Flashback

“Thanks,” she said, meaning it as much for the fact that he hadn’t asked her any questions as for the escape plan.

As she pulled out of the rear parking lot, drawing some curious glances from uniformed personnel, she was relieved to see no sign of the blue car there, either. Perhaps it really had been a coincidence. But once again she had to admit, there were times when her distinctive curly red mane of hair was a definite drawback.

In case it was not a coincidence—and she was inclined to go with her gut reaction that it was not—she headed back to the hotel by a different route than she’d come by. She had Eric’s personal notes in her satchel, and her plan for the afternoon was to settle into her room and go over them inch by inch. It would take a while; he hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he wrote everything down.

But that could only help her in her quest for anything that would mesh with the new information she had from Marion’s letter. Hopefully, he would have the original case file by tomorrow, and she could plow through that, hot on the heels of the notes, and everything would mesh together.

At her hotel room door she had to shuffle her load of satchel and the lunch she’d picked up on the way—a fast-food drive-through purchase that would have made her mother faint dead away—to insert her card key again. And again.

Nothing. No blinking green light to signal the unlocking of the door.

With a sigh she looked around, spotted the courtesy phone in the elevator lobby and headed that way. She called the desk and explained her problem.

“I’m so sorry, Ms. Forsythe. Let me just check something here….”

There was a pause that went on a moment too long, and Alex’s antenna for trouble snapped up.

“Is there a problem?” she asked.

“Well…I…we thought you had checked out,” the young male voice said, sounding nervous.

“Checked out? I just got here, and my reservation is open ended.”

“I know, but…let me check this note on the file…here it is, it says you had to return home unexpectedly. A family emergency.”

Alex went cold, the chill weakening her joints and making her skin clammy.

“Who gave you that information?”

“Um…it doesn’t say.” The young voice sounded even younger, and very worried now. “But I’ll send someone up right away with a new key.”

“To a new room. And send someone with a clue about how this happened, please.” She realized she had sounded very sharp, and tried to ameliorate it. “I realize this is not your fault, but I need to know how and why this happened for…other reasons.”

“Very good, Ms. Forsythe.” The voice seemed calmer then, and Alex hoped that would result in answers to her questions sooner.

But first she had a much more important question that had to be answered immediately.

She yanked out her cell phone and hit the voice-activated key. She had to rein herself in to say “G.C., home,” in a tone the phone would understand.

The five rings before his voice mail picked up seemed to take forever. She left a hasty message and hung up to try the private line to his home office; if he was busy there he often didn’t answer the house line.

No answer again.

Damn this age where we all have so damned many phone numbers, she thought as she tried his cell phone.

It went immediately to voice mail, telling her he was either on it or it was turned off. He always turned it off at home or in meetings, she told herself. Or when he simply didn’t want to be reached, wanted to, as he put it, slip the electronic leash. She left another message.

Her hands were shaking now, and she took a deep breath to steady herself before her last chance. She apparently didn’t do that well, because the phone didn’t recognize her voice command on two tries. She canceled the effort and hit the speed-dial button to dial her grandfather’s office in the city.

She held her breath until his assistant, Ruth Epson, answered.

“Ruth? It’s Alex.”

“Hello, dear! How are you?”

A normal greeting, Alex thought, her hammering pulse slowing a bit. “Fine, but in a bit of a rush. May I speak to my grandfather?”

“Oh, he’s not in today, dear. He has that meeting with the FTC, remember?”

She did, suddenly. There was a Federal Trade Commission hearing coming up, about a proposed new tax structure on textiles, and her grandfather, as usual, had been called upon to explain the facts of the industry to those ignorant of it.

“Have you seen or spoken to him today?” she asked Ruth, who had been G.C.’s right hand for twenty years.

“This morning,” she said, relieving Alex’s worries a bit more. “He called to pick up messages before he went to the meeting.”

“Did he seem…all right?”

“Why yes, he seemed fine. His normal self. Why?”

Well, she’d done it now, she’d managed to spark that note of worry in Ruth’s voice. She tried to lighten up her voice.

“Oh, nothing really. I think I just had a joke played on me, about G.C., but I had to make sure, you know?”

“Some people just have sick senses of humor,” Ruth commiserated.

“You would know, you’ve been in that city long enough,” Alex said, and was gratified to hear the woman laugh. She herself was feeling a bit better, although she wouldn’t relax until she’d talked to G.C. herself. “If you hear from him, please ask him to call me as soon as possible. Or if he can’t get free, would you call me and tell me you’ve heard from him?”

