Spontaneous - Brenda Jackson [23]
The other women acknowledged that Mandy Villarosas had been acting strange and had left their hotel room right after breakfast, saying she was meeting someone. When she hadn’t returned for lunch, they’d begun to worry and had called Edward, who’d encouraged them to notify the police.
The other women claimed they had no idea who Mandy was supposed to meet, but indicated there had been a man in a club the night before who Mandy had been flirting with. Two years later, Villarosas had divorced his wife on grounds of desertion, and a year after that, he remarried.
He and Sandra Villarosas had been married two years when he’d reported her missing. She hadn’t shown up for work and one of her coworkers had gotten concerned. Edward was out of town on a fishing trip in Florida with friends and had left two days before. In fact, Sandra was the one who had taken him to the airport. Several witnesses verified that, and also the fact she had been seen around town afterward.
Neither woman had been heard from since, and Edward’s alibis were verified by family and friends.
Duan walked inside the airport terminal, which was busy as usual. Any other day he might have wished he were someplace else, even in his office totally absorbed in another case. But not today.
If Kim’s flight left on time she would be here in less than an hour. It had been five days since they’d been together and he was anxious to see her again. With that admission, he felt a punch to his stomach and something close to panic. He was reminded that the last thing he needed to do was get wrapped up with any woman. Women, he knew for a fact, had the ability to wrap a man around their finger, then walk away and not look back.
Instead he switched his thoughts from Kim to the real purpose of this trip. Edward Villarosas. Going to Shreveport to meet Kim’s family would afford him the opportunity of being in the man’s company for almost a week, and with a bit of luck he’d notice or discover something that the other detectives who’d worked the case hadn’t. For the time being, the less Kim knew about what was going on, the better.
If Villarosas was guilty, then he was a man who’d successfully gotten away with two crimes. It was going to be up to Duan to figure out how Kim’s mother played into any of this. Was the man looking to knock off wife number three? He had read the two case files over and over, and there was nothing in them to indicate Villarosas was a man who married women and then got some sort of sick kick getting rid of them.
But Duan did not intend on taking any chances. He would be on full alert until he figured out just what type of man they were dealing with. At no time did he plan on putting Kim or her mother in danger. A deep frown settled on his face at the thought of anything happening to Kim. He would protect her with his life if he had to, and wouldn’t let Villarosas or anyone else harm a single strand of hair on her head or her mother’s.
Right now he didn’t want to question why he’d become so protective of Kimani; he just accepted that was the way it was. While his partners were out in the field gathering information, Duan’s job in Shreveport over the next few days was to get close to Villarosas and develop a rapport with him in hopes the man would let his guard down.
Even without meeting the guy he had a gut feeling the man was bad news, and the quicker that could be proven, the better.
KIM GLANCED AROUND when she approached her gate. Duan’s head could be seen above everyone else’s, making him easily recognizable. In addition to that, he was the man most women were giving a second look.
She glared at one such woman when she passed, then frowned, wondering why it annoyed her that other women found him as desirable as she did. It wasn’t like he was her man. Everything between them was strictly casual.