im! But how? And did he really know, or was he
just assuming..? But he'd looked right at her. Not toward the bed area or
anywhere else. Straight at her. Just a lucky guess?
Somehow Mandi didn't think so. Switching her vision to normal, she lay back
on the bed to think and fell asleep sometime before Cade let himself into the
room.
Although he moved as quietly as ever, Mandi came awake and watched him
through the darkness. Almost as if he, too, could see in the dark, he went to
the desk, stripped, and headed for the bathroom, where he didn't turn on the
light until he'd closed the door.
Hm. Considerate of him, anyway.
After a quick shower and the use of his toothbrush, Cade padded across the
room to the bed, slipped under the sheets, and went to sleep almost as soon as
his head hit the pillow.

Chapter Twenty-one

Cade snapped awake Sunday morning for no good reason that he could imagine.
The phone wasn't ringing, nobody was knocking on his door, and the TV was off.
He sat up and glanced around the room and saw no Mandi, but her luggage was
still by the desk. His travel alarm clock -- set not to go off at all -- read
almost eight o'clock on the nose. Hm. What the hell had wakened him?
Feeling ravenously hungry, Cade visited the bathroom and drank several
glasses of water to fill the void. That took the edge off his hunger as he
cleaned up and dressed, then headed for the restaurant for breakfast.
As he left his room, he saw Ray Lewis enter the ops room across the hall and
headed that way to see about some wake-up coffee and a general situation report.
Tony answered the ops door and let him in, and as Cade entered the room, he saw
Beth by the coffee pot.
Beth looked up from stirring her cup and saw him. She paled slightly and bit
her lip. Aw, hell. Was she having morning-after recriminations or was she just
worried that he'd say something about last night?
With a smile, Cade said, "Leave me some of that stuff, lady," as he
approached. He snagged a cup and filled it, then tossed in a few small ice cubes
from the nearby ice bucket.
To the room as a whole, he asked, "Anybody seen Mandi?"
Tony said that she'd gone to breakfast with John.
"Breakfast," said Cade, taking a donut from the tray by the coffee pot,
"Yeah. My next stop." Turning to Beth, he asked, "You had breakfast yet? If you
aren't on duty this morning, we can snag a free paper at the lug