At first, when he glanced inside Traci Eddings’s office, he didn’t see her. He knocked on the doorframe. “Hello?”
Nothing.
And then, a disembodied voice said, “Come on in.”
He walked in and peered over her desk, which was when he spotted the Saint’s CEO stretched out, flat on her back on the floor.
“Hey. Are you okay?” He stepped around the desk and gave her a hand as she scrambled to her feet.
“Just a killer headache,” she said. “Compounded by a whole lot of concerned and pissed-off people.”
“Listen, I can still hitch a ride home with one of the guys on the crew,” he said, starting to back out of the room.
“I just had a little late-afternoon sinking spell. But I took three Tylenol and I’ll be fine once I get up and start moving again.”
He pointed at the smashed pill bottle and the capsules scattered around on her desktop and the carpet. “I see that.”
“Yeah, I had a little trouble with the childproof cap,” she said ruefully as she swept the capsules back into the bottle and stashed it in her purse. She brushed some carpet lint off her navy slacks. “Let me gather myself and we’ll be off,” she said.
“No offense, but you don’t look so hot. Maybe you should go home and get some rest.”
“I’m fine,” she repeated. “Let’s roll.”
When they were buckled into the front seat of her Mercedes she handed him her cell phone. “Put your address in there, so I can get directions on Google Maps.”
“It’s not that complicated,” Whelan said. “Follow the causeway off the island. When you get to the mainland, hang a left, and when you get to the traffic circle, take the second exit onto Beachview, then follow that into the village. I’ve got a studio apartment above the surf shop.”
She didn’t say much as she drove, but she kept yawning, and he noticed she kept pressing her fingertips to her temples.
“Would you mind if I drove?” he asked, when they were a mile down the causeway.
“I’m actually a very safe driver,” she said, yawning again.
“But you’re exhausted. And I do this for a living, you know, or at least as a paying side hustle.”
“You’re right,” Traci said. “I feel like, excuse the expression, shit on a shingle.” She pulled off the roadway and they switched places.
Once they were under way, she leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes. A few minutes later, Whelan glanced over when he heard her breathing slow. She was asleep. A moment later, she was softly snoring.
Whelan turned the radio to an easy listening jazz station and followed his own directions into the village.
He pulled into the small parking lot in the lane behind the surf shop. It was postedNO PARKING, VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED, but the shop was closed for the night and he knew for a fact that the shop’s owners rarely summoned tow trucks. Anyway, he wasn’t really parking. Just stopping and dropping off a passenger. Himself.
He cleared his throat. “Mrs. E?”
She didn’t stir, but a thin ribbon of drool dribbled down her chin.
“Traci?” He waved a hand in front of her face. Nothing. He gently tapped her shoulder and in almost comical slow-motion style she slumped sideways until her nose was in his lap.
He shook her again. “Hey, Traci. Wake up. We’re here. Can you wake up?”
In response she turned her head slightly, burying her nose in his crotch.
“Shit. Shit. Shit. What the hell kind of Tylenol did you take?”
He reached across his slumbering boss and picked her purse up from the Mercedes’s floorboard.
Whelan hesitated. In his experience, no woman ever wanted a man digging through her pocketbook. Especially a man she’d just met. But he reasoned that this was an emergency.
