Home Before Midnight (41 page)

Read Home Before Midnight Online

Authors: Virginia Kantra

Tags: #Contemporary Romance, #mobi, #Romantic Suspense, #epub, #Fiction

BOOK: Home Before Midnight
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She had a sudden, sharp memory of Paul demanding his laptop, complaining.
I can’t write the damn book on hotel stationery
.
 
Right there with you, Paul,
she thought.
 
But Paul was dead.
 
She was alone. She had to figure this out herself, with or without a computer.
 
She reviewed her pathetic penciled list. Too bad she didn’t have a client list for the brothel business to compare it with. Or a school directory. Mrs. Buncombe, the faculty yearbook advisor, used to insist Bailey check all the students’ names against the listings in the student directory.
 
Yearbook
.
 
The idea snapped on like the bathroom light. If she could get her hands on a yearbook, maybe she could match Tanya’s abbreviations to names and faces. A male teacher whose last name began with D; an upperclassman named Trey—no, Trip, that was it; an S.W. with a blond ponytail. People who knew Tanya or her brother.
 
It was a place to start.
 
It was something to do.
 
Nineteen years ago, Tanya had been a freshman in high school. If she had lived, she would be thirty-five now, older than Bailey, almost as old as . . .
 
Bailey caught her breath. Digging for her cell phone, she punched in her sister’s number.
 
Leann answered the phone against a babble of background noise. Bailey could hear their mother, apparently fixing lunch for Rose in the kitchen. “Bailey? Where are you? We missed you in church this morning.”
 
“I’m fine. I’m . . .”
 
Hiding out under an assumed name in a sleazy motel by the highway
. Her hand tightened on the phone.
 
“Doing research,” she said.
 
“For that book? Hang on. The apple juice, Mom. On the second shelf.”
 
A sudden wave of love for her family swamped Bailey, swelling her throat. “How’s Daddy?”
 
“Oh, you know. He’s grumpy because his doctor admitted him to the neurology floor, and then Mama told all the nurses he had brain damage, which of course he doesn’t. But basically they’re fine.”
 
Bailey caught herself grinning. “Listen, can I ask you a favor?”
 
“
Apple
juice, Mama. Behind the pudding.” Leann blew out a breath. “Okay, shoot.”
 
Bailey cleared her throat. “Do you still have your old yearbooks?”
 
She had just ended the call with her sister when her phone chirped. She glanced at the familiar New York area code before she pressed the button. “Hello?”
 
 
 
 
TWENTY minutes later, Bailey sat cross-legged on the quilted motel spread, her phone clutched in her hand. Her mind whirled. Her stomach churned.
 
She should be flattered. Nervous. Hopeful. She felt . . . numb.
 
When the knock on the door came this time, she barely jumped. “Who is it?”
 
“Mr. Smith.”
 
Steve
.
 
She roused enough to consider running to the bathroom to reapply her deodorant and brush her hair. Stupid. She couldn’t leave him standing outside while she primped. Scrambling off the bed, she opened the door.
 
He scowled at her from the sunlit strip of concrete. “Did you check through the peephole?”
 
No kiss, no compliment, no hi-honey-how-was-your-day. He was in full cop mode, those double lines cutting between his brows, his mouth hard.
 
She blinked. “I knew it was you.”
 
“You should still check.”
 
This was what it would be like to be with him: the tension and the terse replies, the sense that his head, if not his heart, was otherwise engaged.
 
Unless she did something about it.
 
“I was distracted.”
 
“What’s the matter? Is it your father?”
 
“He’s fine. I’m fine. I’m great. Never better.”
 
Steve’s gaze narrowed. “What happened?”
 
She hugged her elbows, suddenly glad she had someone to share her amazing news. Wishing he would take her in his arms. Hoping his reaction would help her somehow to make sense of her own. “Paul’s agent called.”
 
“So?”
 
“So . . .” She drew a deep breath. “She wants me to finish the book.”
 
“Ellis’s book,” he said without expression.
 
She nodded, anticipating surprise. Congratulations. Maybe even an argument.
 
“Are you going to do it?”
 
His lack of reaction brought her chin up. “I could. I have access to his sources. To his notes. Or I will once I get my hands on a computer.”
 
“Laptop’s in the car.”
 
“Oh.” That was it? “Well, great. Thanks.”
 
He set a white paper sack on the air-conditioning unit under the window. “I stopped by Crook’s Barbecue. I figured you’d be tired of peanut butter by now.”
 
A man who brought barbecue home could be forgiven almost anything. Even a less than enthusiastic response to Paul’s agent.
 
“I love Crook’s,” Bailey said. After all, if he was making an effort, so could she. “That’s one thing you can get around here you can’t find in New York.”
 
His dark gaze collided with hers. “There’s lots of things you can get around here you can’t get in New York.”
 
She waited, breathless.
 
But he looked away, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “Hot in here.”
 
She bit back her disappointment. “You shouldn’t have dressed up for dinner.”
 
