Page 21 of Harrison Hyde and the Runaway Bride

Willow said, “Are you sure he’d have nothing to gain by stealing your… prototype? He couldn’t claim it as his own or sell the design or?—?”

“I don’t… I mean, I don’t think so. It’s patented in all our names.”

“Maybe you’d best tell me those names.” Willow was taking notes on her phone.

“Besides Robert and me, there’s Solomon Hadid and Carrie Sayre. I texted Carrie this morning, asked her to get the backup prototype and bring it with her to Silver Springs.”

“And they’re all supposed to be there?” Willow asked. “At the demo in Silver Springs on Wednesday?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know much about patent law,” Willow said. “But it seems to me, gettin’ your stake back if someone tried to claim it would probably take some time. A lawsuit, maybe. An investigation. Those things can take years.”

“Meanwhile,” Maria said, “Robert takes the solar tile, sells it himself, and flies off to someplace without extradition.”

Harrison couldn’t stop shaking his head. “I really don’t think that was Robert.”

Maria looked at him then shook her head. “I think you do. You just don’t want to think it.”

“I really don’t want to think it,” he agreed.

“I want another look at the drop-off,” Willow said. “Back it up and play it again, Manny?”

Manny backed up the video and played it again, his hand remaining on the mouse for rapid pausing.

“Stop it there.” Willow leaned in. Harrison thought the license plate was too small to read, though. Then Willow said, “Manny, do you care if I send my cousin Orrin over here to take a look at this footage?”

“He old enough to be inside a saloon?” Manuel asked with a smile.

“Twenty-four and gifted with tech. He can send me the pertinent section of video, if it’s okay with you.”

“Sure it is. Send him on over. I’ll make sure it doesn’t get recorded over. That much I know how to do.” He moved the mouse, saying aloud as he clicked, “File. Save. Done. Anything else I can do to help?”

“Well, since we’re here anyway…” Maria glanced at Manny and fluttered her lashes.

“I already have a batch-to-go for you,chica.I told Junior to start ’em up soon as I saw that wild red hair through the front winder.”

Harrison sat in the passenger seat, Willow drove, and Maria was crammed in between them in the middle. Harrison didn’t mind her pressed up beside him. He didn’t consider himself knowledgeable in the ways of flirtation, but he’d realized over the course of the day spent almost entirely by her side, that he was mightily attracted to Maria Michele Brand Monroe. He thought any heterosexual man would feel the same. It probably wasn’t abnormal. It was just abnormal for him.

He didn’t pay much attention to women. He hadn’t had time. And it was completely illogical to feel attracted to this one. It couldn’t go anywhere. He certainly wasn’t moving to Texas and she had her whole life planned out.

And there was no room in his life for a fling. His prototype was missing, his family was breaking up, his father was sick, and his deathbed promise to his dying mother was teetering on the edge of failure.

Harrison’s phone pinged. He frowned as he looked at the screen. “It’s Carrie’s landline,” he said, surprised.

“Your research partner?” Maria asked.

He nodded and took the call. “Hey Carrie. Everything okay?”

“Hey, Harrison,” said a man’s voice. Not Carrie’s.

“John?” Both women in the truck looked at him.

Carrie’s husband said, “Yeah. I’m calling everyone in Carrie’s contacts. They’re on desktop, you know. She’s uh… she’s… Idon’t know where she is. I’m worried. Have you seen her? You spoke to her this morning, didn’t you? What did she say?”

Icy alarm chilled Harrison’s spine. He tapped his phone’s speaker icon so the others could hear. “We texted this morning,” he said. “She was going to the lab to get the backup prototype to bring with her to Silver City this coming Wednesday for the demo.”

John sighed heavily into the phone. “That much I knew. She left for Cornell, and I haven’t heard from her since. She’s not answering texts. Calls go to voicemail.”

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