“Hi, Mom.” Eyes closed, Francesca rolled over, cell phone to her ear, as she answered the early-morning call.
Every part of her body ached.
“Yes,” she murmured. “I know I said I’d call.”
Carl had just left—something she couldn’t even think about right now—or she might not even have been awake to hear her phone.
“I didn’t have anything to tell you,” she said when she garnered, from the gist of her mother’s wailings, that Kay was demanding an explanation. “The Biamonte information didn’t pan out.”
“How do you think I felt?” Kay continued, her voice a few decibels up from normal. “Waiting all night long. Wondering. You could at least have let me know there was no reason to wait….” Kay continued to berate her.
This was hard on her mother. Francesca knew that. First, having lost her youngest child to the streets without a trace, and now having to sit in another state, helpless, waiting for her to be found.
Or to call again.
Kay Stevens needed to vent and Francesca was the only one she could do it with.
Still… “I’m not feeling well this morning, Mom,” she finally managed. “I think I’ve caught a bug….”
There were worms in the bottom of tequila bottles. This morning, that counted.
“Probably all those hours sitting on the street with God knows what other diseased homeless people who—”
“It’s not like we sit around in bunches breathing on one another,” Francesca interrupted. “I have to go, Mom. I need to use the bathroom.”
To lie on the cool, if torn, linoleum floor until her body was kind to her and let her throw up.
Not taking any chances, Francesca went to the Bonaparte before showing up at Guido’s that evening. She was wearing her usual tight skirt—denim tonight—black sandals with four-inch heels and a ribbed tank top that left about an inch of belly showing every time she moved. The overabundance of makeup she usually wore to make her look like the young adults who hung out at Guido’s was still in her purse. So was the chewing gum, big hoop earrings and ponytail clasp.
The last time she’d seen Luke Everson had been fairly late at night, but as head of security surely he worked earlier in the evening, too. Often when she used to make investigative calls for her assignments, she hadn’t known what she was going to do until she got there; in this case, she didn’t know how she’d find him, but it turned out to be relatively simple.
He was standing on the casino floor speaking with an older gentleman, a dealer judging by the crisp white shirt and pleated black tux slacks he was wearing. Not wanting to take a chance on losing him, she poked around the nearby slot machines until he was finished.
“Excuse me, Mr. Everson?” She wasn’t certain he’d be able to hear her over the ringing bells and machine-generated voices and the sounds of coins dropping, but it was as loud as she could manage at the moment. While her stomach had settled some, her head had not become any kinder to her as the day wore on.
Hailing a security employee pushing a change cart, he exchanged a few words. Not many, but enough for Francesca to catch up with him—without losing the contents of her stomach to the dizziness brought on by her sudden movement.
Not that there was much in her stomach.
Unless you counted far too much of yesterday’s tequila. She hadn’t felt like eating much that day. Especially after falling asleep in the hot sun with her head against a hard brick wall.
“Mr. Everson,” she said, touching him on the back of his arm.
He turned, his eyes filled with questions when he saw her.
“You don’t remember me.”
It had been pretty much a foregone conclusion.
“I’m sorry, no.”
“You were here a Sunday or two ago when I won a nine-hundred-dollar jackpot on a nickel slot machine.”
“Oh, yes,” he said, but she was fairly sure he still didn’t remember. He didn’t seem to mind talking to her, though.
“It was my first time in a casino and I didn’t know what was happening.”
He remembered then. Had she been another woman, or herself in another time, she would’ve been flattered by the appreciative light in his eyes.
“You thought you’d done something wrong.”
“I thought I broke the machine.”
“So,” he said, arms folded as though he planned to stay around a while. “How much more than that have you fed back into the slot machines?”
“None.” She shook her head. And then wanted to kill herself for having done so. “No, Mr. Security Head.” She hoped she was pulling off the light tone. “Your town has not made a single dime on me. Or nickel, either.”
“Good for you!” he said, obviously impressed.
“Well, at least not in the casinos,” she added, unsure why she was continuing with this particular conversation. Except that, in spite of how close to death she felt, she was enjoying it. “I have eaten while I’ve been here.”
“And slept, too, I imagine.”
“Yeah.” But not nearly as much as he probably thought. And not anywhere that put her out much. She could practically pay her bill at the Lucky Seven with what she’d collected in her McDonald’s cup.
