Cut To The Chase

“So the next time your father wasn’t where he was supposed to be, I sent Bebe back to Humboldt Park again, you know, disguised, so she could get closer this time. She wore a headscarf and sunglasses and pushed a baby carriage. Your father never suspected a thing,” his mom said with fierce satisfaction.

Bebe in disguise, pushing a baby carriage. It might’ve been funny if it weren’t so horrifying. “Let me get this straight. You had Bebe shadowing Dad at the park?”

“So? She got some very good pictures, didn’t she?” His mother shook her head. “Same woman, same park bench. Meeting her again. And look at her, Sean. Cheap Christmas trash.”

Well, he couldn’t disagree. Bebe’s clear, sharp photographs showed a dyed-blonde with obvious roots and a frizzy ponytail, big sunglasses, and a dark raincoat over her clothes. She had a good jawline, a determined little chin, and what appeared to be a nicely shaped mouth exaggerated by a load of shiny, dark pink lipstick. The raincoat was open far enough in several of the pictures to reveal a low-cut top, very tight jeans, and the most god-awful pair of shoes he’d ever seen. They were clear plastic sandals with very high heels and glitter and stars plastered all over them. He didn’t have to be a detective to recognize hooker shoes when he saw them.

So which was worse? The assumption that his dad was having an affair? Or that he was somehow involved with a prostitute?

“All right,” he said grimly. “You’ve got photos of him with a suspicious woman. Is there more?”

“That’s the thing, Sean. I was waiting for him to have, you know, another unexplained absence. But he hasn’t. Well, until today, but his secretary heard him on the phone arranging to meet Jake, so I think that was okay.”

“Yeah,” Sean put in. “I got a message from Jake canceling the fishing trip. He said Dad had an errand for him. So that checks out.”

“So since the meeting where Bebe got the pictures, he’s been clean. But now…” Her voice was positively triumphant as she made a flourish Bebe’s way.

“I saw her again,” Bebe whispered.

“At the park?”

“Oh, no. At the airport.” Bebe leaned forward, her eyes wide. “I had to go pick up my niece, who is such a nice girl. And so smart. She had a scholarship to Johns Hopkins. You should meet her, Sean. She’d be perfect for you.”

“Uh huh. How about the rest of the story?”

“Well, I went to pick up my niece, and who do I see? That same woman from the park! Oh, she was trying to look different all right—her hair was a different color and she had a headscarf, a bandanna kind of thing, but that did not fool me.” Bebe, now the queen of scarf disguises, nodded sagely. “I recognized that trick, I’ll tell you.”

“You saw her at the airport,” Sean said patiently. “So she was leaving town. Which is good, right? If Dad was somehow mixed up with this woman, he’s not now, because she left town.”

“Oh, no, that’s the thing,” Bebe interrupted. “She wasn’t leaving. She was arriving.”

“I don’t get it. If she was already in Chicago, why was she arriving?”

“We don’t get it, either,” his mother said, patting his arm. “But that’s where you come in.”

He had a very bad feeling about this. And since Jake had just canceled out on the fishing trip, Sean didn’t really have a good excuse to duck and run, either.

“Sean, my sweet, adorable son,” Yvonne Calhoun murmured, putting her head on his shoulder, “we all know you have this…”

He knew what would be next.

“You have an uncanny knack for seeing the truth,” she finished. “Sean, you are practically psychic when it comes to these criminals and figuring them out. Disguises, deceptions, it’s nothing to you. You just see right through.”

Already feeling trapped, he asked, “What do you want me to do?”

His mother sat up straight, laying it out for him without mincing words. “Here’s the deal. Bebe saw her at the baggage pickup, she thought it was her so she followed her, she lost her again, but then she picked her out at the Help desk.”

“I spotted the headscarf,” Bebe said helpfully.

“So she got right in behind her at the Help desk and eavesdropped.”

“Wow, Bebe, maybe you should join the force,” Sean suggested, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. Keystone Kops on a stakeout.

“I know,” Bebe said with a smile. “I was pretty good, I’ll tell you.”

“And what did you hear when you eavesdropped?” he asked tersely, knowing he didn’t really want to know.

“She wanted to know how to get to…”

Sean bent closer, waiting for the word that would come at the end of the dramatic pause. “Where?”

