Page 45 of Be Courageous

Tony swung an incredulous look at her. “You didn’t even goshoppingwith her?”

“Robert had the day off,” Corinna blurted, clearly on the verge of bursting into tears. “Ruby knew I wanted to see him, so she dropped me off.”

“Yourboyfriendis to blame?”

Corinna’s eyes flashed as her own temper ignited. “Don’t you dare put this on him!”

“Unbelievable!” Tony gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles hurt.Focus. He ground his molars, forcing himself to think. “Where did you tell Ruby to park?”

“I gave her directions to the garage under the Wanamaker Building.”

He was approaching the latter right that second. Flipping on his turn signal, Tony headed into the underground parking area, where he was forced to stop at an automated gate and get a ticket. Ruby would’ve had to do the same thing. “Look for cameras,” he instructed Corinna. “And keep an eye out for Ruby’s car.”

Maybe they would find it parked here. Maybe she was somewhere inside of City Center shopping and having a grand time, completely unaware that her phone had been stolen. But who would steal a phone, only to throw it away almost at once?

The tires on Corinna’s Escort squealed on the smooth cement as Tony circled his way through the parking garage, eyes peeled for Ruby’s Range Rover.

Nowhere. He didn’t see it anywhere.

There was one car, an old Volvo, that caught his eye because its license plate was missing.

He executed a three-point turn on the lowest level and started back toward the entrance, where he intended to call the police. He drove around a syringe some junkie had tossed down onto the cement. That really ought to go into a trash can.

As he neared the elevator, his gaze landed on a trash can not twenty yards away with trash overflowing from it, including a license plate of all things. He almost drove right past it, but when his intuition niggled, he jammed on the brakes.

Someone had tried to wedge not one, but two completely good Virginia plates into a trash can overflowing from Thursday’s parade. Tony pulled them out and stared, acid burning his esophagus. They didn’t belong to the Volvo. They were Ruby’s plates.

Corinna had one foot out of the car and was staring at him over the top of her Escort. “What’d you find?”

Icy with shock, he held up the personalized plates, I XPOZ U, for her to see as he walked automatically toward her.

Corinna’s jaw had dropped. “Somebody took the plates off her car and stole it?”

They should never have brought her Range Rover to Philly. “Whoever drives that Volvo put his plates on her Rover.” The words he was saying actually encouraged him since the police would jump all over a stolen vehicle, whereas they’d wait twenty-four hours to take action on a missing person’s report.

Dropping back behind the wheel, Tony took out his phone and tapped three numbers with a tremor in his fingers.

“911. What is your emergency?”

“I’d like to report a stolen vehicle and a missing person.”

By the time he hung up, Corinna was crying quietly, her face in her hands. She lowered them to raise her tearstained eyes at him. “This is all my fault!”

Tony palmed the back of her head and pulled her into his arms, taking as much comfort from her fierce embrace as he was giving. “No, it’s not.” In fact, if the women hadn’t gone their separate ways, Corinna might have been kidnapped, too. “I’m thinkin’ it’s a good thing you had coffee with your boyfriend.”

At his comment, Corinna pulled back far enough to search his expression. “You think we would’ve both disappeared?” The color drained from her face.

“Yeah.” If this was anyone’s fault, it washis. Clearly, Ruby didn’t trust him to support her investigations. She didn’t see him as her teammate, which put her at serious disadvantage. Tony faced danger with his fellow SEALs, but Ruby worked alone. She kept her business to herself because Tony had a habit of overprotecting.

But his fears were well founded. Powerful men did not take lightly to having skeletons dragged out of their closets. Just look at what had happened to Staskiewicz.

God, please don’t let that happen to Ruby.

If Ruby ended up murdered…Tony refused to consider the possibility.

CHAPTER7

“Sir, you have a personal call on line three.” The voice of Lennard Katz’s secretary purred over the speaker on Len’s office phone in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

---