His Personal Mission
Justine Davis

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Copyright

Justine Davis lives on Puget Sound in Washington. Her interests outside of writing are sailing, doing needlework, horseback riding and driving her restored 1967 Corvette roadster – top down, of course.

Justine says that years ago, during her career in law enforcement, a young man she worked with encouraged her to try for a promotion to a position that was at the time occupied only by men. “I succeeded, became wrapped up in my new job, and that man moved away, never, I thought, to be heard from again. Ten years later he appeared out of the woods of Washington state, saying he’d never forgotten me and would I please marry him. With that history, how could I write anything but romance?”

Chapter 1

He had to do it, Ryan Barton told himself. What was a little personal humiliation, under the circumstances? He had no right to even worry about the odious task before him. He needed help, and the last person on earth he wanted to ask for it was the only one who could provide it. He couldn’t stand even one more day of his parents’ frantic worry.

Or his own.

He didn’t like the word frantic. It contained an element of hysteria, and that was not a word he liked applied to himself. But he had to admit the more time that passed the more it fit; he’d gone beyond anxiety and worry a couple of days ago.

Trish, he thought, an image flashing through his mind of the blonde, blue-eyed little pest who had annoyed him endlessly in his early teenage years, even as he’d admitted to himself that he was flattered by her unwavering adoration of her big brother. And when he’d gotten himself in big trouble for hacking a corporate network, and been facing some serious consequences, Trish had been the one who had defended him to their furious parents. That he’d known perfectly well he’d been in the wrong made her loyalty even more amazing to him.

And it had also been Trish who’d talked him into taking the unexpected offer made to him by the very person he’d been caught attacking. When Josh Redstone had challenged him to make the network he’d hacked safe from others with the same bent, it had been the beginning of his relationship with the vast Redstone empire. And now, seven years later, he couldn’t imagine life without that connection. At Redstone he got everything that had been missing: the challenge, the equipment he never could have afforded on his own and the appreciation for his…less traditional skills.

That Josh Redstone had been the same age Ryan had been at the time when he’d begun that odyssey was one of the factors that had decided him. That, and that the alternative would likely have been a too-close acquaintance with bars and a cell somewhere.

He could, he knew, go to Josh with this. Anyone at Redstone could go to Josh with anything. And if Josh found out his little sister was missing, he would swing into action. But he also knew it was likely Josh would call in the Westin Foundation.

And that meant Sasha.

Ryan had met the dark-haired, dark-eyed Sasha a couple of years ago when Reeve had called for some tech help on the case of Josh’s missing nephew. She had enthralled him with her bold beauty, her vibrant energy and spirit, and fascinated him with her exotic history.

It had taken him a long time to work up the nerve to ask her out. And no one had been more stunned than he when she’d said yes. But then, somehow, he’d managed to ruin things practically before they even began, and she’d walked away leaving him feeling like a spurned puppy.

And with the nagging feeling that that was exactly how she saw him, like an immature, bothersome puppy.

And now he had to ask her for help.

Only for you, Trish, he muttered to himself.

He dug his smart phone out of the pile of parts on his worktable; Ian’s new, ultrasecure, wireless network router design was proving to be a bit of a challenge. But then, that was why he loved his job, and considered it a great honor to be working with Ian Gamble, Redstone’s genius inventor.

At the last second he decided not to call Sasha directly. He still had her number in his phone—assuming it hadn’t changed—but he didn’t want her thinking this was just an excuse. This situation, and his concern for his little sister, was genuine, and calling the foundation would show her that.

So instead he found the number for the foundation and called it instead. As the call went through, he decided maybe the best approach would be to just pretend he’d forgotten all about their aborted relationship. Like it had meant nothing, that he’d thought about it no more than she likely had.

Yeah, that was it. That was the way to go. Sasha Tereschenko? Yeah, I remember her. Works for the Westin Foundation, right? Met her a couple of times, I think…

Sure, that would work. Never let her see you sweat, wasn’t that how it went? So he wouldn’t. Besides, he didn’t, not really. It wasn’t like he obsessed about it, about what had gone wrong. He’d moved on, just as she had. He hadn’t been ready for any kind of permanence anyway.

No strings, that’s the way for me, he’d said to himself, and two years later that hadn’t changed. Not at all.

He really did barely think about it.

Which didn’t explain why his stomach took a wild tumble when that unmistakable smoky voice rang in his ear.

“Westin Foundation, this is Sasha. How can I help?”

What the hell was she doing answering the phone? They had somebody who did that. Why was she—

He reined himself in, grimacing at his flustered reaction. It was like Sasha to just jump in if someone else was busy. She had no compulsions about job descriptions, only the job itself; he’d learned that about her early on. And he had a real, solid reason for calling, he reminded himself. Get to it.

“Do you have someone missing? I’m here, just tell me what you need.”

What you need… That gentle, soft urging note had come into her voice, the tone that Ryan remembered so well. She could get a guy to eat broken glass with that voice, he’d thought then.

It hadn’t changed.

“Yes,” he said suddenly, not exactly sure what he was saying yes to. With an effort he shook off the effects of that voice. Thought about addressing her as Ms. Tereschenko, but that sounded so weird even in his head he abandoned the idea as soon as it formed.

“Sasha, it’s Ryan. Ryan Barton.”

“Ryan?”

Well, at least she only sounded surprised, and not like she had no idea who he was. That was something, he supposed, that she hadn’t forgotten him completely.

“It’s been a while. How are you?” She sounded, he thought, annoyingly cheerful.

“Okay,” he answered, not quite able to sound the same.

“I heard about you helping with Gabe Taggert’s missing wife. That was a good thing you did.”

He was warmed by the words, but didn’t like the fact. He didn’t want to care at all. So he said, “I didn’t do it. Ian’s new metal detector did.”

“But you ran it,” she said. “If you hadn’t found that car, he might never have known what happened to her. And I heard there were a couple of other missing persons cases closed because of the other things you found. Definitely a good thing.”

“Yeah, well,” he muttered, not knowing what else to say when he was thinking, If I’m so great, why did you walk away?

“So what are you—” She stopped suddenly. Then, quickly, “Wait. You said yes when I asked if you had someone missing.”

Thankful she’d made the change, he shifted into the real reason he’d called. “Yes. My sister. For a week.”

“Ryan, no!”

She sounded genuinely appalled, and that enabled him to get going on the things he’d planned to say.

“Yes. I know the foundation deals with children mostly, and Trish is eighteen, but only by five days. So the principles of searching can’t be much different, can they?”

“It’s very different looking for a teenager than a child,” she said.

“I get that. Look, if you can’t help, at least tell me how to start.”

“Ryan, I never said that.”

Her voice had taken on that gentle, coaxing tone again. Only this time it stung, made him think she’d put him into the category of frantic-relative-to-be-calmed. That that’s exactly what he was didn’t help any.

“Let’s meet. Russ and I are just finishing up the paperwork on a case, but it should only take another half hour or so, then I’ll be free.”

Great, Ryan muttered to himself. Russell C. Langer, resident stud, GQ-handsome and so smooth he made Teflon seem like sandpaper.

And so hot for Sasha it was infuriating.

Or had been. He had no right to be infuriated anymore. And maybe Russ wasn’t hot for her anymore.

Maybe he’d gotten what he wanted.

That thought made Ryan’s stomach knot. Sasha’s lively vividness and the polished, slightly older Langer’s practiced charm made for…well, the perfect couple. Especially when contrasted with his own laid-back geekiness. Russ was all that, and he was none of it. At best, his sister’s sometimes irritating friends called him cute, which was something he associated with little kids and puppies again, and thus not particularly flattering. Trish just told him he should be glad he didn’t look like a typical geek, but he hadn’t found much comfort in that.

“Shall I come there, or can you come here?” Sasha was asking.

There? At the foundation, where she and Russ were cozily working together? No way, he thought. I so do not want to go there.

Ryan shook his head sharply.

Trish, he ordered himself. Get back to Trish, she’s what really matters here, not your stupidity.

“Ryan?”

“I…Let’s meet in between.”

“Okay.” She didn’t seem to find anything odd in the request. “It’s lunchtime, how about at The Grill in an hour?”

“Great.”

