Turner gave her a comforting pat. "No, no, that's not going to happen. I'll stay right here to be sure he doesn't go anywhere."
"You are so wonderful. Do you want me to come back up here?" She glanced nervously down the hallway. "Or:maybe I could meet with the sheriff downstairs?"
"My office would probably be the best place. Have the desk clerk direct you there and ask them to page me as soon as the sheriff arrives."
"Oh, my gosh, thank you,thank you! You've truly been my hero."
It took her only minutes to check out. She was on the road heading out of town moments after that, conveniently having failed to pass on the request to page the manager.
Envisioning Jared's face when he found himself all tangled up in red tape, she laughed as she hit the city limits and punched the pedal to the metal. Score one for the girl in the white hat.
IT TOOKJARED ALL DAYto track P.J. down. Sitting in the foliage-filled atrium of a downtown Red Lion hotel in Spokane, Washington, he ate a club sandwich while keeping an eye on both the entrance to the bank of elevators and the stairs that came down from the two interior balconies overlooking the lobby.
Much as he hated to admit it, she'd caught him off guard. He didn't know precisely how she'd conned the manager of the hotel in Pocatello, but her performance must have really been something, because the guy had been all over him the minute he'd opened the door to a peremptory knock. The damn sheriff had even been called in and he'd had to do some fancy dancing to avoid having his ass hauled down to the county clink. Luckily he had a copy of the contract that the agency had signed with Wild Wind Records.
It hadn't hurt, either, that P.J. had vanished. By the time Turner hauled him down to his office, only to discover the sheriff had been there for some time but P.J. hadn't made an appearance at all and no one had been instructed to contact him, it was obvious he'd begun to suspect he'd been played. An involuntary grin tugged at Jared's lips now.
No shit, Sherlock.
Not that he had much to chortle about, himself. He'd underestimated her. From everything he'd seen so far, he would have sworn P.J. would do just about anything to avoid turning the light of media attention on herself. She sure as hell kept dodging having to deal with all the bullshit her mother was spreading. And unless Jodeen Morgan had changed dramatically since their Denver days, he had to believe one session of straight talk from P.J. and her old lady's guns would be spiked. The fact that P.J. wasn't doing a damn thing about it had led him to believe she wouldn't make a fuss over his homemade alarm system, either.
Looked like he'd been wrong on that front.
Before he'd fallen asleep last night it had occurred to him that hooking up with her this early was probably a mistake and that maybe he ought to back off and just keep his eye on her from a distance until her tour started. Well, screw that. Her trying to get him arrested forstalking, for crissake, had made this personal.
He came to attention when P.J. suddenly came into sight, skipping blithely down the staircase just as he was killing off his sandwich. It was an hour to sunset and he hadn't known if she'd go out at all. If so, though, he would have expected her to be dressed for hitting the club circuit like she'd been last night. Instead, she wore a sports bra, an abbreviated pair of shorts and running shoes. A CamelBak hydration system was strapped to her back.
She was a runner? That wasn't something he ever would have guessed. He watched her cross the atrium.
It didn't take a detective to figure out she was going for a run-which meant that sooner or later she'd be right back where she'd started: here. No sense in leaving this beautifully air-conditioned hotel to get all hot and sweaty following her around.
Then he sighed. Because this morning's stunt was still fresh in his mind, and what if this were a ruse? She could easily have spotted him from the upstairs landing, in which case he wouldn't put it past her to have called the bell captain to load her luggage into her truck. And wouldn't he look like an ass if he sat here for the next hour and a half waiting for her to return, when for all he knew she was jogging her way to Timbuktu.
Standing up, he glanced down at his Teva sandals. Shit. He was asking Rocket for a raise. He wasn't being paid nearly enough for this crap. He watched her exit through the front entrance, then followed.
Like a breath-stealing, run-amok forest fire, a wall of heat hit him the moment he stepped outside, and he damn near trod on P.J.'s heels when he unexpectedly came up behind her where she stood stretching. With the image of blue hip-hugger boy shorts stretched taut over that amazing butt seared into his retinas, he backpedaled out of sight until she set off at an easy clip down the path that fronted the hotel. Once she disappeared around the corner, he started out behind her.
He followed her past the pool at the back of the hotel and by the umbrella tables until she reached a little bridge that crossed the river to the hundred-acre island that formed Riverfront Park. She picked up her pace and they ran at a decent clip past the forestry shelter and the pavilion with its carnival rides and IMAX theater, through greenery and meadows, down to the place where the gondolas took off overhead and past a bunch of sculptures.
Heating up, he stripped off his T-shirt as he ran. Even then, he had to stop at the hand-carved wooden carousel to catch his breath. Pressing one hand to the stitch in his side, he braced the other against a bench back and bent over, blowing hard. He looked beyond the kids leaning out to try for the brass ring to where P.J. was running by a structure that he heard a parent call the Garbage Goat. Thinking he would kill for a bottle of water, he blew out a breath and started after her again, ignoring the hot spot that his sandal was rubbing on the ball of his right foot.
They jogged past a giant interactive sculpture shaped like a Radio Flyer red wagon and farther along passed a floating stage. They turned left over another little bridge, then P.J. turned left again and they pounded past a Vietnam veterans' memorial with a soaring clock tower in the background. That brought them back near the forestry shelter and he watched a trickle of sweat roll between her shoulder blades as she ran in place while giving another connected island they hadn't covered a considering gaze. Another drop coasted down the shallow groove of her spine and disappeared into the low-cut bandless waist of her little blue shorts.
Christ, had the temperature just spiked another twenty degrees? He could see the headline now:Semper Fi Detective Strokes Out on Measly One-Mile Run. Lucky for him, he knew he could count on his sister to spend time at his bedside wiping the drool from his chin. John, on the other hand, would probably just show up to laugh at him.
To his eternal relief, P.J. turned back toward the first bridge.
Figuring he could safely assume she was headed back to the hotel, he slacked off his pace. Then his professional self demanded,And you're going to discover her room number howfrom back here?
"Crap." Blowing out a breath, he picked up his speed again.
She'd disappeared by the time he got in sight of the pool again and, swearing to himself, he put on a further burst of speed.
"Enjoy your run?"
He skidded to a halt, his head whipping around. P.J. sat at one of the umbrella tables on the rail-enclosed deck, her feet up on the chair next to her. He walked back. "You knew I was behind you the entire time?"