Secure Location - By Beverly Long Page 0,3

held her small family together, even when there were weeks where the only food to eat were peanut butter sandwiches.

People managed.

Just like Meg and Slater could manage this. Scott Slater ran this fancy hotel. He had the money to beef-up security, get some around-the-clock protection.

It wasn’t Cruz’s problem. And clearly, Meg wasn’t overjoyed to see him.

But, he realized, as he walked around the car, each circle making his stomach grip tighter, none of that mattered. He wasn’t going anywhere. Not if there was a chance that Meg was in danger.

The creep had been thorough. There was hardly a spot that hadn’t been damaged. Somebody had wanted to make a point.

“So who have you pissed off lately?” he asked, without looking at her.

“I don’t know. I’ve been through it a hundred times in my head and I can’t think of anybody. The police asked for a list of people that the hotel had terminated in the last year.”

It was a good place to start. When people lost jobs, they wanted somebody to blame. The Senior Vice President of Operations was as good as anybody. He’d seen stranger things in his fifteen years on the force. Hell, once a man was stalked for three weeks and ultimately killed because he’d taken somebody’s seat on the train. People were squirrelly.

Beat cops arrived before the in-house security, which didn’t give him a whole lot of confidence in the hotel staff. He and Meg told their story, everybody walked around the car a couple times, and a whole lot of pictures got taken. Security arrived five minutes later, trailed by Detective Harold Myers. The man was twenty pounds overweight, in his fifties, smelled like cigarettes, and his nose was too big for his face.

They told their story a second time, did some more walk-arounds, and then it was up to the main office to take a look at the security cameras. Cruz managed to keep his I-told-you-so to himself when it became clear that the location of Meg’s parking space was about fifteen feet beyond the scope of the camera. But he did want to kick her boss’s ass. How could the guy have allowed her to park somewhere where there wasn’t even a security camera after she’d received death threats?

But Slater was playing golf and Sanjoi Saketa, the skinny Asian from in-house security, didn’t seem inclined to page him. It gave Cruz only a little satisfaction that Meg wasn’t demanding that he do so.

Cruz drummed his fingers on the metal desk. “You do have a camera on the entrance and exit, right?”

“Of course,” Sanjoi said, sounding a little offended. “There’s one gate in and one out. The camera swivels between them, every four seconds.”

“Do employees have to swipe a badge to activate the gates?” Cruz asked.

Sanjoi shook his head. “No. Guests park here, as well. The gates are activated by a car pulling up.”

Myers shrugged. “It’s not the best system, but then again, I’ve worked this beat for a lot of years and this hotel has had very few problems. Let’s take a look at the tapes and try to isolate cars that enter and leave again quickly.”

“Is there a camera over the employee entrance?” Cruz asked.

Sanjoi nodded.

“Good. Can you produce a list of every employee who entered the building after Meg did this morning?”

Myers stepped forward. “The list should be given to me,” he instructed. “Detective Montoya is not here in an official capacity.”

Yeah. He was just the idiot ex-husband. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to Meg.

“It’s not even three o’clock. I can’t just leave.”

“I thought you were going shopping?”

She was saved from having to answer because at that moment her boss breezed into the office. Cruz could have picked the man out of a lineup in dim lighting. The man’s blond hair was always perfectly combed and his six-hundred-dollar suits perfectly pressed. Hell, his golf pants had creases. The man had been Meg’s coworker in Chicago and when he’d accepted a promotion to San Antonio eighteen months ago, Cruz had been happy to see him go. He’d always thought the man was a little too friendly with his wife, although there had never been any reason to think that Meg reciprocated in any way.

He’d felt pretty damn stupid when Meg had followed him here six months later, leaving the same day she’d signed the divorce papers.

Slater ignored him, eyes only for Meg. “Are you all right? This is getting out of control.”

You think? Cruz put a proprietary hand on the