He wasn’t at all hungry, but at least at the popular restaurant—known to locals as The Grill despite it’s longer name involving the street it was on and the ethnicity of the owner—he could have some coffee, or a soda, something to do instead of staring at her like that pesky pup.

It would make it easier to hide the truth, that he’d never, ever forgotten her.

Ryan Barton, Sasha thought as she leaned back in her chair. She certainly hadn’t ever expected to hear from him again. She’d known that he’d been bewildered by her sudden withdrawal, although she’d tried to explain. It wasn’t that she hadn’t liked him, she had. A great deal. It wasn’t that she didn’t have fun with him, she did. A great deal.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t attracted to him, she was. An even greater deal. Almost too much; she’d been nearly ready for a move to the next level, a sexual relationship, far too quickly for her comfort. There had been something about him that had, unexpectedly, appealed mightily to her. It wasn’t his short, almost spiky hair that was nearly blond at the tips; that was hardly her style. More likely it was his obvious intelligence, his ready grin, his quick, energetic way of moving, and the simple fact that he’d made it clear he was strongly attracted to her.

But none of that changed the bottom line, the one difference between them that she simply couldn’t get around. Ryan was cheerful, happy and carefree. The first two she liked. The last…well, it annoyed her. Ryan didn’t worry about much of anything, even things that should be worried about. He seemed to have a blind faith that everything would work out the way it should.

And Sasha Tereschenko knew better.

But he’d called with something that seemed to have finally gotten through to him, she reminded herself. For the first time since she’d known him, Ryan had sounded…well, worried.

Maybe he would finally learn that life wasn’t always a lighthearted skateboard through the park.

Quickly, she turned back to the paperwork she’d been working on when he’d called. If she pushed, she’d just make the time frame she’d given Ryan. She finished entering the text section of her report, then tackled the checklist at the bottom that would enter the case into their ever-growing database of cases, details and MOs in the case of criminal connections and the thankfully rare kidnappings.

When she was finally done, she attached the routing command that would complete the process. The computer software linked up with databases across the country, both law enforcement and private, and gave them an incredibly vast and broad-based pool of knowledge, statistics and case information to draw on. It was, to her knowledge, unique in the field, although thanks to Redstone, which had funded its development, it was being put into use all over the country.

And it had been written by Ryan Barton.

And there she was, back to the big conundrum. Shouldn’t he get credit for that? Shouldn’t the fact that he was making it easier for places like the Westin Foundation to find missing and endangered children count as evidence he wasn’t utterly carefree?

She’d thought so. In fact it was one of the reasons she’d agreed to go out with him in the first place. But she’d learned early on it had been the challenge of making it work, not the desire to help, that had truly driven him. That was Ryan; he thought his blessed computers could do anything, if you just programmed them right. That his work often helped people was just a side effect.

Not that that didn’t please him, but his focus was the machines, not the people. And that—

“Hey, beautiful, how about lunch to celebrate?”

Startled out of her reverie, she glanced up at Russ Langer, who was leaning against the doorjamb of her office. Funny, she thought. In the same way Ryan seemed to project his carefree mind-set, Russ projected self-assurance. She made herself use the term, even to herself, when what she was really thinking was cockiness. But she had to work with the guy, and thinking all the time he was a cocky jerk could lead to her actually saying it out loud, and she didn’t want that.

Besides, he wasn’t really a jerk, he was nice enough. And when he worked, he was good at it. It was simply that he was handsome beyond belief—and he knew it. She guessed he always had. She wondered yet again what it must be like to be able to slide through life simply on your looks.

“Well?” Russ prompted when she didn’t leap to say yes to his offer.

“Sorry,” she said, standing up and grabbing her phone to stuff it back in the capacious bag she called a purse. “A call just came in. I have to meet a…relative.”

“We just finished a long one. Somebody else can go. We deserve a break.”

“The family of a missing girl deserves a break,” Sasha said pointedly.

Russ sighed. At least he’d learned that about her—nothing could distract her from helping someone who needed her particular talents.

“Want me to come with?” he asked as she reached the doorway, and him.

“No, I’ve got it. You go get your lunch, take your break.”

His gaze narrowed over impossibly perfect cheekbones, as if he wondered if she’d meant the words as a slam. And perhaps, on some level, she had. She couldn’t picture Russ ever skipping a meal or forgoing a break—even though he was right, it was deserved, the Novato case had been long and hard—to jump right into another case.

But he had offered, she reminded herself, and smiled at him. “I’ll call you if it turns into something and I need the help. Thanks.”

Appearing mollified, he nodded and moved aside so she could pass. She caught a whiff of expensive men’s cologne. At least Ryan only smelled of soap and shampoo, she thought, much preferring the simplicity. It made the times when they’d gone out to dinner, when he had put on something, seem more special somehow. And his entire approach less…practiced.

God, woman, you are being ridiculous, she told herself as she walked through the building, a converted Tudor-style home that had once been known as “the purple place” for its odd paint job. Thankfully it no longer looked like a misplaced San Francisco row house, and blended in nicely with the others like it in the neighborhood that had once been residential gone seedy but was now a successful business area. Again, mostly thanks to Redstone, who had bought it specifically for a headquarters for the foundation; when Josh took an interest, the business world listened.

She walked out to her little yellow coupe, parked in the small courtyard they’d turned into a parking lot to avoid destroying the lovely garden they’d reclaimed from the front of the building. And every step of the way, she continued her self-lecture.

Just because the guy called out of the blue doesn’t mean anything’s changed.

She hit the button on her key, and the brightly colored car chirped and unlocked itself obediently.

He’s got a problem, that’s all, something he knows you’re good at. He’s probably got a steady girl by now, anyway, one who isn’t so picky.

She yanked open the driver’s-side door and tossed her big bag on the seat.

You’re acting like you’ve been missing him all this time.

She got into the car and jammed the key into the ignition with more gusto than was needed. She hurried to start the car and head out. She needed to focus on driving.

So she could stop thinking about the irritating fact that her last thought had been true.

Chapter 2

Ryan watched Sasha thread her way past crowded tables back to the booth he’d managed to snag because he’d once bussed tables here. She was still the most amazing woman he’d ever seen.

She’d laughed when he’d told her that once, saying she had a mirror, thank you, and knew she wasn’t beautiful. Striking, she could manage, she’d said. With the sense of a guy who’d just been asked if something made a woman look fat, he’d stumblingly answered, “That’s what I mean. No, I meant…You’re not…I mean, you are, but…different.” He remembered that drowning feeling as he gave up and muttered, “You make it hard to breathe.”

To his amazement her laughter had turned to a genuine smile. And she’d told him that was the nicest compliment she’d gotten in a while.

Things hadn’t changed, he thought as he watched eyes lift and heads turn as she went by, a spot of bright, mobile color in the sunny yellow sweater she wore. It was, he knew, her favorite color, usually paired with black, “for contrast” she’d told him. She had a huge bag in the same colors slung over her shoulder; the bag was different, but the size the same as he remembered.

She’d cut her hair; that was about the only real change. And the short, sleek bob, longer at the front and sides than in the back so it moved every time she did, suited her. He usually preferred long hair, but there was something about the bare nape of her neck…

And then she was there, and he belatedly stood up, remembering his mother telling him a gentleman always did when a lady arrived. He thought such things ridiculously old-fashioned, but Sasha had also once told him she was an old-fashioned kind of girl, so he figured it couldn’t hurt.

She smiled at him.

Score one for Mom, he thought as Sasha slipped into the booth opposite him.

Suddenly he couldn’t think of a thing to say. He’d rehearsed in his head what he’d tell her about Trish, but he’d somehow forgotten to work on anything else. Desperate, his gaze landed on the brightly colored bag.

“Still carrying your life around, I see,” he said, then groaned inwardly at the lameness of it.

“You never know,” she said, as she always had when he’d teased her before about seeming to need a ton of stuff with her at all times. “Besides, it’s a special bag. It was made for me by a friend.” He looked more closely as she went on. “It was knitted, then washed in really hot water to shrink it. It’s called felting.”

“Shrink it?” he said, eyeing the thing that seemed the size of a large briefcase skeptically.

