Daniel fired off a text to Emmanuel. You would’ve told me if you’d located BadAss_Bandit right?
The response came back almost instantly. Bet your ass I would. Working on it. Strange, tho. It looks like his responses came from the same computer she used.
Daniel responded, asking to be kept up to date. And then he opened the slider and walked inside the room. Sunlight poured over the bed, over Clara who sat up and rubbed sleepy eyes.
“How long have I been asleep?” she asked.
He stalked to her side of the bed and sat down, facing her.
“Emmanuel got a hit.” He held up his cell phone.
She took it from him and studied the screen as he got busy packing up their few supplies.
Clara gasped and he figured she must’ve gotten to the last entry.
“Get dressed, Clara. I’m hooking us up on a flight to Jamaica.”
Travel days were always tiring but today had been hell for Clara. Revisiting the resort—the last place Ashlyn had been seen alive—knowing that her niece had met up with someone on her last night there parked an SUV on Clara’s chest. Every passing day made the possibility of finding Ashlyn more remote.
The military plane had gotten them as far as Cuba and then a chopper took them onto Jamaica. The skies had been choppy and she was never more grateful than to be back on solid ground once they landed.
Daniel thanked the pilot and grabbed her overnight bag.
A car waited just off the tarmac and Clara was struck at how little she knew about the man she’d just left the country with. Oh, she knew him in the biblical sense. She could recount every scar and describe every tattoo on his fit physique. She knew his background. He’d had a daughter and a wife, both of which were sadly gone. Whatever the reasons for their deaths it was clear that he blamed himself.
Clara didn’t want to consider him on a professional level, to evaluate him as though he was sitting in a chair in her office. The habit was hard to break.
There’d been one person in the last five years who she’d considered dating seriously, Brendan Andrews. One night, during an argument he’d baited her into outlining ‘his issues,’ as he’d put it. She’d made the mistake of obliging him, sharing her clinical opinion. Brendan had told her the next time she wanted to analyze someone that she’d be better off looking into the mirror.
He’d walked out and shut the door behind him. He was right. She’d been analyzing everyone around her instead of the person in the reflection. Brendan’s words had seared through her normally-impenetrable walls. Clara excelled at avoidance. Inconvenient truths had a way of doing that, piercing through external layers and shooting daggers through the heart.
Other than Daniel’s losses and his ability to slip in and out of the country without leaving a trace—much like a ghost—that was the extent to which she knew about the man.
She appreciated that he’d sat next to her on the trip, quietly, not trying to force her to talk. Her emotions were wrung out. The messages that she’d read dozens of times over the course of the day spun around in the back of her mind in a constant loop.
Besides, she’d been too busy admonishing herself for not seeing any of this coming.
Ashlyn had kept so many secrets. Oh, baby. Why?
The question looped in her mind on the way to the resort. Having Daniel beside her kept her from a full-scale panic attack. She knew to take deep breaths. She knew a dozen other ways to calm her mind. None of her tricks worked. There was something about being on this island, being so near the last place Ashlyn was seen alive that caused her heart to thump painfully against her ribcage.
After a short ride, Daniel pulled past the security gate and parked the car at the tropical resort.
Jamaica Royale was stunning. Dark was descending but there was still enough light to see clearly for now. Rosewood, palmetto palm, and coconut palm trees were everywhere. There were breadfruit, banana and plantain. All flourished. Ferns grew almost everywhere she looked. Hibiscus trees and Canna contributed so much color. Lizards in a variety of sizes and shades of green scattered about the pathway to the main building. The place was high end with all the trappings.
It struck Clara as she walked into the grand marble-floored lobby that a little more than two weeks ago Ashlyn had walked these same steps.
Another wave of emotion slammed into Clara like a physical blow. The only thing that kept her legs from giving way was Daniel. His arm was looped around her waist and he held her upright.
The smiles the workers wore as they passed by felt like a mockery. Two performed double takes at Clara and she instantly realized they must be noting the resemblance between her and her niece. Everyone else welcomed them with a smile like nothing bad had ever happened, which caused all kinds of anger to stir inside Clara.
Dammit, how could life go on when her niece was missing?
A dark thought struck. What if they couldn’t find Ashlyn? The thought made it hard to breathe. It felt like Clara’s entire world was collapsing around her, sucking her into the current and out to sea forever.
“Are you okay?” Daniel’s voice came as barely a whisper. She’d felt him move closer to her, felt his reassuring touch.
Clara refocused on the mosaic tile and putting one foot in front of the other. “Being here is harder than I expected.”
“You’re doing great,” came another reassurance and Clara wanted desperately to hold onto those words as they approached the grand lobby area.
Daniel had made the reservation under the name Roger Staubach in order to ensure no one knew their names or could piece together the real reason they were there. He’d said that the fastest way for workers to zip their mouths shut would be to alert them
