Wyatt dared to step away from the door he’d been examining. “I guess your taste in music hasn’t changed.” Seemed a safe enough topic until Rich arrived.
Yeah, right. Wyatt gave himself another mental shake. He was pretty sure he’d lost his damned mind.
“Lot of things about me have changed.” She stood back from the bed and considered the room a moment. Then she looked him up and down. “I’m not that girl anymore, Wyatt. I’m a woman. Maybe you didn’t notice.” Then she headed for the bathroom.
There was no way to verbalize his response to that. Oh yeah, he’d noticed ... every damned thing about her.
“Well, well.” She jerked her head for him to come to the bathroom door. “Check this out.”
Adrenaline sent a second charge into his veins. He stopped in the doorway. Fury chased the adrenaline through his bloodstream. This wasn’t just a random act of vandalism by some jerk from the past.
The bastard every member of law enforcement in three counties was looking for had been in her room.
Glued to the mirror was another cut-and-paste note.
Are you ready to die, princess?
“That’s it,” Wyatt snapped. “You’re not staying here another minute.”
She glared at him for three beats before turning her attention back to the mirror. “If he’d wanted to kill me, he would have paid me a visit while I was actually in the room. Clearly, murder wasn’t on his schedule for tonight.”
Wyatt’s frustration meter topped out. “You are the most hardheaded woman—”
A knock sounded at the door before he could finish sticking his foot completely in his mouth. He turned away from the woman driving him absolutely crazy and strode across the room. He opened the door for his colleague. “Thanks for coming so quickly, Rich.”
“Not a problem.” Rich Baggett, his bag of tricks in hand, leaned his head toward one shoulder to see past Wyatt. “That can’t be Adeline Cooper.”
“Hey, Rich.” She swaggered up to him and thrust out her gloved hand. “Long time, no see.”
“You ain’t kidding.” He bypassed her hand and gave her a hug.
Wyatt grabbed their jackets from the floor.Shit.He hoped like hell Rich hadn’t noticed.
“Somebody doesn’t like my taste in clothes.” She gestured to the bed.
Rich blew out a long, low whistle. “Looks that way.”
“I doubt it’ll do any good,” Wyatt cut in, “but you can check the relevant areas of the room for prints.” It would probably be a waste of time, but maybe they’d get lucky.
“Gotcha.” He set his bag on the floor and knelt down to get the tools he would need for the job.
“There’s also a message on the bathroom mirror,” Wyatt told him. “I’m particularly interested in whether or not the glue used is the sameas what was used on the princess letters Prescott and Adeline have already received.”
“Whether it is or not,” Addy piped up, “this is not the work of the same guy who sent the letters.”
Her claim took Wyatt aback. “We can’t be sure until—”
“I’m sure.” She turned and headed back to the bathroom.
Wyatt followed, trying his level best not to stare at her sweet ass.
“Take a look at how the words are lined up.” She drew a line in the air beneath the message. “Perfectly straight. Exactly the same distance apart. The letters, mine as well as Prescott’s, were not so meticulously arranged. The words weren’t so perfectly straight, a little upward tilt on the right as if the perp had trouble maintaining a straight line.” She shrugged. “Hands weren’t steady enough or maybe a vision problem.” She pointed to the spacing between the words then. “These words are spaced precisely, like the guy took a ruler. Not so with the letters from our perp.”
Wyatt considered the validity of her points. “Could be that having them on the mirror right in front of his face enabled him to be more accurate with the spacing and the lining up of the words.” If the glue was the same, damn it, then it had to be!
Maybe. Damn it!
“That’s possible,” she admitted. “But why tear up my clothes? It’s not consistent with his actions related to Prescott’s abduction.”