"I'll just... head out," she said as the woman wheeled her cart in. "Let you work in peace."
Adele got as far as the neighboring room when the door clicked open behind her.
"Miss? Miss?"
Adele turned, her lips smiling, legs tensing, ready to bolt. "Yes?"
"Phone ringing."
"Oh, that's okay. They can leave a message."
She waited until the door had almost closed, then darted back and caught it before it locked. "On second thought, I'd better get that."
She walked slowly to the silent phone, giving the person time to finish his message. When the light flashed, she picked up the receiver and retrieved the message. As she listened, her smile grew.
When she hung up, the light continued to flash, message delivery incomplete. That was fine. She'd heard what she needed to know. Better if there was no sign someone had already listened to the message.
* * *
HOPE
When Hope reached the rear of the ice cream stand, she slowed her jog to a more respectable fast walk. Her gaze was already on the horizon, scouring the strip malls for stores selling shirts. If the same store sold moist towelettes for Karl to clean up, all the better. She just needed -
Hope stopped. While her gaze was focused beyond the ice cream stand umbrella tables, something about those tables pulled her attention back. Before she left, six of the eight had been occupied. Now, only two were, and Robyn was at neither.
Their two cups were still at their table. At the ice cream stand a single patron waited - a round-faced teenage girl.
No cause for panic. Robyn might have needed to use the bathroom or decided to grab a magazine.
Hope called Karl. He answered on the first ring.
"Small delay." She walked toward their table. "Rob stepped away. Looks like she'll be back in a sec. She left her drink - " She stopped, staring down at Robyn's cup.
"Hope?"
"Her milkshake melted."
"What?"
"She was drinking a milkshake and it doesn't look as if she touched it since I left. It's melted, with a puddle of condensation under it." Hope shook her head. "Probably because she wasn't that interested in it in the first place. Just buying an excuse to sit down. Sorry, I'll stop worrying."
"Do you see a place to buy a shirt?"
"Not from here, but I'll go across the road and take a better look."
"Just grab anything. I'm going to start heading that way."
"You think something happened?"
"No, but I think you'll feel better buying my shirt rather than sitting around waiting."
Hope bought Karl a shirt and pack of wipes and hurried across the road. An elderly man was clearing their table, shaking his head at the nearly full cups.
"Excuse me," she said. "That's my - My friend was sitting there."
"Not now," he said, wiping the table.
"You work here, right?"
That made him glance up, watery blue eyes meeting hers. "No, I just like clearing tables. A good hobby for an old - "
"Has this one been vacant long?"
"Long enough." He shuffled off.
One last look for Robyn, then Hope strode around the ice cream stand and broke into a jog.
Hope handed Karl a t-shirt advertising Coors Light and a box of baby diaper wipes. He didn't comment, just shucked his shirt, wiped himself down and pulled on the new one as she trashed the old shirt and the bloodied cloths.
By the time they arrived back at the tables, they were almost full again. There was still no sign of Robyn. Hope's racing heart hit full gallop. Robyn shouldn't be gone this long. Something had happened.
"He didn't circle back," Karl said as they wove through the tables.
She glanced at him.
"Gilchrist. He didn't come back."
That was what she'd been worried about, that while they were recuperating in the office complex, the werewolf had returned and lured Robyn away. Whether he'd connected Robyn with Karl, Hope didn't know, but if he did, he might return for her as a way to get at Karl.
"You were sitting here?" he asked, pausing by the table, now occupied by a couple and two young children.
When Hope nodded, he said to the couple, "Excuse me. My wife was here earlier and she dropped her keys. May I take a look under your table?"
The couple backed their chairs out. Karl crouched and checked one side, then the other. A word of thanks, and he put his fingers on Hope's elbow, guiding her toward the stand.
"Two trails for Robyn, both leading this way," he said under his breath. "One coming, one going, I presume."
