His Personal Mission Page 12

  The smile widened and he shrugged, stopping short of looking like a very smug male and instead looking only deliriously happy, Sasha thought.

  “When? Is Kate all right?” Josh asked.

  “It’s early yet. We just passed the danger mark of three months. She has her moments, but she’s so happy about it in general she gets through them pretty quickly.”

  “Losing her little girl like that, I’d be surprised if she didn’t,” Josh said. “Some things you never, ever get over.”

  Sasha heard the note of quiet, pained endurance under the words, and remembered suddenly hearing from Reeve that Josh’s beloved wife had died some years ago, and that he’d never been seriously involved with anyone since, let alone remarried.

  “Everyone around him at Redstone seems to be falling in love and getting married with amazing regularity,” she’d said. “But Josh…”

  A few minutes later, after watching the sleek Hawk IV lift off and head back south, Rand ushered them toward the small building that served as an airport terminal.

  “I’m assuming you want to get started right away, so let’s go over what you’ve got in here,” he said, leading the way toward an office in the far corner of the terminal building.

  He pulled open the glass door etched simply with the Redstone logo and let them precede him. A young man on a phone looked up as they came in, smiled and nodded at Rand. Then his gaze flicked to Sasha and, gratifyingly, his eyes widened. So did his smile.

  In that same moment she felt Ryan’s hand on her back, as if she needed his guidance to find her way to the single, private office in the back of the relatively small space.

  Or as if he was making a statement to the young man on the phone, she thought suddenly. Staking a claim?

  Get over yourself, she thought sternly. It was ridiculous the way she was seeing everything through that filter. She’d never had so much trouble staying on task before, and she wasn’t happy that it was happening now. True, she’d never spent so much time with someone she’d broken up with before, but still, it just shouldn’t be this…silly.

  She shouldn’t be this silly.

  “I’m sorry about your little girl,” Sasha said to Rand, aware she was reaching for something to say to get herself past this moment of idiocy, but meaning it, too.

  “Emily wasn’t mine. I never got the chance to know her. She died a few years before I met Kate.”

  “Oh.” That’s what I get for being an idiot.

  “It’s…brave of your wife to try again.”

  Sasha turned to stare at Ryan, stunned at the perception in his quiet words.

  “It is,” Rand agreed. “She is. Among the many other amazing things she is. Now,” he went on briskly, “let’s get on to your business. What do we have?”

  At his request, they laid it out for him from the beginning; Sasha appreciated that he was willing to take the time, and that he wanted everything they had. He seemed as intent on this as they were, and she knew she was seeing the Redstone philosophy in action.

  The only interruption was Rand asking for the current photo of Trish, which he took a copy of with his cell and sent it to a number along with a brief text. When they got to what Ryan had discovered on the plane, Rand’s eyes narrowed. “Son of a…Okay, that puts this in a lot more than just a runaway category.”

  He seemed about to go on, but hesitated, with a glance at Ryan.

  “Believe me, I get it,” Ryan said grimly.

  “Time,” Sasha said, “is really critical now.”

  Rand nodded, shoving that silky hair back with his left hand, a simple gold band glinting on his ring finger. “Okay, do you have a list of references this guy has made?”

  Sasha nodded and pulled out the pages she’d been working on on the flight. “Here are the things and places he mentioned on Trish’s page. And these—” she set out another page “—are the ones he’s mentioned on other pages, under other screen names.”

  Rand scanned the pages, nodding occasionally.

  “You have copies of the pictures that purport to be him?” was all he asked, and when Sasha handed him the copies they’d made he lapsed back into silence and kept reading.

  When his cell rang, Sasha sensed Ryan tense. The conversation was rapid-fire.

  “Hey, Mel. Yeah, California girl. About then, yes.” Then Rand listened for a moment. “Thanks.”

  He hung up, and looked at them. “Friend of Kate’s she used to mentor. She works part-time at the airport now, while she’s going to college. At the transportation desk.” Rand grinned. “Handy, sometimes.”

