She suppressed a shudder at the memory of the man chasing her through those alleys. It was one of the reasons that she’d kept Maria close to home since Lennox had left, only doing activities on the Rybak property where they’d both be safe.
“Did you happen to hear the man’s name, or the names of any of the men that met with your father?” Talia asked.
Maria scrunched up her face for a few seconds, apparently thinking hard. Then she brightened. “Oh, yeah! It was Mason Keller and he’s from England. He told Daddy that he grew up there but didn’t live there now. He said he liked the sun in Spain more. I remember that part because Beverly’s mommy and daddy went to Spain, and they talked about how sunny it was. He wanted Mr. McDaniel to get him some medical stuff.”
“Mr. McDaniel was talking to the men with your daddy?”
Maria nodded.
Talia stared at her in shock, not sure what stunned her more. The fact that Maria had been able to remember that level of detail, or that Dayton McDaniel had been in the meeting with Bogdan. And why did Keller want medical equipment?
Before Talia could ask anything else, the sound of a door opening downstairs caught her attention. It was immediately followed by the clack of high heels on tile, the sound echoing up through the atrium from the entryway below. Vera was home.
Maria hopped off the couch, running for the top of the stairs across from the reading nook. But she stopped with her foot on the first step, turning back to look at Talia.
“You’re not going to tell Mommy about me listening to people’s conversations, are you?” she asked, a worried look on her sweet face.
Talia shook her head. “No. But maybe you shouldn’t do it anymore. If you get lonely or bored, call me down at the cottage and I’ll come up and hang out with you. I don’t want you getting into trouble.”
Maria nodded and grinned, seemingly okay with that deal. But as she started to head downstairs to see her mother, the girl turned and looked back up at Talia again.
“You didn’t answer my question about why you don’t like worrying about Lennox. I’m going to ask you again later.”
All she could do was shake her head as Maria ran down the marble stairs.
Sighing, Talia sat back on the couch. She needed to talk to Lennox about Mason Keller. She also needed to think about why she was so afraid to worry about Lennox too much.
CHAPTER NINE
“Where are we going again?” Katrina asked, for the tenth time in the past thirty minutes as they drove across town the next morning. “And who are these people we’re meeting?”
“I already told you. We’re going to see some of Lennox’s friends who are helping us find Anna,” Talia said from the passenger seat without glancing up from her phone and the directions they were following. “I called Kyla and Wes last night to tell them about some new stuff I learned and am hoping they’ve been able to use it to get some more information about the guy who chased me the other night.”
Her friend gave her a sidelong glance. “Are you sure this isn’t a way to keep yourself occupied until Lennox gets home tonight? Not that I’d blame you if that’s the case. I know I’d be excited too if I had a man that good looking leaving me texts in the middle of the night.”
“It’s not that at all,” Talia said, even as a little voice in the back of her head whispered that it probably was. “Or, at least, it’s not only that. I honestly do want to hear what Kyla has come up with since last night.”
“I’m sure you do. But don’t act like I haven’t seen you staring at those texts for the entire drive.”
Talia looked back down at her phone to flip over from the map directions to her text messages, drawn to reading Lennox’s words again for what was probably the fiftieth time. He’d texted her at four-twenty this morning, so of course, she’d been fast asleep. When she’d read his message, she’d been stunned at the tremendous sense of relief that had flowed through her.
“I didn’t realize how much I missed him or how worried I’d been until I got his text saying he’d be home tonight,” Talia said softly, the words coming out before she could even consider whether she should be saying anything at all. “It hit me then that I’d been holding my breath, expecting the worst. I think my biggest fear was that he’d be gone, and the Navy would never say a word. I’d just never see him again.”
Katrina opened her mouth, almost certainly intending to say something she thought would be reassuring but would probably only make Talia feel worse. Not wanting to get any further into it, she flipped back to the map directions and held up her phone as a distraction.
“We’re almost there,” she said. “Take the next left into that apartment complex and keep going to the back left side of the parking lot.”
Katrina frowned, almost certainly knowing when she was being put off. But she didn’t complain as they turned into the parking lot and found an empty space. A few minutes later, Talia was knocking on Wes and Kyla’s apartment door, her thoughts divided between what she hoped Kyla might be able to tell her and what she’d say to Lennox when she finally saw him.
“Before we go inside, I should probably mention that the McDaniels might be involved in this whole mess,” Talia said as they waited for someone to answer the door.
Beside her, Katrina did a double take at that announcement, her eyes going wide. “What? Why didn’t you tell me before now?”
Talia opened her mouth to reply but before she could the door to the apartment opened.
“Hey!” Kyla said, giving them a smile. If she noted the stunned expression on Katrina’s face, she made no mention of it. “Come in.”
Talia smiled and led the way, Katrina following.
