My Valdez Valentine (An Odds-Are-Good Standalone Romance Book 4) Read online

  “Yeah. Here it is…he rented a car from Valdez U-Drive at four o’clock on Friday afternoon and checked into the Blueberry Inn at five.” I grimace at the rest of Kitty’s message. “My assistant called the hotel, though, and they said they haven’t seen El since Saturday morning.” I look up at Gideon, and he’s so alive and so handsome, a latent buzz trails down my spine, reminding me of my thoughts right before I fell asleep. “I, um…I’d like to drive out there. Now if possible.”

  He shakes his head. “It’ll be pitch-dark. Not a good idea.”

  “You said the roads would be—”

  “They might be clear, but the walls of snow on either side of the highway will be over ten feet high. Snow’s packed, but it’s still a mountain pass. An avalanche could bring them tumbling down. We’ll go in the morning when it’s light. Sun’ll be up by nine thirty.”

  Frustrated by this information, I search for the Blueberry Inn on my phone and call the number.

  “What are you doing?” Gideon asks.

  “Calling the inn. I want to talk to someone.”

  “Give me your phone,” he tells me, and I hand it over without question.

  “Maureen?” he asks. “Hey! It’s Gideon. How’s it going up there?” A pause. “Yeah? All good? Uh-huh. Yeah. I bet it was bad.” He nods at something she’s saying before speaking again. “Yeah, I’m actually trying to track down someone staying with you. Uh-huh. Name of Elliot…DeWitt.” He looks at me with raised eyebrows to confirm this is my brother’s name, and I nod. “Uh-huh. His sister’s worried. Hasn’t heard from him in two days.” His forehead creases, and he rubs his chin with two fingers. “Huh.”

  Livia looks up at him and whines softly, focused on his face before lying down again. What does she know that I don’t?

  “What’s she saying?” I whisper.

  He purposely avoids eye contact with me. “On Saturday morning?” He nods again. “Uh-huh.”

  I reach for his arm lying on the table. “Gideon?”

  He looks up at me, and I can read his expression like a book. Whatever this Maureen is saying, it’s not good news. I withdraw my hand and sit back in my chair, the hopefulness I’d felt before my nap quickly sluicing away.

  “Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat. “Okay. Well, I’ll be up there at your place tomorrow morning with his sister. If you hear anything else, give me a call, huh? Yeah. Yeah, okay. I appreciate it, Maureen. Talk soon.”

  He presses End Call, then lays my phone on the table, blinking at me once before tenting his hands.

  “He checked in on Friday night,” he says in a quiet, level voice, “and met up with four other guys in the bar.”

  “What guys?”

  “I have no idea,” he says, shrugging. “But they hung out in the hotel bar until one in the morning. They were all pretty drunk, I guess. Saturday morning, they got up early and left. All five of them. Haven’t been back since.”

  “How can five people be missing and no one’s looking for them?” I demand. “And who the hell were these other four guys?”

  “No clue…but she did say that they were talking a lot to the bartender. I know him. Guy named Ford Hanrahan. Lives here in Valdez. Works at the Rattlesnake Bar over on Egan most weeknights and at the Blueberry Inn on Fridays and Saturdays.”

  “Can you call him?”

  Gideon nods. “Better’n that. You get dressed. We’ll go over to the Rattlesnake and talk to him in person.”

  My emotions are all over the place. The burst of hope I’d felt is gone, but I’m determined to find this Hanrahan person and find out what my brother was doing on Friday night…and where he might have been headed the next morning.

  “Also, I picked up the forms to report a missing person at the police station,” Gideon tells me. “I have ’em in my truck. You should fill them out later, and we’ll drop ’em off tomorrow morning.” He scans my face. “Police asked if your brother has a Facebook or Instagram page. Sometimes you can track a person’s movements through social media sites, they said.”

  “He hates Facebook,” I say, standing up and walking over to the bureau to take out a shirt, sweater, jeans, and underwear. “I don’t think he has Instagram, but I could check. If he had it, it’d be new.”

