Free Elusive (On The Run Book #1) by Sara Rosett

the
master bedroom and looked around. It looked plainer, more streamlined, without
the gauzy mosquito netting she’d had draped over the brass four-poster bed.
She’d taken the comforter, a patchwork of rich fabrics in ruby, caramel,
amethyst, and turquoise that had covered their bed.
    During one of their arguments,
Jack had declared that he hated it. It was now on the bed downstairs in her
room. She shook her head. Why had they been arguing about the
comforter
? Now there was a
dark blue comforter trimmed in chocolate brown on the bed. It looked good in a
masculine, understated way, and she wondered when he’d bought it. The rest of
the room was unchanged—black contemporary dresser and treadmill angled toward
the small TV in the corner. The only additions Zoe could see were a small black
desk and a mini-refrigerator that was humming away in one corner.
    Through the two windows that
looked out over the front of the house, the leaves of the large cottonwood
tree, vibrantly green with new growth, swayed in the faint breeze. Zoe had
always loved the view—it was the one thing she missed about the room. She walked
to one window and pushed the curtain to one side so she could see better. She
looked out at the dancing leaves and smiled faintly, thinking of all the times
she had fallen asleep listening to the wind whistle through the leaves. She
missed that sound. The only thing that lulled her to sleep downstairs was the
clatter of the loose screen on her window.
    Out of the corner of her eye, she
saw that brown car she’d noticed earlier, pulling away from the curb. It moved
down the street, slowed in front of her house, then sped up again once it
passed her house. That was odd, Zoe thought. She looked back to the house where
the brown car had been parked. A young couple lived there. They both drove tiny
compacts. Maybe they had company? She didn’t know her neighbors intimately, but
she did know that no one else in the neighborhood drove that kind of car. She
moved to the desk, feeling uneasy.
    “Let it go,” she muttered. She set
her ginger ale on a coaster, plopped into the rolling desk chair, and slid over
to the refrigerator. It contained small cartons of orange juice and milk and a
few white take-out boxes. A box of Raisin Bran Crunch sat on top of the
refrigerator beside a stack of plastic bowls and cups. A four-cup coffee pot
was wedged on top of the fridge next to a hot plate.
    She swiveled the chair back and
forth, contemplating the clean desktop. Jack’s laptop and a desk lamp were the
only two things on the desk. The laptop was in hibernation mode. A few clicks
brought it to life. His mail program wasn’t password protected and she logged
into it and ran a search for Eddie. A few e-mails popped up with the address
“[email protected].”
    Feeling a bit weird and intrusive,
she clicked on the most recent e-mail, which was over a year old. It was short,
only one line. Eddie confirmed that he would meet Jack in the lobby of The
Venetian. GRS business had taken Jack to Vegas a few times, and she supposed he
and Eddie had gotten together then.
    Eddie’s contact information,
including a phone number and store location—inside the Venetian Hotel in Las
Vegas—was listed in an automatic signature at the bottom of the e-mail. Zoe
printed it out, absently folding it and sticking it in her back pocket with the
phone as she looked at the e-mail that had arrived since yesterday. Most of
them were junk e-mails announcing sales. She’d been hoping there would be
something from Connor that would help explain what had happened, so she went
back through the e-mail, but found nothing except the normal day-to-day
communication of people running a business.
    She sighed and hit the button to
check for new mail, more out of frustration than anything else. A new message
popped up from Star Bank. Zoe clicked on it. It was from the local bank
manager. They were urgently trying to reach Jack regarding a transaction that
took place