Worth the Risk (12 page)

She sagged backward. “I can’t believe I wasted seven hours.”

“You needed the rest,” Sam said firmly. “And now you need something to eat.”

“I’ll eat and rest when Tamara is safe.”

“If you don’t eat now, you won’t be in any shape to help make her safe. The same goes for the rest.”

“I don’t see you eating.”

“I ate steak dinner last night. Yours and mine. And I promise I didn’t let the time go to waste. I said I had news, remember?”

“You also said it was mediocre. And you’ve yet to tell me anything anyway,” Meredith grumbled.

Sam turned away and lifted the lid of the platter on the room service cart, and the scent of food wafted from the plate. Meredith’s mouth watered.

Sam held out a forkful of scrambled eggs. “Have a bite, and I’ll open the laptop.”

“Are you seriously threatening to
not
tell me if I don’t eat?”

“Definitely. I’m also threatening to leave you behind if you don’t accept the terms of my blackmail. And since you already begged me once not to do that...” He wiggled the fork.

With an annoyed sigh, Meredith opened her mouth. Sam popped in the eggs, and she had to admit the food was more than welcome. She chewed and swallowed, and almost immediately she felt better than she had just moments before.

“More?” Sam offered.

“Mediocre news?” she countered.

He handed her the fork, then wheeled the cart closer. And he waited—stubbornly, Meredith thought—until she’d swallowed two more bites before he opened the laptop, typed in his password, set it up so she could see and positioned himself on the arm of her chair.

He pointed at the screen. “I filled in the blanks. Translated all those location codes Worm gave us, then plugged in the names and addresses of every place your sister’s been over the last week. They’re all here on the map.”

Meredith leaned forward, grabbed a piece of toast and gave the screen a once-over. Most of it looked typical. A nail salon. A couple of high-end restaurants and a boutique clothing store. All of Tamara’s favorite places. But something was off.

Sam read her frown perfectly. “Something stand out?”

“Give me a second.” Meredith chewed slowly and took a more careful look, following the arrows. “What’s this purchase here, the day before the credit-card activity stopped? Somewhere called Bowerville Station.”

“That’s the bus station.”

“Tamara owns two cars and she
hates
transit. I can’t picture her getting on a bus. Even if her life literally depended on it.”

“So why did she spend sixty dollars there? She obviously bought a ticket of some kind.”

“Not one she’d use.” Meredith paused, thinking. “Is it crazy to wonder if she was trying to draw attention to the bus station itself?”

“No. That’s not crazy. It’s genius.”

“But how would she even know someone would be looking at this stuff? And if she
did
know they were going to kidnap her, why wouldn’t she call me
before
it happened?”

“Probably for the same reason you wouldn’t call her, if the roles were reversed.”

“To protect me.” Guilt tickled at Meredith again, and her eyes drifted back to the computer. “She waited until it was too late and she had no choice but to contact me. Maybe she thought she could fix whatever was wrong.”

“Or she thought she could outrun it.” Sam leaned back. “I guess there’s only one way to know for sure.”

“Take a trip to Bowerville Station?”

“Yep. Time to do what Worm said.”

“Which is?”

“To get our PI on.”

Meredith might’ve laughed. If Sam hadn’t sounded so serious. And if she hadn’t been so pleased that he’d said
our
instead of
my
. Like they were a team.

Chapter 12

S
am used the excuse of wanting a coffee refill to give Meredith some space to change clothes. Truthfully, though, he needed the short-term distance himself. He could feel the hopeful vibe taking hold, bubbling outward from Meredith. Threatening to overtake him. He liked that the sparkle was back in her eyes. He wanted to make it even brighter. But what he
wanted
to do and what he
had
to do were two different things. The case needed clarity and objectivity, and at the moment Sam’s growing emotional attachment was bogging it down.

