To The Rescue

Heathside, Yorkshire Who is he? How did he find me? Needing answers, Jennifer hugged the shadows at the top of the stairs, her heart registering anxiety with rapid beats as she listened to the conversation in the lobby below. "You're sure you can't give me her room number?" His voice was deep and mellow. That much Jennifer could tell, but nothing else about him. Although she had a limited view of the front desk and the young woman who stood on duty behind it, the man who had come in off the street wasn't in her line of sight. She would need to lean forward in order to glimpse him, but she feared even a slight movement would betray her presence. The clerk, her thin face peppered with freckles beneath a cap of red hair, shook her head in regret. "Be worth my job if I was to go and tell you that, sir." The woman had been far less careful when he'd approached the desk a moment ago with a confident "I'm here to see Jennifer Rowan. She is registered with you, right?" He shouldn't have known that. Jennifer had told no one she planned to spend the night at this inn. But his bold assumption that she was here had won an admission from the clerk that, yes, Jennifer was a guest at the King's Head. The clerk hadn't bothered to ask him his name. "Sure wouldn't want you to go and jeopardize your job--" he paused, moving in close to the desk in order to read the clerk's name tag "--Wendy." Jennifer could see him now. Or at least enough of him to understand why the desk clerk wore a willing smile as he leaned toward her. From what Jennifer could tell at this angle, he was good-looking in a rugged sort of way. That deep voice was also persuasive, with a tone that was appealingly personal. "But how about calling her room and letting her know someone is here to see her.You could do that much, couldn't you, Wendy?" "I wouldn't say no to that, sir. Not that I'd have to, being as how Ms. Rowan isn't in her room. Went out a bit ago to buy herself a London paper. Real disappointed, she was, when I told her we only take the local paper here. Well, why would we need anything else when we have the telly?" But Jennifer hadn't been willing to wait for a TV newscast, which wouldn't have provided her with enough details anyway. Only a London paper would have a full account of Guy's murder. She needed to know if there was any new development in the case, whether she was at imminent risk of being arrested. As far as the desk clerk knew, Jennifer wasn't in the inn.Wendy had watched her go out the front door in search of a shop that carried the London papers. What the young woman didn't realize was that, once out on the street, Jennifer had feared she would be soaked within seconds. A hard rain had begun to fall. Wendy hadn't been at her post when Jennifer immediately returned to the inn to fetch her umbrella. If the tea mug now at the clerk's elbow was any indication, she must have been in the kitchen. Umbrella in hand, Jennifer had been heading toward the street again when the stranger below had asked for her by name. Alarmed, she had shrunk back into the shadows where the hallway emerged at the top of the stairs. But she couldn't go on standing here. The dimness, presumably the result of a burned-out lightbulb in the fixture overhead, wasn't enough to conceal her if either of them happened to look up. Frozen in place, Jennifer prayed he was satisfied by the clerk's explanation of her absence. That, whoever he was, he would leave the inn and go out on the street to look for her in the shops. But it didn't happen that way. "You wouldn't have any objection if I waited here in the lobby for Ms. Rowan, would you, Wendy?" he asked the clerk. "That's all right then, sir." Trapped! What was she to do? He had already removed his coat, was running a strong hand through his wet hair. It was when he looked over his shoulder, probablBarrett, Jean is the author of 'To The Rescue', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373229567 and ISBN 0373229569.