“Please hold.”
Sam was watching his watch, and it wasn’t more than seven seconds before the manager picked up.
“Frazier.”
“Hi, Milt,” Sam said. “I’m Bill Horowitz—Alyssa Locke’s personal assistant. I’m actually looking to reach Alyssa. Is she there with you, sir?”
“No, she’s not.”
“Darn,” Sam said. “Well, maybe you can help me. I’m on a deadline to type up these reports—it’s pretty important stuff, I’m sure you’re aware. But her handwriting is … Well, let’s just say she’s a much better agent than she is a writer. I absolutely cannot make out the name of the desk clerk on duty on the morning of May twenty-fifth. Is it Frank Jackson, Johnson, Josephson—”
“Beth Weiss.”
“Holy cow,” Sam said, writing the name on his arm. “I really would’ve gotten that one wrong. That’s Weiss, e-i-double-s?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is it possible Alyssa wrote it as Elizabeth or …”
“As far as I know, she’s just plain Beth.”
“Thanks. And I have her home address here as—shoot, I’m afraid even to try to guess.”
“Let me look it up again,” Frazier said. He was silent for a moment, then, “It’s 43 Rosewood Drive. Right here in Gainesville.”
“Phone number 352 …?”
Frazier obediently filled in the rest of the numbers, and Sam added them to the list on his arm.
“Thank you much,” Sam said. “Oh, and Milt? Do me a biggie? Don’t mention this to Alyssa when she comes back inside. I’d prefer having her think I can actually read her handwriting. Female bosses can be pretty intense—you know what I mean?”
Frazier laughed. “I can imagine.”
“Thanks again.” Sam hung up the phone and got back into his car. Once more onto the highway, once more going north, this time two exits down.
That one had a BP gas station.
Again, he used the phone card to connect to the Sunset Motel.
Marblemouth answered.
Sam put a lot of Texas into his voice. “Is this Beth Weiss?”
“No, sir.”
“She be in later?”
“No, sir.”
Talkative woman. “I’ve got a flower delivery for Beth Weiss. She gonna be in tomorrow?”
“Who’s sending Beth flowers?” Whoever he was talking to, she didn’t sound happy about that.
“Hey, I’m just the delivery service. She gonna be in tomorrow or not?”
“Eight a.m. to two is her regular shift.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Sam said.
“Assuming she’s back from Orlando.”
Uh-oh.
“You know, you could drop the flowers off now. I’ll see that she gets them.”
Yeah, after you read the card, you nosy bitch.
“Shoot,” Sam said. “There’s something here on this slip about Orlando. Maybe these flowers are supposed to be sent to her down there. You got an address for her?”
“I have no idea where she’s staying. We just work together. I don’t really know her that well.”
“Well, if she really is in Orlando, I can put a hold order on the delivery. No point in bringing them out there if she’s not going to be back for another week,” Sam said.
“No, I’m certain she’ll be in tomorrow.” Marblemouth was suddenly more than willing to provide information. She really wanted to see who was sending Beth flowers. “The manager was just going over the schedule and I did hear him say Beth would definitely be in in the morning.”
“Well, thanks for the offer,” Sam said. “I just might take you up on it if I’m in the neighborhood this afternoon. You have a nice day, you hear?”
He got back in the car, back on the highway, and headed back south to Gainesville.
It was time to go over to this Beth Weiss’s house on Rosewood Drive for a little sneak and peek.
If she really was out of town, there was a chance—a very slim chance—that Sam could get first access to whatever information she might have about Mary Lou and Haley.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
It was after eight-thirty p.m. when Max uncovered the messages on his temporary desk at the Sarasota office.
Kelly Ashton Paoletti had called.
Seven times.
Kelly Ashton Paoletti.
In fact, one of the messages actually called her Mrs. Lieutenant Commander Thomas Paoletti. No doubt that was in case he’d missed the significance of her new last name.
