Read The Other Daniel - A Camille Grisham Novella for Free Online Page B

had
checked out after one night. He isn’t married, he doesn’t have a
girlfriend that I’m aware of, and I didn’t have any family
contacts. So all I could do was sit on my hands and wait to hear
something.”
    “You didn’t think to call the police?”
Camille asked.
    “I called them, along with practically every
hospital in the state. There was no sign of him and the police told
me that without any evidence that he had been here beyond his one
night stay at the hotel, there wasn’t anything they could do.”
    “So after not hearing from him for nearly
three weeks, what made you come out here now?”
    Meredith took a labored breath as she
reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone. After
scrolling through it for a moment, she handed it to Camille.
“Because last night I received this.”
    Camille took the phone.
The email message on the screen had been composed yesterday
afternoon at 2:42 P.M. The subject line consisted of only two
words: Camille Grisham . The body of the message consisted of three short
sentences:
    Meeting at Grisham residence tomorrow at
10:30 A.M. Closing the deal. Need you there.
    “Jacob wrote this?” Camille asked as she
continued studying the perplexing message.
    “Apparently so,” Meredith answered without
much confidence. “I don’t recognize the email address, but most
people I know have more than one.”
    “Did you write back?”
    “Several times. No response. Then I tried
his cell phone.”
    “And?”
    “Disconnected.”
    Perhaps that explained why Jacob offered the
number to his hotel instead of a personal one. The tightness in
Camille’s chest returned. “You realize there was no meeting
scheduled here today, right?”
    “I realized that before I left New
York.”
    “So why do you think he sent this?”
    Meredith let out a nervous chuckle. “Since
you were apparently the last person to talk to him, I’m hoping you
can tell me.”
    “I don’t know much beyond what I’ve already
told you. Before we ended our first meeting he told me he was
staying at the Brown Palace and tried to give me the phone number
to his hotel room in the event I wanted to discuss his proposal
further. But I didn’t take it.”
    “The Brown Palace?” Meredith said with mild
surprise. “As far as I knew he had been booked at a Doubletree near
the airport.”
    “I’d call that a fairly significant
upgrade,” Paul chimed in with a light smirk.
    “Considering his fledgling author status,
I’d say the same thing,” Meredith added.
    “So you don’t hear from Jacob for the better
part of three weeks, then out of the blue you receive this cryptic
message telling you to fly out here to meet him.”
    “On the same day he approaches you for the
first time,” Paul said to Camille. “That obviously isn’t
coincidental.”
    “Then what is it?” a visibly concerned
Meredith asked.
    Camille hesitated before answering. The
tightness in her chest, the intuition, told her exactly what she
needed to say, but she knew how dire the consequences would be once
she said it. She had only known Meredith Park for a short time, but
she wanted nothing more than to spare her the pain that she knew
was an inevitable consequence of a truth only she was willing to
give voice to. But there could be no hesitation. Just like there
would be no sparing of pain.
    “Do you happen to have a picture of
Jacob?”
    Meredith once again reached inside her
purse. “I brought one in the event I would have to show it to the
police.” She handed over the wallet-sized photo.
    As Camille stared at the bright, smiling
face of a man whom she had never seen before, the tightness in her
chest began to subside. In its place came a surge of adrenaline
that both fueled and frightened her. “We have to go to the Brown
Palace. Right now.”
    “Why? What’s the matter?” Meredith asked in
a voice that was riddled with shock.
    “We have to find Jacob Deaver. And the man I
met this morning might be the only person alive