Luckily, it was Antonio who poked his head in cautiously. “You alive, girl?” he asked, spotting her pale, waxy face. Kait shook her head.
He held up a shopping bag. “I brought you some supplies. Coconut water, you gotta keep those electrolytes up. Bread, so you can make toast. I brought you my toaster because Gray said you didn’t have one. That’s weird, by the way. A couple of movies I found in the $3 bin. This one’s in Spanish. It has a cute dog on the cover though.”
Kait wanted to laugh, but her body hurt too much. She smiled weakly instead. “Thanks, Antonio. That was nice of you.”
“Sure.” He shrugged, setting the bag on the kitchen counter and plugging in the toaster. “Want me to make you anything? Toast? I’ll even put butter on it if you’re feeling up to it.”
Kait’s stomach roiled. She held her breath, letting the nausea pass, then shook her head. “I don’t think I should risk it.”
“All right.” He hung at the end of the couch for a moment, then tentatively patted the blanket over her feet. “Gray also said not to worry, urgent care hasn’t had any reports of food poisoning since he last checked. You might have just picked up a stomach virus. You need anything else before I go?”
Kait shook her head again, and he headed for the door. “Oh, I almost forgot.” He stopped. “Gray asked me to grab your card. His dropped behind the Micros.”
“Yeah, of course.” Kait flipped a weak hand toward her purse. “It’s in the front pocket. Just take it off my keychain.”
She sagged back into the couch after locking the door behind him, gratitude and disappointment beating dissonantly in her chest. Antonio was so nice, but when she’d unlocked the door, she’d hoped it was for Landon.
Chapter Seventeen
When his phone rang at 11:30 that night, Landon assumed it was Carter. He didn’t recognize the number, but that was typical. Carter found it easier to get a new number rather than tell his latest bedmate not to bother calling his old one anymore. But when he answered, it wasn’t Carter’s voice on the other end.
“Mr. James, this is Ed Harrington.”
It took him a moment to connect the name to the private investigator who had confirmed that Basil Hampton was out of the country. Landon’s spine stiffened. “What is it, Ed? Is Hampton back?”
“No, he’s still in Norway. However, considering all the trouble you’re having in New Canton, I kept digging.”
“And you found something?”
“I believe so. Did you know that Basil Hampton has a relative in New Canton?”
“No,” Landon said grimly. “I had no idea.”
“Then I guess it’s also going to come as a surprise that this person is an employee of LeClarks.”
Kait awoke when Gray came home. She felt marginally better, though that could have been because there wasn’t enough left in her stomach to roil about.
“How are you feeling?” Gray asked, shutting the door behind him and coming around to sit on the end of the couch. “It smells better in here.”
“That’s because I haven’t thrown up in a few hours.” Kait spotted his keys in his hand with his card attached. “Oh good, you got it back.”
Gray glanced down at his hand. “My keys?”
“Your card. Antonio said you needed mine because you dropped yours behind the Micros.”
“He did?”
Kait pushed up, relieved to feel her stomach stay steady even if her arms were trembling. “Did he give you mine?”
“No,” Gray said grimly. “And I never dropped mine behind anything. Why does Antonio want a managerial keycard?”
Kait’s whole body went cold. “Hand me my purse, Gray.”
Without hesitation, he snagged it off the armchair and tossed it up to her. Kait dug through and found her keychain. The card was missing, as expected. But so was the key to LeClarks.
“Why does he want to be able to get into LeClarks is the real question,” she said.
Gray sprung from the couch, moving in the direction of the door.
“Wait.” Kait struggled to untangle herself from the nest of blankets and get to her feet. “I’m coming with you.”
“You’re staying in the car,” Gray said, not willing to waste time convincing her that she should stay home.
“The hell I am,” Kait muttered, equally unwilling to waste any time. She slid into the passenger seat, already exhausted from the minimal amount of effort it had taken to walk twenty feet.
Gray’s driving rivaled Simone’s as he turned the five-minute drive into three. Kait held onto the passenger side door with one hand and pressed the other against her stomach. Thank god she hadn’t eaten anything since noon.
The parking lot of LeClarks was empty when Gray screeched in. The restaurant windows were dark. Rather than reassuring Kait that no one was inside, it chilled her. She had the crawling sensation that someone was watching her from the other side of the opaque glass.
“Maybe we should call the police,” she whispered, following him up the walk.
He glanced back as if surprised to see her behind him. “I told you to wait in the car.”
But he said it without any force because he knew there was no way she was staying behind. Using his key, he unlocked the first set of double doors. Kait followed him into the bench-lined vestibule and waited while he unlocked the second. It was as silent as a tomb inside the restaurant. She could see the red pinpricks of light from the fire alarms, but they didn’t make a dent in the dense gloom. “Gray, the security cameras,” she whispered.
“What?” he whispered, distracted.
The security cameras emitted a yellow-green glow, but the places where Kait knew they hung were pitch black. She opened her mouth to say this just as he pushed open