Max stood up for the first time in what seemed like hours even as his intercom buzzed.
Even though his assistant hated it when he shouted, he crossed the room and pulled open his door. “Laronda!”
There was really no need to raise his voice, considering her desk was right there, but he was going on five short hours of sleep over three long days, and sometimes shouting and moving quickly fooled his body into releasing a little extra adrenaline. “Get me Kelly Ashton Paoletti right—”
Away.
Another good reason to stay behind his desk and communicate via the intercom was standing there, looking at him.
“Gina Vitagliano to see you, sir,” Laronda told him, shooting him a look that said “Now how am I supposed to tell her that you’re in a meeting, fool?”
Jules Cassidy was near Laronda’s desk, collecting his phone messages, and the man didn’t so much as glance in Max’s direction, but he, like everyone else in the room, was suddenly paying very close attention.
Or maybe that was just Max’s own paranoid imagination.
Unlike him, Gina hadn’t changed her clothes since he’d seen her a few hours ago in Tampa. She was still wearing cutoff jeans. They weren’t as short or as low-cut as the styles Max had seen some women wearing today, even in downtown Sarasota, away from the beaches, but despite that, they made her tanned legs look incredibly long. Her funky T-shirt didn’t quite meet her shorts, revealing a glimpse of an equally tanned stomach and, yes, that sparkling turquoise belly button ring he’d first been hypnotized by a few hours ago.
It was all Max could do not to break out into a cold sweat.
The sandals, the toenail polish, the leather ankle bracelet, her long dark hair down loose around her shoulders—it all made Gina look as ridiculously young as she actually was.
“Can you give me ten minutes?” she asked him. Her eyes were somber, and she hadn’t flashed even a subdued version of her vivacious smile in his direction. She looked tired, with shadows underneath her eyes that he hadn’t noticed before. Her makeup didn’t hide them so well, here in the land of fluorescent light.
“How’d you get down here?” he asked. It was more than stalling—it was information he needed to know.
One of the big problems caused by her getting into an accident with the rental car was that, technically, she wasn’t supposed to be driving. The rental car company, like most in the area, had a “drivers must be twenty-five years or older” policy. But the vehicle had been rented and insured by Gina’s employer, and she hadn’t even known about the rule. The company was overlooking the alleged violation, but they had refused to replace the damaged car. Which had left Gina stranded.
Which shouldn’t have been a problem if she’d stayed in Tampa until her flight home to New York.
“Bus,” she told Max now. “Then cab.”
Max nodded as he handed the message slip to Laronda. “Get me Kelly Paoletti on the phone in exactly ten minutes.” He knocked on the desk. “Cassidy.”
Jules looked up as if startled, a question in his eyes, pretending he hadn’t been listening to every word. He was a good actor, but Max knew him well and didn’t buy it for a second.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Max ordered the younger man. He silently held his office door open for Gina, and followed her inside.
He purposely left it ajar, but she went back and closed it tightly as he went to sit behind his desk.
“Thank you for seeing me,�
� she said.
“I really don’t have much time,” he told her. “I’m in the middle of a situation.”
She sat down across from his desk. Crossed those legs. “When aren’t you?”
“Good point.” Max forced a smile.
She didn’t smile back. “I need to ask you something. I know you’re not going to want to talk about this, but …”
Well, wasn’t this going to be fun? He just waited.
Gina took a deep breath. “Why did you stop returning my calls?”
It was the question he’d been expecting. The question he was ready for. He’d done everything but rehearse saying it aloud.
“I started seeing someone,” he lied without blinking. Well, it was really only half a lie. “Someone I’m still very serious about. I don’t think it’s going to shock you, Gina, if I admit that my relationship with you has always had undercurrents of something more than mere friendship.”
It was a gamble, admitting that, and he could see both surprise and something vaguely triumphant in Gina’s eyes. Someone had to teach this girl how to put on a poker face. She just let everything she was feeling and thinking show.
