Falling for the Billionaire's Daughter - Lori Ryan Page 0,16

of a tourist attraction as Breckenridge had been. It had been too risky being in a place where people came from all over the country to visit.

She clicked through city after city. The bigger places like New York or DC would be too hard to find a safe place to live. She moved the map to the center of the country, looking at options. Des Moines, Iowa, would be warm enough for another month or so and there were campgrounds she could stay in and sleep in her car.

Still, she didn’t want to go straight there. She’d go south into New Mexico and then cut to the west and come up and over Colorado before heading to Iowa.

She thought about emailing her friend and asking her to use one of Joy’s credit cards again. Bella Johansen had been Joy’s friend in middle school until she moved to California with her family. The two had lost touch but reconnected when Joy did an internship out West during college. It wasn’t a connection Turner would know about and it was one that had proved to be invaluable over the last year.

If Joy emailed, Bella would know what to do. She would choose one of Joy’s credit cards and run it for something like a disposable cell phone or gas in a car, or sometimes a meal for two people. With Bella’s job as a flight attendant, it was easy for her to make it look like Joy was someplace she wasn’t. To make it look like she and her mom were on the run in some other part of the country together.

But Joy had a feeling it was time for her to make another real appearance again soon. Every few months, she would let herself pop up on the radar for real before fleeing. She knew better than to let Turner catch her so anything she did had to be carefully planned.

Maybe she would sign onto social media before she left town this time. Just something small to drop a clue about where she’d been. And she’d make damn sure she’d left town and was long away by the time anyone found the breadcrumb. She had to. If she didn’t and Turner got hold of her, she had no doubt he’d hurt her to get to her mom. No doubt he’d do whatever it took to get back the woman who had run from him.

Chapter 9

Turner Carson scanned the room, easily taking in those who could help him and those who didn’t matter. It was one of the many annual events he attended, the stated goal of which was fundraising for God knows which charity this year, but he only attended for networking purposes. Sure, he wrote the obligatory check—they wouldn’t let him walk out without that—but he made sure he got something out of the event that would benefit one of his businesses in some way.

Marilyn Seaver was waving him down. He would have liked to pretend he didn’t see her but she was the mayor’s wife, so ignoring her wasn’t prudent.

“Marilyn, you’re looking lovely as ever.”

She waved off his compliment. “Is Debra doing better? Is she coming home soon?”

Turner blinked. He didn’t know why she would assume his wife would be coming home anytime soon. As far as the town was concerned, they all thought Debra was undergoing a series of groundbreaking surgeries in Switzerland but he’d made it clear her recovery would be a long time coming.

He hedged his answer. “She’s doing as well as can be expected, but she’s got a long way to go.”

Marilyn’s brows knit. “Oh, when I saw her daughter was back in the states, I assumed she was doing better. I was hopeful she might even be back.”

Turner forced his smile to remain in place as he glanced around the room. “You saw Jane?”

“We went on a little vacation,” she said, only to be interrupted when her husband brought over another couple and made introductions, drawing the conversation—and his wife’s attention—away from his stepdaughter and wife.

Turner seethed. He needed to find out where they’d gone on that vacation. He’d seen the mayor and his wife only two weeks prior, so if she’d seen his stepdaughter, it had to be recently.

His PI was currently chasing a lead in New Jersey, but Turner didn’t mind going and tracking down his bitch of a stepdaughter in the meantime. He could use that kind of vacation.

He waited and watched for the chance to get close to Marilyn or