  “Or maybe one of the guys he was with has Facebook or Instagram,” says Gideon. “If we can get their names and search their accounts, maybe we can figure out where they went.”

  “God, that’s such a good idea!” I say, pulling the bathroom door mostly shut as I get changed. “Can you call Maureen back and ask for their names?”

  “Yeah. I’ll do that now. We’ll go see Ford at the Rattlesnake, then come back here and see if we can find any of those guys online, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I get dressed quickly and look at my face in the mirror. I look tired and worried, with dark circles under my eyes and frown lines turning my lips down. I close my eyes for a second, thinking about Elliot and wondering where the hell he is and with whom.

  Please help me find my brother, I silently pray to a God who’s always let us down. Please help me find him.

  Chapter 4

  Gideon

  I pick up Addison around nine the next morning, and she gets in the van already on the phone, from the sound of it, on a business call.

  “Mrs. Mendelsohn, I understand your frustration. Truly I do.” She pauses. “Mm-hm. I know that you purchased Fluffy with your own money, but pets acquired during a marriage—”

  She’s obviously cut off.

  I catch her eyes in the rearview mirror and double take when I realize they’re a deep brown today. Her real eyes. And wow, they’re pretty. They make her look completely different…in a good way. Less flashy. More…I don’t know, natural, maybe. Real. Deep. They match her skin tone and her hair color in a way those fake emerald eyes never could.

  In the rearview mirror, she rolls them.

  “We can definitely work out a visitation schedule, Mrs. Mendelsohn,” she says. “It’ll take me a few hours, but we’ll find a solution that works for both of you.” She nods. “Yes, of course, and for Fluffy too.”

  After she wraps up the call, she leans forward. “Morons!”

  “You know what King Solomon would’ve done,” I say, handing her a cup of coffee from the front cupholder.

  “Cut Fluffy down the middle,” she says without skipping a beat. “Poor Fluffy.”

  “Fluffy might thank you for it,” I say, still looking at her. “Your eyes are brown.”

  “They’ve always been brown.”

  “I like them,” I tell her.

  The angles of her face, which are pronounced when she’s thinking or frowning, soften a little. “You do, huh?”

  “A lot.”

  She starts to smile, her lips wobbling a little before tilting up a touch, then shakes her head. “I wish Ford could’ve remembered the names of those guys.”

  Last night didn’t amount to much, but we did make a little headway, and for that, I’m grateful.

  As far as we could tell, Elliot didn’t have an Instagram profile. At least not one that we could find. And unfortunately, Maureen was no help either. She refused to give out the names of her guests, citing a law that says she can only disclose guest names to the police with a search warrant.

  Ford, however, remembered the five guys well, because they drank way too much and tipped for shit.

  They came in around seven and took over a whole table, loud and obnoxious from the get-go. They only got rowdier as the night went on, at one point picking a fight with a table of Swedish tourists. After a tray of shots somehow landed on the floor between the bar and their table, Ford shut them down, closing the bar and telling them he wouldn’t serve them anymore. They didn’t like that much, he recalled, but one of the guys in the group—a blond—gave Ford a credit card that he forgot to take with him. He didn’t remember the name on the card, but unless someone moved it, it was still sitting behind the bar, propped against the cash register.
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  If we can sneak into the bar today, find the card, and get a name off it, maybe we can figure out who one of the guys was and check out his social media accounts.

  “First stop, Valdez PD,” I say. “You got that form?”

  She hands it to me just as her phone rings, and I take it as I pull into a parking place. Covering the phone with her hand she says, “Now it’s Mr. Mendelsohn. Can you drop off the form while I take this call?”

  I nod, heading into the police department and glancing down at the form as I walk inside. Under report type, she checked “Catastrophe,” and under category, she handwrote “Presumed lost in mountains.” The address Addison gives is the same as the one she put on the form she filled out for me on Tuesday, which means that he lives with her? Or maybe he doesn’t live anywhere.