“It’s perfect,” she said, her voice taking on an imperious tone he hoped was teasing. “It’s solid, sturdy, but nice and soft to the touch.”

She stroked a finger over it as if to demonstrate. It was a simple motion, and he had no explanation for the sudden hike in his pulse rate. He studied the bag for a moment, more to give himself a moment to collect himself than out of real interest, but when he did, he noticed the intricacy of the pattern.

“It looks like the geometric screen saver Ian uses.”

Sasha laughed. “Maybe that’s where she got the idea.”

“She?”

“Liana Kiley.”

His head came up then. “Liana? Our Liana?”

Sasha grinned. “I love the way you Redstone people are. Yes, your Liana. I figured you’d know her, given she works in your neck of Redstone, as it were.”

He did know Liana. She worked for Lilith Mercer, who was cleaning up a mess left by the former head of the R&D division, a task he’d been involved in periodically, including some time spent with the pretty redhead. She was relatively new to Redstone, but that she was a perfect fit had become clear very early. Ryan liked her. And not just because she liked computers and was pretty good with them; she was a genuinely nice person.

And apparently a friend of Sasha’s, which he hadn’t known.

“Your colors,” he said, not sure what else to say; that she was friends with someone he saw almost every day bothered him somehow.

“Liana called it ‘Fright of the Bumblebee,’” she said with a grin.

He couldn’t deny it fit; the explosion of yellow and black did look a bit like a bumblebee gone berserk.

The waitress arrived with two large glasses and set them down, along with a couple of menus, then left to give them time to look. Sasha looked at the glass, then at Ryan.

“I took a chance you’re still into Diet Coke,” he said.

She smiled. “As long as it’s not decaf. I mean, what’s the point?”

He laughed, and the knot in his gut loosened a bit. “Order something. I’m buying.” She lifted a brow at him. “I called you,” he pointed out.

“Point taken,” she said, picking up the menu. “And since they fund us as well, I know how Redstone pays.”

“I’m not hurting.”

She looked up from the menu. “Not about that, anyway.”

For an instant he thought she meant hurting about her, and he winced inwardly. Then he realized she had to mean Trish, and he felt like a fool, and worse, an uncaring idiot, for even momentarily forgetting the matter at hand.

“Tell me about your sister,” she said in that soft, encouraging tone that had always made him want to go out and climb a mountain or slay a dragon, and not in any virtual world, but the real thing.

She’d never met Trish during the short time they’d been together, but he knew he’d told her about his little sister, probably with that exasperated tone most older siblings used. Although with ten years between them, he’d moved out on his own when she was nine, so he hadn’t had to deal with the teenage angst on a daily basis.

And then he’d hacked himself into that colossal mess and she’d become a staunchly furious eleven-year-old defender, changing his view of his pesky little sister.

“She was there for me when I was in trouble,” he said, only vaguely aware, lost in the memory, “and now I’m afraid she’s in trouble.”

“So you’re going to be there for her,” Sasha said, and the approval in her tone warmed him. “Tell me what’s happened. Was there trouble at home?”

“No,” he said quickly. “Not the kind that would make her take off. My folks are great.”

“You’ve always said so,” Sasha said. “But sometimes siblings see things differently.”

He shook his head. “Trish got along fine with them. No fights, no blowups. Just the usual teenage stuff. She thought they were overprotective, but so did I.”

“Sometimes,” Sasha said again, this time carefully, “parents are different with girls.”

Ryan considered this for a moment. “My dad was, a little. Extraprotective. But Trish could get around him, too, in a way I never could.”

“Girls and their daddies,” Sasha said. “It’s a fact of life.”

“Yeah. I envied her sometimes, when I was still at home. There she was, seven years old, wheedling things out of him that I couldn’t get at seventeen. But it was hard to stay mad at her when she…” He trailed off awkwardly.

“When she adored her big brother?”

A sheepish smile curved his mouth. “Yeah.”

“That’s the natural order of things, too,” Sasha said.

There was a pause as the waitress took their order—she still went for his own favorite cheeseburger, which likely meant, given she hadn’t changed at all, she still worked out like a triathlete—and then she continued.

“You said it’s been a week.”

He nodded.

“And she just turned eighteen?”

He nodded again. “On the ninth.”

“Any reason to think she didn’t just take off on some celebration of her newly gained adulthood?”

And there it was, Ryan thought. The same wall they’d run into with the police. “Concrete reason? Like something I could show you?” He sighed. “No. The opposite, in fact.”

“Opposite?”

“She left a note.” To her credit, Ryan thought, her expression didn’t change. “Not a suicide note,” Ryan said quickly, since that was the first thing the cops had asked.

“I assumed it wasn’t, or you wouldn’t be talking to me, the police would be investigating. Are they?”

“No.”

She merely nodded. “Do you have it?”

“No. My folks do.” He shifted in his seat. “They didn’t know I was going to call you.”

“Will it bother them?”

Not nearly as much as it bothered me, he thought.

“I don’t think so. They just want somebody looking for Trish, and obviously the police won’t unless we come up with some evidence something’s wrong. I mean they took a report, but it was pretty clear it wasn’t going to go far.”

“They have some big limitations,” Sasha said. “So what did the note say? Any clues?”

“Thank you,” he said impulsively. At her questioning look he tried to explain. “For not…instantly writing this off. For not giving me that look the cops did, the minute I told them about the note.”

Although she looked pleased, she waved his thanks off with a gesture and refused to bash the police. “They have different priorities, and too darn many rules. We don’t. And we have access to Redstone’s resources. That’s why we’re so successful. So what did the note say?”

“Just that she had to go somewhere, not to worry, and she’d call when she could. But she’s supposed to start college in the fall, at U.C. Davis. She wants to be a vet.”

“And did she? Call, I mean?”

“No. And she’s not answering her cell.”

“Didn’t even call friends?”

“Her best friend is spending the summer in Australia. Graduation present. She said she didn’t know anything, even laughed at the idea of Trish taking off on her own.”

Sasha nodded thoughtfully.

“Boyfriend?”

“No. She never dated much. She was focused on school. She was seeing one guy a year or so ago, but they broke up. I don’t know why.”

“Nasty break?”

Ryan looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know. I only barely knew about the guy.”

“Would your parents know?”

“Probably. They keep a close watch—” He stopped, as if realizing that however close his parents had watched their daughter, it apparently hadn’t been close enough.

“I’ll talk to them about it,” Sasha said. “And I’ll want to see the note.”

“There was nothing in it about where she was going, or how long she’d be gone, or even if she’d be back. Nothing,” he repeated in obvious frustration.

“Did she have a car?”

“Yes, my dad’s old one, but it’s at home still.”

“How about finances? Credit card?”

“She had a checking account, and savings, but that’s it. My folks wouldn’t let her have a credit card, afraid she’d do the kid thing and get in way over her head.”

“She’ll get a million credit card offers once she gets to college,” Sasha pointed out, refraining from stating her opinion on that common practice.

“They knew that. They just flat out told her she couldn’t have one while she was underage and they might be held responsible for her irresponsibility, and that if she got one once she left the house, they wouldn’t help her with it.” One corner of his mouth quirked upward. “I got the same lecture at the same age.”

“Good for your folks.”

“I knew you’d say that,” Ryan said, but with a smile.

“She’s never expressed a desire to take off when she was old enough, see the country or the world?” Sasha asked.

“Trish? Hardly. She didn’t even like going on family vacations. She’s never even talked about wanting to go anywhere. She was looking forward to going to school, but she was even a bit nervous about that, it being so far away. In her eyes, anyway,” he amended, as if realizing that to many people, especially those connected to a worldwide entity like Redstone, a distance of less than five hundred miles was almost negligible.

“So she’s a homebody?”

He shrugged. “She liked life here. Her friends, going to the beach. And she volunteered a lot at Safe Haven.”

“Safe Haven?”

“It’s an animal shelter, sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“It’s mainly for the pets of people who have to go to the hospital, or older people who have to go into a nursing home, to take care of them while the owners can’t.”

Sasha smiled widely. “That’s a wonderful idea.”

Ryan nodded; even he had had to admit his little sister had found a worthwhile cause. “It’s the main reason Trish wanted to be a vet, to come back and work for Safe Haven one day. They take care of the animals until the owner can take them back, and when it’s an option, they take them to visit their owners until then. That’s one of the things Trish was doing as a volunteer.”

