Secure Location - By Beverly Long Page 0,39
anymore?” Jana asked.
Cruz felt his chest tighten up. Yeah, Meg. How come?
“I...” Meg’s eyes lifted, resting on him. She pressed her lips together. “Grown-up reasons, Jana.”
Jana pointed at Meg’s hands. “You have pretty nails. Can you paint mine?” she asked.
Meg smiled. “I could probably do that. As long as it’s okay with your uncle.”
“Fingers. Toes. Knock yourselves out,” Cruz said, grateful that the little girl had moved on to other topics. Meg had left him because she didn’t love him anymore. That’s what she’d told him a year ago and based on her actions this morning, nothing much had changed.
He put Jana’s snack on the table next to the bed. “Jana and I were thinking dinner sounded good. Would you mind if we ordered in?”
“I want macaroni and cheese,” Jana piped in.
Meg smiled. This time it reached her eyes. “I think the kitchen can manage that,” she said. “I’ll have the salmon.”
Cruz rounded out the order with a steak, wine for Meg and a beer for himself. Then he shaved and jumped in the shower. He had just finished dressing when there was a knock on his door.
“Room service.”
Cruz looked through the peephole. There was a young woman on the other side, holding a tray. He slipped his gun into the small of his back before carefully opening the door.
“Hi,” he said. “You can just put it there.” He motioned to the table closest to the door. Once she had the table set, he scrawled his name on the charge slip. She wished him good-night and left. He locked the door behind her, then poked his head around the connecting door.
Jana was still next to Meg. The little girl was on her back, her arms stretched out like a zombie and her feet flexed, evidently so that she could admire her freshly painted fingernails and toenails. Meg was sitting up, bent over her leg, touching up the polish on her own toes.
They looked...perfect. Connected. Their dark hair was almost the same shade. They could have been mother and daughter.
Cruz felt the burn in his chest. Someday Meg would have someone else’s child.
“Cruz?” Meg lifted her head. “Did you say something?”
Damn. Had he done something extraordinarily unmanly like moan? “Dinner’s here,” he said.
Jana scrambled off the bed. “Yeah, is there ice cream?”
“Only if you eat your carrots,” Cruz said.
She stopped in her tracks. “Carrots,” she repeated.
Cruz nodded. “It’s chocolate ice cream.”
The little girl scrunched up her face. “How many carrots?”
“How old are you?” Cruz asked.
“Four.”
“Then five. You always want to be one carrot ahead.”
She considered, then smiled, showing her small, white teeth. “You’ve got a deal, Uncle Cruz.”
They pulled their chairs around the small table in the lower half of Cruz’s room. He opened the sliding glass door but kept the vertical blinds mostly closed. The sounds of the River Walk, rich with early-evening laughter and chatter, drifted in. Latin music was playing somewhere.
Meg took a sip of her wine and felt herself relax for the first time that day. She’d just lifted her glass for a second sip when her cell phone buzzed. She picked it up, recognized the number as Sanjoi from in-house security, and answered.
She listened, then very carefully put her glass down. By the time the call ended, she felt cold all over.
“Meg?” Cruz asked, already standing.
“Someone broke into my office and the damage is extensive,” she said, repeating what she’d heard. She lifted her head. “There’s blood. Smeared across my desk.”
Chapter Eleven
Cruz had no choice but to take Jana with them. He and Meg hurried down the hotel hallway, the little girl running to keep pace with them. She chattered, about dinner, about the day, misjudging their anxiety for excitement.
For her, it was just one more adventure.
For Cruz, it was just one more punch in the gut.
When they got to Meg’s office, he stepped out in front, blocking their view. One glance told him that that the outer area, Charlotte’s domain, was untouched. Sanjoi had his butt perched on the desk. He frowned at Cruz and nodded in Meg’s direction.
“It’s a real mess in there,” he said.
Cruz looked through the connecting door. He could see the backs of two uniformed officers. They were standing in front of the desk. Between their shoulders, he got a glimpse of Detective Myers’s face. His eyes were focused down. Cruz took a step forward, the man looked up and Cruz could see a mix of frustration and anger on the detective’s face.
He turned to check Jana. Meg had grabbed a