“Would you like to get a coffee or something?”
Nothing in Francesca’s life worked this easily. “If that offer included hot tea, I’d be glad to.” Must be the inch of belly she’d caught him peeking at.
“We could have something stronger, if you’d like. I have friends in the bar.”
“No, thanks,” Francesca said, swallowing carefully. “Tea would be great.”
It would go well with the dry toast she’d had at a cheap little grill around the corner from her phone booth that afternoon.
He was a nice man. In Vegas.
After half an hour of chatting with Luke Everson in a relatively quiet lounge, Francesca was surprised by how much she liked him.
In her previous life, she’d made ferreting out the information people didn’t want her to know into an art, and had found since her arrival in Vegas that she hadn’t completely lost the talent. Which was why she felt so pleased by how genuine Luke Everson appeared.
“I’m sure glad your memory is better than mine,” he told her as he sipped cappuccino. “I’d have walked right by you.”
“You did.”
“Well, there you go, then.” He grinned, his gaze focused solely on her. “Thank you for not letting my ignorance stand in your way.”
“You don’t spare yourself much, do you?”
“What’s the point? People’s true colors usually come out in time, anyway.”
She sat forward, trying not to notice when his eyes dropped to the low-cut cotton-ribbed V of the black shirt she was wearing. “Okay, well, that’s an opening if ever I heard one,” she said.
“Opening for what?”
“I came here specifically to find you.”
Sitting back in the padded leather chair, he unbuttoned the jacket of his charcoal suit. “Should I be flattered?”
“I would be.” She grinned. And tried not to grimace as she experienced another stab to her brain.
“Why don’t you tell me why, and then I’ll decide how I feel about it.”
Great-looking. Honest. And a discriminating man, to boot. Who wore a suit with as much ease as most men wore basketball shorts.
Francesca pondered what to tell him to win his empathy and his help—and found herself being unusually candid.
“I’m not here vacationing.”
“I doubted that, since you’ve been here what? Two weeks?”
“Yep, two weeks today.”
A waitress came around and Luke ordered an appetizer for them to share and offered her another drink. She made the big leap from tea to diet cola.
“You’re not a drinker?”
“Not really.” She stopped herself before she shook her head that time. “I mean, I drink. Occasionally. I don’t have anything against it. I’m just not a big drinker.” She stopped. And then, as his eyes continued to rest on her with an affectionate kind of amusement, she finished, “I had far too many margaritas last night.”
His grin widened knowingly. “And today you pay.”
More than he knew. She was dreading her trip to Guido’s that night. Facing Carl.
She had no idea what they’d done. Or not done. But her braless state that morning hadn’t been reassuring. She suspected that, in the condition she’d been, she hadn’t managed to get herself out of it. And that meant, at the very least, he’d seen her topless.
Carl was a great guy. She was truly fond of him. But she wasn’t planning to have a get-naked relationship with him.
Or with anyone.
“So what was the occasion?” Luke asked. His gaze didn’t waver. Despite all the people walking by the lounge to the other establishments inside the hotel, including the casino just across the wide-open walkway that ran through the middle of the entire first floor of the Bonaparte, he didn’t get distracted. Even a little.
His attention was…unusual. Though not in a negative way.
“It all has to do with why I’m here,” she said. “I’m in town looking for my younger sister.” This was a time when playing it straight was her best shot.
He didn’t say anything. Just kept paying attention.
“She ran away from home and disappeared without a trace two years ago. We looked everywhere, had posters out, local police forces and the FBI involved. My mother even hired a private investigator.”
“And now you think she’s here? In Vegas?”
“A little over three weeks ago she called my mother, apparently just to say she was all right.”
“An odd thing to do after all this time.”
“Yeah. But maybe not. The police say they all get homesick after a while.”
“Two years is a pretty long while.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“And when she called, she said she was in Vegas?”
“My mother had a tracer put on our line when she first left. The call came from a phone booth just a few blocks from here.”
He whistled. “Definitely a lead, but that isn’t necessarily where you’d want to find her.”
She almost nodded, and settled for a tiny, sad smile. “I keep asking myself, would I rather she was still out there, lost to us, alone? Or can I deal with what the past two years have done to her? Deal with what she might have done to herself.”