“Good for her.”

“She was helping with adoptions, too, when they knew the owners wouldn’t be able to take their pet back. They always try to place them with people willing to make the effort to continue the visits.”

Sasha blinked. “To their original people?” Ryan nodded. “That’s beyond wonderful, that’s beautiful. Whoever thought of that should be very proud.”

“Actually, there’s a Redstone connection. Emma McClaren runs it. She’s married to Harlan McClaren. Also known as Mac McClaren.”

Sasha blinked. “The treasure hunter?”

“The same.” He wasn’t surprised she knew the name; anybody even vaguely aware of world happenings had heard of the man who had such a knack for finding and salvaging fortunes both sunken and buried.

“Wow.” Her brow furrowed. “But what’s the Redstone connection?”

Ryan grinned. “Who do you think bankrolled Josh Redstone when he was starting out?”

Her eyes widened. “Really?”

“And now he’s Josh’s right-hand financial go-to guy. He’s got as much of a knack with finances and investments as he does finding treasure. And he’s available to anybody who’s Redstone. He’s why even our file clerks have a retirement plan that’s the envy of the corporate world.”

“I had no idea.”

“Few people do. Neither he nor Josh brags much.”

“You’re quite the Redstone booster, aren’t you?”

He bristled slightly. “Redstone doesn’t need me to boost it. It speaks for itself.”

“That wasn’t criticism. I have the highest opinion of Redstone, and Josh. We wouldn’t exist if not for them, and him, and if we didn’t, I’d be trying to get a job there.”

“Oh.” He felt a bit foolish.

“I like that you want to defend it, though.”

He shrugged, tracing a path through the condensation on his glass. “I don’t know where I’d be if Josh hadn’t…been who he was.”

She knew his story, he’d told her himself when he’d realized he wanted to keep seeing her. He’d told her before she’d heard it from someone else, not wanting her to get some slanted version of his youthful exploits as a malicious hacker who’d tackled Redstone just because they were the biggest kid on the block.

“So how’s your retirement looking?” she asked. Startled, he looked up. Saw the twinkle of humor in her dark eyes. Felt the smile start to curve his mouth before he even realized he was doing it.

“Great,” he said. “Even my dad approves. Thinks I’m finally being responsible. I haven’t had the heart to tell him I signed up half because I wanted the kick of Mac McClaren doing my investing for me.”

She laughed at that, but then, rather more intently, asked, “And the other half?”

Of course she hadn’t missed that. He hadn’t forgotten how rarely she missed anything. The very trait that made her so good at what she did also made her sometimes uncomfortably observant to be around. Especially if you were prone to sliding easily along the surface of life.

“I’m trying,” he said at last. “Somebody told me once I didn’t worry enough.”

Her dark, arched brows shot upward. He’d startled her with that, since she’d been the one who’d said it.

“I doubt they said exactly that,” she said.

“Close enough.”

To his amazement, she seemed flustered. He’d never been able to manage that before, and he wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad sign that he’d done it now. Before he could decide, their food had arrived.

The cheeseburgers were as good as always, but he wasn’t able to give his the attention it deserved. Not with Sasha sitting across the table from him. He was grateful when, between bites—he’d always liked the fact that she enjoyed food—she turned back to the reason they were here.

“So this is uncharacteristic of your sister?”

“Very. Like I said, she loved living here, and her friends, and what she did at Safe Haven.”

“Have you talked to them? The shelter?”

“I talked to one of the other volunteers. She said Trish left Emma a note saying essentially the same thing.”

“Did she have a work schedule there, or as a volunteer did she just drop in whenever?”

He frowned. “I’m not sure.”

“We’ll check that out, then. And the girlfriend. Anyone else you can think of?”

The French fry Ryan had just swallowed seemed to jam in his suddenly tight throat. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d needed somebody to believe, somebody to take his word for the fact that something was wrong with the way his sister had just up and left everything she knew and loved.

“You’ll help?” he said, almost wonderingly.

“Of course,” Sasha said. “It’s what I do.”

And if he was wishing she meant that personally as well as a representative of the Westin Foundation helping someone from Redstone, that was his problem, Ryan told himself. It didn’t matter what he wished, or that he wished it from Sasha Tereschenko.

What mattered was that they find Trish.

Safe.

Chapter 3

“Is this taking you away from something else?”

Sasha glanced at Ryan in the passenger seat before pulling out into traffic; they were taking her car out to Safe Haven because he was low on gas and it was a long drive. And, as she’d pointed out, she got paid mileage.

“Not at the moment. That case we just finished was the only thing right now.”

“You and…Russ.”

“Yes.” She saw something flicker in his eyes; he’d never liked Russ. And she was female enough to be flattered when she’d realized why.

“Is he still…”

“Hitting on me? Tirelessly.”

“Did you ever give in?”

“No. Not,” she added, “that it’s your business.”

“I know that.”

He said it so quietly she changed her tone. “He only wants me because I don’t want him. He finds that…hard to believe.”

“He would,” Ryan muttered.

Sasha stifled a smile.

“Happy ending?” he asked.

It took her an instant to make the shift. “The case?”

“Yeah.”

She had to turn her attention back to her driving as a chance to get out of The Grill driveway presented itself—not something to be bypassed even midday in this busy area. It also gave her a chance to process the thought that she was surprised he’d asked. The old Ryan, the two-years-ago Ryan, wouldn’t have even thought of that.

That she doubted he would even have cared back then was one of the reasons she’d walked away.

“Yes,” she said once they had merged safely into the number two lane. “We found him in time.”

“Little one?”

Again she was surprised. “Yes. Eight years old. Noncustodial parent took him.”

“That’s kind of common, isn’t it?”

Now she was really surprised. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

“I’m lucky my folks stayed together. Seems like all my friends’ parents divorced, remarried, had more kids, divorced, and on and on.”

“Yes, you are lucky,” she said.

And she was stunned. His taking for granted the life he had had always irritated her. Was this appreciation sincere, or some effort to convince her he’d changed?

Get over yourself, she muttered inwardly. It’s not all about you, girl.

“I appreciate your taking the time to help me. And even being willing to, when the police wouldn’t.”

There was undeniable sincerity in the words, and again she wondered at the formerly uncharacteristic attitude.

“They have their criteria, we have ours,” she said. “Ours is relieving pain and worry.”

“I know. I’ve always…admired what you do.”

He’d told her that before, but in the aftermath of discovering how…well, face it, shallow he’d been at the time, she’d discounted that along with almost everything else he’d said as just surface chat to try to charm her.

Perhaps she’d been a little harsh before.

But right now there was something else she had to make clear. “You know that we can’t force your sister to come back if she doesn’t want to, now that she’s eighteen.”

“I know that.”

“But we can find her and make sure she’s all right.”

“That’s all I want. My folks want her home, but…I remember what it was like at that age.”

He spoke as if that age were many decades behind him instead of merely one. That, too, was new.

She glanced at him again. He was staring out the windshield, but she noticed he was digging his left thumbnail into the side of his index finger, a habit she’d noticed before, the only sign he’d ever shown of being concerned about anything. That it had usually been about a complex computer problem he was dealing with had been the part that irritated her.

“Don’t you ever worry about people?” she’d asked him once in exasperation.

He’d only shrugged. “With computers there’s always an answer. You just have to find it.”

She hadn’t appreciated the logic and, she admitted later, the wisdom in that at the time. It had seemed just another sign that much as she liked and was attracted to him, their attitudes about some critical things simply didn’t mesh.

“I don’t want you to get into trouble,” he said now, snapping her back to the present, his concern adding another layer to her surprise. “I know your focus is on kids, and technically Trish isn’t one.”

“But she’s connected, through you, to Redstone. That’s all Zach will need to hear. He’d do anything for one of Josh’s people. It’s once Redstone, always Redstone, for him. And of course, his wife is pure Redstone.”

Sasha smiled as she said it; she greatly admired Reeve Westin, and had when she’d still been Reeve Fox. She’d been a bit intimidated at first, what with the incredible reputation of the Redstone security team, but Reeve had been wonderful, and for her own reasons staunch in her support of what the Westin Foundation did.

