Wade dialed the phone from his hospital bed. He closed his eyes as he counted the rings, but it didn’t help to shut out the image of his brother the way he’d last seen him, making his way slowly and awkwardly through his apartment in his wheelchair.
The rings stopped after only two, surprising him. Always before when he’d called, it had taken at least six rings for Matt to get to the phone.
“Man,” he said, “that was fast.”
“Cell phone,” his brother said. “Who’s this?”
“It’s me—Wade. How are you, buddy?”
“Hey…Wade. Wow—been a while.”
“Yeah.” He gritted his teeth against a double whammy of pain waves, one from his leg, suspended in a sling and swathed in surgical dressings, the other in his heart. Pure guilt, that one. “Listen, about that—”
“Forget it, bro. It’s cool. I understand. So…how you been? Bad guys keepin’ you busy?”
Wade laughed—tried to do it without moving anything that might hurt. “Yeah, well…I guess I’ve been better. But hey—that’s not why I called. I’ve got somebody here who wants to talk to you.” He paused. “You sitting down?”
“Oh, yeah, funny. Very funny. So who is it? Hey, don’t tell me. You got married?”
Wade looked at the woman standing beside his bed, reached for her hand and squeezed it tightly. “Not quite,” he said in a voice gone raspy with emotions he knew better than to try and hide. “Not yet. Soon though. We want you to be there. And I promise you, man, you’re gonna love her. No—this is…” He paused, looked up at the other faces bending over him, and muttered half to himself, “Jeez, I didn’t think this was going to be so hard. Uh…Mattie? Remember those nightmares I used to have? I told you about ‘em, remember? There was this voice—you said it was—”
“An angel. Sure, I remember. I was a kid—what can I say. So? What about it?”
Wade took a deep breath and grinned up at the man standing poised, his face a mask of suspense that didn’t come close to hiding his emotions, either.
“Well, little brother…guess what? He’s real. And here he is. In person.” His voice broke, and he barely got the rest of it out as he handed the phone over to Cory. “Mattie, say hello to our Angel. The brother you didn’t know you had.”
Alex Penny gave a start when the front door to the offices of Penny Tours, located in the tiny town of Wofford Heights, California, opened to admit a stranger. Almost nobody used the front door, since most people wanting to make reservations did so by telephone or online, and when they showed up in person, they would have been directed to the Rafting Center farther along and on the other side of the highway. Guides and drivers coming in from the equipment yard and warehouse used the back door.
Once in a great while, though, someone did wander in looking for information on available tours, or maybe directions to the Rafting Center, so she gave the visitor an automatic smile and was well into her customary speech. “Hi. If you’re looking for the Rafting Center, it’s about a block down on…” Then the man’s face came into full focus.
Behind rimless glasses, the stranger’s eyes were a dark and penetrating blue, but it was his smile that made her heart give a kick she wasn’t prepared for.
“I think I’m in the right place. I’m looking for Alex. Are you…?”
“That would be me.” She could hear her own voice, hear that it was even more hoarse than her normally froggy croak, and she cleared her throat as she clicked the save button and pushed back from the computer.
“We spoke on the phone. I’m—”
“Yeah, you’d be Matt’s brother. Cory, right?” She was on her feet, hand extended, the expected words—she hoped—on her lips. But her mouth was on autopilot and her heart in overdrive, because her brain had temporarily disengaged, having gotten hung up, for the moment, on that smile.
Mattie’s smile.
“Cory Pearson. I hope I haven’t come at a bad time. You did say afternoons were usually best.”
“No…no, this is, uh…fine. Can I get you anything? Water? Coke?”
“Water’s fine. Thanks…”
Ridiculously glad to have a specific job to do, Alex darted into the kitchen alcove, opened the refrigerator and took out two bottles of water. She turned to find that the stranger—who was no stranger at all, it seemed—had followed her.
“Nice Lab,” he remarked, gazing at the large slumbering form sprawled on the floor, taking up most of the space between the fridge and the small sink and counter.
“That’s Annie.” Alex stepped over the dog to hand one of the bottles to her visitor. The other she cracked open for herself. “She was Matt’s, actually. She’s pretty old, now. Mostly just sleeps. So—” she took a gulp and waved the bottle at the empty office “—you said you wanted to—”
Before she could finish it, the back door opened a crack and a voice called through it. “Hey, Alex, Booker T just called. The Las Colinas group’s on its way in. I’m heading over to the center, unless you want—”
“I’m kinda busy right now, Eve.”
The door opened wider, and Eve Francis, one of the river guides who sometimes doubled as office staff, stuck her head through the opening. Her blond hair was caught up in its usual style—messy ponytail with wisps flying around—and sticking to her face, which, since she’d been working all morning in the warehouse, was red-flushed and sweaty. And she still managed to look disgustingly gorgeous. Partly, Alex was sure, because of the smile that lit up her face when she saw they had a visitor.
“Oh—hey!” She turned the smile, full wattage, on Cory Pearson. “I didn’t see you come in. Welcome to Penny Tours.” The smile didn’t dim as she switched it to Alex. “I’ll take care of him, if you want to go. Those guys were kind of your babes, I know.”
Cory looked a question at Alex and had his mouth open to spit it out, but she waved it aside before he could say the words. “No—no, it’s okay. You can take it. This is something I need to, uh…” She paused to take a breath. “Eve, this is Matt’s brother. Matt Callahan, my, uh…”
Eve’s smile went out like a light. “Oh yeah! Matt—your old partner—right. So…well. Okay, I guess you…” She cocked her head to give Cory a long look, eyes glittering with curiosity and something Alex couldn’t define, then shrugged. “Hey, I’m gone. See you later.” Her head vanished and the door thunked closed.
“Look,” Cory said, “if you need to go take care of something, I can wait.”
Alex waved a hand at the chair she’d vacated and settled her own backside onto the edge of her desk. “No, it’s just that…well, the kids from Las Colinas Academy are kind of a special bunch, is all. Teenagers. They’re all mentally disabled.”
As he took the relinquished chair, the visitor’s eyes lit up with a new kind of interest, and Alex remembered what Matt’s brother Wade had told her—that their longlost and recently found older brother was a journalist. A reporter, and a fairly famous one at that. “You take disabled people down the river rapids?”
“Oh yeah, sure. We take all kinds—physical and mental disabilities both. These people come every year. Have a ball, too—you should see ‘em. But hey, Eve can take care of things. She’s a guide—also a friend. She won’t mind.”
She drank the last of the water