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“I was wondering if you could drive around to some of the cheaper motels in the area,” Rina said. “I’m looking for a twenty-one-year-old guy and his eighteen-year-old girlfriend. They took off from the East Coast a couple of weeks back, and I have reason to suspect they’re holed up somewhere in Santa Monica.”
“Anything for you, Rina,” Jimmy said. She could feel his smile through the phone. “By the way, I heard about your mother’s fall. How is she doing?”
“She’s healing up.”
“Glad to hear it. The world is as it should be, then,” Jimmy joked.
Rina paced the hotel room, switching from tea to wine to beer, waiting for Jimmy’s call. It came just after eleven thirty, which was eight thirty California time.
“I found that car,” he said. “And I saw a guy who fit your description coming in and out of the Sunset Motel to get something in the trunk of that vehicle.”
Rina’s heartbeat quickened. “But no sign of the girl?”
“Not tonight,” he said.
“Can you do me a favor, Jimmy? Can you make sure they stay there?” Rina gasped into the receiver.
“This sounds serious. This guy isn’t dangerous, is he, Rina?”
“I don’t know,” Rina answered. “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”
ChapterTwenty-Two
Rina and Steve grabbed the six o’clock flight from Boston to Los Angeles. Neither of them had slept more than a wink, and they guzzled coffee till their stomachs ached and held hands between the seats. When the plane touched down in California, it was nine thirty in the morning California time, and a cerulean-blue sky echoed above. Steve unzipped his winter coat and puffed out his cheeks. “So many changes in temperature in just a few days is giving me whiplash.”
They’d packed lightly, just backpacks, which allowed them to breeze past baggage claim and jump into the first taxi. When the taxi driver tried to make small talk with them about “visiting California,” Rina shut him down immediately and said, “I was born and raised here, sir.” She felt like an exposed nerve. She just wanted to see Nathan Rodgers in front of her. She wanted to demand answers.
The taxi dropped them off at Rina’s place, where they grabbed her car without bothering to go inside and drove the rest of the way to the Sunset Motel. True to his word, Jimmy sat just a block away in his cop car, drinking coffee and eating a donut. He rolled down the window as they passed and waved the donut. “I’m upholding the old cop clichés, aren’t I?”
“You’re a godsend, Jimmy,” Rina said. “Don’t know what I would do without you.”
“I haven’t seen the guy since last night,” Jimmy said, nodding toward the motel. “I imagine he’s still asleep. The light was on till late.” He tapped at his lips with a napkin, then added, “I’ll stick around just in case, Rina.”
The words “just in case” rang through the air between their cars. If Nathan was dangerous, that would open up a brand-new can of worms.
Rina parked in the motel lot and squeezed Steve’s hand.
“I’m coming up there with you,” Steve insisted.
Rina understood there was no arguing with him. She set her jaw. “Let me do the talking.”
Rina and Steve headed up toward room 12, the door Jimmy had seen Nathan coming in and out of. Rina’s heart pumped, and the ground beneath her seemed to tilt. Steve steadied her with a sturdy hand behind her back.
“You okay?” he breathed.
“Yes,” she lied.
But Rina had begun to imagine Penny in that motel room—a teenage-version, waiting for Rina to find her. Lack of sleep was making her crazy.
Before Rina could chicken out, she rapped her knuckles against the door and waited, shifting her weight. There was a groan on the other side of the door, followed by a rhythm of words, two different sets of voices. Rina squeezed Steve’s hand a final time and then released it.
“Hello?” A young man’s scratchy voice addressed them from inside the room.
“Hi there,” Rina said.
“We don’t need you to clean the room or whatever,” the man said.
“I’d like to talk to you for a moment, if I can,” Rina said.