And not just because she loved the man responsible for its founding; the foundation had arisen out of the tragic murder of the Redstone Aviation’s administrator’s six-year-old son. It was funded in large part by Redstone, and was now headed up by Zach Westin himself. Another layer had been added when Westin had married Reeve, the member of the stellar Redstone security team who had been assigned to his son’s disappearance. The latest in the growing string of Redstone couples.

“How are they? Zach and Reeve, I mean.”

“Nauseatingly happy,” she said with a grin.

“Figures,” he said wryly. “I swear, it’s in the water at Redstone these days.”

“So I hear. Don’t drink any, who knows what might happen to you.”

He went very quiet then, and she wondered what about her somewhat-lame joke—which, if she was honest, had probably been a bit of a jab at him—had shut him up. For a moment she was afraid he was going to bring up the past, and she didn’t want to deal with that. She’d put him safely and thoroughly behind her, and that’s where she wanted him to stay. She was sure he’d probably done the same. After all, they’d only dated a few months. It wasn’t like they had some huge, involved history between them. They’d had some good times, yes. If she were being honest again, some of the best times she’d ever had.

But you didn’t build the kind of life she wanted on just good times. Well, that and incredible chemistry, she thought. Yes, that had definitely been there.

But it still wasn’t enough. Not for the long haul. Not to end up where her parents had, married thirty-five years and still mad for each other. Or for that matter, like Ryan’s parents, married nearly as long and in the same condition.

But where she appreciated, adored and wanted to emulate her parents, Ryan was embarrassed by his. He took them for granted, more amused by them than anything, and by their staying together through thick and thin when their contemporaries seemed to split like a stream around a rock anytime the slightest difficulty came up.

And then there was his embarrassment when they would engage in displays of affection in public, groaning that he preferred PDAs to be of the computer variety. Sasha had found them incredibly sweet, people to be admired, not embarrassed by. And Ryan had seemed bewildered when she’d pointed that out to him.

“How are your folks?” she asked now. “This must be awful on them.”

“They’re pulling together, as always.” There was, Sasha noted, none of the usual embarrassment in his voice now.

“My mom keeps thinking it must be something she’s done, my dad keeps telling her she’s the perfect mother and it has nothing to do with her.”

“Chances are he’s right, it has nothing to do with her, or them. In a stable family like yours, it’s often simply…being a teenager. Thinking you know everything. Rebellion against the status quo, all that.”

It wasn’t lost on her that these were some of the reasons Ryan had gotten himself into trouble all those years ago. He’d never denied to her that he’d started down the path that had led him into big trouble early on. He’d hacked his first system when he was sixteen, a simple one, that of his high school in an effort to improve his grades. It had been so easy he’d graduated quickly to other hacks.

He’d never gone for banks or financial institutions. Money wasn’t his motivation. Once he’d taken on a gaming company, in an effort to get an advance look at a new game they were developing. Their security had been much tighter than the school’s, and it had taken him a long time.

Redstone he had tackled when he was twenty-one, simply for the challenge. He’d read an article on the brand-new Redstone genius Ian Gamble, who had developed a state-of-the-art firewall that had the computer security industry buzzing. It had taken him nearly a year to find a way past Gamble’s ingenious design.

And if Ian hadn’t been willing to take him on at Josh’s request, Ryan didn’t know where he’d be.

“They don’t have any idea where she might have gone?”

“They’ve thought and thought about it, and can’t come up with anything.” He seemed to hesitate, then said quietly, “I’m worried about them.”

“They’ll probably be fine once we find her.”

“I appreciate the confidence,” he said. “And I know if anybody can find her, you can. But they seem full of…selfdoubt. And part of that’s my fault.”

“Why?” she asked, startled at the sudden turn.

“First I go get into trouble, and now Trish essentially runs away from home? They thought they were doing a good job with us, but now they’re questioning everything they’ve ever done.”

Sasha had only met his parents twice, once by accident when they’d dropped by Ryan’s apartment when she was there, and once after the breakup, when she’d gone by Redstone to return a CD he’d lent her and they’d been visiting. She’d liked them both times. Enough to wish things had gone differently. They seemed to her the epitome of the backbone of America, the kind of people who really made things work, the kind she admired and respected.

She didn’t like the thought of them second-guessing their entire lives.

“I’ll talk to them. Maybe I can help them see that’s not true.”

He seemed relieved at that idea. So he did care, she thought.

“Will they be home tonight?”

He nodded. “Dad gets home about six, and mom’s always home in the afternoons.”

“Is she still working for that doctor?”

“Yeah. And Dad’s still crunching numbers at the bank.”

She remembered suddenly how he’d once told her his dad had to be the most boring guy on the planet. Same boring work, at the same boring place, for over twenty years. That had been, she realized in retrospect, the beginning of the end. The dismissive assessment had angered her. She couldn’t be with someone who didn’t realize the value of that, who didn’t make the connection between that kind of steadiness and his own comfortable, carefree life.

And she’d told him so, in no uncertain terms.

“Almost as boring as sitting at a computer all day,” she said, not bothering to keep the snap out of her voice. And then wondering why; it wasn’t like it mattered anymore.

“Computers aren’t boring!” His defensiveness was quick, instinctive. “They’ve changed the world, made amazing things possible.” He gestured at the GPS screen set into the dash of her car. “You’d be fumbling with maps if you didn’t have that thing to give you turn-by-turns right to Safe Haven’s front door.”

“True enough,” she had to admit.

“They’re not boring at all.”

As they pulled to a stop at a red light, she turned slightly to look at him.

“Did you ever think that maybe numbers aren’t boring to your father? That maybe he likes the…the logic of them, the symmetry, the balance? Did you ever think that your blessed computers are based on numbers, and that you probably inherited some of your father’s knack with them, and that that’s the reason you’re good with them?”

She could see by his expression that he hadn’t.

The light changed. As she turned her attention back to driving, she was inwardly chiding herself for coming down so hard. This was, after all, none of her business anymore. It probably never had been. But it had been a measure of how much she liked the guy that she’d even tried to change his attitude about some things that were very basic to her.

Teach you to be a foolish female, try to change a male who doesn’t want to change, she thought, and not for the first time.

“Sorry,” she said into the silence of the car, “you came to me for help, not criticism.”

She heard him let out a compressed breath before he said levelly, “If one’s the price for the other, I’ll take it.”

Now that was a change, she thought, surprised anew.

“Besides,” he went on, “I realize now how you could spend twenty years in the same place. I never want to leave Redstone. I still don’t get the accounting thing, but what you said about the numbers…that makes sense.”

My God, Sasha thought. He really has changed.

The old Ryan would have either laughed her off, or gotten even more defensive.

Had he finally grown up? Had the boy who had wanted only to slide along smoothly, the only challenges he enjoyed coming from his beloved computers, finally realized that people were what really mattered?

She didn’t know. Couldn’t be sure, at least, not yet. Maybe he was just putting on a front of connecting with real people, knowing—because she’d told him so bluntly—that she thought him lacking that skill.

And there you go again, making it all about you. When did you get so stuck on yourself?

She lectured herself for another moment, ending with the truth that there was only one thing she could be sure of at the moment: that her own, deep-down reaction to the possibility was unsettling. She shouldn’t care, it shouldn’t matter, she’d left Ryan Barton long behind.

Hadn’t she?

Chapter 4

Sasha was still pondering the changes in Ryan, wondering just how deep they went, when the GPS he’d been so enamored of announced their destination was one mile ahead on the right. She slowed, looking, and saw a long, low, red-barn-style building set back from the road. A smaller one was off to one side, and what had apparently once been a small house sat at the end of a long driveway behind a secured gate.

The traditional rail fencing was high, and screened on the inside to make it secure, but painted pristinely white so that the first thing you thought of was charm rather than serious function. The grounds were tidy and well kept, and the small pack of five dogs who raced along the fence to greet them, tails up and tongues lolling, gave a homey air to it all.

“They look happy,” Sasha said as she pushed the button on the gate beneath the small plaque with those instructions.

“Yeah. And healthy.”

