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Zeke
A growl rose up from deep within Zeke’s chest as he took in the empty room. He’d underestimated her.
He’d thought she was truly ill.
He’d thought he’d be considerate and eat his breakfast in the nearby restaurant since even the mention of food had turned her pale complexion green.
He’d thought he’d positioned himself well enough to notice if she somehow tried to slip away.
Clearly, he’d thought wrong.
He verified that her things were gone, then gathered his own. She couldn’t have gotten far. He hadn’t been out of the room that long.
A knock sounded at the door, followed by a woman’s voice declaring, “Housekeeping.”
She opened the door, hesitating when she saw him standing there with a scowl on his face. She apologized and turned to leave, but he told her it was fine, that he was on his way out.
“Did you happen to see a woman?” he asked. He lifted his hand to his collarbone. “About yay high, brown hair, glasses?”
When she stared blankly back at him, he extracted Aggie’s picture from his wallet and showed it to her.
The woman’s demeanor changed in an instant. Her spine stiffened, her eyes narrowed, and her features hardened. “No see.”
“It’s important.”
The woman started muttering in a foreign language, unaware that it was one he spoke fluently. She called him several nasty things, but they all painted the same picture—that he was a woman-beating piece of shit and should rot in hell.
He couldn’t help but be mildly impressed. The sneaky little hacker had taken his words to heart. She’d played on the woman’s sympathies and somehow enlisted her help to slip away, unnoticed.
Well played, Robin.
Zeke sighed and left the woman muttering obscenities behind him. Knowing exactly how Robin had gotten away wasn’t important. Not when he still had the tracking app for her laptop on his phone.
He stepped into the parking lot and tossed his bag in his latest ride, and then he pulled up the app. Ten miles, north-northwest. Less than twenty minutes away, without traffic.
He put the car in gear and drove away, taking his time. He was in no hurry. The dot hadn’t moved. His lips curled when he thought about the look on her face when she saw him.
He turned into a town center, one with an eclectic mix of shops. The locator signal led him to an organic café tucked back in one of the corners. Zeke chose a parking spot farther away, one with a good view of the entrance, and considered his options.
Going inside wasn’t ideal. All Robin had to do was cause a scene, and with her bruises, she’d be convincing. No, he was better off waiting where he was, then following her when she emerged. Once she was someplace less public, he could reclaim her and be on his way.
Ten minutes passed. Then thirty. Then an hour. A steady stream of people came and went, but there was no sign of Robin. Eventually, a niggling doubt began to make itself known.
Ensuring his cap and shades were in place, Zeke grabbed his phone and went into the café. It wasn’t a big place. Besides the counter, there were no more than half a dozen two-person tables lining the right wall.
And she wasn’t at any of them.
He held up the phone and moved with purpose, checking each one of the tables, ignoring the irritated reactions of those sitting there. At a table in the back, he found what he was looking for. A slim tile the size of a mini SD card, stuck to the underside of the table with ... he sniffed his hand. Peanut butter?
“Fuck,” he grumbled.
“The woman who was sitting here,” he said, raising his voice to be heard among the patrons watching him with curious, wary eyes, “when did she leave?”
No one responded. If they’d caught sight of Robin’s bruises, chances were, no one was going to respond.
Zeke cursed again, and then he moved swiftly to the exit at the rear of the store and scanned the parking lot.