When Wishes Collide (9 page)

He let out a sigh. Stake-outs had never been his favorite thing to do -- too much waiting, not enough action. "I have another idea. Why don't you show me the alley where you first saw the kids?"

She immediately shook her head, a dismayed expression appearing on her face. "I never agreed to that. I don't want to go near Vincenzo's."

"You went in yesterday."

"I know, but the alley …"

"Is where you saw the kids," he finished. "Nothing bad happened there. It might help for me to see what else is around there, and it might help you, too. It's one step closer to getting you back into the kitchen."

"You could go on your own."

"I could, but if the kids are around there, they'd be more likely to show themselves to you."

A debate went on in her eyes. Finally, she gave him a short, quick nod.

"All right. Come on, before I change my mind."

* * *

As Adrianna led Wyatt into the alley behind Vincenzo's, she felt a familiar surge of panic. Wyatt was wrong when he'd told her nothing bad had happened in the alley. That's where she'd been standing when her whole life had been shattered. But as her steps faltered, Wyatt's hand centered on the small of her back, and his reassuring, solid strength behind her kept her walking. She paused when the back door of the restaurant came into sight. It was closed, and she felt immense relief that she would not catch a glimpse of the busy kitchen.

"This is it. Nothing really to see," she added, sweeping her hand around. Several other restaurants and stores backed up to the alley. There was a van parked down the street, but no one in sight. With several smelly dumpsters, it wasn’t a popular place to hang out.

Wyatt's gaze moved down the alley. "What direction did the kids come from?"

She had to think for a moment. "From there," she said, pointing her finger toward the back doorway of a clothing shop. They just sort of materialized out of the shadows. I think they might have hidden behind one of the dumpsters until I came out the back door."

"Did anyone else at the restaurant see them or talk to them?"

She licked her lips. "Will saw them the first time they came around, but I was the only one who spoke to them, and the only one who saw them that night. I'm not sure if anyone else in the kitchen had contact with them on nights that I didn't work. No one mentioned it, but that doesn’t mean it didn't happen. They're not the first homeless people to come knocking on the back door."

"I thought you said they weren't homeless."

"That's what Ben said," she corrected. "I wasn’t sure."

She saw the annoyance on his face, but thankfully he didn't put his irritation into words. She was tired of defending herself. Maybe she hadn't made the right decision, but she'd done what she'd thought was best at the time.

Wyatt started walking down the alley, and after a moment, she followed. He seemed to be making note of which door led to which business, pausing occasionally to check the stairs of a fire escape. There were some residences on the upper floors of the buildings as evidence by the curtains blowing in some of the open windows.

"Maybe they live in one of the apartments," she suggested.

"It's possible," he said. "You really didn't see them come out of any particular doorway?"

"I wish I could give you a different answer than I don't know."

"So do I," he muttered.

 
When they reached the corner, Wyatt looked in both directions, his gaze settling on a run-down motel a block away.

"The
Fantasy Inn
," he murmured, casting her a quick glance. "Doesn't look much like a fantasy to me."

No, but it looked like a lot of places she'd lived in.

"Let's check it out," he suggested. "Maybe someone there has seen the kids."

She followed him down the street to the motel, and when they entered the building, she felt like she had stepped back in time. The small lobby boasted nothing more than a chair, a half-empty snack machine, and an old coffee maker surrounded by paper cups.

The last time she'd been in a motel like this had been with her mom, just a few weeks before she'd died. Every day she'd collect loose change from the streets in order to buy a candy bar out of the machine. Every night she'd split the candy with her mom. That sweet was their midnight treat, her mom used to say, never questioning how she'd come up with the candy or the money. There were a lot of things her mom hadn't wanted to question. Even as a little girl, Adrianna had known better than to share too much.

Shaking the memories out of her head, she watched Wyatt approach the counter. The clerk looked like a hundred other desk clerks she'd seen in her childhood, a middle-aged, balding, overweight man, who didn't look too closely at anyone or anything. The kind of guy who wouldn't get involved if someone was being hurt right in front of him.

Wyatt flashed his badge, which made the guy stand up a little straighter, and then Wyatt showed him the photograph of the kids leaving the liquor store. "Have you seen these children?" he asked.

The clerk nodded. "That's Ben. Nice kid. Comes in to get candy, doesn't talk too much. I've seen the girls in the parking lot."

"Who are they with? What room are they in?"

"They were with a woman. But she left about a week ago."

"Do you have a name?"

"We don't take names here. Everyone pays cash."

"Look, I've got some kids in trouble. Help me out here."

The clerk hesitated. "The woman said her name was Delilah, but I'm a hundred percent sure that wasn't her real name. She was here off and on for about four months." He paused. "And then there was another woman, a real looker, great legs," he said, blowing out a long whistle. "She came by a few times. Always had a big, sweet smile when she asked to use the phone."

Wyatt frowned, and Adrianna could see his patience wearing thin.

"Did you get her name?"

"Carly."

"What did she look like?"

"Dark hair, brown eyes, I think, long, long legs, the kind that could wrap –"

"Yeah, I get the picture," Wyatt said grimly. "When did you last see her?"

"A couple of weeks ago."

"Did they leave anything behind?"

"Housekeeping takes whatever is left."

"If they come back, call me," Wyatt said, handing him his card.

"I don't want any trouble."