  Under scars and tattoos, the list is so long, she makes an arrow pointing to the back of the form. But what’s written on the list makes my blood run cold: clusters of cigarette burns on his upper arms and back, wrist and ankle scars, hot water scald burns on the side of his neck and down his back, and a jagged scar in his abdomen from a knife blade. The various markings are bullet-pointed and written in her strong print—a matter-of-fact listing of brutal and horrible scars that couldn’t have been self-inflicted because of their placement. It’s a list of injuries that no human being should bear on their body, because they were likely put there by someone bigger and stronger.

  What happened to her brother? I wonder, pulling open the door of the police station. And did the same things happen to her?

  I look up from the form as I enter the station.

  “Hey there, Gideon!” calls my childhood friend, Tom Kosbruk.

  “How you doing, Tom?”

  “Good enough,” he says. “Went home last weekend.”

  “See my Mom?”

  “Sure. Saw everyone.”

  I nod. “Gotta get back. It’s been since Christmas.”

  He shrugs. “Eh. You’ll go when you can. What you got for me?”

  “Missing person report.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Tom looks at me as he takes the form. “Who’s missing?”

  “Name’s Elliot DeWitt. Tourist from California. Got in on Friday night and headed up to Thompson Pass but hasn’t been seen since Saturday morning.”

  Tom takes a deep breath. “We lose a few every year.”

  “Yeah. I know. But I’d like to find this guy. His sister hired me to give her a hand.”

  “Sister, huh? You old dog.” Tom raises his eyebrows up and down and chuckles.

  I shrug. “I can wish all I want, but it’s not like that. She’s…she’s really worried, you know? Got a call from him on Monday saying he needed help, but nothing since.”

  “Bad snow on Monday evening.”

  I nod. “Yeah. I know.”

  “Another few inches pouring in today.”

  “Thought I smelled snow,” I tell him, shaking my head. “Best get up to the Blueberry Inn before it begins.”

  Tom finally looks down at the form, scanning the information. “Last known location says the Blueberry Inn.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “We don’t know where he went after that. Mighta left with a group of four guys, though.”

  “Huh. We had a call about some guys causing trouble at the Blueberry Inn on Friday night. Bothered a bunch of tourists staying there. Any connection?”

  I remember what Ford Hanrahan said about Elliot’s group bothering the Swedish tourists. “Same group.”

  “I guess Fordie closed down the bar and they went to bed. Maureen called back and said not to bother coming up.”

  That’s too bad, I think. Elliot would’ve been safer in jail than with those four, whoever they were. And a police report would’ve made their names a matter of public record.

  “We’ll hold onto this,” says Tom, “but if you find a last known location, you sure could speed things up a little.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” I tell him, thinking about the credit card leaning against the cash register at the Blueberry Inn. “Might have a lead on one of the guys.”

  Tom nods. “Good enough. Talk later, Gideon.”

  “Talk later, Tom.”

  When I return to the car, my mind instantly slides back to the list of scars on Elliot DeWitt’s missing person form. It makes me think about him differently. Before, I thought of him as an overconfident idiot, but now I think that maybe Elliot DeWitt is just permanently on the run from something horrible that happened at some point in his life. He has more of my sympathy now and less of my disdain. Finding him is more important than ever.

  I slide back into the van just as Addison is hanging up her call. “Thank you, Mr. Mendelsohn. I know that Fluffy is a priority. I will make sure the agreement is fair. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “How are the Mendelsohns doing?”

  “They’re quarreling over a ten-year-old Pomeranian,” she says, then mutters, “I went to Stanford for this.”

  “Did you, uh, grow up in San Francisco?” I ask her, pulling out of the parking lot and heading northwest toward Thompson Pass.

  “No,” she responds, offering no further information.

  “Not from California, huh?”

  “No.”

  “I’m from Alaska,” I tell her. “Born and bred on a little island called Tatitlek. It’s about three hours away by ferry.”

  She doesn’t follow up with a comment about where she was raised, and it’s pretty clear she’s not going to. Her body is completely shifted toward the window, and she hasn’t caught my eyes in the rearview mirror since mentioning Stanford. Okay, I get it. Her childhood’s off-limits.

  “I didn’t go to college anywhere as fancy as Stanford,” I say.

  She turns to me, engaging just a little bit. “Oh?”

