He nodded. He appreciated that although he didn’t verbalize it. But before he opened the door, he looked at her. They were within an inch of each other. “Stop calling me sir,” he said to her. “I’m Hawk. Or Hawthorne if you prefer. I’m not your sir.”
She smiled. “Yes sir,” she said on purpose and he slapped her backside, which made her smile even greater. And then he opened the door and they walked in.
It was Janita’s first time inside the Webster mansion since that terribleness earlier that day, and she still had anxiety about it. But what she wasn’t going to do was let any of them see her sweat.
But what she did do was follow Hawk toe to toe. He was a tough cookie just like the rest of his family, but that strong connection she felt to him was still there. And it wasn’t just a sexual connection. It was more emotional than anything else. And besides, she was his invited guest. She had every right to be in that house whether they wanted her there or not. She followed him into the huge dining hall.
Hawk’s father and his siblings were all seated around the table. Dinner had been served, but most of their plates were still full. Dale Donnally was there too. He was standing near the head of the table giving the family an update. When they walked in, he was telling the family that they would leave no stone unturned. “Once that ransom demand comes in, we’re on it. We don’t need no FBI.”
Hawk disagreed. Janita did too. “But they’re still coming, right?” Hawk asked the chief.
“Oh yes sir,” Donnally said. “Your father insists on it, although we don’t need them. But yes, they’ll have a special agent here first thing in the morning.”
Janita noticed how Donnally was behaving as if he didn’t know what a bribe was. When she would count one-hundred-thousand ways that he knew.
“Do they know that the kidnappers contacted my father?” Hawk asked.
“Not yet,” said the chief. “But again,” he said as he turned to William, “we will leave no stone unturned until we bring your wife back home to you.”
“Safe and sound,” added Janita.
Everybody looked at her. But Minka nodded his head. “Right,” he said.
“Of course safe and sound,” said Donnally, although he gave Janita a side-eyed look.
“Where have you been?” Babs asked Hawk as she looked from him to Janita as if she knew their secret.
“We were searching for mother,” Hawk said. Then he looked at the chief. “Why wasn’t that dressing room still protected as a crime scene yesterday?”
“We got all the evidence we can get from there.”
“And what have you concluded?” asked Hawk. “Other than Janita did it because she didn’t.”
“It was a well-planned and coordinated job,” Donnally said, ignoring that part of what Hawk said. “It was one of the best jobs I’ve ever seen. They knew about that false door. They were going to snatch her if it was the last thing they did. They knew exactly what they were doing. It was extremely well-planned.”
“But . . .”
It was Janita, and they all looked at her. Hawk could tell she wasn’t buying what the chief was selling. “What is it, Nita?”
His siblings glanced at one another. She wasNitanow, was she?
“If it was so well-planned,” Janita said, “how could they have planned to kidnap her that day when they couldn’t have known she was going toEllen’s? It was a spur of the moment decision. She even said she felt like buying a new dress after she got in the car and thought about it. Even Miss Ellen didn’t know she was coming by, or she would have already had some dresses ready for her to try on.”
“Ellen did say that,” Hawk said, nodding his head.
“So how could they have known she was coming that day?” Janita asked the chief again.
The chief didn’t like her questions, that was obvious. But Mr. Webster was staring at him. “Answer the question, Dale,” he said.
“Well um.” He cleared his throat. “We believe it was well planned because that hole was a distraction. And apparently they knew she was going to stop by Ellen’s that day because they followed her there. Yeah, that’s it. They followed her there.”
But Janita was shaking her head again. “I have cameras all around our SUV. While we’re driving our clients to any location, I’m checking that screen to make sure nobody’s following us. I even have cameras on the sunroom to get an aerial view. Nobody, not by land or by air, was following us.”
Hawk was impressed. His father and siblings were too. They looked at the chief. “I don’t know about all that,” Donnally said. Then he got nasty: “If she’s so efficient, why couldn’t she prevent them kidnappers from kidnapping Mrs. Webster in the first place? If she’s so efficient.”
They all looked at Janita. He had a point.
Not to Hawk he didn’t. “That’s beside the point,” he said. “I saw that sawdust on that floor. That hole was fresh. And if they used a silent blade, they could have cut that hole while Mother was in that dressing room and snatched her as soon as Ellen left to get more dresses for her to try on. She screamed when she first saw them, and then they snatched her through that hole and moved the vanity back in place.”
