But something had changed since last night. There was more at stake now. She hadn’t just found his car in the Pembroke lot and decided to hunt him up and personally give him the boot. “That’s all?” he asked, dubious.

She said tightly, “Yes.”

“Dani, you’re not telling me everything.”

She shot him a look. “And you’ve told me everything?”

Among her very high standards, Zeke suspected, was a profound distaste for people who neglected to tell her everything she thought she had a right to know. And he hadn’t even begun.

She looked down at the track, still quiet. With her angular Pembroke features, she cut a handsome profile, but Zeke could see the fatigue, the shadows under her beautiful, dark eyes, the straight, uncompromising line of her mouth. He thought of the woman with tears on her cheeks as she cut her kite loose at dawn. How to figure Dani Pembroke?

“Your lifestyle’s caught up with you,” she said without looking at him.

Zeke felt himself tense. “What do you mean?”

“I mean-” and now she threw the full force of her black eyes on him “-that your room at the Pembroke has been turned upside down.”

Falling back on his training and experience, Zeke let his muscles relax, kept his face impassive. “Was anyone hurt?”

“Not that I know of.” In the bright sun, her eyes had narrowed to two black slits. “None of the other rooms were touched. It wasn’t a random act of violence. It was deliberate. Whoever got into room 304 was specifically looking for your room-or for you.”

“And you think that someone was maybe the same person who knocked you three ways from Sunday-”

“I think there’s a high probability of a connection.”

No doubt she was right, not that Zeke had any intention of telling her so. This wasn’t her territory. She bottled water and made people feel good for a living. She didn’t deal with the likes of Quint Skinner, who, Zeke had no doubts whatsoever, had tossed his room. It was a message. You’re not the big shot you think you are. I can reach you. Or just Skinner’s way of trying to find out what Zeke was really doing in Saratoga.

“So you think this break-in was aimed at me personally and not at you or your company?” he asked calmly.

“You’re the expert.” She gave him a look that made him realize how she’d succeeded in the competitive beverage and hotel businesses, how she’d gone on with her life after her mother’s disappearance, her father’s embezzlement, her war with the Chandler half of her family. Dani Pembroke was a survivor. She added smoothly, “After you’re off my property.”

He’d tackle that one later.

She jumped up, turned to him, her black eyes challenging. “I’m going to find out what you’re doing in Saratoga.”

Before he could decide whether or not to grab her and level with her, she was off, her small size helping her speed through the crowd. If he was to have a prayer of catching up with her, he’d have had to leap over seats and generally make a scene. He’d done that sort of thing before, gun in hand, even. But right now he wasn’t sure what good it would do.

He made himself settle back in his seat. He sipped his warm beer and listened to the people around him, the idle chatter, the laughter.

And he reminded himself of his mission in Saratoga.

He was to find out if the gold key Lilli Chandler Pembroke had worn the night she disappeared was the same gold key in the recent photograph of her daughter twenty-five years later. He was to find out if the blackmail letter Joe had given to Naomi had anything to do with Lilli’s disappearance.

If his brother had died knowing what had happened to the missing Chandler heiress. If he’d been a part of it.

That, Zeke thought, was his mission in Saratoga.

As she made her way through the packed clubhouse, Dani tried to blot out the sights and sounds and smells of the track, whose history and traditions were as personal to her as a family picnic. She remembered her mother’s blond hair shining in the bright afternoon sun and her gentle smile as she’d held her young daughter’s hand walking down the steep aisle.

Dani found a reasonably short line at a concession stand and bought herself a lemonade, then permitted herself a peek back toward Zeke’s box before she moved on. She couldn’t see him. He was a man, she thought, who defied prediction. He got under her skin more than anyone in recent memory had. He was careful and controlled, undoubtedly good at winning his clients’ trust. But she wasn’t a client, and his reasons for being in Saratoga, she was now certain, had nothing to do with business. They were personal.

Had they brought on the ransacking of her bedroom Thursday afternoon? His room that morning?

She gulped her lemonade, suddenly feeling thirsty and exhausted. Not for a second did she believe Zeke would leave the Pembroke of his own accord. He’d push her as far as he could and make her throw him out. Probably even enjoy going toe-to-toe with her. Would she toss him? Or was she bluffing? She could argue, she thought, that having him stay where she could keep an eye on him wasn’t a bad idea.

She looked around her, not having paid attention to where she was going, and found herself face-to-face with Eugene Chandler. Before she could say a word, he took her by the elbow and pulled her aside. For a man in his eighties, her grandfather’s grip was like a leghold steel trap.

Her grandfather was highly proficient at concealing his emotions, and Dani had to look closely to see the telltale signs that he was angry and upset: deep breaths through the nose, tightly clenched jaw, extra-straight back, extra-quiet voice, extra-piercing blue eyes.

She pulled her arm free, or maybe he just let her go. “Is something-”

“I wish you’d warned us that your father was in town,” he said.

She felt blood rush to her face. “He is?”

Eugene Chandler’s legendary control faltered. “Yes, I spoke to him myself a few minutes ago. Didn’t you know?”

Dani shook her head. Pop’s in Saratoga. What next?

“Danielle?”

“I’m fine.” But she wasn’t fine. She had a professional security consultant from Mattie’s hometown skulking around, and now her father, whom she hadn’t seen in months, had turned up.

“Perhaps you should sit down,” her grandfather said softly.

“I’m okay,” she said, anxious to make her exit, to find her father and grill him. “Thanks.”

“Danielle…” He sighed. “Never mind. Go find your father. It’s good to see you.”

She wished she knew if he was being sincere or if he was just saying what he thought he was supposed to say. Either way, at least she’d know for sure where she stood with him. She tossed her empty lemonade cup into a trash bin and looked back, saw her grandfather join her aunt and uncle returning to the Chandler box.

She didn’t linger. She wanted to find her reprobate of a father and make him tell her what he was doing in Saratoga.

Not for a moment did she believe it was another coincidence.

Altogether, John Pembroke was glad his trip east had cleaned him out or he might have put a few bucks on a homely bay with fifteen-to-one odds. There was no intelligent reason for his pick. A hundred years ago his great-grandfather had entered a homely bay in the first Chandler Stakes and won. So it seemed a fitting tribute, if not good betting, to wager on a similar horse at the Chandler centennial. But John hated the idea of crawling to his daughter for money.

He yawned, shaking off his jet lag and night on a lumpy cot at a trainer friend’s crummy cottage. He’d entertained the idea of trotting up to the Pembroke and asking for a room, just to see what Dani would do. Show him to a park bench? Offer him a room for twice the cost? But John knew what she’d have done. She’d have let him stay with her. He was, after all, she would say, her father.