“Champaign,” both women said at once.

“Downstate Champaign?” he asked doubtfully. “University of Illinois?”

“Exactly.” His mother sat back. “She caught a bus to go downstate to Champaign. So I want you to go there, too, and find this tart and figure out what she wants with your father.”

2

AS SEAN UNPACKED AT the Illini Union, he could feel himself begin to relax. A beautiful summer day. A nice hotel room overlooking the Quad on a serene, green college campus where most of the students were gone for the summer. And just about no chance in hell he would ever run into anything remotely connected to the bimbo in the hooker shoes his mother wanted him to find.

Okay, so he felt a little silly being on a wild-goose chase. But as long as he already knew it was a wild-goose chase, what difference did it make? He could hang out in Champaign-Urbana, enjoy himself for a few days, and then head back to town and tell his mother with a crystal-clear conscience that he had done what she’d asked and gee whiz, he just didn’t find hide nor hair of the woman she was looking for. Sounded like the easiest case he’d ever been assigned.

And, hey, accepting her crazy mission got him out of town, didn’t it? Out of town, away from his desk, away from Mom and her endless string of fix-ups, and away from the responsibility of baby-sitting Cooper at a fishing cabin for a week. Not so bad. Especially when it meant he was back in Champaign-Urbana, which struck him as a great place for a little R&R.

He’d gone to college here, and he had fond memories of pickup basketball games, excellent pizza, lousy beer and general irresponsibility. Good times.

After stowing his belongings, he didn’t waste any time, grabbing a bottle of water and quickly taking the stairs down to the ground floor of the Union. He planned to make a fast trip down memory lane to check out some of his old haunts and get his bearings. Then he would tool around town with the blonde’s picture, put out a few discreet inquiries, enough to truthfully say he’d done his duty, and get beyond that to the beer and pizza as soon as possible.

First, memory lane. Sean was actually smiling as he slid out the big white doors onto the Quad, feeling footloose and fancy-free for the first time in forever. That smile lasted approximately four minutes, which was as long as it took him to walk down the west side of the Quad, past a group of kids and a guide walking backward on a college orientation tour, and glance up at the auditorium looming ahead.

Because that was when she showed up.

Her. As nearly as he could tell, the same one from the photo.

From out of nowhere, she came walking toward him. Automatically, he assessed the details. Head down, looking at the sidewalk. Left hand rammed into the pocket of a long denim coat. Right hand wrapped around the handle of a canvas tote bag with Chicago White Sox written on it.

Her eyes were hidden by dark, impenetrable sunglasses, similar to the ones in the picture. She had brown hair, cut kind of choppy, with the ends visible under a bandanna. Pale skin. Clean, elegant jaw. Feisty little chin. Perfectly formed lips.

Sean blinked. Was he nuts? Or was that really her, the one in Bebe’s photographs?

He felt like someone had set off a signal flare inside his head. Surprise, excitement, the thrill of the chase… The zing in the air was as unexpected as it was unwelcome.

Luckily, he had the presence of mind to keep moving after she cut across in front of him and took up residence under a tree. As casually as if he were any old tourist retracing his college memories, he ambled around the steps of the auditorium, turning to gaze back up the Quad, pretending to take in the vista of sun-dappled trees and stately buildings as he gathered data on his mystery woman.

Although she looked a little nervous, fussing with the ends of her hair, arranging her coat, adjusting her sunglasses, she seemed unaware of his scrutiny as she plunked herself down on the grass under a maple tree. Sean bided his time, watching, sipping quietly at his water bottle, wishing his instincts would knock off the high alert already and quit pumping adrenaline through his veins.

Forcing himself to judge the facts, he noted that she wore a lot less makeup than the woman in the picture, plus her hair was a different color and length, and there was no sign of trashy footwear, just plain flat sandals. On the other hand, her lips, face shape, and overall bone structure were a good match, she was the right height, she was wearing a bandanna, which was something Bebe had specifically mentioned, and…

And he had a strong gut feeling, the kind he had learned to trust. After all, an “uncanny knack for seeing the truth” was right there on his resume.

