Get Lucky (12 page)

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London stared at the printer as it took its time printing out the checkouts for the day. She’d slept well last night, in spite of staying up late having sex with Marc. And she’d woken up at her usual time; although they’d fucked again, it hadn’t seemed to wear her out at the time. Now she was exhausted.

The note sent with the pictures hadn’t made sense. The pictures were more disturbing. There were only two of them this time. Her mom walking toward the camera with two men on either side of her. It almost looked as if she was in handcuffs. The men’s heads were down and they weren’t in any kind of uniform, but a lot of detectives wore street clothes. The picture of London’s father was similar. He glared at the camera, appearing fit to be tied. London knew that look. Johnnie Brooke glared as if he would kill the next person who said the wrong thing to him. His cheeks were flushed and his lips pressed into a straight line. She swore she felt his anger just staring at the picture.

Before Marc got out of the shower she’d shoved the photos with the rest of the pictures in her middle dresser drawer and tried putting them out of her mind. Her parents had been arrested. It really sucked. Not that she had planned on seeing them anytime soon or had a clue where they were when they were arrested, but knowing now that they were gone left an unsettling feeling inside her. Weirder yet, someone wanted her to know her parents were busted, someone who knew it was going to happen before it happened. It sure as hell wasn’t standard protocol to mail pictures to the family when a criminal was about to go down. London was more than a bit freaked out thinking whoever took those pictures might approach her soon.

London didn’t worry enough that she was in any kind of danger. It still would be nice to talk to someone about it. She’d come real close to saying something to Marc when he got out of the shower. It had been time to leave, though. Marc didn’t follow her out to the lodge, which she told herself was for the best. Cliff was never in this early, but she didn’t want more crap for being seen with Marc. She was curious where he went, though.

“How many checkouts do we have today?” Sally came around the side of the counter, her brown hair pulled back tight against her head and gray streaks dominating along her temples.

She wore her usual scowl, but Sally was okay. London figured years of frowning had created the permanent expression on Sally’s face. In truth, she was usually a pretty cheerful person.

“They’re printing right now,” London told her, glancing over her shoulder. “I’ve got coffee made in the break room.”

Sally held up her mug. “And it’s appreciated,” she said. When she grinned, her skin stretched over her gaunt face, as if her face wasn’t used to moving that way. She had buck teeth and was anything but pretty. Sally was always on time, though, worked hard, never complained, and never missed work. “Sounds like we’re getting more snow today,” she said, apparently willing to camp out and kill time until she had her list of rooms.

“Looks like it.” London glanced toward the front windows and the heavy gray day looming outside. The walking tour might be canceled again tonight. She needed the money, but getting home early sounded good. If she were smart, she would encourage herself to look forward to an evening alone. Up until Marc sauntering into her life she never gave a thought to her evenings. They were always the same and always spent alone. If she did meet up with anyone it was never at her house.

“Here you go,” she said, pulling the list from the printer and walking over to the counter to separate the copies. One for their paperwork and one for Housekeeping.

Sally picked up her copies as London handed them to her, glancing over each page. “Looks like that sex god checked out. Damn shame. He tipped well.”

Her words reached London slowly. When their meaning sunk in, London scanned the list of rooms.

“This is a mistake,” she said, staring at Marc’s name. “He isn’t checking out.”

“I don’t make the list.” Sally grabbed her papers and started around the corner. “I’ll get the girls working. Let me know if the list is wrong.”

London nodded and grunted but didn’t watch Sally walk off. She stared at the list. According to what it said here, he did the self-checkout less than an hour ago. But he hadn’t even returned to the lodge yet. Grabbing the phone, she rang his room. There wasn’t an answer.

It was a mistake. She would figure it out. Several guests came to the front desk. She helped them, greeted some early arrivals who wanted to know if they could have an early check-in, and even ran towels to several rooms when things got busy. It was a typical morning, and activities she usually didn’t mind doing. Today, though, she grumbled at each new task as it came her way. It seemed everything and everyone was against her finding out why the printout said Marc had checked out.

London came down the second-floor hallway shortly after lunch and paused at the Housekeeping cart.

“You knew I was going to clean his room,” Sally said, popping out of the room and grabbing clean glasses. She held up a twenty-dollar bill between two bony fingers. “I told you the sex god was a good tipper.”

