Read Online Other People's Baggage by Kendel Lynn, Gigi Pandian, Diane Vallere - Free Book Online

his left eye. He was the man who had driven me from the airport to the hotel. He was not a cop.
    Jack was telling the truth.
    I sucked in a deep breath of air and pushed past him as instructed, then ran as fast as I could into the hallway, down the hall, to the elevator. My knee pulsed, but adrenaline kept me moving. I jabbed the up and down buttons by the elevator. The up button lit up first and I hopped inside and pressed Door Close. My heart pounded in my chest like a chef pounding out a chicken breast with a wooden mallet. I didn’t care I was going up without an escape route. Up was better than where I had been, and after going up my only problem would be getting back down. I could deal with problems like that.
    And then elevator stopped on the eleventh floor. The doors eased open and a fresh new problem confronted me.
    I was face to face with Brad.

MIDNIGHT ICE: TEN

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    I slapped at the panel of buttons on the wall. One of the buttons screamed the alarm. The doors slid shut. Brad didn’t move. I gulped deep breaths and punched the lobby button repeatedly, as if it would make the elevator travel faster. I looked around the elevator for a hidden security camera, something that indicated that there was a chance I wasn’t really all alone. Aside from the reflection of the brunette stranger in a cowboy hat and Dodgers t-shirt in the mirrored ceiling, I saw nothing.
    When I landed in the lobby several older couples stood around in nylon jog suits and bright white sneakers, as if their trip to Carmel had required new workout clothes. A police officer stood by the front door. I didn’t know if he was real or not. My knee throbbed but I headed past the early birds to the front door anyway, in search of the crutches I’d abandoned in the front garden beds earlier that morning.
    â€œI don’t know who she is,” I heard. I looked in the direction of the voice and saw Kitty from the front desk talking to a man in a black suit and tie. “She was here right before Louis left. He found her crutches out front. I don’t know where she went.”
    â€œDid you see her leave the hotel?” asked the man.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œCan you describe her?” he asked.
    â€œShe looks like, well, she looks like that,” She pointed to a poster from Midnight Lace that hung on the wall of the hotel. By her feet a small dog wound circles around her leg, circling her with a blue leash.
    â€œShe looks like Doris Day?”
    â€œPretty much. She has fluffy blond hair and a cute freckled nose. She’s thin and wore a floral dress. She smiled a lot.”
    The man studied the poster on the wall for a few more seconds. “Always liked her,” he said, as if he were talking to himself.
    I stood to the side of the column, weighing my options. On one hand I could approach the man talking to Kitty, tell him what I’d been through, and hope he was somehow able to help me. There had to be a reason he was asking her about me. On the other hand, I didn’t know why he was asking about me. I caught my reflection in the glass frame of the Midnight Lace movie poster and gasped. Brown streaks from the temporary coffee-hair color ran down the side of my face like skinny sideburns and dripped onto the collar of the t-shirt. I looked a wreck.
    And suddenly I knew Brad hadn’t recognized me.
    I inhaled deeply and blew the air out of my mouth. I straightened my posture and walked out of the hotel as though I was balancing a book on the top of my head: confident, smooth, injury-free. The doctors had told me I would know when I was well enough to start walking without the crutches, and right now, I knew. Even though pain shot through my leg at evenly spaced intervals, I faked good health until I reached the sidewalk, then crossed the street and entered the diner Jack had mentioned.
    A rotund man in a stained apron approached my table. I ordered a cup of coffee and a Denver omelet before