  I shake my head. “Nope. Went to the University of Alaska up in Fairbanks.”

  “…where you were a classics major?”

  “Nope. They didn’t offer it. I majored in linguistics with a minor in ancient, medieval, and early modern studies.”

  She nods, a little smile brightening her face. “Figures.”

  “Not that I’m doing much with it,” I tell her. “I fly helicopters. I work in the tourism business.”

  “The study of languages and the tourism trade sort of seem like a natural combination, actually. What languages do you speak?”

  “Alutiiq was my first language,” I tell her. “English. My Spanish, French, and Italian are passable. And some Japanese.”

  “Don’t forget Latin,” she says. “You seem to know your fair share.”

  “Quod me nutrit me destruit,” I tell her. What nourishes me destroys me.

  “Why do you say that?” she asks.

  “Because speaking Latin doesn’t pay the bills,” I say.

  “Maybe it does.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can I tell you something?”

  “Why do you answer questions with questions?”

  “Why do you?” she asks, a little chuckle escaping her lips.

  It’s the first time I’ve ever heard her laugh, and it’s a marvelous sound, throaty and melodic. I wish I could hear it again.

  “Tell me anything.”

  “The Latin,” she says. “Maybe it does pay the bills. Maybe the fact that your company is called Ad Astra showed me that you’re…educated. Smart. Not just a helicopter pilot. More. Maybe the Latin is partly why I hired you. Maybe what nourishes you doesn’t destroy you. Maybe it even pays the bills.”

  I smile at her in the rearview mirror. “That’s a whole lot of maybes, aa’icagaq.”

  Her eyes widen. “What did you say?”

  Fuck. What did I say?

  “Huh? Um. I said…that’s a whole lot of maybes.”

  “No. You definitely said something else. Eye Choo Hawk.”

  “Fine,” I say. “I called you aa’icagaq.”

  “Which means?”

  “Literally, it means ‘little cute on
e’ in Alutiiq, but it’s a common term of endearment, like ‘honey’ or ‘cutie’ or ‘sweetie.’”

  She doesn’t say anything, though that small smile rests on her perfect lips as she turns slightly to look out the window. I flick my glance up twice, watching her in the rearview mirror. I decide I haven’t offended her, not that she’s given me permission to call her by a pet name either.

  “Do you mind, aa’icagaq?” I ask her softly.

  She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, and I almost wonder if she didn’t hear me at all until I hear her whisper:

  “No. I don’t mind, Gideon.”

  My heart swells in a way that almost aches but somehow feels good at the same time, and we ride the rest of the way to the Blueberry Inn in hyperaware silence.

  ***

  Addison

  The first thing I notice about the parking lot of the Blueberry Inn is two cars, side by side, covered almost completely in snow, and my heart sinks, because when we brush off the license plates, one of them matches the car that Elliot rented from Valdez U-Drive on Friday afternoon. It’s obviously been here since the “big snow” on Monday evening, which makes my heart sink a little. I guess I’d been hoping for a miracle.

  “Listen,” says Gideon, helping me out of the van, “I’m going to talk to Maureen. You go into the bar area—through the door across from the reception desk—and see if you can pinch that credit card, okay?”

  As I nod in agreement, he opens the door to the Blueberry Inn, which is a stucco and timber, Bavarian-style ski lodge that looks like it’s seen better days, and I follow him inside. Straight ahead, there’s a massive picture window that looks out over the snow-covered mountains. To the right is a small office with a half door, and to the left is the entrance to the bar.

  While Gideon rings the bell—which elicits a “Coming!” from inside the office—I bear left and sneak into the dark, quiet bar. It smells like a combination of stale beer and decades-old cigarette smoke that must have seeped into the walls, because each of the four or five dark-wood tables has a small sign that reads, “No Smoking.”

  The bar itself has four stools covered in worn red leather, and as I approach, I can’t immediately figure out how to get back. There are no hinges on the sides of the bar counter. Hmm. I look closer and realize there’s a doorway behind the bar, next to the cash register. It probably leads to the kitchen. Damn it.