(Sandy's Perspective)
Remarkable to me still, Dorian's Range Rover is among the things to survive the attack on the Desert packhouse. While it may not give me much to track him with, finding it missing from the hotel parking lot provides at least enough information to determine he intended some distance, not just a momentary escape from the business suite we share on the upper floor.
I'm not expecting much, but I opt to try to text anyway and pull my cellphone from my back pocket. 'Where are you?'
Glancing around me, I pocket the phone, then head for the concrete bench tucked into a corner of the slightly overgrown courtyard under an ornamental maple. I plop down hard at one end, tucking my feet up beneath me and wrap my arms around my knees, prepared to wait for Dorian's stubbornness to subside and the needle that I am to bore under his armored skin. A noisy bumblebee hums lazily from one flower to the next in a cement planter a few feet away and I watch irritably.
