They reached the seventh floor. Rye cautiously opened the door. In both directions, the corridor was empty. He motioned Brynn through. They jogged toward their room.

When they got to it, Rye moved Brynn aside, went down on one knee and checked to see that the thread he’d pulled from the hem of the bedspread was still stuck between the door and the jamb. It was. He unlocked the door. Brynn rushed into the room. Rye checked the hallway once again, followed her in, and bolted the door.

“The thread?”

“I saw it in a movie,” he said.

“As we left, you sent me ahead to hold the elevator.”

“That’s what I was doing. Good thing. Because as least we know no one has been inside the room.” They’d left only the bathroom light on. “Don’t turn on any more lights,” he told Brynn as he checked the floor of the closet to make certain his flight bag was as he’d left it.

Then he moved to the window and peered through the crack between the wall and the edge of the drape. “Christ! Only one person, no one riding shotgun, but he’s parked at the end of a row. Lights off. No exhaust from the tailpipe.”

“Just sitting there?”

“Just sitting there.”

“Maybe he has nothing to do with us.”

“Maybe.”

“It could be hotel security.”

“Maybe.”

“Dammit, Rye. Say something besides maybe.”

“Well, sorry. That’s the only answer I have at the moment. I don’t know what he’s doing there. What I do know is that he’s got an unrestricted view of that side door.”

She looked at the clock. “I should be on the road.”

He absently acknowledged that as he assessed their predicament. “You can’t get through that exit and to Wes’s car without him seeing you. Do you want to chance it?”

“There’s no ‘or’?”

“Or you go through the lobby, out the front, flank him, and sneak around to the car.”

“He may still see me.”

“Another ‘or’ is to give it a while, see if he leaves. He could be taking a coffee break, and just chose that spot.”

She gave it a moment’s thought. “That’s logical, isn’t it? If he’d seen us, recognized us, he would have chased after us, wouldn’t he?”

“Not necessarily. He could have called it in and is waiting for instructions on how to proceed, or for backup.”

“Backup for us? We’re not public enemies number one and two.”

“Not to law enforcement. But that’s how the Hunts would rank us, and I wouldn’t put it past them to have cops on the take.”

“So then…what do I do?”

“I think you wait a while, see what happens.”

She slumped with disappointment, but without debating it further took off her coat, shook the rainwater off it, and hung it in the closet. He draped his bomber jacket over the desk chair so the leather would dry. He motioned toward the mini bar. “Something to drink?”

She shook her head.

He watched as she sat down on the edge of the bed and gave her a long, meditative look. Eventually she noticed. “What?”

“I do want to know about your life,” he said. “About you and Wes. Tell me why you make people think you shunned him, when it was the other way around.”

She looked prepared to refuse, then she looked resigned, then she looked away from him, and, in a barely discernible voice, said, “It hurts too much.”

He checked the cop car. It was still there. Nothing else beyond the window was noteworthy except hard rain. He walked over to the bed and sat down on the end of it. “What hurts too much?”

“Rejection, and admitting to being rejected. So, I mislead people into thinking that I rejected him.” She hooked a strand of damp hair behind her ear. “The deceit began early. Whenever Dad was in, I pretended not to care. Indifference was an easy and safe barrier to hide behind. I fooled everyone into believing that I was ashamed of him, when, in truth…” Her voice hitched. She took a breath. “When all I ever wanted was to be with him.”

She paused, ran her hand over the duvet. “He told you the truth about why he steals,” she said. “It was never about the booty, the gain. He rarely kept the things he took. They had no value to him.

“What he loved was being a rapscallion. The challenge for him wasn’t to avoid capture, but to make friends with those who put him behind bars. Living as the town ‘character’ was more important to him than living with me.”

She looked down at her hand where it rested. “I must have inherited my mother’s hands. Slender, long fingers. Dad’s hands have wide, stubby fingers.” She gave a soft laugh. “He had a time of it, wrestling my hair into ponytails, which as often as not were lopsided. He cursed tiny buttons that wouldn’t go into their buttonholes.”

The light from the bathroom cast half of her face in shadow, but Rye could see how pensive her smile was.

“Once, I picked a bouquet of wildflowers and needed a vase to put them in. Rather than steal one, which I expected, he painstakingly glued sequins onto a Mason jar. By the time he finished, the flowers were wilted, but I put them in the vase anyway. I still have it. It’s the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen. But it’s the dearest thing I own.”

She choked up, but recovered quickly. “Before tonight, the last time I saw him, he told me that since I was all grown up and doing well, it was time we cut ties and got on with our separate lives. We had been separated so many times before, you would think I had become immune.

“But I no longer had the resilience or faith of a child. I couldn’t cling to a na?ve hope that things would change, get better, that he would miss me enough to want me with him. Because that separation was voluntary, mandated only by him, it hurt much more than all the others combined.”

She sat for several seconds, then left the bed and went into the bathroom. “Did you see a hair dryer in here?” A few seconds later one was switched on.

Rye got up and checked outside again. “Damn it.” The police unit hadn’t gone anywhere. The officer could be sleeping through his shift. Or guarding that door. He had no way of knowing, and the only way he could test it was to show himself.

The hair dryer went off. Brynn came out, her hair still only partially dry. She was briskly rubbing the ends of it with a towel. “Still there?”

“Yeah. But there’s no sight of anyone else, which means he didn’t call for the cavalry or they would have been here by now.”

“Do you think it’s safe for me to leave?”

“Unless he’s manning a post.”

She bowed her head and rubbed her forehead. “I can’t fail at this. I can’t.”

“Hey.” Rye went to her, took the towel from her hand, and dropped it to the floor. “You’re not going to fail. We’ll figure a way. You’ll get to Violet with time to spare.”

She raised her head and looked at him with damp, imploring eyes. “Do you promise?”

“I have every faith in you.” Then he continued forward, his footsteps unchecked. She had no choice but to back up until she was against the wall. He placed both hands above her head and on either side of it.

“What’s this about?” she asked.

“Sharing body heat.” He bumped her middle with his.

She dropped her head forward and left it to rest against the center of his chest. “Look, Rye, exhaustion made me nostalgic. I told you a boohoo story, but it wasn’t designed to make you feel sorry for me.”

“Then feel sorry for me.”

She raised her head. “What for?”

He lifted a strand of hair lying against her chest and rubbed it between his thumb and fingers. “Because I’ve been wanting you for almost twenty-four hours, and I’m tired of it.”

She swallowed, said huskily, “You’ve passed on several opportunities.”

“Best I recall, the last time I made a move, you pushed me away and enforced a kissing restriction.”

“It was intended to be a goodbye, so why should you care?”

“I wanted that kiss.”

“You’d said you didn’t have designs like that on me.”

“Well…” He moved in closer, the bump graduating to a meshing. Her placed his hands at her waist and began gathering up her sweater. He took it slowly, giving her time to object, slap his hands away, stop him in any fashion. She didn’t.

He leaned in to whisk his lips across hers as he continued to raise her sweater until it cleared her chest. Her arms went up. He pulled it over her head and let it fall where it would.

She lowered her arms, but otherwise didn’t move. He took advantage of her passiveness to drink in the sight. The slender column of her neck, the shallow triangle at its base, a bosom made for pillowing. Her bra was the color the sky turns right before the first star comes out.

He placed the fingertips of both hands on her collarbones, traced their width to the bra’s shoulder straps. “I believe that’s what I said. What I can’t believe…” He lowered the satin strap, dragging it down her arm with painstaking slowness until the cup of her bra caught on her nipple. “…is that you took me serious.”