He was a manipulative son of a bitch, which was bad enough, but if he were a truly evil manipulative son of a bitch, he could take total advantage of her.
“Under those circumstances, continuing my friendship with you didn’t seem right,” he concluded.
She nodded, and then she laughed. “You’re a brilliant liar.”
Max caught himself about to shift in his seat—a basic negotiating blunder. Never let them see you squirm. Instead, he made himself sit still and hold her gaze. “I’m not lying.”
“Today you said that you were still angry,” Gina told him. “About what happened to me on that plane.”
Yeah, he had said that. Max didn’t clear his throat, didn’t move. He could still hear the sound her head had made as she had been thrown down onto the cockpit deck. He blinked it away. Nodded. Even managed to smile. “Of course I’m still angry. Everyone who worked that op is still angry about what happened to you.”
“You said I have no reason to want to check up on you,” Gina persisted. “That, of course, you were okay. That you weren’t the one on that plane.”
“That’s right.”
She shook her head. “No, Max. You’re wrong. You were on that plane.”
He smiled again, as condescendingly as he could. “Gina—”
She leaned forward, her eyes intense. “You can pretend you weren’t, but you were as much a prisoner as I was. You can tell me you walked away, out of that surveillance room, but I know you didn’t. I know you were listening when it happened. I know you saw at least part of … of … it … with the minicameras the SEALs installed.”
He didn’t bother denying it.
She laughed in disgust, sitting back a little. “Listen to me. It. When it happened. We rarely talk about it, and you know, when we do, we always use euphemisms, don’t we? When I was attacked. When I was hurt.” She leaned forward again. “I was raped and beaten, Max. You were forced to watch and listen while I was brutally raped and beaten. That happened to me—and it happened to you, too.”
Max shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. Anything to keep her from looking—God help him—too closely into his eyes.
“I think you stopped calling me because seeing me, talking to me, thinking about me, makes you have to think about it, to remember it.”
God damn it, she just wouldn’t let up. Max pretended to stare out the window, trying not to think about the way her long hair had fanned out, looking so beautiful, as she’d fallen right in front of the minicamera. Trying not to remember the way her screams had turned from panic to pain to despair.
Gina’s voice was quiet now. “I think that in addition to having to deal with this as something traumatic that happened to you, you also have to deal with the fact that you see the entire incident as one of your few failures.”
She was silent then, and when he finally glanced at her, she was watching him, just waiting, with such tenderness in her eyes. Obviously, it was now his turn to say something.
This twenty-three year old girl was out-negotiating him.
“What can I possibly say?” His voice was hoarse and he cleared his throat again. “You asked a question, I gave you an answer. I understand that you don’t like my answer, and you can theorize all you want, but that doesn’t—”
“You didn’t fail,” Gina interrupted him, her husky voice even thicker with emotion. “Don’t you see? You succeeded. I’m alive. I’m here!”
Yeah, he’d kind of noticed.
“You saved my life,” she told him. “You saved the lives of nearly all the people on that plane—”
“Right.” Max stood up. “This has been fun, but I have to take a phone call—”
She stood up, too, spoke right over him. “You saved me more times than you’ll ever know. You were there, with me. Every single time I really needed you.”
He laughed aloud at that—he couldn’t help it. How could she say that?
Gina knew exactly what he was thinking. “I didn’t need you while they were raping me,” she told him, leaning over his desk, hands braced on the files that held his notes from his meeting with the President of the United States. “I knew you couldn’t stop them. Don’t you see? I knew no one could stop them. The best anyone could do was to keep them from killing me. And that’s what you did. I heard you talking over the radio, talking to them the entire time, the voice of sanity—reminding them that they were in a better bargaining position if they kept me alive. You didn’t fail—you saved my life. And then you saved me again when it was over, when my parents were flying out to be with me in the hospital. You stayed with me. I can’t begin to tell you what that meant to me. I’m not your failure, Max. I’m your biggest success!”
