Chapter 16 #2
Wyatt backed off the bed. “Don’t touch anything else,” he warned. “I’ll be right back.”
He raced out to his SUV and dug through the console for a couple of pairs of latex gloves. Closing the door with his hip, he put in a call to Rich Baggett. He’d gone to school with Rich. Trusted him. He was the best forensics tech in this part of the state.
Addy waited for Wyatt at the door. He thrust a pair of gloves at her. “You called a tech?” she asked.
Wyatt nodded, then followed her back inside. “Rich Baggett, you remember him?”
“Yeah.” She turned back to her room. “He still one of the good guys?”
Anger lit deep in Wyatt’s gut, obliterating the other lingering heat. “Yeah, he’s one of many good guys in my department.” How did he get it through her head that things weren’t the way they used to be?
Cyrus Cooper didn’t run Wyatt’s department or him.
She picked through her damaged clothes, held up a Bon Jovi tee. “Damn. This was my favorite.” She dropped it back onto the bed. “I got it at his last concert in Nashville.”
Wyatt checked the lock on the door for evidence of forced entry. Maybe if he lingered long enough Rich would arrive and provide a much needed buffer. Right now, Wyatt just needed an excuse not to have to look at her.
They’d almost had sex.
What the hell had he been thinking?
Focus, dumbass. The lock. Of course there was evidence of forced entry. Lots of it. There likely wasn’t a single room at the Shady Oaks that hadn’t been broken into at least once. For someone with the know-how it wouldn’t be that difficult. A damned credit card would no doubt do the trick.
“Shit. The Def Leppard shirt got it, too.” She stared down at the scraps of fabric on the bed.
Wyatt dared to step away from the door he’d been examining. “I guess your taste in music hasn’t changed.” Seemed a safe enough topic until Rich arrived.
Yeah, right. Wyatt gave himself another mental shake. He was pretty sure he’d lost his damned mind.
“Lot of things about me have changed.” She stood back from the bed and considered the room a moment. Then she looked him up and down. “I’m not that girl anymore, Wyatt. I’m a woman. Maybe you didn’t notice.” Then she headed for the bathroom.
There was no way to verbalize his response to that. Oh yeah, he’d noticed . . . every damned thing about her.
“Well, well.” She jerked her head for him to come to the bathroom door. “Check this out.”
Adrenaline sent a second charge into his veins. He stopped in the doorway. Fury chased the adrenaline through his bloodstream. This wasn’t just a random act of vandalism by some jerk from the past.
The bastard every member of law enforcement in three counties was looking for had been in her room.
Glued to the mirror was another cut-and-paste note.
Are you ready to die, princess?
“That’s it,” Wyatt snapped. “You’re not staying here another minute.”
She glared at him for three beats before turning her attention back to the mirror. “If he’d wanted to kill me, he would have paid me a visit while I was actually in the room. Clearly, murder wasn’t on his schedule for tonight.”
Wyatt’s frustration meter topped out. “You are the most hardheaded woman—”
A knock sounded at the door before he could finish sticking his foot completely in his mouth. He turned away from the woman driving him absolutely crazy and strode across the room. He opened the door for his colleague. “Thanks for coming so quickly, Rich.”
“Not a problem.” Rich Baggett, his bag of tricks in hand, leaned his head toward one shoulder to see past Wyatt. “That can’t be Adeline Cooper.”
“Hey, Rich.” She swaggered up to him and thrust out her gloved hand. “Long time, no see.”
“You ain’t kidding.” He bypassed her hand and gave her a hug.
Wyatt grabbed their jackets from the floor. Shit. He hoped like hell Rich hadn’t noticed.
“Somebody doesn’t like my taste in clothes.” She gestured to the bed.
Rich blew out a long, low whistle. “Looks that way.”
“I doubt it’ll do any good,” Wyatt cut in, “but you can check the relevant areas of the room for prints.” It would probably be a waste of time, but maybe they’d get lucky.
“Gotcha.” He set his bag on the floor and knelt down to get the tools he would need for the job.
“There’s also a message on the bathroom mirror,” Wyatt told him. “I’m particularly interested in whether or not the glue used is the same as what was used on the princess letters Prescott and Adeline have already received.”
“Whether it is or not,” Addy piped up, “this is not the work of the same guy who sent the letters.”
Her claim took Wyatt aback. “We can’t be sure until—”
“I’m sure.” She turned and headed back to the bathroom.
Wyatt followed, trying his level best not to stare at her sweet ass.
“Take a look at how the words are lined up.” She drew a line in the air beneath the message.
“Perfectly straight. Exactly the same distance apart. The letters, mine as well as Prescott’s, were not so meticulously arranged.
The words weren’t so perfectly straight, a little upward tilt on the right as if the perp had trouble maintaining a straight line.
” She shrugged. “Hands weren’t steady enough or maybe a vision problem.
” She pointed to the spacing between the words then.
“These words are spaced precisely, like the guy took a ruler. Not so with the letters from our perp.”
Wyatt considered the validity of her points. “Could be that having them on the mirror right in front of his face enabled him to be more accurate with the spacing and the lining up of the words.” If the glue was the same, damn it, then it had to be!
Maybe. Damn it!
“That’s possible,” she admitted. “But why tear up my clothes? It’s not consistent with his actions related to Prescott’s abduction.”
“Not that we’re aware of,” he countered. Addy was in way too much of a hurry to dismiss this situation. Bottom line, he didn’t care who had come into her room. She wasn’t safe here, especially not alone.
“Does management maintain video surveillance here?” she asked.
Wyatt laughed. “No surveillance, and if the manager’s asked if he saw anyone hanging around, the answer will be no. But we’ll ask, just the same.”
Addy folded her arms over her chest and eyed the message on the mirror. “Next time I’ll have a surprise waiting for this bastard.”
“There won’t be a next time,” Wyatt informed her in no uncertain terms. “You’re not staying here another night. No negotiations.”
She turned to face him in the cramped bathroom. “I thought we’d gotten past that. You don’t own me, Wyatt, so stop acting like you do. I can take care of myself.”
Enough. “We don’t have a single clue as to this perp’s identity,” he reminded her. “No fingerprints. Nothing. We’re forced to wait for him to act and to hope that this time he’ll make a mistake and leave us something.”
“It’s not the first case like this you’ve had to deal with,” she countered. “Probably won’t be the last. Sometimes it’s just the way it goes.”
“You are the one link we have to him.” That was the part she was glossing over.
“I’m not about to let anything happen to our one shot at getting this guy.
” That didn’t come out the way he’d intended but he got the point across.
The subtle shift from cocky to mildly uncertain in her expression was telling.
“You’re saying this is business,” she said warily, “not personal.”
“That’s right.” A muscle in his jaw throbbed irritatingly. There was no reason for her to know any differently. “Strictly official business.”
She laughed. “Good. I thought maybe you just wanted to finish what we’d started.” She squeezed between him and the sink but stopped shy of the door. “Because that’s not going to happen.”