’t you?” she asked.

  It was a definite criticism—but he had one of his own for her. “And you run from the facts like an Artful Dodger. What’s the matter, Aphrodite?” he asked. “What is there about the truth that scares you?”

  “Nothing at all,” she told him, her eyes flashing as she raised her chin defiantly again. It was a tug-of-war to get the upper hand and she refused to allow him to win out over her. But as for his initial question, she had a feeling that he would go on badgering her until she told him the truth. Either that or he would follow, which wasn’t going to
happen because she really didn’t have anywhere to go. “And as for where I’m staying, I’m not.”

  It didn’t take much to figure out what she was telling him. “You breezed into town and went straight to that motel to see the dead guy, is that it?”

  She knew that things would go more smoothly for her if she mixed a bit of the truth into the tale she was fabricating, so she conceded to his summary. “Something like that.”

  He nodded, silently telling her that he believed what she was telling him. “Who was he to you?”

  The key to everything right now, she thought in frustration. “Just a connection.”

  “To what?” he pressed, never taking his eyes off hers. And doing his best not to be mesmerized by them at the same time.

  She shrugged, indicating that the answer was obvious. “To Roland apparently.”

  He sincerely doubted that she saw him in that kind of lofty capacity. “The kid in the motel room wasn’t in your league,” he pointed out.

  “I wasn’t planning on marrying him,” she said, annoyed that he was picking apart every word she said. She’d always found these sorts of mind games wearying and of absolute no merit. She wasn’t fond of chess in any sort of venue, especially when she felt that her opponent was trying to wear her down. “He had access to information I needed, so I went to see him. End of story.”

  He looked at her knowingly. He wasn’t buying it. “But it isn’t, is it? It’s not the end of the story for you.”

  Okay, enough was enough, she thought. She’d been nice and played along, but now it was time to end this little charade, or philosophical dance. “If you’re looking to wear me down, you’re wasting your time—and mine. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m hungry and I’d like to get something to eat, so—”

  He cut her off and said in a far more hearty voice, “Sounds good to me.”

  She stared at him. The man was incorrigible. “That wasn’t an invitation.”

  He smiled tolerantly. “Just an oversight on your part, I’m sure.”

  “No, I’m rather sure it wasn’t,” she responded firmly. “Now, if you don’t mind—”