“Of course I will. You’re really concerned, aren’t you?”

Alex tried to soothe the woman’s own motherly concern. “I just worry about him. He means the world to me.”

“Ah, child, as you do to him. I’ll make sure you either talk to him or I’ll let you know when I have. Don’t you worry.”

Alex said goodbye as she heard the elevator doors open. A woman in the tailored blazer of the hotel staff hurried toward her, already apologizing. Behind her was a bellman with a suitcase and carry-on bag that looked very much like hers.

“I just don’t understand,” the woman whose name tag read Lynn said. “The man had your room number and reservation code.”

“Man?”

“Yes.” Lynn consulted a piece of paper in her hand. “He called at 10:00 a.m., from out of state, and said you’d had to come home immediately. That you’d asked him to call and handle this because you’d be on a plane.”

“Did he give you a name?”

“No, but he identified himself as your brother.”

Ben?

Alex’s heart picked up speed again; was there really an emergency after all? Had he been hurt, injured? Was he in trouble? Or was it Tory? She knew her brother and her fellow Cassandra were involved with each other. In fact, it had been Tory Patton who had strongly hinted to her that Ben wasn’t merely the scapegrace it appeared he’d become, relieving somewhat her constant worry about her beloved brother.

Still, she hadn’t thought of contacting him. Her focus had been on G.C., not her brother. She wasn’t even sure where he was at the moment.

Heck, you’re not even sure who he is at the moment, she muttered to herself.

“He said to pack up your things carefully,” the woman went on, “and that you’d send someone for them later.”

So those were her bags on the cart, she thought. And this was rapidly moving from the arena of sick joke or harassment to carefully thought-out plan. And that made her very nervous.

“Again, I can only say we are so very sorry for the inconvenience.”

“I have a feeling it was totally out of your control,” Alex muttered.

“What can we do to make up for this unfortunate mixup?” Lynn asked.

“I would like another room, please, on a different floor. But I need to get into this one first, to make sure nothing was overlooked.”

“Of course,” the woman agreed immediately. “And if you find any damage to anything in your luggage, the hotel will be responsible.”

I’m not the lawsuit type, Alex thought, realizing the woman was working hard to make it right and avoid anything unpleasant for her employers. But right now she just wanted to get this done.

Lynn unlocked the door, and Alex cautiously stepped inside. The maid had apparently already been in, the towels were fresh and the bed was made. The drapes were nearly closed, the slight gap letting in a swath of light that fell across the table beside those windows, as if it were a spotlight highlighting the one thing in the room that looked out of place. A single page of newspaper, with a ragged edge that told her it had been torn out.

“I don’t know how they missed that,” Lynn said, taking a step toward it.

“I’ll get it,” Alex said hastily, stepping ahead of the woman. She paused only to look at the door itself; the lock appeared intact. She bent to look and saw what appeared to be a small amount of some kind of smeared residue on the faceplate of the lock.

She reached into her purse and took out a latex glove from the small packet she always kept handy. She pulled it on her left hand and touched the edge of the residue. The glove clung for a moment, then released. Whatever it had been, an effort had been made to clean it, which had probably destroyed any evidence value.

Lynn was staring at her, but she wasn’t about to take time to explain. She entered the room, and after a quick look to be sure she wouldn’t be disturbing anything else, she reached out for the torn newspaper page. When she got to the new room, she’d pull out an evidence envelope to put it in, and keep from disturbing any trace evidence or prints that might be on it. At least it was porous paper, and more likely to retain prints.

She wished she had her own lab equipment handy, or even just a lab to borrow, but she knew any good forensics person would find anything that was there.

Then she saw what was on the page, the story that had been highlighted by the way the page was folded, and her heart slammed into her throat.

She stared down at the small but painfully clear picture of the man who had been at the center of her life for as long as she could remember. And couldn’t deny what was right in front of her. The threat was implicit, just short of declared in black-and-white.

The story was from yesterday’s paper, about the upcoming FTC hearings, accompanied by a photo of her grandfather, exiting the Federal Trade Commission Building after a meeting last year.

The very same building where he was meeting with them today.

Chapter 5

Although she knew it was relatively quick, it seemed like forever before they had arranged a new room. On the concierge level this time, no doubt as part of their effort to placate her, because they had no way of knowing that this little inconvenience was the very least of her current worries.

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