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

  “Hello, there, Gideon!”

  “Hey, Maureen.”

  “Can’t give you those names, now.”

  “Yeah. I know. Just wanted to stop in and see if you remember anything else…”

  As Gideon and Maureen talk, I kneel on one of the stools, then slide onto the bar. It creaks softly under my weight, and I freeze, holding my breath and making sure that their conversation continues.

  “…mighta heard something about them coming up from Portland, but I can’t be sure. So many folks pass through,” says Maureen. “My noggin ain’t what it used t’be.”

  Hoping that I don’t fall off the narrow counter, I lean toward the cash register and see the Visa card still leaning against it. Reaching forward, I nab it, sliding it into my bra before leaning back onto a stool and dismounting to the floor.

  “Someone in there?” calls Maureen.

  I rush back around the tables and poke my head out. “Just me having a look around.”

  Gideon looks at me, and I smile brightly. Yep. I got it.

  “Maureen, this is Addison DeWitt, sister of Elliot DeWitt, who rented that room.”

  “I’d like to see my brother’s room, please.”

  “I’m sorry,” says Maureen, “but the room’s not yours—”

  “I think if you look at the credit card used,” I interrupt, “you’ll note that it’s in my name. Which means it’s my room.” I open my purse and slide my driver’s license across the small countertop.

  “Well, I don’t know about that.”

  “I do,” I tell her, getting a little haughty. “I’m a lawyer. I’ll wait if you want to go ahead and check the card used.”

  “Humph. Well, alright…”

  Maureen turns around and wanders back into the office while Gideon turns to me.

  “You got it?” he whispers.

  I nod. “But it was dark in there. I didn’t take a look yet.”

  “Where is it?”

  I pat my left breast. “Here.”

  His gaze lowers to my hand, and if I’m not mistaken, his eyes widen and his nostrils flare.

  (I’m not mistaken.)

  “Later,” I murmur.

  He’s attracted to me, and I’m attracted to him too. The tension between us is palpable, and yes, maybe it’s almost time to do something about it, but not right now.

  His eyes slide up to mine, the interest and hunger there readable. “Later…we’ll check out the card? Or later we’ll—”

  “Just…later,” I say quickly, looking up as Maureen returns.

  “Well, yeah. You were right. It’s Addison, not Elliot, on the card. How was I supposed to know? Addison could be a girl’s name or a boy’s name.”

  I give her a half-smile and brisk nod. “Honest mistake. Can I have my room key, please?”

  She takes a metal key from a cork board to her right and hands it to me. “Will you be checking out today?” Cheeky.

  “Yes,” I answer. There’s no use paying for a room that no one is using. “We’ll go take a look and come back in a moment. Can you cash me out while we’re gone?”

  “Just make sure all of his stuff is out of there,” she says.

  “His…stuff?” I turn back around. “He left his stuff here?”

  Maureen shrugs. “Take the stairs to the second floor. His room was the third on the right. Number six. Said he wanted a mountain view.”

  We head upstairs to a hallway that boasts a badly frayed carpet and walls that could use a good paint job.

  “If he left his stuff here, he wasn’t planning to be gone long.”

  “No more than a day or two,” agrees Gideon.

  I use the key to open room six, step inside, and frown.

  It’s a pigsty.

  “Don’t tell me…the Blueberry Inn doesn’t offer housekeeping?”

  Gideon sighs. “When you’re the only lodge in a popular mountain pass, you can offer whatever you want…or don’t want.”

  The bed is unmade, there are clothes on the floor, and an open suitcase has exploded on top of a bureau. Empty beer and liquor bottles are scattered about, glasses with dried-up liquid are clustered on the bedside table, and cigarettes overflow a glass ashtray.

  I pick up the ashtray, retching a little as I empty it into the empty garbage can beside the bureau. I open the only other door in the room to wash out the ashtray in Elliot’s bathroom, but it leads to an empty closet. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  “Shared. Down the hallway,” says Gideon, taking the ashtray from my hand. “I’ll rinse it.”