So he sipped the hot liquid in his cup, grateful for the way it slid down his throat, burning just a little. It helped him focus. Helped him sort through the puzzle pieces in his mind. To try and figure out what detail it was that nagged at him but he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Was it Tamara’s motivation for not calling until it was too late?

No. Not that.

Like he’d told Meredith, he believed Tamara had waited in the name of protection.

So was it something about the credit-card purchases that bugged him? Sam didn’t think so. And he agreed with Meredith’s conclusion that Tamara had been leaving a clue.

“What then?” he asked the empty room.

He took another healthy slurp of coffee and tapped his fingertips on the closed laptop. Meredith said her sister was by-the-book. Sam thought it was safe to assume she was smart, too. He tapped harder. Then paused.

The police.

Why hadn’t Tamara called
them
? Had the kidnappers threatened her MIA husband? Meredith? His rarely wrong gut told him no. Besides which, if they’d made the threat, Tamara would’ve turned over what they were looking for. So maybe...

“She had to know,” Sam murmured.

“Know what?”

He set the mug down, stood and faced Meredith. And was momentarily tongue-tied. She’d tidied her hair and cleaned her face, and the clothes sent up by the concierge fit her perfectly. Skin-tight jeans. A pale pink shirt, short-sleeved and buttoned up, but cut low across her chest. Somehow tough and feminine at the same time.

“You look fantastic,” Sam blurted.

Meredith’s face went several shades darker than her shirt. “Thank you. But shouldn’t I be blending in? Maybe I should put my other stuff back on.”

She turned to go, but Sam shot out his hand and stopped her. “Don’t.”

“Don’t?”

“They sent up a sweatshirt, too. Stick it on over your top and you’ll—” He paused for a beat because he couldn’t possibly imagine her even blending in, then cleared his throat and tried again. “You’ll be fine.”

“You look good, too, you know.” She narrowed her eyes. “Maybe you need a sweatshirt.”

“Got it covered.” Sam grabbed the hotel-provided hoodies and tossed the smaller of the two her way. “See?”

“Then I’m sure you’ll be
fine
, too.”

Her eyes slid down his body, then up again. Sam saw the movement and the accompanying appreciation. More importantly, he felt it. An arc of heat that curved with her gaze and made the room sweltering.

Sam cleared his throat again—this time to remind himself that he wasn’t supposed to be mentally unbuttoning Meredith’s blouse. He was supposed to be helping her.

“Your sister,” he said. “I think she knew that the cops were involved in her abduction.”

“Because otherwise she would’ve called them herself.”

“To quote you...
exactly.
But it doesn’t change our plans. Our best lead is still the bus station. You ready?”

“As ready as a girl can be when she’s getting her PI on.”

Sam smiled, glad again that Worm had provided him with the colorful phrase. He slipped into his sweatshirt and did it up quickly, then noticed that Meredith’s zipper was stuck. He reached over to help her adjust, and she let him pull the soft fabric over her chest, standing still as he worked the zipper from her waist to her throat. When he reached the top, he stopped, but didn’t pull away his hands, struck by how intimate the gesture seemed. How it seemed to exemplify an increasing level of trust.

Sam leaned down to brush a kiss over her mouth. She felt so good. So right. Like he’d done it a hundred times rather than half a dozen or so.

Only you would find the perfect girl in the middle of all this, Potter.

He pulled back slowly, met her eyes and ran his thumb over her velvety lips.

“I’m scared as hell, Sam,” she said softly, and the admission made his gut clench.

“Listen to me, Meredith,” he said. “I don’t make outright promises to my clients. Life has no guarantees and I’d hate to make a liar of myself. And even though I know you’re not technically my client, I’m doing this as much for you as I am for the person who hired me. Probably more, if I’m being honest. So I’ll make an exception and I
will
make you a promise.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I do, sweetheart. I want you to know that you mean something to me. I might not know yet what that something is, but I do know it sure as hell matters. So my promise is this—no matter what happens, I’ll protect you. I’ll make sure that for every one I owe you, you owe me two. Or three and half, if that’s what it takes.”