Impatient with that “knack,” as always, Sean went back to hard, cold facts. His mantra was that bones didn’t lie, and those sure looked like the cheekbones and chin line of the woman in the photo.

What else? He couldn’t see much of her body inside the bulky coat, but that itself was suspicious, considering the fact that everyone else around was in shorts and T-shirts or tank tops in the hot weather. Plus she was wearing sunglasses and a scarf and her hair was a phony shade of brown, all of which had “disguise” written all over it. In his opinion, her demeanor was anxious, somewhat furtive, as she huddled there under the tree, deliberately not looking at anyone. She was definitely sending out “pay no attention to me” vibes.

It all added up to someone who had a lot to hide.

But it couldn’t be the right woman, could it? Not only had he not expected to find her in the first five minutes he was in town, he hadn’t expected to find her at all.

And he hadn’t expected her to be so…interesting. Even with the odd clothing, she had this kind of aura, as if she was just more vivid than anybody or anything around her. Call it ESP or just that blasted “uncanny knack” he was supposed to have, but Sean had a strong feeling that if he peeled off the scarf and the sunglasses and the bulky denim coat, he would conclude that she was…

Beautiful. Smart. Intriguing. A knockout.

“Okay, now you’re really going around the bend,” he said under his breath. Must just be some weird kind of investigative eagerness kicking in, making him feel all hot and bothered in inappropriate ways. It had never happened before, but there was a first time for everything.

Taking a long swig of water to cool his jets, Sean pushed himself back to reality, back to the question at hand. Was she the quarry he was supposed to be looking for?

Physically, the details matched. But the fact remained that she was not at all what he had expected from the woman in Bebe’s photo, the one with the frizzy, bleached hair and trashy ’ho shoes. The one who might be playing mattress macarena with his father.

That idea had become even more disgusting now that he’d found her.

Frowning, Sean backed off. Putting a little more distance between them, he looped around the side of the Foreign Language Building to keep an eye on her while he decided what to do. Since he’d had no reasonable expectation of finding her, he had never gotten to the point of planning what he should do if he did. Take a picture and send it back to Bebe for a positive ID? Get fingerprints and try to track down her identity or her rap sheet? Chat her up and see if he could get her to spill what was happening with his father, if anything was happening at all? None of it made any sense.

Meanwhile, as he pondered his next move, she still didn’t appear to have a clue that he was there, which meant she had lousy survival instincts. Or a trusting nature.

He got his answer on that one when a scruffy kid on a bicycle rode up. “Hey!” the kid shouted, jumping off his bike right next to her. Petty thief? Purse-snatcher? Something worse? Sean decided he was close enough to jump in if his law enforcement skills were required, but he hung back for now. She sat up abruptly, looking very, very nervous, sort of like Bambi in the headlights. But then the kid extended his hand, shuffling his feet, trying to act all tragic and woebegone. Asking for a handout, no doubt. She relaxed, smiling up at him. Great smile. Bright, shiny, sincere. There had been no evidence of that in Bebe’s photos, but it was everything you could ask for in a smile.

If he hadn’t been such a cynical man, Sean told himself he might’ve felt all warm and fuzzy after seeing her beaming at the boy.

So she rooted around in a big tote bag, took out a few bucks, and handed them over, after which the boy said thank-you loud enough for the tour group all the way down at the other end of the Quad to hear. Then he leapt back on his bike and zoomed away, leaving Sean to conclude that the girl was either an easy touch or just a sap. Or that had been the best-disguised drug deal in the history of the universe.

Sean cooled his heels, wishing he had a newspaper or something else to give him a little cover, but it didn’t seem to matter, since she didn’t look his way. Again, he was struck by her lousy survival skills. He’d been spying on her for a good half hour, and she was clueless.

As he watched and waited, she removed the bandanna, rubbed a hand—left hand, no rings—over her forehead and then carefully tied the scarf back on again; she stared into space; she pulled out a book and dropped it in her lap without opening it; she leaned against the tree and tipped her head back as if she were dozing; she looked a little flushed and clapped her hand over her mouth and left it there for several seconds; she took off her sunglasses and wiped at her eyes with a tissue which he took to mean she either had allergies or she was crying; and she rooted around her bag and took out a package of saltine crackers, which she proceeded to eat, one by one, until she had demolished the whole package. Then she folded her trash back into the bag quite neatly, stood up, hoisted her bag, and began to walk away.