London almost tripped over the cart. She stared past Sally into the empty room. All morning London had believed there was a mistake. Marc didn’t check out. Why would he? Now, as she stared at the empty room, her throat swelled closed before she could answer. Emotions hit her so hard she couldn’t identify them, let alone deal with them.

“Good,” she managed to cough out, and hurried down the hall.

Marc didn’t just leave. They’d had the perfect night, the perfect morning, and he was going to see her again. She couldn’t accept he would check out and not even say good-bye or at the very least, give some explanation as to why he would leave long before he’d planned.

The rest of the afternoon went by in a blur. Her confusion switched to anger, though, by the time she learned there would be a walking tour tonight. It was snowing again when she drove home. London wouldn’t let being here alone bother her; she wouldn’t lose sleep or shed a tear over a man she’d known less than two weeks. As she headed into her kitchen and leaned against her counter, knowing she was in there to fix food but doubtful she’d be able to swallow a bite of anything, she told herself Marc King wasn’t even worth getting angry over.

“He left without even saying good-bye. He’s a shallow, spineless chickenshit. That’s why.” She glared at her floor, letting her anger release. She’d let it out and then be done with it. “And good riddance, too. Any man who starts something but then is too much of a coward to hang around the moment it goes beyond physical is a coward. And cowards don’t turn me on.”

Chapter Seven

Marc pulled into his driveway behind his dad’s Avalanche later that night. He’d gained an hour but was still beyond exhausted after the fourteen-hour drive. As he turned the car off, the front door opened and Jake stepped outside.

“Hard to believe I left a blizzard and came home to this,” Marc said, holding the sweater he’d peeled off several hours ago and walking around to his trunk.

“Man, it’s cold as hell tonight,” Jake said, scowling at the bags Marc unloaded from his car. “I wouldn’t hurry too much to unpack.”

“Why? What have you learned?” Marc had gone into auto-drive the second Jake called and told him Mom and Dad were missing. “Do you have a lead on where they might be?”

“Nothing is confirmed. I was just going over those pictures some more.”

“Let me see them.” Marc grabbed his suitcase and duffel bag and let Jake take the laptop, then followed him inside.

“How was your trip?” Natasha stood in the doorway off the living room leading into KFA’s business office. She looked pale and her eyes were puffy, as if she’d been crying.

“Long,” he said, dropping his luggage by the couch, then tousling her hair when he followed Jake into the office. “How long have they been gone now?”

“We got the latest batch of pictures last night. None of us were home, so I couldn’t say when they arrived, but they’re like all the rest.” Jake crossed his arms over his chest as he scowled at Marc. “Dad and Mom went to a movie and didn’t come home. The note in the pictures says they’re gone.”

“Three sets of pictures, huh?” Marc stared at the packages laid out on Natasha’s desk. All three packages were handwritten, addressed to the Kings with their personal street address. “And you think Dad and Mom were taken before the last set of pictures arrived?”

“What do you think?” Jake slid one of the packages toward Marc.

He dumped the pictures out and stared at two glossy eight-by-tens. They were in color, taken by a fairly expensive camera if the detail caught in the snapshot was any indication. The first shot was of Mom with two men he didn’t recognize walking on either side of her. She glared at the camera, pissed as hell. Both men had their heads down, making it hard to identify them.

Marc lifted the other picture, one of Dad. He also appeared livid. The way his hands were behind his back, it looked as if he might be handcuffed. The hateful stare he gave whoever took the picture would have many men shaking in their boots. There were two men on either side of Marc’s father, again with their heads down, and dwarfed with Greg King walking between them. Marc would guess the men to be about six feet tall, since his father was six feet, four inches.

“This is the note that was with those two pictures.” Natasha handed him a plain white piece of paper.

“‘As promised, your parents are gone. Let the game begin!’” Marc read out loud, and stared at the simple Comic Sans font with the two-line message typed in the middle of the page. “‘Game begin’? What does that mean?”

“Well, if there is a connection between these pictures and Marty Byrd’s game he mentioned to Dad before Byrd died, then someone has picked up where he left off,” Jake said, repeating what Greg King had said to Marc on the phone the other night.

