As he approached the room, an aide wheeled out a cart, packed solid with floral arrangements. Trey stepped aside to let her pass.
“Can I help you?” She eyed him curiously.
“I’m here to get my wife and son.” His glance skipped past her into the room, stripped of its balloons, flowers, and cuddly toys. But it was the empty bed that made him check the room number.
“What’s her name?” the aide asked in an attempt to he helpful.
Trey answered automatically while he was still trying to make sense of what he was seeing. “Sloan Calder.”
“Mrs. Calder?” the young girl repeated in surprise. “Why, she’s already left.”
Features that had initially appeared youthful and ruggedly handsome, hardened into something forbidding. ?
??You must be mistaken.”
The aide drew back. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m not. She’s gone.”
The sound of approaching footsteps, whisper-soft in their tread, intruded, and the aide was released from the pinning glare of Trey’s cold eyes when it sliced to the nurse moving toward them.
“Good morning, Mr. Calder.” The greeting gave a touch of normalcy to a moment that was anything but. “Is there a problem with the flowers? Your wife did leave instructions that she wanted to share them with the other patients.”
“Where is she?” Trey demand curtly. “Where’s my son?”
Surprise left the woman momentarily speechless and a little flustered. “I believe they left right before I came on duty, probably thirty or forty minutes ago. If I’m not mistaken, Tessa—Nurse Hutchins—accompanied them to the lobby.”
“Where’d they go?”
Confusion and concern came together in the woman’s expression. “They didn’t arrive at your motel?”
“Would I be here if they had?” Trey countered, his voice low and rough.
“I suppose not,” the nurse admitted. “It’s just that Tess—Nurse Hutchins—mentioned that your wife said something about wanting to surprise you. Naturally she assumed the taxi was going to take her to your—”
Trey walked off before she could complete the sentence, swift strides carrying him toward the lobby. The nurse sent an anxious glance after him.
“I wonder what happened to Mrs. Calder,” the aide murmured. “Do you think we should call the police?”
After a moment’s hesitation, the nurse made a small negative shake of her head. “I don’t think so. At least—not yet,” she added and hurried after Trey.
Even at a running walk, she didn’t catch up with him until he reached the lobby. Oblivious to her calls for him to wait, he never slowed until she caught his arm. Halting, he swung around to face her, bristling with impatience.
“Maybe you should check at the other motels in town,” she suggested earnestly. “It’s possible she went to the wrong one.”
Without even a nod of acknowledgement, he turned back and started across the lobby again, taking no notice of the heavyset man in a billed cap standing at the information desk. But the gray-haired volunteer manning the desk saw him and waved an envelope in the air.
“Yoo-hoo, Mr. Calder,” she called. “Ken just brought this in for you.”
One glimpse of the envelope in her hand and Trey changed course, crossing to the desk. He took the envelope from her outstretched hand and ripped open the flap.
“It’s a good thing I caught you before you left, “the woman declared brightly. “Oh, it would have been forwarded on to you, of course, but as slow as mail is these days, who knows how long it might have taken?”
Inside was a single sheet of plain paper, folded in half. Trey snapped it open. The message was one sentence long. My lawyer will be in touch. It was signed Sloan.
Trey’s fingers curled into the paper, stopping short of wadding it into a ball. He turned the full bore of his attention on the man in the billed cap.
“Are you the one who brought this?” His voice was tight with challenge.
“Yeah.” The man’s shoulders moved in a small, so-what shrug.