When he pulled up to the motel, she looked around and panicked. There was nothing around. Not a car or a restaurant or another building in sight.
She didn’t intend to stay here. Not where Dean knew her location. She needed to get to the next town over, where she had options and could hide out for a few days.
He turned off the engine. “Are you sure this is where you left your truck?”
“It’s the closest motel to the mechanic.” She grabbed her bag and opened the door. “Thank you for the ride.”
“I’ll come in with you.”
“No need.” She stepped into the wretched heat.
He reached across the seat and caught her elbow, stopping her. “Let me take you to dinner. There’s nothing here—”
“No.” She wrenched her arm away. “I’ll see you in a month, Dean. Drive safe.”
She shut the door on his response and strode toward the motel office.
Inside, the scent of tobacco smoke attacked her nose. A young blonde woman sat behind the desk, flicking ash from a cigarette, her gaze glued to her phone.
Rylee turned toward the window and watched Dean pull out of the lot. She didn’t move until his truck vanished beyond the horizon.
“Need a room?” the girl asked.
“I need transportation to the next town.”
“Can’t help you there, babe.”
“You can’t call me a cab? Or a vehicle for hire?”
“Nothing like that comes out here.” The girl snorted without looking up from her phone. “You’ll have better luck using your thumb out on that road.”
Rylee glanced at the highway, which hadn’t seen another car since she’d arrived.
Shit.
Desperate, she grappled for options. “When do you get off work?”
“In six hours.”
Double shit.
She couldn’t wait that long. She needed food, a shower, a bed, and a million other things to formulate a plan, and she needed to do all of it in a place where no one could find her.
Tommy might’ve let her go because he didn’t want to shoot Dean. But he would come for her now that the detective was out of the way.
The girl lowered her phone and toyed with one of her short blonde ringlets. “I have a one-hour lunch break.”
“When?”
“Right now.”
Exhilaration coursed through her as she dug through her duffel bag and removed a wad of cash. “I’ll pay you two-hundred dollars to drive me to the next town.”
“Okay.” The girl shrugged a shoulder. “Sure.”
Yes! Mind spinning, she turned toward the cash machine in the corner. “Does that work?”
“Last I checked.”
Perfect. She would withdraw enough cash to get her by for a few days and destroy her credit card. “Do you have a trash bag?”
“Umm…” The blonde’s eyebrows knitted. “Yes?”
“I need that, too.”
The duffel bag would stay here, and only the things she needed would go in the plastic bag. Things that couldn’t have been bugged.
If Tommy or anyone else was tracking her, she was going to make it as hard as possible.
CHAPTER 17
For the next three days, Rylee holed up in the shittiest motel room in Texas. Restless, overstrung, and nearing her wit’s end, she paced the stained carpet and chewed her nails down to nubs.
When she’d paid for the ride here, she had the girl drop her at a corner store a mile down the road. There, Rylee had bought a range of everyday items, including a cheap, prepaid smart phone. After paying in cash, she carried it all on foot to this smelly, dilapidated, out-of-the-way motel.
By the time she’d checked in, her body throbbed everywhere, a reminder of the beating she’d taken in the desert. Her immediate concern had been taking care of her basic needs—shelter, water, food, hygiene, pain-killers, sleep.
So much sleep.
God, she’d needed that rest. After asphyxiation, extreme thirst, starvation, and unthinkable stress over the past week, she slept through most of the first two days. She never wanted to wake up.
But she couldn’t hide forever.
The prepaid phone burned in her hand as she paced the room. She hadn’t stepped outside once since arriving. Hadn’t called Mason or Evan or any of her colleagues. Hadn’t logged into her email at home or the systems at work.
The television stations reported no major news. A web search on Paul Kissinger turned up exactly nothing. As if he didn’t exist. She didn’t know who had hired him or why. She didn’t have names, physical descriptions, eye-witness reports, behavioral habits, a motivation… Absolutely nothing to profile.
She had no plan. No solution. Not a single goddamn thing to go on.
Desperate, she’d pulled up an internet browser and typed random search strings.
How do I identify who’s stalking me?
What types of devices are used to track cars?
Can bugs be hidden on a person?
If I’m being followed, what should I do?
Every answer led to the obvious course of action. Call the cops. Ironic, considering her occupation. She wanted to call her colleagues but didn’t know who to trust. Dean had already helped her, so contacting him was the most logical option.