Ryan turned in his bar stool. The bar was dimly lit, but not so dark that he couldn’t see her. She was surprisingly attractive. Very attractive. Ryan glanced back at the bartender. “Is she a… you know.”
“A hooker? No. You want one? No problemo. What you like, I can get it.”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” he said with mild embarrassment.
“Berry good-looging,” he said with a smirk.
Ryan checked his reflection in the big mirror behind the bar. No woman had ever bought him a drink before. Bars had never been his forte. He was too shy. He felt like the only man in America who had actually never gotten a woman’s phone number in a bar, not even in college. Maybe I should have been hitting the happy hours in Panama.
He looked her way to thank her, raising his glass. She smiled — not too much, barely perceptible. A subtle smile that invited him over.
His battered ego swelled. It had been a long time since a woman had looked at him that way. Liz hadn’t wanted him for months. Amy had sparked him for a few minutes at the Green Parrot, then backed off like a squirrel. Flirting, however, was the last thing he felt like tonight. Still, her interest was flattering. He at least had to be polite, thank her properly. He started across the room toward her table. The closer he got, the better she looked.
She was in her early thirties, he guessed. Her straight hair was shoulder-length, a rich black sheen beneath the dim bar lights. The eyes were equally dark, not cold but mysterious. She wore a tan fitted suit, probably French or Italian. Her jewelry was gold and sapphire, clearly expensive but still professional. A stunning international businesswoman. Ryan was amazed she was alone.
Don’t see many women like this in Piedmont Springs.
“Thank you for the drink,” he said.
“You’re quite welcome. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you looked like you could use it. That’s a very stressful look on such a handsome face.”
“Kind of a tough day.”
“Sorry.” She offered the empty chair. “Care to commiserate?”
He considered it, then thought better. Nothing good could come from confiding in some stranger, however beautiful. “I appreciate the invitation, but my wife has this thing about me meeting women in bars. Can you imagine that?”
She smiled thinly. “I understand. That’s very decent of you. Your wife’s a lucky woman.”
“Thanks.”
“Does she know how lucky she is?”
It was an oddly personal question, the kind that sounded rehearsed. Ryan guessed it was a tried-and-true modus operandi, the gorgeous woman in the bar who made married men feel the need to spend time with a woman who could appreciate them. “Thanks for the drink,” he said.
“Any time.”
He turned and headed back to his bar stool. The irony nearly choked him — using Liz as an excuse not to meet an attractive, interesting woman. Instinct, however, had him questioning everything and everybody. Especially with what he was carrying in his bag.
My bag!
He froze just a few steps from his bar stool. He didn’t see his leather bag. He’d forgotten it had even been there until now. The come-hither looks had made him forget all about it and leave it behind when he’d walked over to her table. He was sure he’d left it on the floor.
He checked the other bar stools and the floor all around. It was nowhere to be found. Panic gripped him. The bag contained everything. His passport. His plane tickets. Photocopies of everything from the two Panamanian banks.
“Bartender!” he said urgently. “Have you seen my bag? It was right beside the stool.”
“No. Sorry.”
“Did somebody pick it up, maybe by accident?”
“I don’t see nobody.”
He wheeled around for a look at the woman. Her table was empty. She was gone.
“Damn it!” He ran from the bar to the lobby, weaving through the crowd, skidding on the marble floors. He nearly knocked over a bellboy laden with baggage. “Have you seen a woman in a tan suit? Black hair?”
The man just shrugged. “Many peoples, senor. ”
Ryan was about to try in Spanish, but his mind was racing too fast to translate. He sprinted across the lobby and pushed through the revolving doors at the main entrance. Outside it was dusk. City lights were flickering, a neon welcome for the night life. Cars and taxis clogged the motor entrance to the hotel. Pedestrians filled the sidewalks on both sides of Avenida Balboa. Ryan ran to the curb and looked up the busy street, then down. For blocks in either direction, throngs of shoppers flowed in and out of stores that would remain open well into the evening. Ryan picked out several tan suits in the crowd, but no one stood out. In Panama, that woman’s jet-black hair was hardly a distinguishing feature.
He clenched his fists in anger, mostly at himself. She was clearly a designed distraction. He’d been robbed. Scammed was more like it. Undoubtedly, the woman had gone in one direction. Her partner had run off in another — with Ryan’s bag.
He rolled his head back, looking up toward the darkening sky. “You idiot.”
24
It took longer than Amy had expected to fix her truck. She didn’t get on the road until the late morning. It wasn’t just a leaky water hose. The radiator had holes in it. Not rust holes. They were small and perfectly round, evenly spaced apart, as if the metal had been punctured by something. Or someone. The mechanic suggested it might have been kids, possibly a prank — rowdy teenagers with nothing better to do on the plains in the summertime.
Amy wasn’t so sure.
She drove straight to Boulder from Kit Carson, stopping only once for gas and to make phone calls. Nothing urgent at work. No answer at home. That didn’t surprise her. Gram took Taylor to the youth center three afternoons a week, always on Monday. She would play cards with the other seniors. Taylor would jump rope or play kickball, though most of her time was spent running from the boys who felt compelled to pull the hair of the prettiest girl on the playground.
At 5:20 Amy reached the outskirts of Boulder. She would have liked to go directly to the youth center to pick up Taylor, but during the peak of rush hour she couldn’t have gotten there before the place closed at six o’clock. She went home to the Clover Leaf Apartments, where she’d wait for Gram and her little girl.
Amy inserted her key in the lock, but the deadbolt was already open. That was surprising. Gram never left the door unlocked. She turned the knob. It felt different, the way it turned. The door creaked open by itself, just a few inches. She realized what was wrong.
The lock had been picked. Someone had been there.
Logic told her to run, but maternal instinct wouldn’t let her. She was worried about her daughter. “Gram, Taylor!” she called out.
There was no reply. She nudged the door, swinging it open slowly. Her eyes widened with horror as the scene unfolded.
The apartment had been ransacked — completely torn apart. The sofa had been butchered, the cushions sliced open. The television was smashed. Shelves had been emptied, books and mementos strewn across the carpet. They had been searching for something.
“Taylor!” she called, but all was quiet. Amy knew they were supposed to be at the youth center, but something told her differently. The smell. The whole apartment had that smell.
She ran to the bedroom. Broken glass from picture frames crackled beneath her feet. It was an obstacle course of broken furniture, shattered memories. “Taylor, where are you!”
Amy shrieked at the sight. Taylor’s bedroom was destroyed, her mattress shredded. The dresser was overturned, her little clothes thrown everywhere. But no sign of her daughter.
“Taylor, Gram!” She ran to the other bedroom. It was the same scene — completely destroyed. The cordless phone lay on the floor beside the shattered lamp. She snatched it up to dial 911, then stopped. They couldn’t tell her what she needed to know. She tried the youth center first, speaking as fast as she possibly could.