  He steps out of the room, and I close the closet door, backing up to take a seat on the bed and look at the chaos around me. It’s not an unfamiliar sight, actually. My guest room looks like this every time Elliot comes to stay, and although I usually resent it a little, right now it makes me feel closer to him, so I breathe deeply and savor his familiar scent mixed in with cigarette smoke and evaporated beer.

  I hate it that the smell is so familiar. It’s a smell Elliot and I have known all of our lives. You know how some people flashback to their childhood when they smell chocolate chip cookies or apple pie? For us, this is what “home” smelled like.

  I gulp over the lump in my throat and stand up abruptly, anxious not to go down that rabbit hole. I’m not that little girl in Detroit anymore. I’m all grown up. I’m a successful lawyer. I’m a successful lawyer. I’m a successful—

  “Find any clues?”

  Gideon is standing in the doorway of the room. When I turn to look at him, his eyebrows furrow together. “Hey…are you okay?”

  “I’m…I’m just…”

  That lump grows as the compassion in Gideon’s eyes deepens, and without my permission, I find myself being drawn into his arms. For a split second, I consider pushing him away, but I can’t remember the last time I let someone hug me, and it feels so. fucking. good. to be held like this. I lean forward, resting my head on his chest and closing my eyes.

  His arms are warm and strong, and his chest pushes flush against mine in a way that’s so comforting, I take a deep breath and burrow closer. His flannel shirt smells like clean laundry, like the dryer sheets my grandmother used—a good smell as opposed to the beer and smoke combination—and it makes me feel safe.

  I’m not a coward, but I’m so weary, I wish I could stay like this for a while, hiding in Gideon’s embrace.

  But Elliot must be found.

  I clear my throat and lean my head up. “I’m…fine now. Sorry.”

  “I’m not sorry,” he whispers. His eyes are wide and dark when he looks down at me, telegraphing his hunger for me. “Addison, I want—”

  “Gideon.” I say his name firmly. I know what he wants. Part of me wants it too. The timing just sucks. “We need to look around and pack up Elliot’s stuff.”

  “Yeah. I know.” He nods, looking down at me, deeply into my eyes, the windows of my soul. “You had it rough somewhere along the way, huh?”

  I clench my teeth and my jaw tightens. “Why do you say that?”

  “I just do,” he says, his ice-blue eyes searching mine. We stand like that for a long moment before his arms finally loosen. “Fine. You pack up. I’ll look around.”

  “See if you can find a receipt or a brochure or something.”

  Gideon gathers up the empty bottles and puts them in the garbage can, then picks up a pair of jeans wadded on the floor while I look under the bed.

  “Hey,” he says. “What about the credit card?”

  Shit! I’d almost forgotten!

  I stand up and pull it from my bra. “Tyler J. Tully.”

  “Who issued it?”

  “Bank of the West.”

  “And Maureen said she thought those guys mighta been from Portland. Makes sense. Check Instagram. Let’s see if he’s on there!”

  I pull my iPhone from my back pocket and click on the Instagram icon. In the search bar, I type “Tyler Tully,” and about twenty accounts come up.

  I sit down on the bed and
click on the first one. It’s private. Shit.

  The second one is a high school girl in Texas.

  The third one—

  “I think this is him!”

  Gideon sits down next to me, looking down at my phone. “Portland, Oregon…works at Trader Joe’s…Yeah. Sounds about right. Click on the first picture.”

  I click on the picture of a snowy mountain range, but the location of the photo isn’t tagged. The caption reads, “Conquer the Beast.”

  “That’s called the Books,” says Gideon, pointing to the picture. “It’s a series of mountain peaks that look like library books on a shelf. Over by Heiden Glacier, which is on the east side of the highway, not the west, like Berlin Wall. Go to the next one.”

  I swipe down and gasp. “Elliot. That’s him!”

  Five guys are in a line and Elliot’s on the end in snow gear with a pack on his back. Ray-Ban Aviators cover his eyes, but his smile, under a bushy, red beard is broad and happy.

  “Is the photo tagged? When was it taken?”

  I check. “Not tagged, but, um, Sunday. It was taken Sunday!”