The little house was clearly the office, and was surrounded with plants, trees and flowers that looked as happy and healthy as the dogs. Beside the house Sasha saw a path that led through a big, open field toward a thick grove of trees, where it disappeared invitingly into the deep shade.

They went up two steps to the broad front porch, and stopped at the bright red front door.

“This is quite a place,” she said as she looked around.

“We like it,” came a female voice from inside the door where they’d stopped. “Come on in.”

The interior of the office was as tidy as the grounds. Sasha couldn’t help smiling at the photos on the walls, images of animals captioned imaginatively in the vein of a popular Web site that she’d come across recently, the funny spelling contributing to the humor.

“Very nice place,” Sasha said. “I’m Sasha Tereschenko,” she added, offering her hand to the young woman coming toward them.

“I’m Sheila McKay,” the woman said, drying her hands on a bright blue towel before she held out a hand first to Sasha, then Ryan. “I sort of run this place, when the real boss is away.”

“Mrs. McClaren?”

Sheila blinked at Ryan. “Yes. You know her?”

“Of her. I work for Redstone.”

The smile that lit the woman’s face made Sasha reassess her looks; she’d thought her a bit plain at first, although her shoulderlength hair had a lovely reddish tint that went well with her fair skin and the faint sprinkling of freckles across a pert nose. But that smile could light up a city block, Sasha thought now.

“Bless Redstone,” Sheila said fervently. “We were nearly going under, a few years back. The rent kept going up, the county was threatening to rezone us, we could barely keep up with the maintenance.”

Sasha looked around. “Obviously that’s not a problem now. This place is perfect.”

“Well, not quite. But we own the land now—it was Emma’s wedding present from her husband—and Emma’s got big plans. An aviary, so the birds we get have room to fly, if they can. And her husband’s building a corral for us out back, because Emma wants to take on a couple of abused horses the county shelter doesn’t have room for.”

“He’s building it? Himself?” Sasha asked, startled at the idea of a man like Mac McClaren doing something so mundane.

“Yep. For a rich guy, he’s pretty handy,” Sheila said with a grin. “And we love him around here. He’s made it all possible. Anything Emma wants for this place, she gets. Including the county off our back, since they surely don’t want to make Redstone mad. Or have Mac McClaren, famous treasure hunter, talking to the press about their interference in our innocent, benevolent enterprise.”

“Wise,” Ryan said with a crooked grin back at her.

“Yes. Now, what brings you here? Do you need us to take an animal?”

“No,” Sasha said, “it’s something else.”

“Then how can I help you?”

“It’s my sister,” Ryan said.

Sheila looked puzzled. “Your sister?”

“Trish Barton.”

Sheila looked startled. “You’re Ryan?”

He nodded. Sheila looked him up and down, then smiled impishly. “Well, she was right. You are cute.”

Sasha smothered a grin as Ryan flushed. She knew that term grated on him. It always had. She sort of understood, cute was such a high school term. But he was cute, there was no getting around that. And she had the feeling that with his boyish face, he’d still be cute at fifty.

“Better than pretty,” she said to the room at large, and Sheila’s laugh got them through the moment, even though it made Ryan grimace.

“I don’t think we realized how hard Trish worked around here until now,” Sheila said. “I know I didn’t. I’m trying to pick up the slack, but the therapy program alone has me exhausted.”

“Therapy?” Sasha asked. “For the animals?”

“No,” Sheila said. “We started a program where we take animals to visit nursing homes and hospitals, to cheer up patients. Started with one dog, a very special one, and Whisper did so well we’ve now got three dogs, a cat, two hamsters and a ferret in the program.”

“A ferret?” Ryan said, distracted.

“Kids,” Sheila explained with a smile. “They love the dogs, but they’re fascinated with the more unusual stuff.”

“And…my sister did this?”

Sheila frowned. “Yes. You didn’t know?”

“I know she took the animals to visit their owners a lot, but not about this part.”

“You should be proud of her. She has built up that program almost by herself, from the moment Emma gave her a shot at it. She has more energy than the rest of us put together.”

“She is…happy here?” Sasha asked carefully.

Sheila looked puzzled. “Very. Emma always has to be careful to make sure she doesn’t neglect the rest of her life to do it, always nagging her about schoolwork, and telling her she should have a social life, too.”

She shoved a hand through her hair, brushing back a lock that stubbornly wanted to fall over her forehead. It looked like she was growing out bangs, Sasha thought, an annoyance she’d been through herself a time or two before she’d settled on the sleek bob she wore now.

“We were glad she finally took that advice. How’s her trip going? Will she be back soon?”

Sasha saw Ryan’s reaction, the disappointment in his eyes that this woman apparently didn’t know any more than he did.

“You haven’t heard from her?” Sasha asked.

“Since she left? No. We’re all hoping she’s having too much fun.”

“What did she tell you about where she was going?”

Sheila glanced at Ryan, obviously assuming he must already know all this; after all, Trish was his sister.

You don’t know Ryan, Sasha thought. He likes his world without ripples.

And even as she thought it, she realized that for all the difference in his talk, it seemed Ryan hadn’t really changed at all. Not at heart.

And that, she thought sadly, was where it mattered the most.

“Just that it was somewhere she’d never been. And that she’d heard it was beautiful there.”

“Where?” Ryan asked, as if he couldn’t hold back any longer.

“She didn’t say,” Sheila answered. Then, curiously, “Don’t you know?”

“No one does,” Ryan said flatly.

Sheila’s eyes widened. “Not even your folks? That doesn’t sound like Trish.”

“Exactly,” Ryan said.

“She hasn’t called them, either? Or you?”

“No. Or answered our calls. And her voice mail is full.”

“That’s very odd. She adores you.”

Ryan flushed again, but his voice held a note of bitterness when he said, “So much she wouldn’t even tell me about this.”

Maybe she thought you wouldn’t understand, Sasha thought, but kept that to herself as she asked, “She didn’t say anything else, even in passing, about where she was going or why?”

Sheila seemed to hesitate for a second. “Not directly, no.”

“Then indirectly?”

“Nothing she said. But…”

“But what?” Ryan said urgently.

Sheila studied him for a moment, and Sasha saw the moment when the woman realized what was really happening. “You’re afraid for her,” she said, worry suddenly transforming her face. “You think something’s happened to her?”

“We don’t even have a clue that anything’s happened. But for Ryan’s parents’ sake, we want to be sure.”

Sheila shifted her focus to Sasha. “Are you a friend of Trish’s?” she asked, somewhat belatedly.

“More of Ryan’s,” Sasha said. “I have some…practice looking for people, so I’m helping out.”

Sheila wasn’t distracted by the purposeful vagueness. “Are you a cop?”

“No. I’m only here as a friend.”

“Are you Redstone?”

“No,” she said again. “Except by extension. Where I do work is funded in part by Redstone.”

“Oh. Kind of like us, then.”

“Yes, I imagine so.”

Finally, the woman seemed content to leave it at that. Sasha was glad; sometimes just the idea of the Westin Foundation being called in frightened people. They’d handled several highprofile cases, and some of them had not ended prettily. The case the foundation had been born of, the kidnapping and murder of Zach Westin’s small son, had been one of the ugliest.

“What was it you were thinking, Sheila? At this point, anything will help.”

The woman’s mouth twisted slightly, as if she weren’t sure what she’d thought wasn’t silly.

“Before she left Trish was acting…different. Excited. Almost giddy. We all thought it was graduating high school, turning eighteen, all that. But then she told us she was going on this trip, her first one ever by herself, and it seemed obvious that was what had her so wound up.”

Sasha listened silently, and when Ryan opened his mouth as if to speak she hushed him with a gesture.

“And…?”

Sheila lowered her gaze. “It’s just a feeling I got. Nothing I can say for sure.”

“Sometimes feelings are more accurate than what we think we see,” Sasha said.

“It was just the way she talked about it. Like there was more than just the trip she was looking forward to. She never said, but…I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that we don’t remember how exciting that first solo trip can be.”

“Did she talk about what she was taking? Shopping for things to take, that kind of thing?”

She sensed rather than saw Ryan grimace, as if he thought the question foolish. She didn’t care; she knew what she was doing.

“You know, she did say something one day about having to find a heavier jacket. She said it was going to be hard to do in Southern California in the summer.”

