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“Yeah?”
“We have to get our asses back to Iowa, fast.”
Chapter Thirty-five
“Stay. Out.”
Katie braced her arms in the doorway of the hotel bar, glaring at Sean and the three Palmerston bodyguards arrayed behind him.
Sean took a step closer. “I don’t like it. Listen, what if—”
“Back off, or I’ll stomp on your foot,” Katie warned. She was wearing canvas sneakers, so the threat lacked punch, but Sean seemed to register her seriousness.
“I d-don’t like it,” he repeated.
“We already talked about this. You guys can stand guard if you must, but do it from out here. He won’t talk to you, and he might run if he sees you coming.”
“Fine.” His eyes narrowed as he struggled with something. Then he dropped his head and kissed her, a brief press of his lips charged with urgency. “D-don’t get hurt.”
“By Judah? Not likely. If there’s anything for you to be afraid of, it’s that I’ll get drunk.”
She smiled, hoping to lighten the mood and loosen his shoulders, but no luck there. Sean was a lead balloon.
Her phone rang. She glanced at the screen and winced. Caleb again. He was going to keep calling until she picked up and listened to his tirade, because she’d broken every single rule she’d agreed to follow on this case.
Run everything by me. Don’t put yourself in danger. Sean’s in charge. Instead, she’d found out Judah was in trouble and headed directly for it, and along the way, she’d made Sean promise to let her lead.
But this wasn’t about some random threatening fan mail; this was about Judah and whatever was going on in that odd head of his. Katie was the one he confided in, and something told her she was the only person who could find out what he was doing in Iowa unprotected.
She pressed the screen to pick up the call and shoved the phone into Sean’s hand. “Talk to Caleb. I’ll see you later.”
Befor
e he could answer, she’d spun around and walked away. She heard Sean say, “Yeah?” from behind her as she scanned the large, dim space.
Judah sat at the far end of the empty bar. With Ginny.
Katie had never guessed Ginny would be here, but then she hadn’t guessed a lot of things. Such as the fact that Sean had his own company plane, which he kept at the airstrip in Mount Pleasant. Sean’s pilot had flown them to Pella as Katie and Sean talked strategy, drinking Sean’s mineral water and eating Sean’s bags of chips and cookies and mixed nuts.
How had this never come up before, this airplane-ownership business? She’d flown to Iowa and back with him, and he’d completely failed to mention it.
Hey, Sean, don’t you agree that commercial airline travel kind of sucks?
Why yes, Katie, I do. That’s why I own my own plane.
And now Ginny and Judah, cozy together at the bar of the Plains Rest Inn.
Ginny, who still had a place on Katie’s list of Judah Stalker Suspects.
Not that it was much of a list, or that Ginny was much of a suspect. She looked like Bambi sitting over there, young and sweet and smitten.
But being from Pella, she had a link to Iowa, and Katie would do well not to forget it. What if Ginny had realized after Judah’s last stint in rehab that he was never going to fall in love with her? What if she’d become disillusioned and angry, and she’d decided to take her revenge?
By sending him poison pen letters from a computer at the Pella Public Library.
Yeah, no. Totally cockamamie. Katie and Sean had talked about it on the plane, and Sean thought Ben was the strongest possibility. Katie resisted that conclusion, but she had no better theory to offer. A disgruntled Paul, Ben’s sister Melissa, some random angry Iowan—she didn’t have a clue, or any motive to work with.
But Judah would give her the motive if she could get him to talk.