When people walk, they shed skin cells and hair, which fall to the ground and lay a scent trail. Hope had researched it, looking up how search-and-rescue dogs track so she'd understand what Karl could and could not do. He wasn't comfortable with questions about what he considered one of the more undignified aspects of being a werewolf.
Canines tracked two ways. One was by air scent, which led straight to a person if he was still around. The other was ground scent, which told where someone had been. What ground scent couldn't tell Karl, though, was which of two recent trails was fresher.
As they drew close to the ice cream stand, he paused. From Karl's expression, Hope knew the trails had grown fainter, meaning he'd veered off course. Short of sniffing the ground, though, it was difficult to find exactly where they'd diverged.
She looked up at the menu board and absently reached into her pocket. She pulled out her change, letting it fall, clinking on the pavement and rolling away.
"Oh, of all the stupid - " she began.
"I've got it."
He knelt, sniffing nearer the ground as he gathered her scattered coins. When he rose, he bent to hand them to her and said, "One goes to the left, through the parking lot. The other heads right, around the back of the stand."
"The second is the way Gilchrist went earlier," she said. "And the way I went."
"Then that's where we'll go."
Once past the strip malls, Robyn's trail became easier for Karl to follow, partly because he could stoop and sniff and partly because they'd figured out where she'd been going - following Hope. When Hope had run to see Karl, she'd checked for a tail a few times, but had been too anxious to do a decent job. If Robyn had stayed a reasonable distance away, Hope would never have noticed.
Robyn's trail ended at the corner of a building. Looking around it, Hope saw the spot where she'd waited out her chaos rush with Karl.
"She saw me," Hope said. "Dammit. What did she think? I must have looked - "
"She didn't see your face, not from this angle. You had your back to her. What she saw was me... and a lot of blood."
"Shit! She must have panicked and - " Hope shook her head. "No, not Robyn. She doesn't rattle that easily."
Karl said nothing, but his expression disagreed. The old Robyn would have seen blood and marched over to help. But she hadn't been herself since Damon's death. After witnessing two murders, had seeing Karl covered in blood been too much?
Or had something caught her attention? Lured her away?
Karl followed her trail. This time, it didn't cling to the shadows. She'd made a beeline for the road, crossed to a gas station and headed into a phone booth.
"It ends here," Karl said, crouched in the lot.
"She called a cab."
"That would be my guess."
"So she sees you bleeding, finds the nearest phone booth and calls a cab... Where? Back to the motel?"
Hope checked her cell. No missed calls. Maybe Robyn had run out of change and decided to call from the motel.
She hoped so. Otherwise, she had no idea where her friend had gone.
When they arrived at the motel, Hope leapt from the car while Karl was still parking it. A cleaning woman near their motel room shrank back behind her cart, then relaxed as Hope pulled out her key, as if the cleaner had thought she was racing over to demand extra towels.
Hope opened the door. Their room w
as empty.
She remembered the cleaning woman. Had she been in here? Hope had told her to come after three, so she could get Robyn out first.
"Excuse me!" she called as she hurried back outside.
The cleaning woman's shoulders tightened, but she didn't turn, as if praying Hope wasn't hailing her.
Hope jogged up beside her. "The room looks great. I just wanted to give you this."
Hope passed her a five. She looked at it, still in Hope's outstretched hand, her sunken eyes wary.
"Really, thanks," Hope said. "I appreciate you coming later for us."
The woman took the money.
"Oh, and before you go. Did you see another woman in my room? My friend was supposed to meet us there."
"Friend... ?" She shook her head. "English no good."
Hope switched to Spanish and repeated the question as best she could, though her Spanish was probably worse than the woman's English. Karl came up behind and took over. His international jobs meant he had a working knowledge of about a half-dozen languages.
Karl translated on the fly. There had been someone in their room when the cleaner arrived. A young woman with shoulder-length blond hair, who'd left right after the cleaner arrived. She'd seen her get into a cab a few minutes later.
