Crazy for Her(24)
The next day, after arranging for Scott to stay with Dani, Logan borrowed her Jeep. He made a visit to the Asheville police department and explained the situation to Detective Langley.
Langley assured him the patrol cops would be on the lookout for a black Ford truck driving anywhere near Dani’s house, but that was the best they could do until the man broke the law. Although it didn’t sit well with Logan, he understood their position. As for himself, he had a lot more freedom than the cops.
Next, using the yellow pages he had torn out of Dani’s phone book, he started visiting motels, beginning with the closest to her house. On his fifth stop, he hit pay dirt. At the Mountain View Motel, the desk clerk nodded when Logan described the truck.
“Had one like that in the parking lot off and on for the past month. Guy comes and goes. Checked out yesterday.”
Logan tempered his excitement. Didn’t mean it was their guy. “What was his name?”
“John Smith.”
He raised a brow. The clerk stared back at him, his expression blank. Logan opened his wallet, pulled out a twenty, and slid it across the counter where it disappeared into the man’s pocket.
“His name?”
The clerk smirked. “John Smith.”
“I’m not fond of games.” Logan resisted the urge to wipe the ill-advised grin off the smartass, but his wish to do so must have showed.
The man’s smirk disappeared and he took a step back. “That’s the name he gave me, mister. Shit, half the men checking in here are named John Smith. I could hold a Smith family reunion most any day of the week.”
Damn. Logan picked up a pen and a flyer for pizza delivery and wrote his cell number on it. “If he comes back, you call me.” He turned to leave.
“Why should I?”
He stepped back to the desk. “Because if you don’t, you’ll wish you had. But if you do, I’ll make it worth your while.”
“You a bounty hunter?”
Logan’s chuckle held no humor in it. “You might say that.” At the door, he paused. “Do you get the license plate numbers?”
The clerk nodded. “Don’t know why I bother, though. Most are made up.”
“So you don’t get the plate numbers yourself?”
“Too much trouble. I just ask them to write it down when they sign the registration form.”
Logan let the door close and returned to the desk. “What number did John Smith give you?”
Pulling a spindle speared to the top with sheets of paper from under the counter, the man thumbed through them, finally handing one over. Logan glanced at it, then folded it and put it in his pocket.
“Hey, I might need that someday,” the clerk said.
Logan pulled another twenty out of his pocket, set it on the counter, but kept his hand over it. “Just how badly do you think you might need it?”
“Not all that bad.”
Once outside, Logan scanned the area. Why the dive bore the name Mountain View was a puzzle. The only view was that of a biker bar, a laundromat, and an abandoned auto-repair shop. The only cars in the motel parking lot were an older-model Chevy, Dani’s Grand Cherokee, and a Volkswagen bus with daisies and peace signs hand-painted on it, parked in front of one of the rooms.
He unlocked the Cherokee’s door, slid inside, and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Where are you, John Smith? Taking out his phone, he called Buchanan, gave him the probably fake plate number, and told him to run a check.
“Got a state to go with that number, boss?”
He glanced at the paper. There was a place for an address, but it was blank. “No, just a name and that number.”
“What’s the name?”
“John Smith.”
Logan hung up on Buchanan’s laughter. He spent another hour checking out motels with no luck. Frustrated, he turned for home. Correction. Dani’s home. What he should do is go back to Pensacola and send Buchanan to Asheville to protect Evan’s wife. Along with that thought came the urge to bloody Buchanan’s nose. Romeo couldn’t resist a pretty lady, and Logan had overheard one woman refer to Buchanan as one hot hunk of a man. Not happening.
He slammed his hand on the steering wheel. Where the hell was this asshole? Had Buchanan been able to lift any fingerprints off the bear? Logan shook his head in disgust. He should’ve asked when he had him on the phone. More proof he was so far off his game, he wasn’t even in the right ballpark. The Iceman never missed important details like that, but his other persona was still AWOL.
What he needed was intel, and he should have spent the past few days gathering information and searching for John Smith instead of acting like a besotted fool. As he steered the Cherokee around a curve on the road to Dani’s house, he mentally compiled and prioritized a list of things he needed to do.