He glanced down at his rumpled dark suit as if he had forgotten he had it on. “I took Gabrielle to church this morning.”
 
“And you didn’t have time to change afterward?”
 
His expression shuttered. “I had things to do.”
 
What things? she wanted to demand. But he had already retreated someplace she didn’t know how to follow. Maybe he wasn’t that different from Paul after all, she thought in despair.
 
And maybe she was the one who hadn’t changed.
 
Who needed to change.
 
She thought about it as she cleared a space on the brown quilted spread to sit and he pushed the table closer to the bed. She popped the lids from their sweet tea and spooned coleslaw onto paper plates while he shifted the evidence box to the floor.
 
Like an old married couple, dividing chores without speech. She flushed.
 
The spicy aroma of good barbecue filled the room. She waited until he had worked his way through half a pile of barbecue before she dragged a hush puppy through ketchup and pointed it like a gun.
 
“Tell me about your day.”
 
His mouth quirked. “Or you’ll shoot?”
 
Biting the end off the hush puppy, she wagged the stump at him. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
 
“Obviously not,” he murmured. Now that he’d eaten, he looked . . . not relaxed, she thought. But more approachable. “Tell me about this book deal.”
 
She accepted the change of subject. For now.
 
“It’s not a deal yet.” She chewed and swallowed. “I haven’t decided whether I want to do it.”
 
“Why wouldn’t you?”
 
“No good reason. The advance would pay my bills. I’d be able to stay in Stokesville while I figure out my next move. Or at least until the sublet on my apartment is up.”
 
“Would it be under your name?”
 
“What?” Now how had he zeroed in on the thing that bothered her most?
 
“The book. Would your name be on the cover?”
 
“Yes.” She dug her plastic fork into a heap of barbecued pork. “Somewhere. Paul’s agent suggested ‘by Paul Ellis with Bailey Wells.’ ”
 
“Don’t do it.”
 
She felt a flare of resentment. What did he know about it? “It’s more acknowledgement than I’d get if Paul had written the book.”
 
“Paul isn’t writing the book. You are.”
 
“But his name is established. His name sells. And anything I wrote would be based on his work. His ideas.”
 
“Then write something based on your own ideas. Sell that. I thought you were working on a kids’ book.”
 
She scowled. “It’s not that easy. Although . . . I did pitch my YA book to her.”
 
“Good for you.” His approval warmed her all the way through. “And?”
 
“And she asked to read the complete manuscript.” Impossible to contain the glow of pleasure.
 
“That’s good, right? That she wants to see the whole thing.”
 
She allowed herself a small smile. “It’s very good.”
 
“So why are you even thinking about the other job?”
 
Because she was terrified of failing.
 
“Well . . . it would pay more.”
 
“In the short term, maybe. You need to think long term. Look at this as an investment in yourself and your career.”
 
“What if she doesn’t like it?”
 
“What if she does?” he countered. “Do you really want to be stuck finishing Ellis’s book when you could be working on your own?”
 
“No-o.”
 
“Then leave it. Put all this behind you.”
 
“I can’t.”
 
“Why the hell not?”
 
“Because even if I don’t write the book, I need to go through Paul’s files. I have to find what he knew that would lead someone to kill him.”
 
His face was unreadable. “Sugar, there may not be anything. Not if we can’t turn up his interviews with Billy Ray.”
 
“I have the interviews.”
 
Steve went very still. “You have transcripts?”
 
She shook her head. “Paul never gave them to me to transcribe. But I should have the original files.”
 
“You have the tapes.” Steve bit the words out. “And you never told me.”
 
“They’re not tapes,” she hastened to assure him. “They’re audio files. On his computer. Paul never went anywhere without his laptop. Most come with built-in microphones now to enable Internet conferencing, but he actually used a microphone jack—you know, like some students use to tape their professors’ lectures? He recorded the interviews directly onto his hard drive.”
 
A muscle jumped beside Steve’s mouth. He pushed away his half-empty plate. “Let’s hear ’em.”
 
He went out to the truck.
 
So much for sharing the news of their day over dinner.
 
She was clearing away the remains of their meal when he returned with a slim black laptop.
 
“I’ve got this,” he said, taking hold of her plate.
 
Her hand instinctively tightened. She wasn’t used to accepting help. Particularly domestic help from a man. “I can do it.”
 
“So can I. What I can’t do is access your boss’s files. Sit. Work.”
 
She sat. While the computer booted, she retrieved her flash drive from her purse and plugged it into the USB port. The contents flashed on the screen.
 
“What’s this?” Steve stood by the bed, her penciled list in his hand.
 
“All the names and abbreviations I could remember from Tanya’s diary. Not very many, I’m afraid.”
 
“Mind if I copy it?”
 
“Of course not.”
 
The mattress dipped under his weight. Bailey glanced at the stretch of his suit pants over his thighs and then away. It just figured that the first time she was alone with a man in a motel room, they’d both be doing paperwork.

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