"Then don't forget to call me, or you'll have all kinds of trouble," he warned.

Wyatt's ruthless tone made the clerk back up a step. "Got it."

"Good." Wyatt strode briskly out of the lobby.

Adrianna followed, happy to be back in the sunshine. She hadn't imagined that helping Wyatt would take her back to places that reminded her of her own past.

Wyatt walked down the path in front of the motel and around the corner where two machines offering ice and drinks were located. The motel was shaped like a U with the parking lot in the middle. There were three cars in the lot and an old man sitting in a folding chair in front of his room. When he saw them staring, he got up and went inside, as if he was afraid they were going to ask him questions.

"I feel like knocking on some doors," Wyatt said.

"I doubt many will answer," she said. "But you can try."

He shot her a quick look. "I've got nothing to lose."

She shrugged. "It's your call."

As she'd predicted, only one person answered his knock, an older, confused woman who seemed to think they were going to give her a ride to the drug store. It took a lot of explanation to convince her otherwise. In the end, she finally just went back inside.

"Okay, now you can say,
I told you so
," Wyatt said as they circled back to the front of the building.

"Can I say I'm impressed instead?"

"Impressed by my failure?"

"No, by your determination. You're relentless."

"The stakes are high," he said.

She nodded. "Did one of the women the clerk described sound like your ex-wife?"

"The long legs could have been hers, but who knows?"

"What did Jennifer do? Did she have a job?"

"At one time, she wanted to design clothes. But after we married, she got pregnant, and that seemed to be the end of that. One time, when we were arguing, she told me that I'd stopped her from having her dreams, because I'd wanted a kid."

"So she didn't want to get pregnant?"

"Oh, she wanted a baby. That was part of the fairytale, until she actually had a baby and realized the fairytale literally stunk. She used to say she didn't have time to work because she was taking care of a baby, but her parents got her a nanny, and she spent more time having lunch with her friends than pushing a stroller to the park." He let out a sigh. "This was a waste of time."

"It was a good place to check. It's more than likely that the kids are staying in a place like this and that it's close to Vincenzo's. Maybe they'll come back here."

"I hate to say I hope so, because this place is a dump."

"Yeah, it is," she said. "But for a lot of people it's home."

His gaze met hers and he gave her a questioning look.

"I used to live in a place called the Oceanview Lodge," she said, answering his unspoken question. "It didn't have a view of the ocean. Our room overlooked the dumpsters behind the strip clubs. The clerk was just like the guy inside. He didn't care who was staying there as long as they paid cash, and I doubted if he could have described anyone who came through the door. He made a point of not looking. I was actually happy about that at the time. It was the ones that looked at me that made me nervous."

"What a shitty life you had," he said, shaking his head. "I don't understand why someone wasn't looking out for you."

She was taken aback by his passion, by the anger in his eyes. "My mom was sick."

"What about the rest of your family? Someone should have tracked your father down. And weren't there any grandparents, any aunts, any cousins?"

"They did look for my father, but I didn't have any information for them to go on. He wasn't listed on the birth certificate. I only knew what my mom had told me, and I was twelve. I was in shock after her death. At first, I didn't care if they found him. He would have been a stranger to me, too, but then when I ended up in really bad spots, I used to dream that he'd come looking for me and turn out to be this great guy. That didn't happen. And as for the rest … I had a grandfather, but he was in a nursing home, and my grandmother was dead. So it was just me. It took me a long time to accept that fact. It was actually easier when I let go of the hope."

"I'm sorry."

"It wasn't your fault."

"No, but you just made me realize how lucky I was to grow up with a family."

"You were lucky. My mom was my family, and I don't want you to think badly of her. She did the best she could under terrible circumstances. Anyway, when I was about fifteen, I ran into Josephine, and she took me in, made me realize I could fight for something better or I could give up, but it was my choice. It was the first time I felt I had any control over anything."

"And you chose to fight."

She nodded. "Yes, and I thought I was doing really well. I had a good job, friends, a boyfriend, and then my life went spinning out of control once again."

"Sounds like you're going to have to make the same choice -- give up or fight."

She took a breath and slowly exhaled. "I'm tired, Wyatt. I've been fighting a long time."

"You just need to regroup."

"I need -- something."

He glanced down at his watch, and she suddenly realized the sun was going down.

"I didn't realize it was so late," he muttered.

"You have somewhere to be?"

"Actually, I do. Some place I don't want to be."

"Ah, so you're using me to stall. No wonder you're so interested in my life all of a sudden," she said with a smile. "I was doing the same thing yesterday by the fountain."

He smiled back. "Guilty."

"What do you have to do?"

"Have dinner with my family."

"Well, that doesn't sound so hard."

"It wouldn't be normally, but the last two years …"

"Oh, so the problem is -- they ask a lot of questions or they don't ask any."

"How are you so perceptive?"

She shrugged. "Am I right?"

"Yes, it's awkward as hell when I'm around. You should come with me."

She was shocked by the invitation. "I don't think so. I'm not in the mood for a family dinner. In fact, I'm not good with families. I never know what to do or say. Talk about awkward. I can't tell if people are teasing or angry with each other. I don't get the whole bickering thing. It's like a foreign language to me. Will took me to his parents' house once, and I swear I was so uncomfortable I was actually sweating, beads dripping down my face."

"Why was it so bad?"