“Where’s the other note?” Marc asked, moving the pictures around on Natasha’s desk. The shots his brother had described were even spookier to stare at in person. Shots of his mother and father on their cruise and pictures of Mom and Natasha shopping went beyond an invasion of privacy. Marc had seen pictures taken by private dicks when they were out to bust a cheating spouse. These weren’t intimate shots taken through a window or from the end of some dark alley. They were taken in public settings with Marc’s family members happy and enjoying time spent with each other. They weren’t doing anything wrong.

A moment of their lives was stolen by some asshole. These pictures were sent to flaunt how close their captors were prior to taking Mom and Dad. It was all Marc could do to maintain the violent rage threatening to rush his insides.

“‘Say good-bye to your mother and father. You’re never going to see them again,’” he read out loud, his teeth clenched as he fought to focus and not rip the paper to shreds.

Greg King was a rock, the one solid, impermeable part of their lives growing up. He was also one of the best bounty hunters in the nation, his reputation as solid as his nature. Their mom was just as strong a woman as their father was a man. It scared the crap out of Marc that someone was able to kidnap both of them. Marc remembered his father “letting” himself be captured when they’d been down in Mexico just so he could learn more about what Marty Byrd was up to. He couldn’t imagine his father doing the same thing again, especially when Marc and Jake’s mother was abducted, too.

“They were threatening us and flaunting how close they were with these pictures,” Natasha said, voicing Marc’s thoughts. “Uncle Greg was outraged the moment he saw these.”

“I can see why. I would have been, too,” Marc said. “Hell, I am pissed. Who would take the two of them, and why?”

Marc compared the first and second notes. Same font, typed in the same location on the page. The notes were identical other than the message. “This is fucking insane,” he snarled, slapping the first note on top of the other on Natasha’s desk.

“No shit,” Jake agreed.

“I noticed this,” Natasha said, shoving her long, thick black hair over her shoulder as she leaned across her desk and rested her elbows against it. She tapped a fingernail on one of the shots. “Look at this,” she said. “See those buildings behind where Aunt Haley is walking with those men?”

“What about them?” Marc leaned forward as well, realizing at that moment how similar Natasha’s long black hair was to London’s. He needed to call London as soon as possible and should have done so when driving home. He’d been so infuriated and shocked when Jake called after he’d left London’s and told him Mom and Dad never came home from their movie the night before and now weren’t answering their cells, Marc had headed home without hesitating. If it weren’t for the note and new set of pictures saying they were gone, Marc might have believed the two of them simply took off for some alone time. He’d rushed out of there, filling out the quick checkout form and slapping it in the hands of the night auditor before racing out the back door of the lodge.

Maybe Marc had intentionally avoided London when he left, knowing she would have been pissed and hurt. He wasn’t done with her. That much held strong in his gut. But he needed to know what was going on with his parents. Marc wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he stayed there, falling hard for a beautiful woman, instead of jumping on all clues around his parents’ abduction while the clues were fresh.

He refused to believe leaving without saying good-bye had anything to do with how fast his feelings for her were growing. It would do them both good to slow down, and learning what the hell had happened to his parents took precedence over anything else.

“We’ve been there before. I know we have.” Natasha snapped him out of his thoughts as she tapped her finger on the glossy photo paper. “I don’t think this is Photoshop. So either whoever took these are willing to give us clues to allow us to go after them or they’re idiots.”

“Or both,” Jake hissed.

“I vote for the latter, and let me see that.” Marc reached for the picture and Natasha handed it to him.

His brother and cousin stood on either side of him as Marc stared at the picture. “You’re right,” he told Natasha without looking at her. He held the picture up so it was in front of all three of them. “We’ve been there before. Let me think.”

Silence grew in the room as the three of them studied the shot. Marc grabbed the picture of his father between the same two men and held both of them up, catching the same buildings at different angles. The background wasn’t as obvious in the picture with Greg and his captors, assuming that was who the men were, because the camera had zoomed in closer to the men. They blocked the view behind them but not completely.

“It’s cold, wherever they are,” Jake said, breaking the silence. “The men are wearing long coats and Mom is hugging herself. Dad is too pissed to be cold,” he added, but no one laughed at his comment.

“Where have all of us traveled together?” Marc asked.

“When we were kids we all went camping.” Jake started pacing, walking to the entrance to the KFA office facing the street, then back to the desk.

