Sanctuary in Chef Voleur. Mallory Kane
talking about how much she and Kathleen loved Chef Voleur and how they had made that promise to each other.”
She picked up her purse from the dining room table and stood, gripping the back of the chair to steady herself. “I’m truly sorry about your mother.” She paused.
He nodded. “She died a long time ago,” he said dismissively.
That was another reason he didn’t like to be around women like her. Although Hannah was obviously in need of help and had pushed herself beyond her limits, right this minute her concern was for him and he didn’t like that one bit.
She looked down at the photo, then up at him. “You look just like her,” she said. “You have to be her son.”
“MacEllis Griffin,” he said, offering neither his hand nor any further explanation. “Call me Mack.”
“Mack,” she said, “I apologize for bothering you.” She started to stand.
“Wait,” he said. “What’s this life-and-death emergency?” He bit his tongue, literally. But it was too late.
To his dismay, hope flared in her eyes. “I’m—not sure I should—”
“Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong.” What the hell was happening to him? When had his mouth cut itself off from his brain? He was just digging himself in deeper and deeper. And why? Because a pretty woman had fainted in his doorway? No. It was because he had the very definite feeling that when she’d said life and death, she wasn’t overstating the issue at all.
She sank back into the chair and casually picked up a business card from a small stack on the table. “MacEllis Griffin,” she said. “D&D Security?”
“It’s a private firm that takes on certain security issues,” he said, watching her.
“Security—like night guards at office buildings?”
Mack sent her an ironic look. “No.”
She frowned for a second, then eyebrows rose. “You’re a private investigator?”
“You could use that term, although we don’t take the usual divorce or spouse-tailing cases.”
“What do you take?”
The faint hope he’d seen in her eyes grew, although she was still stiff as a board and tension radiated from her like heat.
“We’ve handled our share of life-and-death cases,” he said.
Her eyes went as opaque as turquoise.
“Sorry,” he said. “I can be a sarcastic SOB at times. Here’s a quick rundown of me. I’m thirty-one years old. I’ve been with D&D Security for three years. I’m licensed as an investigator with the state of Louisiana. Now, will you tell me why you drove all night to find my mother?”
“How do you know I drove all night?” she asked.
“Your eyes are twitching and the lids are drooping. Headache and exhaustion, I’d guess. You’re trembling, probably from too much coffee. You haven’t combed your hair and your clothes smell faintly of gasoline. You must have spilled a little while you were filling up. How far have you driven?”
She shifted in her chair. “What are you, some kind of Sherlock Holmes?” she asked drily. “Maybe you can tell me what I had for dinner last night.”
He smiled. “You didn’t eat dinner. You didn’t stop until you were out of gas. You had a cup of coffee and nothing else. Then you didn’t stop again until you got a motel room. You slept in your clothes, although you didn’t sleep much. You couldn’t stop thinking about whatever happened that frightened you so much that you took off without packing.”
“How—?”
“If you’d packed, you’d have changed clothes.” He stopped. “My question is, what or who are you running from?”
She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again. He saw tears start in her eyes, but she blinked to keep them from falling. When she spoke, there was no trace of the tears in her voice. “I’m not running from anyone,” she said, straightening her spine.
Mack knew from her voice that she was lying, and from her determined glare that she’d decided something. Probably to unload her woes upon him. He braced himself.
She stared at him for so long he was beginning to wonder if she’d fallen asleep with her eyes wide-open. But about the time he’d decided to snap his fingers in front of her face, she sat back with a sigh. “I drove here from Dowdie, Texas. Eight hours. And I’ve got to start back today. As soon as I can. My mother is—” She stopped as tears welled in her eyes. She wiped a hand down her face, then swiped at the dampness on her cheeks with her fingers.
“Your mother?” Mack said encouragingly.
“She’s very ill. She has to have dialysis or she’ll die.”
Mack waited, but she didn’t say anything else. She pressed her lips together and clenched her jaw, doing her best not to cry.
“Do you need money?” he asked gently. “To pay for the treatments?”
“What? No! I don’t need money. My mother has insurance.”
“So why did you drive all this way just to turn around and go back?”
“It’s complicated,” she said.
“Most things are, especially if they involve running.”
Tears welled again, and she pulled a tissue out of her purse and wiped her eyes. “I’ve kept that photo in my purse for years. Mom always told me that if I needed anything and she wasn’t—wasn’t—” She took a quick breath. “I should find Kathleen.”
Mack’s brows rose when she’d stumbled over her words. He pushed his chair back and stood. “Okay. Well, I’m Kathleen’s son, so if you’ll tell me what you need, I’ll take care of it for you.”
She played with the water glass, tracing a droplet of water up one side and down the other. “I can’t tell you. It’s too dangerous.”
“Dangerous to who?” Mack asked.
“To my mother.”
“Look,” he said. “You need to start at the beginning. I can’t figure out what you’re talking about and I haven’t heard anything that sounds dangerous yet, except your mother’s illness. And you said she’s getting dialysis.”
“That’s just it. She’s not.”
“Why not?”
“Because—” She sobbed, then banged her open palm on the table. “I can’t stop crying.”
Mack got up and refilled her water. He set it in front of her and watched her as she drank it, hiccuped, then drank some more.
“Now. Why isn’t she getting dialysis?”
“Because she’s been kidnapped.”
Mack flopped down in the chair. “Kidnapped? Is this some kind of joke?”
She stared at him, anger burning away the tears. “A joke? That’s what you think?”
He opened his mouth then shook his head. He wasn’t sure what he thought at the moment. He’d figured she had come to ask for money and it was just taking her a while to work up the nerve.
He studied her. Her skin was still colorless. She looked exhausted and terrified and so far she wasn’t making a lot of sense.
“Okay. Your mother’s been kidnapped. By who? Have they contacted you? Do they want a ransom? And have you talked to the police?”
“No! No. It’s not that kind of kidnapping. And I can’t go to—” She stopped talking.
Mack