The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(56)

After they landed, Bruce Mangione lifted Landry’s bag down from the overhead bin, she thanked him, and that was that. She lost track of him amid the mass exodus that began when the door opened onto the jetway.

“Hi,” he says. “I’ve been standing behind you but you seemed busy and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Oh . . . thanks . . . I just—that was my husband.”

“I just called my wife, too. She gets nervous when I fly. Sounds like your husband is worried about you, too.”

“He . . . not really. I mean . . .” She wonders how much he heard. “He just likes to make sure I’m okay.”

“I don’t blame him. Crazy things can happen. Trust me—in my line of work, I’ve seen it all. So where do you have to go now that you’re here?”

“I think it’s a Residence Inn . . . or maybe a Fairfield Inn. One of those Marriott chains . . .” She starts to reach for the reservation paper she left on the counter.

“You’re going to the hotel before the funeral?”

Caught off guard by his mention of the funeral, she turns back to him in surprise—then remembers that she told him about it on the plane. Still, she wonders again how much he overheard of her conversation with Rob just now. She wasn’t exactly whispering.

Not that it matters . . .

Does it?

“The hotel is right down the road from the funeral home,” she tells him with a shrug, “so—”

“All right, Ms. Wells, here you go . . .” The counter attendant is back, handing over a couple of maps and a contract. “The shuttle driver will wait for you if you hurry, right through those doors, if you’ll just sign here, here, here, initial here and here . . .”

“Thank you.” She scans the contract, signs, signs, signs again, initials and initials, and turns quickly to Bruce. “I’ve got to run. It was nice—”

“Are you sure you don’t need directions?”

“I don’t think—”

“Next!”

“Go ahead,” Landry tells him, gesturing at the rental counter and grabbing the handle of her bag. “I’ll be fine, thanks. Nice meeting you.”

“You too,” he calls as he steps up to the counter.

It isn’t until Landry has stepped out of the shuttle at the rental lot that she realizes she left the paper containing her hotel reservation back on the counter. And she isn’t sure of the name of the hotel chain, let alone the address.

Dammit. She’ll have to go back.

Wait a minute. She received an e-mail confirmation when she made the reservations. She should be able to find that in her phone . . .

She turns toward the shuttle as the doors close, but at the last second the driver sees her and opens the door. Two minutes later she’s behind the wheel of a rental car, typing the hotel’s address into the GPS.

There. See that? I can take care of myself just fine, she silently tells herself. No reason to worry. Not at all.

A man raps gently on the driver’s side window, and Jaycee jumps.

She hadn’t even seen him approach the car. She’d been too busy watching BamaBelle drive off in her mid-sized rental, which had—as luck would have it—been parked in the spot adjacent to hers.

Then again, perhaps that’s not as big a coincidence as it seems. Bama had, after all, been standing directly behind her in the line back at the counter.

Jaycee was so caught up in her own problems that she wouldn’t have even noticed her there had she not overheard that distinct southern drawl talking on the cell phone. Even then, she wasn’t positive it was Bama—or rather, Landry, as she’d introduced herself a few days ago when Jaycee spoke to her from Los Angeles.

But when Landry mentioned Meredith’s name, Jaycee knew for certain.

Sure enough, she snuck a glance over her shoulder and recognized a slightly older, more worn-out-looking version of BamaBelle’s official blog site photo.

Bama didn’t even notice, caught up in whatever she was saying to her husband—it had to be her husband—on the phone. Mostly, she seemed to be trying to convince him not to worry about her.

Even if Landry had given her a second glance, she’d of course still have no clue who she was, because she doesn’t use a head shot on her blog.

From time to time she’s toyed with the idea of posting a photo—though not her own image, of course. It would be easy enough to steal a stranger’s digital snapshot and claim it as her own.

But there would be a certain level of risk involved with that, and why tempt fate?

After handing over the ID Cory had arranged for her years ago, the one that bears her real name and a drab, barely recognizable photo of her—Jaycee finished her own rental papers and headed out to the shuttle as Landry took her spot at the counter. The bus was almost full. Jaycee sat in one of two empty seats up front and willed the driver to pull away before Bama could get on.

It almost seemed like that was going to happen—he waited a few more minutes, then pulled the doors shut. But before he could pull away, he spotted Landry coming out of the terminal and opened the doors again.

Landry sat down right next to her, of course—it was the only empty spot on the bus. Jaycee held her breath on the ride over, but Landry didn’t give her a second glance; not then, when they were shoulder-to-shoulder, and not when they found their way off the bus to cars parked right next to each other.