Ryan let out a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding.
“Good,” Sasha said, “now your brother won’t have to kill anyone.”
For an instant there were three startled sets of eyes fastened on her. And Ryan realized, to his shock, that he was quite capable of doing exactly that, had they found his baby sister still in the hands of that perverted sleaze.
And if they hadn’t because of this kid here, then maybe he should start thinking about being grateful instead of angry at him.
“We know about SadBreeze,” Sasha said. Trish flushed with embarrassment, but Sasha just went on quietly. “And how he lured you up here. And why. Why don’t you just tell us what happened from when you got here?”
Trish took a deep breath, and at an encouraging glance from Nick, plunged in.
“I took a shuttle from the airport down to the ferry. Then on the other side, I took a cab. Sad—” She stumbled over the now ridiculous-sounding screen name and hastened to explain. “He told me it was really his name, short for Sadler, the first name his stupid parents had given him. Anyway, he had IM’d me and told me he’d pay for it, and pick me up at the lighthouse. Since I knew it was one of his places, I figured it was okay.”
“Trish—”
“You wanna hear this or not?” Trish said sharply.
Ryan let it go. Her reaction told him she already knew how stupid this all sounded, now. There was no point and it wouldn’t help to make her feel it even more, not now. As long as she feels it enough to never do something so stupid again, he thought.
So instead he just reached over the seat and took her hand and squeezed it. “Go on, sissy.”
She looked startled at the old, teasing childhood name, and for the barest of moments, she smiled at him. Then she went on.
“The first guy I saw was Nick, at a distance, and I thought he was him.” She glanced at the young man sitting next to her brother. “He kind of looks like the pics. But then this old guy grabbed me, said he was here for Sad, to pick me up.”
“Physically grabbed you?” Sasha asked.
Trish nodded. “He came out of nowhere. Started pushing me to go with him. I kept saying wait, Sad didn’t say anything about somebody else coming.”
“What did he tell you?” Ryan asked when she paused.
“That Sad got sick at the last minute, and asked him to come so I wouldn’t be stuck alone in a strange place. That sounded like Sad, so I started to go with him. But—”
Ryan squeezed her hand again in reassurance.
“Then I asked him if he was Sad’s father. He got really angry, and I didn’t know why.”
“Probably doesn’t like being reminded how old he appears to the sweet young things he favors,” Sasha said.
Trish looked at Sasha, then nodded. “That makes sense. Anyway, it just didn’t feel right. So while we were walking, I texted Sad.”
“He let you?” Sasha asked, sounding surprised.
“I’d been listening to music with headphones, and I think he didn’t realize it was a phone.”
She glanced at Ryan, gave him a better smile this time. He’d given her the popular smart phone for her birthday, one of the few times they’d been in total agreement on the coolness of a gadget.
“And?” Sasha prompted.
“The guy’s phone beeped.”
Ryan grinned at her suddenly. “Way to go, sis.”
Trish shrugged, but looked pleased. “At first I thought he just had Sad’s phone because maybe it had my number in it, but when he saw the message, he looked at me, and I knew.”
She stopped, shuddering. Ryan tightened his grip on her hand, and this time she squeezed back.
“I started to run. He grabbed me, hit me, started dragging me toward his car. I fought him, but he kept slapping me.”
Ryan tensed, he couldn’t help it. And this time when Trish looked at him, he saw a warmth in her eyes he hadn’t seen since she’d been that little girl looking up at her big brother in adoration.
“How did you get away from him?” Sasha asked.
“I threw my phone at him, and it hit him in the eye. He smashed it and threw it in the water. Bro, I’m sorry.”
“I’ll get you a new one,” Ryan said, realizing this explained the lack of GPS signal.
“Anyway, I was like running, then, and Nick—” she looked at the young man, gave him a brilliant smile “—came roaring out of nowhere on his bike, yelled at me to jump on.”
“You just happened to be there?” Ryan asked, suspicion hard to quash at the moment.
Nick shrugged. “I go there almost every day. I write music there.”
“He’s the good guy, bro,” Trish said impatiently. “Anyway, I got on the bike, and he chased us for a while, but Nick is really good, and we got away. The rest is just like he said. I’ve been staying at his place, with him and his mom.”
Ryan shifted his gaze to Nick. “Did you call the police?”
Nick looked uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t let him,” Trish said. “I felt so stupid.”
“What about your mother?” Ryan said, not ready to let that go.
“She didn’t know,” Nick said in a quick defense of his mother that Ryan appreciated. “We told her Trish had had a fight with her boyfriend, and was afraid he’d find her at home. Mom just got the guest room ready. Said we had to call her folks eventually, but she could stay.”
“You still should have—”
“Ryan,” Sasha interjected softly. He stopped, and looked at her. “Think about it,” she said. “They don’t really know who he is.”
It hit him like a punch. She was right. Trish had no idea what she’d really escaped.
But she was about to find out.
Sasha hadn’t had any doubts left about the depth of Ryan’s feelings for his sister, but if she had, they’d have been long gone by now. And even as she watched them walking along the edge of the lagoon, Sasha knew the moment when Trish realized how close she’d come to trouble even more serious than she’d imagined; she threw her arms around her brother and began to sob.