“I—”

The light thump of feet somewhere outside the door, followed by a muffled voice, cut her off. Their gazes locked, and both of them went still. Then, with his finger at his lips, Sam inched toward the door. Before he even reached it, a thunderous bang sounded. He heard Meredith gasp from behind him, but he held steady and lifted an eye to the peephole. Two people stood on the other side, down the hall and directly in front of room 1003. One was the familiar redheaded thug, and the other was a man dressed in a nondescript suit—Sam was sure he was an officer. And his suspicion was confirmed just a moment later. A uniformed hotel employee approached, clearly put off by the noise. He pointed and said something. They exchanged a few words, and the suited man flashed a badge. Then he turned, and Sam realized something worse. It wasn’t just a detective. It was the detective Meredith had so unceremoniously knocked out. Brody Boyd.

Dammit.

It got worse. The uniformed man pulled out a key card, and Sam held his breath as the man shoved it into the lock. Thankfully, the door didn’t respond. Sam let out a relieved sigh and watched as the three men’s animated discussion carried on for a just another moment. Then the hotel employee disappeared, and the other two men relaxed into a conversation. Boyd even went so far as to lean against the wall.

The idiots thought they were just going to walk in and surprise them. Well, they’d be as displeased as they were surprised when they got in and discovered that “Mr. and Mrs. Hall” weren’t where they expected them to be. And it wouldn’t take long after that to figure out they’d gone.

Sam leaned back and lifted the slide lock, careful to keep it from rattling. He latched it silently, then backed away from the door and turned back to Meredith.

He spoke in a voice as firm as it was quiet. “We need to get out of here. Fast.”

“Cops?” she whispered back.

“Two of our old friends. The redhead and the detective from my apartment. And someone is on their way up with a key card to open 1003.”

“Okay. Fast. But thorough, too.”

“What?”

“Like this.” She moved to the laptop and flipped it open, cleared the browser history, then snapped up the USB stick and held it out. “You want to toss the computer out the window, too?”

Sam took the flash drive from her. “Too noisy and not subtle enough, either.”

“Right. Okay. Got it.”

She turned from him and hurried across the room to the minibar, where she snagged a small bottle of booze. She carried it back, cracked it open and drizzled half of it over the laptop keyboard. It snapped once, then went black.

Meredith shot him a smile, then sucked back the rest of the liquor. “Now we can go.”

“Not yet.”

“But you said we needed to—”

Sam reached out, pulled her close and pressed his mouth to hers. He darted his tongue between her lips.
Peach liqueur.
Delicious. He pulled back and answered her smile with one of his own.

“
Now
we can go,” he repeated.

He touched her cheek, closed the ruined laptop and strode toward the sliding glass doors that led to the patio. He closed his hands on the lock. He pushed. It didn’t budge. He pushed harder. Nothing. Sam looked down. And realized why.

He spun to face Meredith. “The lever’s broken. We need to find another way out.”

“What way is that?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

* * *

Meredith waited for Sam to retract his statement. To say he had a plan. Instead, he just stood staring at the glass.

C’mon, c’mon,
Meredith urged silently.

He stayed still. And the seconds were ticking by.

“Sam?”

“They’re going to figure out where we are, pretty damned quick,” he muttered.

“No kidding.”

“We need a fire.”

“Hmm?”

“We need to shut down the hotel down. A fire will do that.”

“And it’ll give us a felony record,” Meredith added.

“You want to take our chances with those guys out there instead?”

“No, but—”

“Good. We can fight about it if we get out of here alive.”

“No we can’t,” Meredith grumbled. “They don’t have coed prisons.”

“I promise my rich-guy persona will pay for the damages.”

“I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.”

