“What kind of case is this?”
“Philandering spouse. Our target is named Daryl Holmes. In from Cleveland for a pharmaceutical convention. He’s staying here.” Jefferina pointed to the middle hotel in a picture she’d brought up on her cell phone of St. Pete Beach hotels. She could have turned and pointed to the hotel because it was directly behind them. But Jefferina was careful about the small things. “I saw Holmes arrive last night. With three other guys and two women from his company. According to the wife, the lover is his boss. Magda Lawson.” She flipped to a polished professional photo of an attractive woman. “Tall, leggy, lots of blond hair.” She sniffed dismissively. “Not my type.”
Macayla smiled. Jefferina’s type was small, curvy, and Latina. Her partner, Julia, was a Salma Hayek look-alike.
Jefferina bought up another photo. “This is Mr. Holmes.” It showed a man in suit and tie who looked like any of a thousand other middle-aged Midwesterners with a slightly receding hairline.
Mac shook her head. “Not a lot of help.”
Jefferina gave her a look. “The mole?”
She leaned in as Jefferina made the photo larger. Sure enough, the man had a small dark mole on his neck above his collar. “Huh.” All she had to do was get close enough to her subject to see a mole. Not a particularly appetizing thought.
Jefferina put her phone away. “I’ll troll the beach and pool areas, see if I can get any juicy gossip from the staff. Call me if anything significant happens. Otherwise we’re on duty until three p.m.”
Macayla really hated this part of the private eye business. Tracking cheating spouses and significant others seemed smarmy. But it paid the bills, her boss assured her. And she owed Jefferina.
Macayla hitched her large logo-bearing beach tote onto her shoulder and tipped her large sunglasses forward over her eyes as she approached the beach entrance to the hotel. She hoped she looked like a tourist. And that none of the service people she knew casually would recognize her, especially after the fiasco with her car the day before.
The lobby was open to the Gulf breeze, but air-conditioned air met her with a heavy chill as she walked midday through the main lobby. She marched up to a bellboy she didn’t recognize and asked for directions to the conference floor.
“Which one? We’re hosting several.”
“Pharmaceutical.”
He pointed her to a bank of elevators. “Mezzanine.”
The elevator she took was crowded with people wearing conference badges on lanyards. But they weren’t what she was expecting. Both the men and women seemed to be wearing a themed uniform: polo shirts in shades of beige, brown, green, yellow, or white with logos stenciled over the heart, as well as cargos or khakis with tactical boots.
When the doors slid open, Mac had to step out to let those in the rear out. As people moved past her she noticed that a few wore T-shirts with sayings like MWA: MALINOIS WITH ATTITUDE and TRUST THE DOG. Others simply had POLICE K-9 UNIT, SHERIFF K-9 UNIT, or the name of a volunteer SAR K-9 group emblazoned on the back.
Looking around, she spied a large long banner hung over a pair of doors at the center of the hallway. It read INTERNATIONAL PROFESSIONAL SAR K-9 HANDLERS CONFERENCE.
Mac turned quickly back to the bank of elevators, but the doors had closed. Damn. She moved quickly to the next one as it chimed its arrival on the floor.
When the elevator doors opened, a bellhop stepped out carrying a three-foot-long billboard prominently displaying the face of a man impossible to forget. The beard. The hair, pulled back this once for a more business-like look. And those eyes: blue-green pools between thickets of dark lashes.
“Excuse me.” She stepped in front of the bellboy as he was about to move past her. “May I?” She scanned the words stenciled above and below the photo.
Annual Awards Banquet
Featured Speaker: Oliver Kelly
Co-founder of Bolt Action Rescue K-9 Services (BARKS)
Honolulu, U.S.A./Canberra, Australia
“You dog!” she muttered under her breath and stepped into the elevator.
Even she had heard of BARKS. They’d played a part in nearly every headline-making story of disaster around the world for the past five years. She’d even seen pictures of the owner. She remembered the TV interview, not because it was about earthquake relief in Nepal, but because of the gorgeous, tall, dark-haired SAR leader from BARKS. Definitely not Oliver Kelly.