  “She saw Trish?” Sasha asked.

  He nodded. “Said she asked for the best way to get to the ferry. Remembered her because she was so excited, and seemed really new to traveling. And nervous.”

  “So we know she made it here,” Sasha said.

  “And that she was headed to this side,” Rand said.

  Finally, as if he could wait no longer, Ryan spoke. “There are about four places he mentioned on all the pages, and a couple he mentioned more than anything else on Trish’s.”

  Rand looked up at him, nodding. “Good place to start.”

  “We should split up,” Sasha suggested. “Cover more ground faster.”

  Rand hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Just be careful. If this bondage Web site guy turns out to actually be the guy who brought Trish here, he could be dangerous. At the least unpredictable.”

  “Wait,” Ryan said, sounding troubled, “if you think Sasha could be in danger—”

  “I’ve run into his type before,” Sasha said, cutting him off. “Besides, I think I’m too old for him.”

  Ryan opened his mouth, then shut it again, as if he’d decided there was no way to safely say anything to that.

  “Wise man,” Rand said, one corner of his mouth quirking.

  Sasha couldn’t deny the accuracy of that. And coupled with his startling observation about Rand’s wife, she was going to have to face soon the fact that Ryan Barton hadn’t just changed, he’d changed a great deal.

  Where that left her, she wasn’t at all sure.

  Ryan slid behind the wheel, taking a moment to familiarize himself with the location of the controls. When they’d agreed on a division of tasks, Rand had suggested they take his Redstone SUV, which had a good GPS system, and he would have one of the office staff take him to pick up his wife’s personal car, since he already knew his way around. Summer Harbor, the small town where they lived, was a few miles away, but it would be worth it to cover more ground faster.

  “Just don’t let it get stolen,” Rand said with a crooked grin. “There’s some stuff in there I’d really miss.”

  There had been no real discussion of who would drive. It seemed logical to Ryan that he would drive the Redstone vehicle, and she hadn’t even questioned him when he got into the driver’s seat.

  “I’m sorry we’re taking you away from your wife,” Sasha said as she walked around to the passenger side.

  Rand laughed as he removed a couple of items from a locker in the back of the gray Tahoe, a metal box and a zippered leather case. “One of the first ground rules Kate laid down was no hovering or fussing.”

  Sasha laughed. “My kind of woman,” she said, pulling open the door. “But then, that’s easy for me to say. I’m not pregnant.”

  Ryan sat there, determinedly not going down any path those words pointed to, as she got in. They said goodbye to Rand, reiterating the promise to touch base every couple of hours. Since he would likely get there faster and easier, knowing the territory, he was going to take the places mentioned on all the pages their quarry had posted on, under one name or another, while Ryan and Sasha checked the two he’d mentioned most on Trish’s.

  “He’s a nice guy,” Sasha said as they headed toward the airfield’s back gate.

  “Somehow I don’t think that’s a woman’s first thought about him.” He was proud of how amused he managed to sound. It surprised him when Sasha answered very
seriously.

  “Absolutely not. But if that ring on his finger didn’t stop any other thoughts, the utter glow in his eyes when he speaks of his wife would. That’s an invulnerable bastion, that is.”

  She sounded, he thought as he paused to listen to the GPS’s verbal directions, almost wistful. “Is that what…women want?”

  She gave him a sideways look. “I don’t know. I only know what I want. And, I suspect, what your sister wanted that got her into this.”

  And just that neatly, she’d steered the conversation away from herself and back to the reason they were here in the first place.

  Which is what I should have been thinking about, not getting lost in speculation about a woman who made her feelings crystal clear.

  Already they were out among the tall, thick evergreens that made this part of the world famous. Down south, they’d still be amid glass-walled high-rises and block after block of traffic and cranky drivers. It was, he thought, a very different world. No wonder so many fled up here. Too bad some of them brought their nastier habits with them.

