Adele deleted the e-mail.
Would that be enough or should she take the laptop? No. With all that had happened Robyn had probably forgotten the photo. If her laptop vanished, though, she'd know someone had broken in and that something on it had been valuable, probably linked to Portia's death -
A rap at the door.
"Housekeeping!"
Adele shot to her feet. "I'm – "
The rattle of a key in the lock drowned her out. She wheeled toward the bathroom, but the door swung open and an old woman with a nut-brown face and a shock of white hair peered in.
"Is okay? Clean now?"
Adele checked her watch, ready to make some excuse.
"You say after three," the woman said. "Okay now?"
It was 2:45. The woman's timekeeping was as lousy as her English. But the bigger a deal Adele made of it, the more likely the woman was to remember her, maybe report it to her boss.
"Sure," Adele said. "Now's good."
She cast one longing look around the room, wishing she'd searched it before getting sucked in by that damned computer. Other than a trash can overflowing with take-out cartons, the room was as neat as a pin. Even the beds were made. There was no way she could start hunting now and mess things up with the cleaner watching, and the longer she stayed, the more of an impression she'd make.
"I'll just… head out," she said as the woman wheeled her cart in. "Let you work in peace."
Adele got as far as the neighboring room when the door clicked open behind her.
"Miss? Miss?"
Adele turned, her lips smiling, legs tensing, ready to bolt. "Yes?"
"Phone ringing."
"Oh, that's okay. They can leave a message."
She waited until the door had almost closed, then darted back and caught it before it locked. "On second thought, I'd better get that."
She walked slowly to the silent phone, giving the person time to finish his message. When the light flashed, she picked up the receiver and retrieved the message. As she listened, her smile grew.
When she hung up, the light continued to flash, message delivery incomplete. That was fine. She'd heard what she needed to know. Better if there was no sign someone had already listened to the message.
HOPE
When Hope reached the rear of the ice cream stand, she slowed her jog to a more respectable fast walk. Her gaze was already on the horizon, scouring the strip malls for stores selling shirts. If the same store sold moist towelettes for Karl to clean up, all the better. She just needed -
Hope stopped. While her gaze was focused beyond the ice cream stand umbrella tables, something about those tables pulled her attention back. Before she left, six of the eight had been occupied. Now, only two were, and Robyn was at neither.
Their two cups were still at their table. At the ice cream stand a single patron waited – a round-faced teenage girl.
No cause for panic. Robyn might have needed to use the bathroom or decided to grab a magazine.
Hope called Karl. He answered on the first ring.
"Small delay." She walked toward their table. "Rob stepped away. Looks like she'll be back in a sec. She left her drink – " She stopped, staring down at Robyn's cup.
"Hope?"
"Her milkshake melted."
"What?"
"She was drinking a milkshake and it doesn't look as if she touched it since I left. It's melted, with a puddle of condensation under it." Hope shook her head. "Probably because she wasn't that interested in it in the first place. Just buying an excuse to sit down. Sorry, I'll stop worrying."
"Do you see a place to buy a shirt?"
"Not from here, but I'll go across the road and take a better look."
"Just grab anything. I'm going to start heading that way."
"You think something happened?"
"No, but I think you'll feel better buying my shirt rather than sitting around waiting."
Hope bought Karl a shirt and pack of wipes and hurried across the road. An elderly man was clearing their table, shaking his head at the nearly full cups.
"Excuse me," she said. "That's my – My friend was sitting there."
"Not now," he said, wiping the table.
"You work here, right?"
That made him glance up, watery blue eyes meeting hers. "No, I just like clearing tables. A good hobby for an old – "
"Has this one been vacant long?"
"Long enough." He shuffled off.
One last look for Robyn, then Hope strode around the ice cream stand and broke into a jog.
Hope handed Karl a t-shirt advertising Coors Light and a box of baby diaper wipes. He didn't comment, just shucked his shirt, wiped himself down and pulled on the new one as she trashed the old shirt and the bloodied cloths.
By the time they arrived back at the tables, they were almost full again. There was still no sign of Robyn. Hope's racing heart hit full gallop. Robyn shouldn't be gone this long. Something had happened.
"He didn't circle back," Karl said as they wove through the tables.
She glanced at him.
"Gilchrist. He didn't come back."
That was what she'd been worried about, that while they were recuperating in the office complex, the werewolf had returned and lured Robyn away. Whether he'd connected Robyn with Karl, Hope didn't know, but if he did, he might return for her as a way to get at Karl.
"You were sitting here?" he asked, pausing by the table, now occupied by a couple and two young children.
When Hope nodded, he said to the couple, "Excuse me. My wife was here earlier and she dropped her keys. May I take a look under your table?"
The couple backed their chairs out. Karl crouched and checked one side, then the other. A word of thanks, and he put his fingers on Hope's elbow, guiding her toward the stand.
"Two trails for Robyn, both leading this way," he said under his breath. "One coming, one going, I presume."
When people walk, they shed skin cells and hair, which fall to the ground and lay a scent trail. Hope had researched it, looking up how search-and-rescue dogs track so she'd understand what Karl could and could not do. He wasn't comfortable with questions about what he considered one of the more undignified aspects of being a werewolf.
Canines tracked two ways. One was by air scent, which led straight to a person if he was still around. The other was ground scent, which told where someone had been. What ground scent couldn't tell Karl, though, was which of two recent trails was fresher.
As they drew close to the ice cream stand, he paused. From Karl's expression, Hope knew the trails had grown fainter, meaning he'd veered off course. Short of sniffing the ground, though, it was difficult to find exactly where they'd diverged.
She looked up at the menu board and absently reached into her pocket. She pulled out her change, letting it fall, clinking on the pavement and rolling away.
"Oh, of all the stupid – " she began.
"I've got it."
He knelt, sniffing nearer the ground as he gathered her scattered coins. When he rose, he bent to hand them to her and said, "One goes to the left, through the parking lot. The other heads right, around the back of the stand."
"The second is the way Gilchrist went earlier," she said. "And the way I went."
"Then that's where we'll go."
Once past the strip malls, Robyn's trail became easier for Karl to follow, partly because he could stoop and sniff and partly because they'd figured out where she'd been going – following Hope. When Hope had run to see Karl, she'd checked for a tail a few times, but had been too anxious to do a decent job. If Robyn had stayed a reasonable distance away, Hope would never have noticed.
Robyn's trail ended at the corner of a building. Looking around it, Hope saw the spot where she'd waited out her chaos rush with Karl.
"She saw me," Hope said. "Dammit. What did she think? I must have looked – "
"She didn't see your face, not from this angle. You had your back to her. What she saw was me… and a lot of blood."