Sasha sensed Ryan’s sudden alertness. Not so foolish after all, she silently told him.

“When did she first start talking about this trip, do you remember?”

“Shortly before she graduated,” Sheila said. She flicked a glance at Ryan. “We thought maybe the trip was a graduation present, from her folks or something. That maybe that was why she wouldn’t talk about any details, that it was supposed to be a surprise, and she didn’t want to let on that she’d found out about it. But I guess that wasn’t it, was it?”

“No,” Ryan said grimly. “We didn’t know anything about it.”

Before Sheila could react to that, Sasha asked, “Do you still have the note she left here?”

“I don’t know. She left it for Emma. She might have kept it. I can ask.”

“Please do.” She handed Sheila one of her Westin Foundation cards, figuring it didn’t matter now if the woman knew where she worked. “My number’s on there, if you could let me know as soon as possible.”

She definitely wanted that note, she thought. She wanted to compare it to the one left at home. If they were different, that would be significant—people often told the people they worked with different things from what they told their family. Especially if those people shared the bond of dedication the people of Safe Haven seemed to.

If they were the same, that would also be significant, indicating Trish had been truly intent on keeping her secret. Or secrets.

If they were identical, that would be even more significant, Sasha thought grimly. There were few circumstances where a person used exactly the same wording, and not many of them were very good.

“You don’t really think anything bad has happened, do you?” Sheila asked, anxiety breaking into her voice now, especially after she’d read the business card. “We all love Trish, she’s so dedicated, and Dr. Burke thought she had a real chance to make it as a vet.”

“Dr. Burke?”

“Elizabeth Burke. She’s retired now, but she donates her services to us. Trish worked with her a lot, made a point to be here to assist anytime she was scheduled to visit. I think that’s what inspired Trish to want to go to veterinary school.”

“There’s no reason yet to think anything bad has happened,” Sasha reassured the woman.

They were walking back to Sasha’s car when Ryan’s cell phone rang. Once she was sure it wasn’t the errant Trish, Sasha walked ahead a little, to give him some privacy.

She thought about what Sheila had told them. If Trish had been excited about more than just a trip alone—to, apparently, a cooler clime—Sasha was willing to bet she was right.

“My folks are home,” Ryan said, catching up with her. “Dad can’t concentrate at work. He’s really worried.”

“Then let’s head there. I want to see the note, and talk to them, let them know that something’s being done. That means a lot.”

“Thank you,” Ryan said.

There was no denying the fervency.

“You really do care about them.”

His sandy brows lowered. “Of course I do. Just because I don’t talk about it every waking minute doesn’t mean I don’t care. I love them, and I love my sister.”

Sasha’s brows shot upward in turn. She tried to remember if he’d ever been prodded to such a stinging retort when they’d been together. She didn’t think so. When she had a moment, she’d ponder that change, along with the rest.

She drove, following the directions he’d programmed into the GPS—never mind that he’d never seen this exact system before, it seemed no computer was beyond his scope—wondering yet again if he’d actually grown up in the past two years.

And steadfastly not wondering why it seemed to matter so much.

Chapter 5

“The note she left at home, was it handwritten?”

Ryan snapped out of his thoughts, which had been focused mainly on how, if they’d been closer, Trish might have told him where she was going and why.

That had always been one of Sasha’s main complaints about him; family was everything to her, and she couldn’t understand his attitude toward his own. She’d more than once told him if anything ever happened to one of them, he’d be sorry he’d taken them for granted.

He’d blithely brushed it off as a skewed view because of the work she did. But now…

He made himself focus on her question. “No. It was printed, on her ink-jet printer. Why?”

“Hand-signed?”

“Yes. And she handwrote ‘Don’t worry,’ at the bottom. As if,” he ended with another grimace. “Why does it matter?”

“Not sure it does yet. Is that her normal way of communicating? Does she leave notes often?”

“I don’t know if she does at home. She usually texts me.”

“Does she use computers like you do?”

He gave her a sharp look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“This isn’t about you, Ryan,” she said. “I’m just asking if this would be her typical way of doing this, leaving a computer-generated note rather than a handwritten one.”

“Oh.” At her patient tone, he felt like a fool. “Yes, she probably would. She uses her laptop for most things like that, but she’s not…into them like I am.”

“Few people are,” Sasha said, and Ryan reined in his initial gut reaction with the ease of long practice. He’d heard the sentiment, often in tones of derision, too many times to get upset, he told himself.

That it still stung coming from her was something he’d just have to deal with.

“But to be fair,” she went on, “few people can make them dance to order like you can, either.”

He blinked. “I…Was that a compliment?”

She looked surprised as she glanced at him. “Of course it was. That software program you wrote for us, the one that links us to all the databases, that’s been an incredible help.”

“Oh.” A kernel of warmth blossomed inside him.

“I could tell you about at least half of my past ten cases where something we found with your system got things going when we were at a loss. And at least three of those…well, it probably made the difference between life and death.”

Startled, Ryan turned in his seat and stared at her. “You mean that literally?”

“I do,” she said firmly.

“That’s…wow.”

She glanced at him. “That wasn’t why you did it though, was it?”

He looked away, shifted his gaze to the front, through the windshield again, his thumbnail digging into the side of his finger.

“I admit,” he said finally, “when they asked me about doing it, it was just a challenge. Setting up all the parameters, the search engine, the query path, all of that, and to get it to work with all the different databases when each one was set up slightly differently.”

“You were focused on the how, not the why.”

“Yes,” he said, glad she understood at least that much. They’d talked about this when they’d been together, but she hadn’t listened to him before. She’d been so astonished that the why, helping find lost souls, hadn’t been the moving force behind his work, that she’d been almost angry with him.

One of the many times she’d been almost angry with him.

And he hadn’t understood. Not at all. “If the end result is what you need, do the reasons matter?” he’d asked.

“Only because I was starting to care about you,” she’d retorted.

He’d realized later that was the beginning of the end.

“So it doesn’t bother you now that my motivation wasn’t the same as yours?” he asked, wondering if he was going to regret asking.

“No,” she said. “Not now.”

He smiled, relieved, although not quite sure why it still mattered after all this time.

It wasn’t until they pulled up in front of the house he’d grown up in that it occurred to him that perhaps he shouldn’t be relieved at her words at all. That “not now” merely meant it didn’t bother her because she truly didn’t care.

No surprise, Barton. You knew that.

No, no surprise that she didn’t care.

The surprise was that it stung.

“Your home is lovely,” Sasha said.

“Thank you,” Joan Barton said.

Ryan watched his mother bustle around, fussing over the plate of cookies she’d put out with the fresh coffee she’d served. He knew it was just her way—when she was worried, she fussed—but Sasha didn’t. He should have warned her.

Then again, maybe not; she seemed unflustered by it. Indeed, she’d been effusive in her thanks, and her compliments about the house, especially the colorful garden out front, his mother’s ongoing pet project, the cookies, the coffee, everything.

Ryan thought she was going a bit over the top. It was just a house, after all, and the cookies were good, but his mom made them all the time, it wasn’t anything unusual. But Sasha was chatting away, as if she were worried about making a favorable impression.

As if he’d brought a date home to meet the parents, he thought suddenly, tensely. The idea put a whole new light on her easy chatter.

“Your home is also very comfortable,” Sasha was saying. “In my parents’ place, you’re almost afraid to move. My mother, she collects. Mostly small, breakable things.”

“Dustcatchers,” Joan said with a laugh. “That’s what Patrick calls them.”

Sasha looked at his father and smiled. “And right you are.”

“Hate all that clutter,” he muttered, but he smiled back at her.

Ryan realized abruptly that this was the first time in a week he’d seen a real smile out of either of his parents. And certainly the first time he’d heard his mother laugh, even though it had been a bit faint.

He looked at Sasha with a new admiration. He’d never seen her work before, but if this was how she did it, he was impressed. In a matter of minutes, she’d not only charmed them, but relieved at least some of their tension.

He felt a little silly. He should have known there was good reason that she’d become so quickly indispensable at the foundation.

“I remember you,” Patrick Barton said suddenly. Then, with a sideways glance at his son, he added, “Always thought Ryan should never have let you get away.”

“Dad!”

