Falling Awake

have to promise her to convince her to come into Frey-Salter. Just don’t let her get away. I can’t afford to lose her.” Jack gave it a beat before adding, “Neither can you.”
    He couldn’t argue with that. “Got to admit, she’s a business asset for me.”
    She was a lot more than that, but damned if he would admit it to Lawson. He was having a hard enough time acknowledging the truth to himself.
    “All right. I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “But no guarantees. Got a new address for her?”

    “Beth faxed it to me a few minutes ago. Hang on a second. It’s here somewhere.” The sound of papers and files being pushed around on top of a desk filled the phone line for a time before Lawson spoke again. “Here we go. Town called Roxanna Beach, somewhere on the coast out there in California.”
    “I’ve heard of it. Never been there. Somewhere north of LA, I think.”
    “She’s got some family there. Sister and a brother-in-law. Beth says she’s renting a house. Here’s the address. Ready?”
    Ellis reached for a pen and a pad of paper. “Yeah.”
    “Number Seventeen Sea Breeze Lane.”
    “Got it.”
    “Get moving on this, Ellis. As things stand, Isabel Wright is a loose cannon. I want her back under control as soon as possible.”
    Ellis tossed the pen aside. “Uh-huh.”
    “Call me after you find her.”
    “Right.”
    He hung up the phone, folded his arms and contemplated the photo on the refrigerator.
    It was a picture of a slender woman dressed in a white lab coat. She had excellent shoulders and a proud, determined way of holding herself. She also had an interesting, intelligent face with big, mysterious eyes veiled by a pair of black-framed glasses. Her dark hair was pulled straight back into an elegantly severe twist that called attention to the delicacy of the nape of her neck.

    In the photo she was smiling joyously, almost glowing, as she examined a vase of orchids that sat in the middle of her desk. He had no trouble at all imagining the passion hidden behind the lab coat and the glasses.
    Definitely not a meek, nervous little spinster, he thought.
    Tango Dancer.

5
    t he auditorium was filled to capacity. Isabel sat in the third to the last row, notebook and pen on the small desk that extended from the arm of the plush, theater-style seat. She was watching the speaker onstage, concentrating so she would not miss anything Tamsyn Strickland said, when she felt a whispery, atavistic thrill stir the hair on the nape of her neck.
    Following an instinct that was probably as old as the species, she turned her head to look back over her shoulder to see who or what was closing in on her.
    A man had entered the dimly lit chamber. He stood in the shadows behind the last row of seats. It was difficult to make him out clearly because of the low level of illumination but she could see from the way he stood that he was not interested in what was going on at the front of the room. Instead he took off a pair ofdark sunglasses and examined the group of seminar attendees the way a large hunting cat studies the crowd gathered at the watering hole. Selecting his prey.
    His gaze locked with hers. That was when she knew he had been looking for her.
    Adrenaline splashed through her veins. She could have sworn that she heard energy crackling in the room. She was amazed that there was no flash of lightning.
    What was going on here? Alarmed, oddly excited and somewhat dazed, she turned quickly around in her seat and forced herself to pay attention to the lecture.
    Onstage Tamsyn Strickland, pointer in hand, launched into her closing remarks.
    “Tapping into your personal creative potential is the focus of the Kyler Method,” Tamsyn declared. Exuberance bubbled up through her words. “That is the skill that we will teach you, and believe me, you will learn it well. What’s more, you will see the positive effects of the method at work in your personal life within the first twenty-four hours.”
    The audience was riveted. No surprise there, Isabel thought. Tamsyn was a charismatic speaker. She believed wholeheartedly in the Kyler Method, and when she was onstage, she could make the audience believe in it, too.
    She was in her early thirties, attractive, divorced and zealously committed to her new career as an instructor here at Kyler, Inc. Tamsyn had found her calling in motivational lecturing.
    Isabel gave it a few minutes and then, unable to resist, riskedanother glance over her shoulder to see if