  Of course, some who were already here likely had some nasty ones of their own. Which again brought him back to the task at hand.

  “Tell me again why we’re doing this? I mean, if this guy isn’t this kid, what good will showing photos around do?”

  “We’re doing this because we don’t know for sure it’s not really just a kid, because it’s a place to start, and the only one we really have at the moment. And because you never know.”

  He had no answer for all that logic, and since it all made sense he just went on. “But that Web site,” he began, then stopped as his stomach started to churn again at the memory of the images.

  “I know, Ryan,” she said gently. “But we really don’t know. It could be someone hijacked a kid’s ID. Those types are always hiding, as well they should. It could be a relative who’s using him as a front.”

  His stomach knotted tighter. “For that crap? Who’d use a kid to front for that?”

  “You’d be surprised,” she said, and this time she sounded nothing more than weary.

  He glanced at her, saw the set of her face, the way she was staring unseeingly at the papers she held. And for the first time he truly felt the weight of what she did. He’d known it, in his head, ever since he’d met her, but now he felt it in his gut, and he marveled at the fortitude it had to take to face what she faced, to see what she saw, on a regular basis.

  He didn’t know if even the joyous conclusions could make up for the bad ones. Not when they were as bad as he knew they sometimes were.

  After making a turn and getting directions to continue for several miles, Ryan seized the distraction-free moments.

  “How long can you keep this up, Sasha?” he asked quietly. “How long can you deal with this kind of thing until it eats you alive?”

  “I’m doing an important job,” she said.

  “Beyond important,” he said. “But at what cost?”

  “Nothing near the cost paid by the loved ones of someone who’s never found.”

  “But what about you?”

  “I can handle it. It’s what I do.”

  “But how long?” he asked again.

  She gave him a sideways look he caught out of the corner of his eye.

  “As long as I can,” she said simply. “As long as I see Zach Westin, who’s been through the worst possible end to a missing child case, show up every day determined to save someone else from going through what he went through.”

  “But now that he and Reeve are married…doesn’t she want him to ease up?”

  “Reeve only reinforces that determination,” Sasha said. “She felt so guilty about not saving Zach’s little boy that it almost destroyed her, and she’d be the last one on earth to ask him to stop.”

  Ryan pondered that for a moment, then muttered, “Complicated.”

  “Life is. Because people are.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” he said, an edge creeping into his voice.

  “What?” she asked, apparently reacting to the sharpness.

  “Just getting tired of the jabs.”

  “Jabs?”

  She sounded, he thought, utterly unaware. “I know what you think of me. You made it clear two years ago. I don’t need the reminders.”

  “Whoa.” Okay, now she sounded startled. Genuinely startled. “You mean jabs at you?”

  “People are complicated. Don’t drink the Redstone water. My ‘best’ laptop. Some jerk of a guy looking for no-strings sex. That I didn’t keep tabs on Trish, or check her page regularly. That I take my folks for granted. You know what I mean.”

  She was silent for a long, tense moment. “I’ll give you the Redstone water one,” she finally said. “And the laptop. I was teasing you. But the rest…they weren’t aimed specifically at you, Ryan. They’re how I feel, and believe it or not, are not all about you.”

  His jaw tightened, and he bit back the retort that rose to his lips.

  “Just like,” she said, her tone suddenly quieter, and almost sheepish, “it’s not all about me, no matter how my brain keeps trying to make it that way.”

  The admission startled him. He flicked a glance at her. Was it possible she’d been going through the same thing? Thinking casual comments were instead aimed directly at her? Had their brief but intense relationship two years ago actually built this minefield?

  He opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by the GPS telling him they were approaching the turnoff they needed. He slowed, exited the highway, made the directed turn at the bottom of the ramp. Almost immediately they were in even thicker trees, towering over them and blocking any view of the surrounding terrain. Were it not for the occasional glimpse of a home or other building through gaps in the trees, you could easily think you were in an untouched forest.