It burst from him before he could stop it. And he wished he had stopped it; he would have liked to hear what Sasha’s answer to that would have been. But after his yelp, she merely smiled.

“I thank you for the compliment,” Sasha said. “Now shall we get to why I’m here?”

“I thought your foundation only worked with children? The police keep telling us Trish isn’t one anymore,” Joan said, sounding aggrieved.

Sasha hesitated for a moment, and Ryan wondered if she’d guessed that his mother had asked not only out of curiosity, but to delay the inevitable. He also wondered how she’d answer.

“I’m not here officially, but as a friend,” she finally said. “I work missing children cases mostly, but I thought perhaps I could help. The fact that there’s no sign Trish is in danger doesn’t mean you’re not still worried.”

Ryan could almost feel his mother relax slightly, and his admiration grew into awe at how easily and quickly Sasha accomplished what he’d been trying to do for a week.

“And,” Sasha added, “I know it’s hard to talk about it like this, because it’s admitting she’s gone and facing how frightening it is.”

And just like that she put her finger on the reason his mother had been acting like this was merely a social occasion. Or trying to.

“It’s horrible,” his mother whispered.

Hearing the pure pain in her voice, Ryan ached to ease it, to do something, but he didn’t know what. His mother was generally a cheerful, easygoing woman, always looking on the bright side. He supposed that was where he got his own usually sunny outlook.

And then his father moved, sitting next to her on the sofa, putting his arm around her. His mother leaned into him, taking a deep, shuddering breath. Then, as if she’d drawn strength from the gesture, she seemed to pull herself together, even sitting up straighter. That was all it took, a simple move by his father?

He realized then that, even had he tried, he couldn’t have comforted his mother so well. In an odd, abrupt shift of perspective, Ryan suddenly saw them as if they weren’t his parents. He saw them as a couple, a unit, still in love after thirty-two years. The size of that suddenly struck him, and it was a jolt. What must it feel like, that kind of permanence? He’d always thought of it as being tied to one person, limiting, confining.

But now he sat here in shock, thinking there were aspects he’d never considered before. Having one person who knew you, knew what you needed before you asked, who would go to any lengths to provide it, one person you could trust implicitly, who would ever and always have your back, one person who would always be there for you…

He snapped out of his reverie as Sasha switched into high gear. She asked for a copy of Trish’s senior photo, which his mother quickly got. Then the note Trish had left, and permission to take it with her; one of the experts at the foundation, an ex-cop named Bedford, had a knack for reading between the lines, she said.

“I’m sure you’ve been wracking your brains,” she said then, “trying to figure out if she said anything, mentioned anything you’ve forgotten.”

Patrick nodded. “I can’t believe she just did this, and we had no idea. I always thought we were a close family, but obviously we weren’t paying enough attention,” he ended bitterly.

Ryan didn’t think anybody paid more attention—often too much for his own comfort—than his parents, but that didn’t seem the right thing to say just now. He left it to Sasha to answer.

“That’s not necessarily true. From what Ryan’s told me, you had no reason to think she wouldn’t want a typical, fun-filled summer here before she headed off to college.”

“No,” Joan said, a tremor creeping into her voice. “No reason.”

“So let’s deal with other things. What did she take with her, and what did she put it in?”

“Her big suitcase is gone. She must have planned to be gone for some time.” The tremor strengthened. “What if she never comes back, what if we never know?”

“It’s way, way too early to even think about that,” Sasha said, then went on briskly. “This boy she dated for a while, have you spoken to him?”

“Troy? Yes. But they broke up when he transferred schools when his folks moved to San Diego. He hasn’t heard from her.”

“Have you looked through her closet? What clothes did she take?”

“Now that was odd,” Joan said, taking her cue from Sasha’s businesslike tone. “She left most of her summery things.”

“So she took fall clothes? Or winter?”

Ryan had no idea what that meant; to him winter meant you put on a jacket. But obviously his mother understood, so it had to be a girl thing.

“Warmer things. She doesn’t have true winter clothes, since she’s lived here all her life.”

“And we have no real winter,” Sasha agreed with a smile. “So, what else? Anything obviously missing, or not so obvious?”

“Her laptop,” Ryan put in. “She has a smart phone, but she took the laptop, too.”

Sasha looked at him. “What does that indicate to you? I mean, I know for you that means you’ll be gone for the afternoon, but for her?”

Ryan winced inwardly, but remembering her earlier words, didn’t react to the teasing. Besides, his mother laughed, and that was worth a lot. And when Sasha glanced at Joan Barton and smiled, he realized that had been her intent all along.

“She used the phone for day to day, I think. I got more texts than e-mails.”

Sasha nodded. Then she turned to his mother. “May I see her room?”

“Of course.”

They went up the stairs, and Ryan started to walk down the hallway.

“Right here,” his mother said, startling him as she stopped in front of the first door on the right.

“She moved into my room?” How did I not know that?

“A couple of years ago. She wanted the window seat,” his father said. “And it’s a little bigger.”

The window seat. That triggered a memory, of Trish saying something about that. So, maybe he had known, and had just forgotten?

More likely filed it under “unimportant,” you jerk, he told himself. And now she’s gone.

“And,” his mother said, putting a hand on Ryan’s arm, “she wanted to be in her beloved big brother’s old room.”

“Aw, Mom,” he muttered, in light of his own thought, much more comfortable with his father’s prosaic explanation.

Maybe that’s why they worked so well together, he thought. His father’s reality-based practicality balanced his mother’s rose-colored glasses outlook. The insight—something he suspected he should have realized long ago—again made him look at them in a new way.

And again he thought of the solidity of them as a team, together for over three decades, a united front, never alone in life…yeah, maybe there were advantages. He could even see himself wanting someone like that, that solid, unwavering, always-got-your-back kind of person.

What he couldn’t see was ever being that kind of person for someone else.

Stepping inside what had once been his domain was strange, especially given how different it looked. Gone were his posters of video games—where had Lara Croft ended up?—and the shelves full of computer gear and software boxes. The corner where he’d had his CD player and music now held hers, a unit that turned her portable into a full-on sound system. He had helped his folks pick it out for her.

Trish had painted the room a soft green, and the trim around the windows bright white. It looked, he had to admit, pretty good. Maybe his black wall—his mother had only allowed him to paint one—had been a bit oppressive. On the walls were some things he recognized, prints of horses running free, and framed photos.

He stopped in front of one in particular, a shot from the last vacation they had all taken together, the year before he’d graduated from high school. His parents looking amazingly, as they did now, Trish, a lively-looking child with a tangle of sandy brown hair the same shade as his own, and himself, thin, gangly and awkwardly teenaged, zits and all.

They’d gone to Yosemite, and while he’d groused mightily about the boredom of it, complained that he’d wanted to stay home and hang with his friends, the memories from that trip were among the most vivid—and best—he had.

The sights, from the amazing two-tiered drop of Yosemite Falls to the towering, unbelievable and almost otherworldly mass of Half Dome, were a dose of genuine reality he’d never forgotten, images no amount of virtual reality could match.

He hadn’t even minded the constant presence of then seven-year-old Trish tagging at his heels. He’d even been watchful of his little sister, out in the real world where big animals—the favorites of the already-set-on-her-life’s-path Trish—roamed and smaller critters milked the millions of visitors for all the free food they could get.

If there hadn’t been ten years between them, would they have stayed closer? Would he perhaps have seen some sign, some clue about what was to come? Would she maybe even have confided in him, the way she once had?

Or was it not the age difference, but his own fault, for being so wrapped up in his own life and world? Was Sasha right, had she been right two years ago? Was he truly that insular, that shallow?

He stared at the image of his little sister, at the way, in this photo, she looked up at him with what he couldn’t deny was childlike adoration. Had he taken what he had so for granted that he’d lost it?

Where the hell are you, Trish? And why?

His mother’s plaintive words echoed in his mind. What if she never comes back, what if we never know?

That wouldn’t happen. It just wouldn’t. He wouldn’t let it.

And Sasha wouldn’t.

He knew that, on some deep gut level he didn’t even question. If there was a way to bring Trish home, or at least to find her safe and explain all this, Sasha would do it. If there was one thing he’d always known about her it was that there was no way she would give up.

Ever.

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