Page 69 of Born for Starlight

"Who did she leave with? Who signed her out?"

Keys again. Slower this time.

"I don't have that information on my screen." A pause that I didn't like at all. "Is odd. There is always a name."

Yeah. Really fucking odd.

I thanked her, told her she'd done a wonderful thing for the sisters, and hung up.

Then I stood in the middle of the bedroom and let it rip through me.

He knew. It was the only version of this that made sense. He never called the hospital while I bathed because he didn't need to call. He already knew she was gone. The ICU. The no-visitors rule. Layla's powerful daddy pulling strings to get me a bedside visit. He’d written an entire script, expecting me to jump right in and play my part.

The absolute dickless son of a bitch!

I'd bet my bestie Kit's Oscar that Layla's daddy wasn't high up in state politics. Kit would back me on it, too. Hell, that woman probably hadn’t been raised by anybody. She’d probably been hatched fully grown by a snake. Guaran-fucking-teed.

I checked the time. An hour and forty minutes until Matthew came back.

Well, I wasn't about to sit here on my ass and wait for the liar to stroll in, spewing more bullshit. I was going to that hospital, and I was going to find out who in the hell walked out of it with Luzia.

I dressed for the part. The navy dress I’d packed along with the good pearls, low heels, hair smoothed back.

Demure.

Concerned.

A serious woman on serious business, not some entitled American who showed up in jeans to throw her name around.

Now for ditching Matthew’s guard dog.

Luckily, years of dodging photographers taught me one thing about five-star hotels. Every one of them knows how to move a famous face out of the building without a single soul seeing it happen. I called down to the concierge and asked for the quiet way out.

"Of course, Ms. Drakos. I'll send a car to the service entrance."

"No car. A taxi, please." A hotel car meant a hotel booking, and a booking meant a record with my name on it. "And this stays between us."

"Naturally, senhora. Rodrigo will meet you at the service door at the end of your hall. Five minutes."

I cracked the suite door and peeked out. Matthew's man in the gray suit sat in the alcove by the guest elevators. He was there to keep the world away from me, so he was facing the elevators, the way trouble comes up. Matthew had made a mistake, he hadn’t told the man to make sure I stayed in the room.

Yep, Matthew had definitely been rattled.

I quietly slipped out the door and meandered away from the guest elevators toward the service door, far away from Matthew’s man.

Rodrigo was maybe twenty, crisp uniform, and he didn’t give me a second look. He took me through the service door and down a service elevator, along a corridor that smelled of laundry detergent. In the kitchen, one line cook looked up and caught an elbow from the man next to him. Then a gray door swung open onto an alley, and a taxi idled there with its back door open.

I’m sure that for the staff, this was just another Monday.

I was surprised by the size of the hospital. For some reason, I’d been expecting it to be smaller. This must be part of the reason that Luzia could have fallen through the cracks. I paid the driver, stepped onto the sidewalk, and stood there looking up for a moment too long. This was where the puzzle pieces were finally going to make sense.

I pulled myself together and walked toward the entrance.

The lobby was clean and old at the same time. Scrubbed floors, plastic chairs faded with age. A fan turned slow circles on a stand in the corner, and a Virgin Mary watched over all of it from the far wall. The woman at the desk had her hair in a bun and a phone wedged between her ear and shoulder. When she looked up, her entire face changed.

"You," she breathed. "Senhora, you are. You are⁠—"

"Angelica Drakos." I took her hand in both of mine, as if she were the famous one. "We spoke on the phone. You found Luzia's records for me. You have no idea how grateful I am."