“We did? I went with you?” Natasha scowled and pressed her finger against her lips. “Wait. You’re right. God, we were all kids. Where did we go?”

Marc leaned against Natasha’s desk, glancing from one picture to the next while his younger brother and cousin brainstormed on all of the vacations they’d taken together over the years. Natasha had been included in almost every family vacation the King family went on. Uncle George would drop her off, Natasha with her suitcase in hand and a book tucked under her arm.

Marc continued studying the pictures, growing angrier by the minute. His dad didn’t give him a clue, not any indication something of this magnitude was going down. If he’d been here instead of parading around in the mountains and snow, maybe he would have picked up on something. The goddamn pictures were left practically under their noses. If he’d been here he could have seen something, someone, picked up on a clue. Instead, now all they had were these fucking pictures mocking them.

“Wait! I’ve got it!” Natasha rushed to Marc’s side and almost ripped the picture from his hand.

“What?” he demanded, still feeling the rage boil inside him.

“Remember when we all went to see all those ghost towns? God. Was it in Arizona?”

“Natasha, you’re right.” Marc faced her desk and spread the pictures out, leaning over and staring at the two where his parents were walking in front of the buildings. “What are the fucking odds?” he whispered under his breath.

“What do you mean?” Jake asked, moving in alongside Natasha’s desk and pressing his fists on top of it as he leaned in as well.

“That they’d take our parents to a place we’d all been to before.”

“Let me make sure,” Natasha said, scooting in around her desk. She sat and started typing. “Is that when we stayed at that bed-and-breakfast?”

Jake snapped his fingers. “That’s right! Mom insisted we stay at this huge old house and the owners were all over the three of us.”

“They thought because we were teenagers we would be nothing but trouble,” Marc remembered. “I swear that old bitch followed me around with a frying pan in her hands, threatening to knock me upside the head with it if I ran through her house or made too much noise.”

“Remember when the three of us went outside and she was sure we were out there smoking?”

Jake made a snorting sound. “Yeah. She thought we were smoking those funny cigarettes.”

“That was the vacation from hell,” Marc grumbled. His parents had fought all the way through it. “I almost became a bookworm just like you in order to hide from everyone.”

Natasha made a face at him but shifted her attention back to her computer screen before speaking. “There were advantages to always having my face in a book. Everyone left me alone.”

Marc was pretty sure Natasha read all the time to escape from her home life. Her father was more interested in playing the field than raising a daughter, and her mother had taken off on them when Natasha had been really young. Marc knew his parents included Natasha in their family outings as often as they did because Uncle George pushed them to take her off his hands.

Marc wondered if London had been an ugly duckling as a kid the way Natasha had been. It wasn’t until his cousin turned sixteen or so that Marc started wishing they weren’t related. They had been short-lived fantasies. Natasha was his cousin, had been practically raised as a sister, and thinking of her any way other than that just didn’t work in his brain.

London, on the other hand, refused to leave his brain. Even as he stressed out on his parents not being there, she was in his thoughts just as much. He really needed to call her, let her know he didn’t walk out on her and definitely planned on seeing her again. At the moment he wasn’t sure when, but he knew he didn’t want to go too long without seeing her again. With it being less than twenty-four hours since he’d held her in his arms, he already knew he’d go nuts until he had her next to him again. London wouldn’t start meaning less to him as time went by as other women in his past had. He accepted there was more with her, but now wasn’t the time to figure out what that might be.

“So check out bed-and-breakfasts in Flagstaff,” he told Natasha, forcing his thoughts off London.

“I’m already there,” Natasha said, chewing her lower lip as she clicked her mouse. “Wait. Here it is. Let me see those pictures.”

She grabbed the pictures as Marc and Jake both walked around her desk so that they were standing behind her. Natasha held the pictures up next to her monitor.

“Bingo,” Jake said under his breath.

“What time was this movie they went to yesterday?” Marc studied the pictures. “It’s daylight in these shots. Flagstaff is a good seven hours from here.”

Jake glanced down at Natasha and she looked up at him.

“I wasn’t here,” Jake began. “Dad sent me over to Ace Bondsman to pick up a check.”

“I was here.” Natasha twisted in her chair to face both of them. “Uncle Greg and Aunt Haley left here yesterday afternoon. They had a few errands to run and then were going to the movie.”