Page 169 of The Stalker

“Blame yourself for that. You gave such a thorough statement to the Texas police that my boss didn’t think you had any extra information for the case.”

“Well, now I do. I’m in Gabriel’s hotel room. Can you come and see me?”

“Give me fifteen minutes.”

There was a knock on the door shortly after that, and Tatiana had Gabriel answer it. She told them it was in case it was someone from the tour, but she also wanted a few moments to collect herself before she faced Derek.

She inhaled a deep breath of air and blew it out slowly. She was doing this for Hayden, and she needed to do whatever she could to get him back.

“Tatiana,” Derek said from the side of the room, and she looked up at him.

He was dressed in a black suit, looking every part the federal agent he was. Sandy-blonde hair and with bright blue eyes staring down at her. Memories of drunken nights from her younger days spent hanging out with him flashed into her mind. She could’ve kept in touch, or reached out to her old friends once she’d started personal security, but she hadn’t. Now she was faced with the awkward reconciliation with someone she’d never really expected to see again.

“Hi, Derek. Long time, no see. You’re in the FBI now.”

She set her laptop aside, then stood and walked over to him to give him a stiff hug.

“Yes, I am. You went dark and I haven’t heard from you since, but I did read your name in a few of our cases. Imagine my surprise when you showed up as the security specialist working with Hayden Vega when he was kidnapped.”

She cringed as she walked back over to her armchair and dropped into it. “Yeah, I accepted a drink from someone I shouldn’t have. I’m doing everything I can to rectify my mistake.”

“Understood. You said you had information on the case?”

“Yes. Ariana made a good point; the profile for the stalker doesn’t match Daniel. I think he’s an accomplice working for someone else.”

Derek nodded with a frown on his face. “Yes, we think that, too.”

“Oh, okay.”

Damn.

She’d been hoping to leverage that into getting the ID from him. She decided to just ask him outright for it.

“I was also wondering if you have a copy of the ID that Daniel was using.”

She looked up and met his gaze with hers, giving him a level stare as his eyebrows raised.

“Come on, Tati. You know that I can’t give you case information, regardless of who you work for.”

“Yes, but I also know that your agency has rules and regulations that my contact doesn’t have to work around when trying to find information. We’re almost twenty-four hours in, and the search will be a lot easier if I have Daniel’s ID as a starting point. Any information I find will come straight to you. Climbing the ranks is easier when you make breaks on cases like this one.”

He considered her for a minute with his jaw set and a deep frown on his face. “Why do I feel like I’m making a deal with the devil?”

“Because you probably are, but I don’t have an ulterior motive. I just want to get Hayden back safe and sound—to make up for what I did.”

She added the last part quickly because her desire to get her boyfriend back wouldn’t convince someone like Derek to risk leaking information. He understood professional courtesies and career-making cases, though.

“Come on, Derek. You know me. I’m resourceful and I want to fix what happened. I’ll never get another client if I don’t get this one home safely. When word gets out about this, I’ll be ruined, but if you give me that ID, it’ll be beneficial for us both.”

He sighed and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I can’t send it to you. Come here and take a picture of my phone screen.”

A thrill of elation ran through her, and she stood up to quickly walk over to him. She pulled out her phone and snapped a photo of the ID on the screen.

“Any other info about him that you’ve found?”

Derek nodded and switched back to his email to pull up another one with the employment details Daniel had given when he was first hired for the tour.

“That’s all we have so far, and it hasn’t amounted to anything. He’s completely clean. We managed to get in contact with an aunt, so we no longer think it’s a fake ID. She hasn’t seen him since he was a child, though, and nothing came of it. Apparently, his parents died in an accident eight years ago, but she was estranged from her sister anyway, so it was a complete dead end.”

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