In the meantime, she herself had been giving Nick the basics of the story, and his horrified reaction—and the fact that he’d apparently unceasingly pushed Trish to at least call home—won him points in her book. He seemed like a good kid, and he had obviously not hesitated to get involved where many wouldn’t have. She told him about her work, and how happy endings often hinged on people with his kind of courage and heart. He actually blushed, and that tipped Sasha firmly over into his camp.
At last Ryan and Trish came back, and the first thing Sasha heard when they were in earshot was Ryan’s voice.
“—folks were frantic. You had to have heard it in their voices when we called. How could you do that to them?”
Trish leaned back and looked up at her taller brother. “Oh, yeah, listen to you, like you aren’t the one who makes them crazy worrying about you before you suddenly call or show up as if nothing was wrong.”
“Nothing was wrong—”
“But they didn’t know that,” Trish was saying as they stopped at the car. If they thought about the fact that the windows were down and both she and Nick could hear every word, it didn’t slow them down any.
“That’s not the point. Why didn’t you at least call me?”
“Why? You did the same to me. You’d go for weeks without a word, not returning calls or leaving a message.”
“I don’t do that anymore.”
“Well, it takes more than a year to make up for ten,” Trish shot back. “And I’m the one who had to live with Mom’s upset, and Dad trying to comfort her, and all the drama of it.”
Ryan looked uncomfortable then. “I just—”
“You took it for granted that they’d always forgive you. And they always did, because you were Ryan the golden, the fair-haired boy, and Mom would put up with anything from you because she loves you so much.”
Ryan paled a little at that one. For a moment he just stared, then, i
n a much quieter voice, he spoke.
“You’re right.”
Trish blinked, obviously stunned. “I am?”
“I took it all for granted. Mom, Dad, you…and others. I assumed they’d always be there, always care, because why wouldn’t they? I never thought that it required any maintenance from me, I thought it just…happened.”
“God, bro, sometimes you are such an idiot.”
“Yeah. I noticed. And I’ve tried to change.”
“It’s been better, the past year or two,” Trish admitted. “A lot better.”
“But when I thought you were dead, it shattered every assumption I had left. No more taking for granted, Trish. I’ve learned. The hard way.”
He lowered his gaze to the ground as if it were fascinating.
“Because it cost me, that attitude.”
“Cost you?”
He was still staring at the ground. And his voice had gone even quieter. “The only woman I ever knew I could really love.”
Sasha’s breath caught in her throat. Trish’s head snapped around to look into the car, and Sasha knew she realized her brother was talking about her.
“Then you’re a fool if you let her go again, bro.”
For the first time Ryan looked over at her, and Sasha realized he’d known perfectly well she could hear him. That he’d meant her to hear every word.
“I don’t intend to ever be that kind of fool again.”
Sasha realized with a little shock that she was shaking. She’d known he wanted to reinvestigate the undeniable attraction and connection between them, but there was such determination and certainty in his voice that the carefree, “if it happens it happens” Ryan might never have existed.
A memory of last night, of how close they’d come to fully exploring the physical side of that attraction, shot through her mind, and she finally admitted what she’d not faced until this moment—no man had ever made her feel the way this one did. And if he—
The jangle of her cell phone cut off her thoughts. With a sigh she grabbed it, thinking about asking Trish if she liked life better since she’d thrown hers at that slimeball. But when she saw it was Rand, she changed her mind quickly.
Moments later, she put the phone away and got out of the car, staring at Ryan.
“He has another girl.”
Chapter 21
Sasha heard Ryan’s breath catch. “What?”
“Courtney told the cops this morning that he’d mentioned wanting ‘a duo.’ Rand asked St. John to check for any missing reports with the same parameters as Trish’s. He just called back. There’s a sixteen-year-old missing from Portland, Oregon.”
“Sixteen?” Ryan asked.
“Apparently she lied online, said she was eighteen.”
“Lied online, imagine that,” he muttered. To his credit, he didn’t look at his sister when he said it, although Trish flushed as if he had. Sasha went on quickly with what Rand had told her.
“Dennis Carlton was seen this morning, getting into a silver hybrid-type car with a girl, near Interstate 5.”
“You mean he went down there and got her?” Ryan asked.
“It’s only a little over three hours from here,” Nick said. “A little more from where you said the house was.”
“Aren’t the cops watching the place?” Trish asked. “I mean, they’d know if he came back with her?”
“They’re watching, Rand says, but they don’t have the manpower to have somebody sit on the house all the time. If something else happens in the county…”
She shrugged; it was a common problem in all law enforcement, but in semi-rural areas like this it was especially bad.
“Will that change, now that there’s technically a juvenile involved?” There was a bit of a bitter edge in Ryan’s query, and Sasha couldn’t blame him for that, after what he and his family had been through.
“It might,” she admitted.
“I assume Rand told them? So they’ll be taking it more seriously now?”