Hope thanked her. As the woman pushed her cart away, Hope checked her watch. It was 3:15. "Fifteen minutes to clean our room? I think I overtipped." They headed back toward their door. "But I guess that means I can relax. Wherever Rob went, she won't expect the cleaning to be done for a while, so I'll take advantage of the wait and make a few calls."
As Karl opened the door, Hope noticed the light on the bedside phone blinking. "Oh, we have a message. Let's hope it's Robyn."
It was. And she was calling to explain where she'd gone. But it wasn't "to the corner for a coffee."
* * *
ROBYN
Robyn's resolve took her within a hundred yards of the police station, then sputtered out. She'd spent the last twenty minutes in a coffee shop, steeling herself for the next step while savoring a vanilla latte like it was her last meal. Maybe, if she was feeling particularly adventurous, she'd follow it with that monstrous slice of Irish cream cheesecake taunting her from the display.
You're a wild woman, Bobby.
She smiled, felt the first prickle of tears and blinked them back. Damon wouldn't want her feeling sorry for herself. He'd expect her to have that cheesecake, fortify herself with sugar and caffeine, and march over to that police station. Well, minus the cheesecake part, but he'd get a kick out of that.
The bell over the cafe door tinkled and she glanced over. She had looked every time it rang, expecting to see Karl, mysteriously tracking her down again.
By now Hope would have listened to her message and, while Robyn hoped she'd accepted her decision, she knew better. Hope would try to find Robyn to change her mind. She'd expect her to go to the nearest police precinct, so Robyn had made sure not to choose that one or the one where Detective Findlay worked.
The two new arrivals walked in and her heart thudded as she saw their police uniforms. The fear only lasted a moment. Earlier a couple of officers had come in and looked right at her. They hadn't pulled their guns. Hadn't phoned for backup. Hadn't even given her a second glance. Just ordered their coffees and left.
When these two had their coffees, the younger one noticed her, then looked again, his pale brows knitting. His partner bumped into him, jostling his arm, coffee bubbling over the lid. The young officer cursed and grabbed a napkin, and they continued on their way, exchanging jibes.
The younger officer didn't look back, her face already forgotten. It would probably resurface later, when he saw her picture somewhere and the lightbulb went off. By then, she'd already be in custody.
She went up and ordered her cheesecake. While the server was getting it, Robyn pulled out what she thought was money, and it turned out to be the printout of the photo.
The cheesecake arrived and Robyn returned to her table, photo still between her fingers. She smoothed it, then stared at it as she ate.
The young woman behind Jasmine looked familiar. She hadn't noticed it when Hope first showed her the picture. In truth, she hadn't really looked at the girl at all. Hope thought the man was the important one, and the girl was just a poor kid seduced by some bigwig. Another victim in this ugly mess.
It didn't help that the girl wasn't exactly memorable. Average height. Thin, even skinny. Plain-faced. Straight, dishwater-blond hair. Robyn hated that term - dishwater blond. Even worse than dirty blond. She preferred dark blond. But for this girl, Robyn hated to admit, dishwater blond was most accurate. A dull, common color on a dull, common-looking girl.
And it was that description that jolted her memory so fast her fork fell, clattering against the plate, a chunk of cheesecake bouncing off. Robyn had seen this girl before.
When Robyn had started working for Portia, her first self-assigned task had been repairing her client's image problem with the media. She would start by identifying those members of the paparazzi who took the most damaging photos of Portia. Then she'd train Portia how to be on the lookout for them. Presumably, once they realized they weren't going to get a juicy photo, they'd go in search of less media-savvy targets, leaving only those paparazzi who didn't mind selling photos of Portia helping in soup kitchens or attending charity events.
A lofty goal. And it proved how little Robyn had understood her new job. While there were tabloid photos Portia would rather not see, soup kitchen photos didn't make tongues wag. As Oscar Wilde once said, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. For the celebutante on the rise, rumor and innuendo were the helium that kept her fragile balloon afloat.
Understanding none of this, Robyn had doggedly pursued her course. She'd scoured back issues of the tabloids, digging up the worst pictures and noting the photographer. One name topped the list. Adele Morrissey.