“You’d rather deal with it.”
Two months ago, she’d have agreed with him, hands down. Tonight she wasn’t so sure.
When did people know if they’d reached the limit of what they could endure? Self-pity aside, when was the hurting too much?
Only the thought that Autumn was out there, perhaps feeling the same way Francesca did, overwhelmed by life’s pain, kept her pushing ahead. That and the fact that her sister was one of the few people Francesca loved.
For now, as long as she could put one foot in front of the other, she’d be taking steps toward Autumn.
“That’s what I think, too,” she finally said. “I’ve spent the past two weeks hanging out at that phone booth on the off chance that she comes to the vicinity regularly. And I’ve been showing around her picture, asking anyone who’ll talk to me if they’ve seen her.” Describing her homeless garb, she got him to laugh, but it didn’t distract him from the seriousness of their conversation.
“The heat out there has to be overpowering.” He motioned for another beer for himself and a diet cola for her.
“It gets a little hot.”
“More like scorching.” His look was penetrating as he met her eyes. “I’m surprised you manage to stay conscious.”
“Anytime I get too lethargic I duck into the convenience store down the street or cross over to McDonald’s.” In truth, she was so tightly strung that she almost welcomed the lethargy.
“There aren’t too many people who’d put themselves through that for a runaway sibling.”
The admiration in his voice embarrassed her. He didn’t know the half of it. Like the part where, before her sister had run away, Francesca had been so busy with her own life that she hadn’t heard Autumn’s very real cries for help as anything more than teenage complaining. Or how, after a year of dead ends in the search for the runaway girl and overwhelmed by her own heartaches, she’d left the country. “I’ve never been one to follow the crowd.”
“The discouragement, especially after two years, has got to take its toll.”
Yeah. “It hasn’t all been discouraging. I’ve actually met a few people who think they’ve seen her.”
“And?”
Although she didn’t go into detail about the young women she’d met, she told him about Guido’s. About Carl who’d befriended her and also recognized Autumn’s picture.
“Hearing about it from various different sources is encouraging.” His emphasis on that last word validated the hope she’d barely allowed herself to acknowledge.
She might have told him so if they hadn’t been interrupted by the arrival of the vegetable quesadilla he’d ordered.
“This is really good,” she told him after the first bite. She immediately took a second. It had been a long time since food had given her any real pleasure.
He nodded, taking a large slice. “I was a kid when I first had it—and not really that fond of vegetables. But I learned to make it when I was on my own.”
“You make vegetable quesadillas?”
He nodded.
“All the men I’ve known can’t even make toast without burning it.”
He shrugged. “I’m a pretty independent guy.” There was more to the story. She could feel it. “And I didn’t have any intention of being forced to eat out all the time.”
So what wasn’t he saying? Once, she would have asked; now she couldn’t be bothered. She took a sip of diet cola, instead. And another bite of quesadilla.
He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Not that that meant anything. And whether he lived alone was none of her concern.
“You went to Guido’s and didn’t find your sister,” Luke said when they’d finished off half the quesadilla.
Wiping her mouth with the cloth napkin, she shook her head. “Not yet, anyway.” She told him about the crowd of young women who came and went. “I’ve started dressing to fit in with them, which explains tonight’s attire.” She was glad to have the opportunity to do that—to explain.
Luke held up the last piece of quesadilla, offering it to her. She shook her head. Funny, Antonio had always assumed the last piece was for him.
“You’re on your way to Guido’s?”
She nodded. “Every night. Carl thinks I’m looking for a friend. He doesn’t know she’s my sister. It’s a pretty sure bet that no one there would tell me anything if they knew why I wanted to find her. Carl’s noticed the girls hanging out, of course, but he doesn’t seem to have any idea where they come from, or what they do, other than drink beer at Guido’s. He says he’s just glad he’s giving them a relatively safe place to be.”
She shrugged. “I’m hoping to be invited to have a drink or something, be one of them, but so far I haven’t been successful.”
“My God, woman, you’re on the street all day and in a bar all night? When do you rest?”
Usually from about three to five in the morning. “Between midnight and breakfast.”
And now would he understand how important it was that he help her?
“I’m here to find Autumn, and I’d much rather be out looking than sitting in a hotel room staring at a television set.”