  “That’s good,” he tells me. “We’re getting a timeline now. He got to town on Friday. Wanted to go to the Berlin Wall but couldn’t get a drop. Rented a car at the airport and must have met up with these guys at the Blueberry Inn on Friday night. Left the inn on Saturday morning at some point and headed to the Books. Verizon only works within ten miles of the pass, so it’s a good sign they were able to upload this picture. It means they had a signal.”

  “So he wasn’t that far away from here?” I ask.

  “Probably not. Is it captioned?”

  “Uh-huh. It says ‘Back to civilization.’”

  “Okay. Sounds like they were headed back here on Sunday.” I glance at Gideon, and he looks troubled. “So…what happened? Are there more pictures?”

  There’s one more, so I swipe left. The next picture is of the whole group standing in front of a bright aqua snowcat, making “hang loose” signs with their hands.

  “Fuuuuuck.” Gideon curses softly, but there’s a pissed off edge in his voice like he’s just gotten some really bad news. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “That’s how they got up there,” he says, then he stands up, rubbing the back of his neck as he looks out the window. “Fuck.”

  “I don’t understand. Why’re you upset?”

  “That snowcat belongs to Howard Greene.”

  “Okay…”

  “And my bet,” he says, “is that no one’s seen Howard since Saturday.”

  “Is Howard a guide?” I say, leaping up to stand beside him at the window. “That’s good! That’s good, right?”

  “No,” he says. “Howard inherited that old cat from his brother Sidney when Sid pulled up stakes and moved to Hawaii. Sid was a guide. A good one. Howard’s not. He’s a drunk. He’s not supposed to take tourists anywhere, but I’ve heard that he charges twenty bucks a pop to take skiers up the mountain and drop them off. It’s a lot cheaper than a helicopter, and it’s on the tourists for not vetting their chauffeur, so people look the other way.”

  I look out the window at the mountains. It’s starting to snow, which makes my stomach sink. I’m still holding my phone. “That thing looks like a tank. I mean, they could be alright, couldn’t they?”

  “Anything’s possible,” says Gideon unconvincingly. “But Howard…he’s not well. To call him ‘unreliable’ would be putting it mildly. He’s in and out of the drunk tank as much as other people are in and out of the grocery store.”

  We stand there at the window, side by side, saying nothing as the snow is whipped around by a howling wind that clatters the windows.

  “It’s snowing,” I murmur, processing this information about Howard while I imagine my brother somewhere in these mountains about to endure another blizzard.

  “It’s going to get bad,” Gideon says softly, like he hates having to say the words, even though they’re the truth. “Better get back down to Valdez while we can, or we’ll be trapped up here in the pass all night.”

  We pack up the rest of Elliot’s stuff in silence, and I sign his credit card bill while Gideon takes his suitcase out to the van. With one last look at the Blueberry Inn, we turn out of the parking lot and head back to Valdez.

  Chapter 5

  Gideon

  I didn’t tell her everything.

  Fact is, Howard doesn’t only get thrown into jail regularly for drunk and disorderly behavior. Five years ago, he severely injured a young woman while he was driving home intoxicated from the Rattlesnake. A summer tourist minding her own business, hiking along the side of the road—Howard hit her, breaking both of her legs and leaving her for dead.

  Because she somehow managed to survive, Howard was charged with a misdemeanor instead of a felony and only had to spend a year and a half in prison. Since he got out, he’s worse than ever. Barely sober. He shouldn’t be driving anyone anywhere at any time—especially not a group of rowdy tourists in a snowcat that should have been retired ten years ago.

  As far as I can tell, Elliot and his new friends went off with Howard on Saturday morning and expected to be back sometime on Sunday…but it’s now Wednesday evening. I don’t know what happened, but it’s not good.

  Cat could’ve run out of gas, leaving them stranded in the middle of nowhere. Could’ve gotten stuck in a crevasse or under an avalanche with them in it. And with a blizzard on Monday night and another on the way this afternoon and tonight, they could easily be buried by now. And if they’re not, they will be by tomorrow morning.