  “There,” Sasha said, pointing to a road sign indicating the public park they were looking for a couple of miles ahead. SadBreeze’s posts about the place waxed lyrical, speaking of writing poetry and thinking about life, and Sasha had been immediately suspicious.

  “It’s just the kind of thing a guy would do who wants to impress a girl with his ‘deep sensitivity,’” she said, her tone clearly indicating she thought that kind of feeling beyond most teenage boys.

  Remembering himself at that age, he wasn’t sure he could deny she was right.

  “My mother and father fell in love when they were sixteen.” He didn’t realize what a non sequitur that would sound like until the words were out. But Sasha seemed to get his point.

  “I didn’t say it doesn’t happen, just that it’s rare. Passions run high at that age, every roadblock is a catastrophe, and every upset the end of the world.”

  “They have no perspective,” Ryan said. Sasha’s head turned quickly, and again he felt the surprise in her glance. It was starting to annoy him that she was so surprised at him.

  “Exactly. Nobody suffers like a teenager, at least in their own eyes. Just look at your sister’s posts.”

  He couldn’t deny that. He knew Trish’s life had been relatively free of disappointments, let alone heartbreak; the worst thing that he could remember was her tears over not being able to get a cat or a dog. Yet her posts seemed…well, almost whiny.

  “I used to gripe to my mom about having to pick up my room, and complain to my friends about how unreasonable it was for them to expect me home at ten on a school night,” he said as he pulled into the parking area for the waterfront park that lay along the edge of what the map said was the Hood Canal, a long, hook-shaped finger of the sound. “But I never would have posted the stuff she did for the world.”

  “Nor would I,” Sasha said. “I like a bit of privacy, still.” She looked at him as he pulled the car into a parking slot. “What’s your reason?”

  “For not? Too much chance for you to be defined by one unguarded moment during a really bad mood, preserved forever in cyberspace.”

  Again her brows rose. Exasperated, Ryan shut off
the engine and turned in his seat to look at her.

  “I’m not a teenager, so I wish you’d quit being so surprised when I don’t sound like one.”

  She had the grace to color slightly. “I’m sorry. It’s just…that’s not something you would have said two years ago.”

  “So a guy can’t change in two whole years?”

  “Apparently he can,” Sasha said.

  She was out of the car before he could answer, and by the time he caught up with her, walking toward the water, the moment was gone.

  “It is beautiful,” she said. “And the view of that bridge is spectacular.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Floating bridge,” he said. “That part opens to let boats through.”

  “Speaking of boats, that’s a launch ramp, I guess.”

  He nodded. “So now that we’re here, what do we do? Doesn’t look like there’s anybody who works here.”

  “But there are a lot of people. We start asking, showing photos.”

  He let her take the lead. She was the pro, after all. And he enjoyed watching her work, noticed the way she got people’s confidence quickly, almost easily. Something about her approach, her demeanor or the urgent sincerity she was able to project, got through to them.

  Not, he thought a couple of hours later, that it did any good. They’d talked to everyone there, and to new arrivals, and there was no recognition of any of the photos. Ryan noticed Sasha didn’t talk only to the younger people but also the older ones, including now, a man walking a large dog who, at a guess, had to be at least eighty. Both of them, the dog in dog years, anyway.

  Ryan wandered down to the water’s edge, watching the boats out on this summer day, distracting himself from his worry about Trish by wondering why all you ever heard about the weather up here was rain. He’d about decided that the locals kept days like this a secret to keep from being overrun when Sasha came up behind him.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Nothing more we can do here right now. If nothing turns up elsewhere, apparently there are some regulars who fish here early in the morning.”

  Ryan nodded as he unlocked the doors to the car. He hadn’t thought about that, that they’d need a place to stay. He’d have to ask Rand about that. It was nearly time to check in with him anyway.