So of course he followed.

Disguise, crying, hungry enough to snarf lots of crackers, possibly a headache or something else physically wrong leading to the flush and the hand over the mouth… What did it all add up to? Sean contemplated some possibilities. Heat stroke from that silly coat? Mental illness but not taking her meds? Undercover or on the lam? Some kind of damsel in distress, emotional or otherwise?

As he trailed her, he found himself with lots more questions, but not getting any closer to answers. If she was the right woman, and the physical resemblance plus how closely she matched Bebe’s description made him about eighty percent certain she was, then what had she been doing with his father on that park bench in Chicago, and what was she doing down here now? He was surprised to realize just how much he wanted to solve this riddle. Whether she was or wasn’t the “tootsie” his mom wanted him to find, this woman in the long coat and sunglasses, with her crackers and her tissues, she was hiding out in Champaign-Urbana, acting very strangely. And he needed to know why.

Sean stayed about a block behind her as she cut down a quiet campus street and ducked into a coffeehouse. He saw her get a muffin and a carton of milk, slowly consume both at an outdoor table that was remarkably easy to keep under surveillance, and then once again take off walking. It took about ten or eleven blocks of her walking straight ahead, not noticing him skirting around trees behind her, before she walked up to the front door of a small home on a tree-lined side street just off-campus. She put a key in the door and disappeared inside.

No car outside. Nothing in the front yard. No sign that anyone else was in the house.

From the protective cover of a large evergreen outside an apartment building across the street, Sean considered his day’s work. Approximately four hours in Champaign-Urbana, and he’d already located his target, shadowed her, and found out where she was staying. Not bad. Not bad at all.

BY THE THIRD DAY, Sean had her routine down cold. She would emerge from her house about nine or ten, ridiculously overdressed, carefully buttoned into that damn coat, with sunglasses and some sort of hat. She would walk to the Quad, sit under the same maple tree, eat an amazing number of crackers, stare into space, and look anxious or upset from time to time, with maybe a tear or two. She also fed a squirrel on one occasion, protected herself from an errant Frisbee on another, and twice stopped to read flyers taped to a kiosk.

Nice profile, good nose, excellent smile, beautiful skin. Fondness for American League baseball, given the White Sox bag and the Orioles cap she had on today, and a major taste for saltines, grapes, cheese curls, pizza, McDonald’s French fries, muffins, and milk, given what he’d seen her pull out of the tote bag and consume on the Quad. Especially saltines.

Man, he was in bad shape—slipping from surveillance ever closer to plain old stalking—if he was reduced to keeping track of every crumb she ate. At least he had a plan now, and a routine of his own that included a backpack, water bottle, very small camera, newspaper, and a book on college sports, just in case he needed cover if anyone saw him spying. So far, he’d left a few messages for his mother—purposely calling when he knew she wouldn’t be in so he didn’t have to talk to her—to let her know he was on the case. But other than that, he’d kept quiet about finding his target. Mostly biding his time, he’d managed to snap her picture from various angles to compare to the ones from Bebe, but that was about it. He figured he could watch and wait a little longer, at least until he saw whether she contacted anyone or anyone dropped by to visit her. Like his father.

Even thinking about that made him grind his teeth and think unpleasant thoughts.

“No way that girl is fooling around with my old man,” he said grimly from his vantage point behind the front doors of Lincoln Hall. Every instinct he had told him that much, anyway. If she was the one Bebe saw in the park and at the airport, there must be some other reason…

But his analysis of the situation was interrupted when she suddenly bolted up from where she was sitting, abandoning her snacks and her tote bag, careening off toward a secluded area near the English Building and looking a little green around the gills while she did it. Without a second’s hesitation, Sean made tracks to follow.

He caught up to her where she’d stopped to hang on to a tree trunk for dear life. She’d knocked off her sunglasses, her hat had fallen off a few feet away, and she was bent over at the waist, with one hand pressed into her stomach and the other firmly over her mouth.

Pale, shaky, unsteady, she turned. Her gaze met Sean’s.