  A chill slithers down my spine. If I had to place bets, I’d say the chance of us finding them alive just sank to next to nothing.

  Just before I lose my signal in the pass, I call Tom at the Valdez PD and tell him what we’ve learned. Maybe the police can track the cat’s GPS…if it has one, which it probably doesn’t. At least they can subpoena the guest records from Maureen and look into the guys’ social media accounts. Or triangulate their phones, maybe. Is that a real thing or only something they do on crime shows? I’m not certain.

  Anyway, I hope they can figure out where Howard and the group were last located. My guess is somewhere between the Books and the Blueberry Inn, out on one of the many glaciers in that direction. It’s a large area but should be searchable once the snow stops.

  Speaking of the snow, however, it looks like we’re in for a whiteout. It’s coming down at a clip and blowing like hell, which makes me slow down the van to a crawl. I know these roads pretty well, but I’m carrying precious cargo, and I’d just as soon get her back to town in one piece.

  “We’ll pass my place on the way to your hotel. Mind if I stop and check on Livia?”

  “That’s fine,” she says softly, her voice small and tight.

  I want to tell her “Don’t give up hope,” but I don’t believe in blowing sunshine up someone’s ass when it’s best they prepare for rain. Unless her brother has some really impressive survival skills or he was picked up by another group and is partying in a warm and cozy RV somewhere, I think it’s unlikely that she’ll find him alive.

  “When can they search?” she asks.

  I clear my throat. “Well, this snowfall isn’t supposed to end until early tomorrow morning. Then you need a good ten to twelve hours to clear the pass. But if tomorrow’s clear by afternoon, I could take you up in the ’copter. We could go back and forth between the inn and the Books and see what we find.”

  She nods. “If it’s clear, I’d like you to hire more pilots. I’ll pay them to search as well.”

  Damn, but she’s tough. She’s not going to give up without a fight even against all odds. I admire the shit out of her.

  “You’re strong, Addison. Brave.”

  “He’s all I have,” she murmurs.

  “That can’t be true,” I say. “You’re a successful LA lawyer. I bet you have dozens of—”

  “No. All I have is hi
m,” she says firmly.

  This time, I leave her alone. She knows the stakes. She’s got to know that her brother’s probably gone by now—doesn’t need me mansplaining the slim probability of his survival or killing the last of her hope. Anyway…what do I know? Crazy things have happened in the Alaska wilderness. Her brother looked strong and healthy. Maybe he’s holding on somewhere. If she was my sister, I’d try like hell to make it home.

  Still, if he’s really all she’s got, she must feel incredibly alone right now, and a quiet hotel room won’t offer much comfort.

  “You, uh…you want to come hang out at my place for a while? Maybe stay for dinner?” I ask her, flicking my glance up to the rearview mirror.

  When she looks at me, her lips wobble like she might cry.

  “Yes. I’d like that.”

  “I’m not a great cook,” I tell her, surprised she accepted so quickly and wondering what I have in my fridge and freezer, “but I can put something together. And I’ve got a bottle of wine lying around somewhere.”

  “Anything stronger?” she asks.

  “Sure,” I say gently, “whatever you want.”

  “Thanks,” she says, but her voice is still thin, like she’s wound so tight that if she unclenches her jaw too much, she’ll fall apart completely.

  We ride in slow silence for a few minutes before I tell her, “It’s okay to cry. I know you’ve got to be worried sick. I wouldn’t judge you or anything. I could even act like it never happened.”

  “I don’t cry,” she says, but we both know that’s a lie because she had tears running down her face on Tuesday when I took her up to see the Wall.

  “I’m just saying you can. It’s okay by me.”

  “Can we just talk about something else?” she asks. “Please? I’m going to go crazy if we talk about this all night when there’s not a damn, fucking thing I can do. Let’s just—do anything! Talk about anything! Anything but the fact that my brother took a ride on a snowcat with a group of people he didn’t know and a—a goddamned d-drunkard, and now he’s been lost f-for three f-full days, and I haven’t heard from him, and he’s—he’s probably…p-probably…Oh, my God…Elliot…”