Adele seemed to be able to find Portia anywhere, in any disguise, snapping pictures of her cuddling with a male stripper while all the other paparazzi waited at the charity function Portia was scheduled to attend. Unable to find identifying information on Adele, Robyn had asked Portia to point out the woman. Portia had laughed. She could barely remember the names of her house staff. She certainly wasn't going to learn those of the paparazzi.
Undaunted, Robyn soon discovered why Adele Morrissey was able to snap photos, anywhere, anytime, undetected. Apparently the woman was a ghost. She didn't exist in any records, and no one in the business seemed to know who she was.
Everyone presumed it was a pseudonym. Some speculated it was one of the more notorious paparazzi, using the fake name to shelter income from a bookie or third wife. Others were convinced it was a plant on Portia Kane's own staff.
Eventually, Robyn gave up her hunt for Adele Morrissey. Even if she did manage to force Adele to cease and desist, she might actually be fired for ending Portia's best source of exposure.
Still, Robyn would find herself scanning the crowds around Portia, ticking off the names of the photographers she knew, hoping to narrow it down and identify Adele, if only to satisfy her own curiosity.
Finally, Robyn thought she'd solved this particular mystery. Portia had been still dating Brock Masters, who'd wanted her to stop seeing other guys. When an old flame returned from a year in Paris, Portia wanted to see him. Purely platonic - she really had been crazy about Brock. So she'd had Robyn arrange a secret lunch at an obscure diner near San Clemente.
Portia had insisted Robyn accompany her. She'd said she wanted to go over her schedule, but Robyn knew she just wanted company on the hour-long drive. Once there, Robyn sat across the restaurant, eating alone. Then she'd seen another, younger woman also eating alone.
It'd been a total fluke that Robyn noticed her at all. The girl had been reading a medical thriller by an author Robyn's brother liked. Robyn always made a point of grabbing the author's latest hardcover for the cash-strapped med studen
t, so she'd noted it in her PDA and continued eating.
Later, when a photo of Portia eating with her ex appeared in True News, credited to Adele Morrissey, Robyn made no connection to the girl reading in the diner. But then, at a movie premiere, she'd seen the same young woman in the crowd.
Robyn had pointed her out to Portia, suggesting that might be Adele. Portia had laughed so hard she'd nearly choked.
"Does that look like an Adele to you?" she'd said as the girl bounced on her tiptoes, watching the limos arrive. "Anyone named Adele has got to be, what, fifty? That's more of a Beth. No, Bethany. Mousy little Bethany."
"But she was at the diner - "
"Well, she must have followed me, then. It's just another pathetic groupie, studying what I wear, what I eat, how I walk, hoping to copy it and be like me. As if."
It still bothered Robyn. But no photo by Adele Morrissey appeared after the movie premiere, and even if Robyn found Portia's argument about Adele's name facetious, she had to admit that this girl, barely out of her teens, was too young to be a top-notch paparazzo.
And Portia was right about one other thing - the girl was mousy, with dark blond hair cut in no particular style, clothing that didn't really suit her coloring or her figure, and eyes that dipped away whenever they were in danger of meeting someone else's. Now, seeing this photo and thinking the same thing, Robyn realized her mistake. She had seen Adele Morrissey. And now she was seeing her again.
Adele had obviously been following Portia, probably dining in the same restaurant, camera hidden, waiting for Portia to do something or meet someone inappropriate. And the man with her? Maybe a tabloid bigwig, hoping for an exclusive contract with the talented Ms. Morrissey. That was ballsy, having lunch while "on the job" tailing Portia. Or maybe it was brilliant - what better way to prove to a prospective client or investor that she could get so close to her target and not be made as a paparazzo?
So Adele and this guy had been leaving the restaurant shortly after Portia. They'd been passing Jasmine Wills - maybe accidentally, maybe intentionally - and Portia, in the car, snapped a picture.