But he was already on the move again. Collecting any stray piece of fabric he could find. A towel. A blanket. The runner from the room service cart. Even a small rug. Then, with his arms nearly full, he snapped up the laptop and strode to the bedroom.

Meredith started after him for a moment, unable to believe he was really considering lighting it all on fire.

“Meredith?” he called.

She hurried to follow him. By the time she reached him, he’d already fashioned the beginnings of a pyre in the center of the bed. He’d added a pile of toilet paper to the top, too, and held the bedside lamp in one hand.

“Shield your eyes,” he ordered.

As Meredith lifted her hand, Sam ripped the shade from the light, then smacked the bulb into the wall.

“Sam!”

“Flick the light on. Quickly.”

But her feet seemed frozen to the spot.

“One of us has to hold the lamp,” Sam said. “The other needs to create the spark. If we don’t do this, sweetheart, they’re going to open that door and they’re going to see that we’re not there. All it’s going to take to figure out where we are is one call down to the concierge and one call to our favorite bellhop and we’re going to be toast.”

And then Meredith swore she could hear the door to 1003 rattling and shaking up the hall. And it spurred her to move. She took three sharp steps and hit the switch. The filaments in the glassless bulb came to life in a single zap. And that was all it took. The toilet paper flamed up in a rapid burn that quickly caught the rest of the flammable material beneath it. But as the orange glow took hold, Sam strode to the bathroom, then returned with a glass of water. He doused the fire and smoke billowed out. It lifted up toward the ceiling, hit the smoke detector and a localized alarm sounded. Then it filled the room, making both of them cough.

From outside in the hall, someone let out a holler. Meredith wondered if they’d seen the smoke, or if they’d simply discovered that room 1003 was empty.

Sam grabbed Meredith’s arm. “Let’s go.”

She let him pull her across the room to the walk-in closet doors, which he flung open, and then he yanked her inside. The second the doors closed behind them, Meredith whipped her elbow free and rounded on Sam. But he beat her to the punch.

“Seven minutes in heaven?” he joked.

“We don’t have seven minutes. And this isn’t my idea of heaven.”

He flicked on the light above their heads. “Two minutes, then.”

“You just lit a fire, then all but put it out, and now we’re trapped in a closet while two deranged men wait to bust in on us!”

“Speaking of which...” He grabbed a spare blanket from one of the closet shelves, rolled it up and tucked it against the door. “Don’t want to die of smoke inhalation.”

Meredith stared at him incredulously. “Please. Tell me you have a plan. And then when you’re done telling me you have a plan, tell me that plan includes you
not
having lost it.”

“I have a plan.”

“Which is?”

“Wait for it,” he replied calmly.

“Wait for what? My head to explode?”

“Nope. Give it another second.”

As if on cue, the in-room alarm was joined by chorus of other shrill sounds. Even from inside the closet, Meredith could tell the noise must be filling the whole floor.

Sam gave her a kiss. “
That
is what you were waiting for.”

Meredith sent an eye roll his way. “You did
not
plan that.”

“Might as well have.”

He lifted both arms over his head and dislodged one of the hanger rails, then dropped to the floor. He drew back the rail and slammed it into the rear wall hard enough to make Meredith yelp. She started to lift her hand to cover her mouth, then stopped. Although the blaring alarms were muffled inside the closet, outside they covered any possible noise. Yelps. Screams. Breaking walls.

And that was Sam’s plan, she realized. A distraction. A completely chaotic distraction.

He pulled back and let the wall have it again. Bits of paint and drywall flew out and up, and Sam tossed the rail aside in favor of his foot. He smashed it into the wall. Once. Twice. And on the third time, it gave out. A wide hole opened up and Sam backed away.

“All right,” he said. “Use your tiny hands to help me tear away enough wall from the wood that we can fit through.”

“I do
not
have tiny hands.”

But she bent down beside him anyway, and did as he asked. And in moments, they’d exposed the framing, and through the person-sized hole, Meredith could see an identical closet on the other side.