Wow. He’d never seen her without the sunglasses. Her eyes were hazel. Even under these circumstances, they were beautiful and warm. Very warm. She paused, blinked, still focused on him, as if she were trying to place him and figure out what he was doing there. He had never felt so awkward and yet so instantly connected to anyone in his life.

Unable to remain merely an onlooker, Sean found himself vaulting into a role as an active participant in this little drama whether he wanted to or not. She was staring at him intently, and he knew he should back off or walk on by before she really did decide he was a stalker. But he couldn’t.

Sean edged nearer, picking up the baseball cap. “Sorry,” he said quietly. “I don’t mean to intrude. But I could tell you were…”

And that was when he finally put two and two together. The bulky clothes, the saltines, the sudden nausea…

She was pregnant.

Sean blinked, backing off a step. Pregnant?

Of course. It all made sense. And yet…

The woman who might be his father’s girlfriend was pregnant? He felt like he’d been punched in the gut.

3

“GO AWAY,” ABRA said flatly.

The last thing she needed at this particular moment was some nosy stranger moving in on her and trying to interfere. He didn’t look dangerous, just way too cute for his own good, with light brown hair cut short and shoved carelessly to one side, and an intense, serious expression on his very fine face. Wearing a white T-shirt and faded blue jeans, with a backpack slung over one shoulder, he seemed like a regular guy. Or at least an extremely good-looking regular guy. Wide shoulders, nice muscles, lean hips… If he stripped off that shirt, she bet she’d find abs to die for. She had this thing about abs, a thing she had never admitted to anyone, not even herself, really. But she still had it.

She spared him another glance and immediately wished she hadn’t. He was adorable, whoever he was, standing there, looking all concerned. And he had blue eyes, too. She might’ve known. All the worst ones had blue eyes, just to torment her.

“A snoop is still a snoop, no matter how hunky the package,” she said under her breath.

He moved closer. “I’m sorry—what did you say?”

Abra groaned, hanging on tight to her friendly tree, wishing her stomach would stop this topsy-turvy stuff. She’d eaten every saltine in sight and she still felt absolutely miserable. But, hey, she was upright. Right now, that amounted to a major victory. Especially with this adorable guy with the fabulous blue eyes staring at her as if she were some exotic wild animal while she tried her darnedest not to barf. If she weren’t so sick, she would’ve considered dying of humiliation.

“I said, go away,” she repeated.

But he shook his head, still advancing on her. “I want to help,” he said kindly. “For one thing, I think we should get you out of that coat before you pass out from the heat.”

Before she could move away, he was right there, gently holding her steady as he unwound her from the heavy denim coat and folded it over his arm. Great. A chivalrous snoopy hunk.

“Better?” he asked in that same soothing, annoying tone, laying his palm on her forehead as if she were a three-year-old with a temperature, and she wanted to smack him. Actually, she wanted him to leave that cool hand there forever, or better yet, move it somewhere more fun. But she knew that was just the hormones talking way too loud.

And they needed to shut up. Now.

One hand on her forehead, one momentary physical connection, and all she could think about was how much she liked his long, elegant fingers, how amazing it felt to be touched, what a pretty color his eyes were, how steady his gaze, how hungry she was for a man’s hands and lips and…

Shut up. Now! she commanded her noisy hormones.

Still, his fingers felt so good, and those blue eyes, fringed with thick lashes, sparkling with intelligence and concern, were awfully tempting. She could so easily fall into that gaze and never even want to escape.

As a new wave of nausea swamped her, Abra cursed her luck. Just once in her life, it would’ve been nice to give in and trust somebody to take over, to swoon into his arms and let this sexy stranger carry her off.

Yeah, right. She straightened. Like she wasn’t in enough trouble already. All she needed was to add to it by drooling all over a man she didn’t even know, someone who could be a publicity hound or a crazed fan or just a garden-variety serial killer.

Starting to panic just a little for a whole new set of reasons, Abra edged away from his hand, mumbling, “Thank you, but…”

But I’m supposed to be in disguise, and now my hat and my sunglasses and even my nice, baggy coat are gone, and all that’s left is Abra Holloway, media star, with ugly dyed brown hair and a bad case of the heaves. And even if you aren’t a serial killer, you are way too gorgeous to be standing there staring at me while I toss my cookies!