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.
“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