Pretty Sly by Elisa Ludwig Page A

the still-moving vehicle. We were finally here, and I couldn’t wait a minute longer.
    I pictured my mom sweeping down a grand staircase to greet us in the lobby. A long, tearful embrace. Maybe even a chamber orchestra. Who knew? I just needed to get in there.
    I stripped off my seat belt and grabbed my overnight bag.
    “Let’s do this,” Aidan said.
    I felt like we were robbing a bank—that was how deeply my pulse was thumping. But it was a different kind of excitement now. A different kind of anticipation.
    We marched through the sliding glass doors, past a gigantic floor-to-ceiling floral arrangement with green tentacles, and toward the check-in desk. The young Asian woman sitting behind it looked up as we approached. “Hello. May I help you?” she asked with a hospitalitytrained smile.
    “Yes,” I said, breathlessly pushing out the words. “I’m looking for a guest named Joanne Fox. I believe she’s registered here.”
    “Hold on,” she said. Her fingers clicked on the keyboard as she consulted her computer. Her eyes dropped down along the lines of the screen. “Hmm, Joanne Fox, you said?”
    “Yes,” I said, my heart rising expectantly.
    She cocked her head politely. “I don’t see anyone here. Is it possible she checked in under a different name?”
    Of course it was. Argh. Why hadn’t I thought of that? If she was in trouble and hiding from someone, she almost certainly wasn’t going to use her real name. I’d heard that celebrities always used pseudonyms, sometimes funny ones, to elude the paparazzi when they checked in to hotels.
    Think, Willa.
    “Maybe try Julie Christie?” That was my mom’s favorite actress. She loved old movies, and she’d evenimitated her haircut once. It was worth a shot.
    The woman smiled. “I think I’d know if someone here was checked in under that name.”
    “Can you just look, please?” I asked, feeling increasingly desperate.
    “Okay,” she said, and scrolled down her screen again. “Nope. Nobody here under Julie Christie.”
    “She’s a blond woman, about five foot six. Looks kind of like me?”
    “I’m sorry, but we can’t give out room information without a name. For security reasons—I’m sure you understand. Besides, I just started my shift, so I wouldn’t have seen her.”
    I looked at Aidan, at a loss. He shrugged back at me and then pointed a thumb toward a plush-looking sofa across the lobby.
    “Do you mind if we sit here for a bit?” I asked the woman.
    “Be my guest,” she said, then let out a tinkling laugh. “No pun intended.”
    Hotel humor. Awesome.
    Aidan and I made our way to the seating area. I sank down onto its soft cushions, dropping my bag on the floor, and felt the weight of my own misgivings.
    What had I been thinking? That I could just waltz in here and summon my mom to the front desk and drive away? In my fantasies, yes. That had been exactly what I was thinking.
    “No other names she would use, huh?” he asked.
    “None that I can think of,” I said. “Besides, I didn’t want her to start getting suspicious.”
    He leaned back and folded his arms behind his head. “No offense, but I think she might be a tad suspicious already, given that two teenagers have shown up to her hotel at an ungodly hour on a school night. What now?”
    I ran my hand over the elegant embroidery on the throw pillows. The lobby was cool and comfortable, and pleasant flute music played overhead. It did nothing to soothe me. I was all raw edges.
    The way I saw it, we only had two choices, and they involved staying or leaving. I still felt reasonably certain that my mom was here, and after driving all this way, I wasn’t just going to turn around and head back to Paradise Valley.
    “Let’s stay. I mean, the email came from this hotel. So she must’ve been here, right?”
    “Well, not necessarily,” Aidan said slowly. “I was kind of thinking this over on the way up and it’s possible she’s not.”
    “What do you mean?” I