He had to know how serious she was.
Holding his beer bottle by the neck, he brought it to his lips, took a long swig. Francesca envied him that alcoholic relaxation aid, but knew her stomach wouldn’t thank her if she imbibed.
“So what does any of this have to do with me?” he asked, pulling lightly at the silver foil label on the bottle.
She took a deep breath. So much rested on this. “I met a couple of young women who knew Autumn,” she told him, but didn’t say where she’d seen them. “They said she worked at Biamonte Industries.”
He blinked. There was no other reaction.
“I went there yesterday morning, and no one seems to have heard of her. But I have to tell you, they didn’t put out a lot of effort to find her.” She spoke quickly. Before he cut her off with a shake of the head, she had to make him understand that he might be her last hope. “I asked for Autumn Stevens, but I’m pretty sure she’s not using her real name. The girls called her Joy. I tried to get Biamonte personnel to do a search for me, but they refused. Nor was I granted permission to show her picture around. If she’s working there, they don’t want to know. They don’t want to be responsible for hiring a runaway.”
He wasn’t shaking his head. Francesca slowed to a stop.
“How do you think I can help?”
Her steady eyes gave no indication of the waves crashing inside her stomach. “You’re a trained detective, aren’t you?”
He acknowledged the statement with a lowering of his head. “But from the sound of things there are many trained detectives working on this already.”
“I saw you at Biamonte the other day. I was hoping you’d have some kind of ‘in’ with them.”
There. She’d said it. And now it was up to him.
“Biamonte Industries owns the Bonaparte.”
“Oh!” Her aching head pounded with possibilities. “I had no idea they had any interests outside that one building!” It could be why no one there had recognized her sister. “So Autumn could be working here.” She looked around, hope warring with her hangover.
“Not likely.” Even frowning he was attractive. “Because we’re in the gambling industry here, we screen all our employees too carefully and too often for a runaway’s false ID to pass. At least for long. But I can check. We have photos of every employee on file. And computer software that identifies matches.”
She sat forward, telling herself to remain calm. “Does Biamonte have other business, too?” Now that she knew they owned a resort hotel, it only made sense.
“A few. And some apartment complexes.”
“And you’ll help me find her?”
“I can get access to employment records,” he told her, frowning again. “I’m not sure how much help they’ll be.”
Francesca almost started to cry—an indication of how close to the edge she felt. “They’ll be all the help I need,” she told him. “Even if she’s not there anymore.”
He nodded, sitting back in the chair, one ankle crossed over his knee, hands linked over his stomach. His golden brown eyebrows were still furrowed, his expression concerned.
“The office opens at seven. If you let me know where I can reach you, I’ll call shortly after that.”
Grabbing a pen from her bag, Francesca scribbled her cell phone number on the small square paper napkin under her glass, folded it once and handed it to him. She’d given it to Carl, too, in case Autumn showed up at the bar when she wasn’t there.
“Thank you,” she said, far more emotionally than she might have done a few months earlier.
“Don’t get your hopes up—we might not find anything at all. If she’s lying about her name, she could be lying about anything else that might identify her.”
He was wasting his time telling her that. She refused to hear it. She returned the pen to her bag, preparing to leave.
She had to get to Guido’s—to Carl—before she decided she was just too sick to face him tonight and went home.
That meant wasting a night of surveillance because she’d been weak and stupid and looking for oblivion.
The quesadilla had settled her stomach. Facing Carl was going to be the tough part.
“But you said there are pictures…” She pressed Luke, refusing to be daunted as she remembered something she’d seen the day before. “I caught a glimpse of some files on a desk while I was in Human Resources and they had photos attached.”
“A hire photo, yes.” He nodded, taking another sip from his nearly empty bottle. “And Biamonte has thousands of employees.”
Thousands of photos.
“You’ve agreed to help me, Everson.” She laid a twenty on the table. “I’m not going to give up.”
“You’re also not going to pay for this,” he told her. “Put your money away.”
“You don’t—”
“I won’t,” he interrupted. And then, “I work here,” he reminded her with a lighter tone. “I have a company account.”
Which he certainly didn’t have to share with her.
She really liked this man.
Almost as much as she liked Carl.
She’d been in Las Vegas for two weeks, had made two new friends.
Her luck must be changing.