No, Oliver Kelly was a wiseass. He’d let her believe he was a stripper. What a joke on her. He was a K-9 handler. And not just any handler. To be a banquet speaker, he probably had more credentials and more honors than she, a pet detective, would ever earn.
He must have had a good laugh watching her crawl around in the sand trying to lure a lapdog out from under smelly garbage bins when he led life-and-death search-and-rescue missions for a living.
She felt her face catch fire and whipped around to examine herself in the elevator mirror. She expected to see embarrassment or fury. But what she saw surprised her.
Her coloring was high, but her eyes were shining and her mouth was trembling with a smile. She’d scorned her own interest—okay, attraction to him—because she’d thought he was a boastful, egotistical slacker accustomed to getting by on his looks and potential sexual charm. She’d never given him a chance.
Maybe she hadn’t been fair.
Maybe she owed him an apology.
Maybe Oliver Kelly was more than a pretty face. That meant he had to be taken seriously. And if she did so, it might turn out that he was pretty damn awesome.
Ugh! She’d done what she disliked in others. She’d been blinded by her preconceived notions and had behaved badly toward a man who had only been trying to help her. One who’d put his physical well-being at risk for her.
She hadn’t wanted to admit what tingled through her body as proof. She was very attracted to him.
And also running scared.
A man like Oliver Kelly would never need to spend a night alone. He was gorgeous, a celeb, and probably wealthy. Either way she added it up, she didn’t see how she’d ever fit in his world.
“Excuse me. Coming or going?”
A man in a magenta shirt was staring at her. How long had she been holding the elevator doors open while her thoughts had been a million miles away, on Island Oliver?
She hurried through the doors onto a floor filled with a much larger press of people exuding the air of anticipated business deals.
Mac did a mental adjustment as the pair of men nearest gave her outfit the once-over. Everything else on her mind vanished as she gave them the mole check in return. Jefferina expected her to be on the job for the next few hours. And she needed the money.
* * *
Three and a half hours later, Mac stood at the back of a sea of people waiting for the bank of elevators that were always full when they stopped at this floor. At the end of her first stakeout, she’d learned three things.
There’s nothing more boring for an outsider than an industry conference that involves highly specialized subjects such as Innovative Research, Manufacturing Parameters, Clinical Strategies, Risk Management and Consequences, or Regulatory Challenges in Drug Design and Discovery Involving Parenterals.
Sure, there was serious business going on behind the closed doors with workshop titles longer than some song lyrics. But out in the corridors, it was a hotbed of social interaction that made Happy Hour at Hooters look like slack time. Lots of too-bright laughter, arm touching, one-arm hugging, and suggestive kidding filled the space with sound and movement.
Thankfully, Daryl Holmes wasn’t difficult to find. A quick perusal of the schedule and there was his name, listed as co-presenting something called Novelties in Pre-Filled Syringe Products. She’d slipped into the session and waited until the speakers were introduced, thereby identifying her target—no mole gazing required. Once he was spotted, she’d slipped out to play video games on her phone while she waited for the workshop to be over.
When he emerged, she approached him to offer her own congratulations for a speech she hadn’t listened to.
He’d seemed glad to have someone, anyone, to chat with. He’d even invited her to join him for the luncheon.
By the end of the meal she was pretty certain the only thing straying in his marriage was his wife’s imagination. He’d sounded and acted in every way like a married man. There’d been pictures of his two children produced and then photos of their dog Sofie, a gregarious-looking mutt who loved Slip ’n Slides as much as his kids.
“I don’t think he’s cheating on his wife,” she’d reported by phone to Jefferina from a stall in the ladies’ room at the end of her allotted time. “He doesn’t seem to have the imagination or energy.”
“I agree. Ms. Lawson definitely has her sights on someone else. I’ve been watching them flirt for the past hour poolside. If she flips her hair one more time I may have to go over there and slap her on behalf of grown-up women everywhere. We’re done here. Need a lift?”
“No, I’m going to sit on the beach a while and enjoy the view.” Mac had tucked a swimsuit and a towel into her bag to make her cover story as a hotel guest more believable.