She nodded. “Rand called the FBI in Seattle. But you know how long it takes the official wheels to start grinding. Plus it’s two hours travel time even if they started to roll the second the phone call was over, and you know that never happens.”
“She may not have that long,” Ryan said grimly.
“No,” Sasha agreed. “It seems he’s escalating.”
“We can’t just wait,” Ryan said. “We know where he lives. We’re close. Closer than anyone, probably.”
“Do you really think he’d go back there?” Trish asked.
“Depends on the timing,” Sasha said. “He may not know he’s been found out, if he left yesterday for Portland.”
“You think he did?” Ryan asked in turn.
“No way to know. But as methodical and perfectionistic as he seems to be, he’d want to check things out in advance. And she was seen still in Portland at nine this morning.”
Ryan went tense. He looked at his watch. Sasha had already noticed the time on her phone, so she knew as well as Ryan did that it was barely half an hour outside the travel time from Portland back to the suspect’s house.
“So he could still be there. With a new victim,” Ryan said.
“Yes.”
“But he’d know he’d been found out, wouldn’t he?” Trish asked. “I mean, the other girl’s gone.”
“And the lock on his secret hideaway has obviously been breached.”
“Maybe not,” Ryan said. “I put it back.”
Sasha blinked. “What?”
“I screwed the hasp back into the door. In case he came back while we were still there. I figured it might give us an extra minute to get away if he thought everything was like he left it.”
A laugh burst from her, and Sasha threw her arms around him. “You are a genius.”
She didn’t say aloud her next thought, but it was there nevertheless: in the real world, too. He looked pleased, but troubled still.
“They’re on the way? The sheriffs, or detectives or whoever?” he asked.
Sasha grimaced. “Rand said they’re having a little problem there. The Redstone name carries a lot of weight, but being who they are, they want to know exactly how your St. John came by his information.”
“Good luck with that,” Ryan muttered.
“Rand says they’ll no doubt roll once they get past governmental inertia, but…”
“In the meantime this girl is in the hands of that sleaze,” Ryan said.
“And who knows what he’ll do when he finds Courtney is gone,” Sasha added. “Rand’s on his way, but he’s at their headquarters, and it’ll take him a good forty minutes even if he breaks every speed law.”
For a long moment Ryan just looked at her. Then he said softly, “We can’t just walk away.”
Sasha couldn’t even put into words the emotions that flooded her then. In five words, Ryan Barton had reminded her once more that he indeed was no longer that heedless, skate-on-the-surface guy she’d walked away from.
“Damn, that’s a lot of yard work,” Nick said as they neared the house.
Ryan gave the boy an amused glance. He’d been hesitant to bring them along, but there was no way in hell he was letting Trish out of his sight. And as it turned out, it had been a good thing; Nick had known a shortcut that got them here a precious few minutes sooner.
“Doesn’t look like a thing has changed,” Ryan said to Sasha.
“No. And there’s no sign of the deputy, either,” she answered with a frown.
“There’s only four of them for the whole north end,” Nick said. “My folks are always griping about that. It’s quiet up here, but when you need ’em, you need ’em.”
“And even if they sent a detective,” Sasha said, “it will take as long as it will take Rand to get here.”
“Let’s check it out,” Ryan said.
“What if he comes back while you’re snooping around?” Trish asked, looking at her brother with worry.
“I’ll becom
e the biggest garden fanatic so fast you’ll get dizzy,” Sasha said.
Ryan laughed. “You’re the genius,” he said.
“Good thing you two finally got it together, then,” Trish said.
Neither of them said anything to that. Ryan looked at the two teenagers and said sternly, “Stay put. Don’t even think about getting out of this car.”
“What if—”
“What if nothing.” Ryan glanced at Nick again. “Can I trust you to keep her here?”
“You can. Sir.”
Ryan blinked, but managed not to laugh.
“Okay,” he muttered as he and Sasha got out of the car, “I’m officially old. I have teenagers calling me sir.”
“You’re officially grown up, I’ll give you that.”
He filed that under hopeful, but Sasha had already started toward the house. To his surprise she veered to one side before they reached the driveway.
“Let’s go up the side, through the trees,” she said. “I was thinking earlier all this gravel makes for the perfect warning system.”
“You’re always thinking,” Ryan said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“That’s what it was.”
Good thing you two finally got it together….
Trish’s words echoed in his head, and for the first time Ryan dared to hope they might be true.
They worked their way up through the trees on the undeveloped lot on the east side of the house. The land and the thick trees provided a buffer that essentially isolated the house on three sides, just as the gravel protected it from the road. The tall wood fence that ran along the property line blocked their view, and Ryan had to back up a couple of steps to judge when they were even with the garage.
“I’ll check that first,” he said.
“I’m going with you.”
“Over the fence?”
“You can help me, or I’ll find another way, but I’m going.”
And she would, he had no doubts. So he gave her a lift, then scaled the fence himself, realizing as he did that he was going to be picking slivers of rough wood out of his hands for days.
The windows in the garage door were too tall for Sasha to see, so she was waiting for him, carefully not making any noisy footsteps across the gravel. He took one slow, quiet one, and stretched up to peer inside.
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