The intercom buzzed.
Max looked at the phone, looked at her. “I have to take this call.”
She straightened up. Nodded. Cleared her throat. “Well, I said what I came to say. I guess I can’t force you to listen, can I?”
“Excuse me for a second.” Max picked up the phone. “Yeah.”
“Kelly Paoletti on line one, sir.”
“Ask her to hold for a minute, Laronda.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And tell Jules Cassidy to come in.” Max hung up the phone, turned back to Gina. “I’m going to have one of my agents drive you back to Tampa.”
“I’m not staying in Tampa anymore,” she told him as Jules knocked on the door.
Oh, damn. He waited for her to drop the anvil on his head.
“I’m staying here in Sarasota—out on Siesta Key—for the next few days,” she said. “At a place right on the beach.”
Boing. The hotel Laronda had found for his team was also on Siesta Key. Please let there be a God and don’t let it be the exact same place.
“Come in,” Max called. If that was the case, a solution would be for him just to never leave this office. It wasn’t as if it would be the first time.…
Jules opened the door, sticking his head in as he looked cautiously from Gina to Max and back.
“Gina Vitagliano, Jules Cassidy.” Max gave them a no-frills introduction. “Drive her back to her hotel,” he ordered.
Jules recognized it as the dismissal that it was, but Gina didn’t move.
“I’m playing tomorrow night at a jazz club,” she said, and at first her words didn’t make sense. Playing? But then he remembered. She was a musician—a percussionist. She’d been on that plane because she was touring Europe with her college jazz band.
“Fandangos,” she continued, “on Siesta Key. A friend of a friend needed someone to fill in for his regular Wednesday night gig because his sister’s getting married out in Seattle next weekend. I knew I’d be down here, so I agreed to replace him for the night. It’s been on my schedule for three months.”
In case he got the idea that she was looking for excus
es to stay in Sarasota.
“It’s a restaurant, too,” she told him. “I’ve heard it’s pretty good. So if you’re looking for someplace to eat tomorrow night—”
“I’ve got a situation that I’m in the middle of dealing with,” Max reminded her.
“Right,” Gina said, more hurt than anger in her eyes. “But in the event that your situation gets handled and anything I’ve said today makes even the teeniest amount of sense … I’d really love for you to hear me play.”
Max could do nothing but stand there. If he said anything at all, she’d take it as encouragement. And telling her that he wouldn’t go, that he didn’t want to go, would be too cruel.
Even for him.
“You could sneak in the back,” Gina continued when he didn’t respond. “No one would have to know you were there. I wouldn’t have to know you were there. That’s the way you like to do it, right?”
Max glanced at Jules.
Gina turned to Jules, too. “Did you know Max likes to follow me—to keep tabs on me? Isn’t that kind of creepy?”
Jules looked at Max. “Uh, actually, it’s one of our team’s policies to monitor the whereabouts of individuals who have spent considerable amounts of time with known terrorists. It’s both for their protection and—”
Gina laughed in disbelief. “To make sure they haven’t crossed to the Dark Side? Yeah, Babur Haiyan and Alojzije Nabulsi were really trying their best to convince me to join their cause. Max witnessed the finesse of their recruitment techniques.” She laughed again—forced joviality. “Of course, maybe you did, too. Maybe everyone in this office watched.”
And Max realized what it must have taken for Gina to come walking in here. To look Laronda in the eye and announce her name—just in case anyone hadn’t already recognized her.
She turned back to Max. “If you really are wasting taxpayers’ dollars stalking me for those reasons, you’re in an even worse situation than you think.”
“I’m sorry I’ve upset you,” Max said quietly. “But—”
“You have to take that call,” she finished for him. “Right. It’s been nice seeing you, Max. But I’ve got to confess, you look tired. Whoever she is, she’s not taking very good care of you.”
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