Kitabı oku: «His Personal Mission»

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.