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“Does she carry her cell phone with her? Maybe we should call her first.”
Adam slapped his forehead. “Why didn’t I think about that?” He fished his cell from his pocked and flipped it open. He dialled Sam’s number. One ring. Two. Three. His call went to her voicemail. Adam wanted to throw his phone against the wall.
“We’ll track her,” David decided.
“She can’t be far. When was the last time you saw her?” Calvin asked Adam.
“After dinner. That was two hours ago. I thought she was tired and went to bed early.”
David looked at his watch. “Did she take a car?”
“Let me check. She might have taken Morgan’s.”
David turned to Calvin. “Want to do this the old-fashioned way?”
Calvin had already shape-shifted into his beastly form, his clothes in tatters on the floor. A piece of white fabric dangled from his feline ear.
The panther bounded out from the room before Adam could step out of the room.
Something struck Adam’s mind. “I hope Calvin won’t freak her out again if he’s going like that.”
David’s jaw twitched. “Let’s focus on one thing at the time. We must find her first.”
* * * *
The concierge behind the desk didn’t even look at her when he gave her Jared’s room key. Didn’t even bother to check on the computer if she was a guest in the lodge either. Sam had thought the sneaking part would be a whole lot more complicated than this. All she’d told the clerk was she was Mrs Knight, saying she had lost her key, showed him her ID and the clerk had produced the spare key without a blink. Keeping her face straight, Sam had snatched the keycard and stalked into the elevator.
Jared was staying in room one-o-four. She had no idea what floor it was on, so she experimented by going to the next floor. After a few turns in the labyrinthine corridors, she found his room. It was easy. Sam slid the keycard and pushed open the door.
She halted her breath. A miasma of stale beer and cigarettes hit her nose. The room hadn’t been cleaned recently. Usually in a motel like this, they had maids do the cleaning every day. Maybe Jared had asked them not to clean his room. Then, maybe, or more likely, he was doing something in here.
Sam’s hopes rose. She wasn’t completely foolish either. There was a chance Jared had made copies of the tape and hidden them in his apartment in Indiana. Either way, she had to try.
She padded to the closet and began her search through Jared’s bag first. Clothes. An extra pair of sneakers. Parka. What kind of idiot would pack a parka in July? Well, her idiot ex-husband for one. Sunglasses. Underwear. Eeewww… Sam cringed and made a note to herself to wash her hands extra clean. She found nothing in his overnight carryall.
Sam moved to the nightstand. Drawers. The bed. Under the bed. She went back to check the underside of the drawers—maybe he’d taped the disc to it. Still nothing. She crawled underneath the writing desk, poking and prodding. Nothing looked suspicious. Sam checked behind the drapes and every nook and cranny for possible hiding places.
Nothing.
She thought hard, trying to recall all of Jared’s habits. She remembered she’d caught Jared hiding his marijuana in a plastic bag inside the toilet tank one time. She had been furious with him openly smoking pot and had told him to get the hell out of the house if he wanted to get stoned.
She quickly ran into the bathroom. A shiver of disgust rolled over her. Jared had only spent a few days in this place, but he’d managed to turn the bathroom into a slob’s paradise. She walked between the wet towels and dirty clothes on the floor and stooped over the toilet. She lifted the heavy tank lid.
Bingo.
A big Ziploc bag was stuck in there. She fished it out. Inside the bag were more drugs in forms of pills and weeds. It also had a disc in a slim case.
Her heart leapt.
Could it be?
Sam opened the bag and plucked out the disc. She put it in her purse. The drugs gave her the willies
. She could return the bag to the original hiding place and call the cops to snitch on Jared. But alas, her fingerprints were all over the bag and every surface she had touched in this room. She should have bought latex gloves before she’d gone sneaking. Shit. She hadn’t thought about it.
She wanted to kick herself for not thinking things through.
She decided to dump the drugs in the toilet. Once Jared found the disk was gone, he would be pissed knowing that she had also flushed the drugs. Especially his beloved weed. For the past several months, he couldn’t let a day go by without smoking a joint.