“Good for you. You need a life, Mac.”
It was true. For all the time she’d spent at the beach since moving back ten months before, she might as well have lived a hundred miles inland.
Now that she’d had time to think about it, she didn’t have a single legitimate reason to seek out Oliver Kelly. What was she going to say—Hi, I’d like to talk you now that I know you’re someone important?
That phrase had both fan-girl and stalker-y elements all over it. No, she’d had her chance. Time to absorb some healthy vitamin D.
Five long minutes after standing in line, she was finally at the front when the elevator doors opened. It was already nearly full of conferees wearing badges for the K-9 SAR conference. Mac wedged herself in, trying to ignore the tall man next to her who boldly looked down her front. Being short had a few disadvantages.
“Hey, you. Up here.” When he jerked his gaze up from her bosom to her face she said, “Do you know Oliver Kelly?”
A grin split his face. “Sure. Well, I mean, we all know him. BARKS is a legend among SAR handlers. I’ve seen him in action. He’s great, isn’t he?”
Murmurs of admiration filled the elevator as it stopped at the first mezzanine. Mac backed up to allow everyone else to exit. A legend?
As the doors were closing, she suddenly changed her mind and popped out of the elevator and into the sea of search-and-rescue conferees.
* * *
Oliver stood at the podium in the empty ballroom, white-knuckling the sides as if he thought it might heave up and toss him off. He felt besieged. Sweat dotted his brow. His shoulders were hunched against imminent attack. His brows rode so low his eyes were hidden beneath the furrowed ridge. Was he Captain Ahab who’d sighted Moby Dick?
He looked across the sea of white-linen-covered tables and empty chairs as it dawned on him who the great white whale was. Once this space filled to capacity tonight, he would be the one harpooned by fear. Mute, furious, and without defense.
“Shit.” He swallowed, blinking furiously. He’d been in tight spots plenty of times, environs that threatened his and Jackeroo’s lives. He’d come up against the possibility of real bullets and natural threats of many kinds. This large banquet space should not frighten a grown man. That’s why he’d come here to face his demons. But the watery gut feeling flowing through him couldn’t be conquered.
Everything he thought he knew about himself was on the line. And he didn’t have a clue how to conquer his imminent sense of failure.
He’d pulled people out of raging rivers.
He and Jackeroo had recently found a young girl who’d been buried in a mudslide, digging her out just seconds before she smothered.
He’d even shot enemy insurgents who were killing first-aid workers in an encampment for survivors of disaster. He was strong, resourceful, the person other SAR team members leaned on in times of crisis. Why, then, was sweat pouring into his eyes as his fingers dug into the wood of the podium?
The pulse pounding in his temples was pure fight or flight. There was still time to get the hell out of here. There were planes leaving town before seven p.m. No one would question it. There were a dozen good reasons why he might be instantly called away. His and Jackeroo’s skills needed somewhere else.
Should he do that? Desert his duty? Humiliated. Desperate. A coward.
“Hi.”
He startled and blinked. He hadn’t paid any attention to the figure who’d slipped in a side door near the podium, thinking it was a server checking the room. Now he saw that the person who had come in stood staring at him. She was a looker, petite but in high-heeled sandals that made the most of her muscled tan legs. And even the loose top didn’t deceive a man of his experience. She had a rack worth gazing at. It was when he reached her face that he got a tiny jolt of surprise.
“Macayla.” He blinked again, to clear his thoughts. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” She looked embarrassed. “I was just in the hotel, for another reason, when I saw a poster with your face on it out in the hall.”
She smiled at him. Something in his middle jumped. She had the nicest smile. Why didn’t she smile more often? “I’m impressed, Mr. Kelly. You’re the conference banquet speaker.”
He winced at her words, reminded of how undeserving he was at the moment of her admiration. His stomach heaved again, and not in any good way. And then he was moving, fast, away from the podium and toward her.
He scooped a hand under her elbow to propel her along with him as he marched down the main aisle toward the nearest exit.
“Come on. I need to get out of here. Now.”