On a Monday afternoon the coffeehouse felt more like a lively college hangout. This time Jessie got there after Steve and she carried her mocha to the booth where he looked way too smug for his own good. “Hi, Jessie. Now before you start in on me, listen to what I have to tell you. I’ve been doing a little background work today that might make you forgive me for not telling you about Adrian’s connection to the family.”
“I’m not sure how that’s possible, but I think one of the few Bible verses I know is something about turning the other cheek and you’ll expect me to do that, so tell me what you know.”
She wasn’t prepared for the frown her remark caused. “Hey, don’t project my faith onto what you’re supposed to do, especially if you don’t get it right. For now let’s put that issue aside and look at what I’ve found out about Adrian, or Matteo. We probably ought to decide to call him one or the other.”
“I think I’d prefer Adrian. Even if it’s the name he was hiding behind, I’d rather think of him as something other than a Brandino.”
“Makes sense to me. If he got this far away from the family and managed to stay hidden from them for a while, he might want to think of himself as something else, too. Does that make you any more hopeful about your brother?”
Jessie stared down into her cup, wondering what she expected to find there. “I’m so confused. So much has changed since Laura went missing. First I have to deal with my mother turning up, but in such a way that I’ll never get to ask her any of the questions I’ve had since I was six. Now I find out that I have a brother I’ve never met. Is there any cause for me to feel hopeful about him or not?”
Steve took a piece of paper out of a battered leather portfolio and pushed it across the table toward her. “I think you ought to at least give him the benefit of the doubt. I still don’t know why Adrian wanted to find you so much, but he did. He really does seem to be the computer expert he told Laura he was.”
“Richards told me about our picture on the missing persons Web site if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s only part of it. Now I’m not the computer expert your brother is, but I know how to use the basics.”
Jessie studied the sketch before her. It looked like one of those police artists’ renderings, of a young man with long dark hair, a high forehead and a slight cleft in his firm chin. “Did you do this? It’s Adrian, isn’t it? I recognize the face from the blurry still Agent Richards showed me earlier.”
“I plugged the right information into the computer software. These days about half our drawings are done by choosing facial features from options on a program and then blending them together. This was fairly easy because I had that same photo.”
“That’s where I start to have issues with you, Stephen. You knew all of this Saturday, didn’t you?”
He shook his head slowly. “Not really. I suspected that Bando and Brandino might be the same person but I wasn’t about to share an idea that would only upset you until I had some proof. Because I knew that if I was right, I’d be telling you about a brother you didn’t know existed. You’ve already had enough pain over all of this without me adding to it if I didn’t have to.”
“And you wanted to be sure.” Jessie could see his point. Even if they were nothing more than casual friends tied together by the hunt for her sister, Steve’s police background wouldn’t let him upset her without good reason. “But why did you let me go see Richards alone when you had to suspect what he’d tell me?”
“For the reasons I gave you on Saturday. I didn’t want to muddy the waters where he’s concerned by having him see a personal relationship between us. I’m usually pretty good about hiding my feelings around people, but I knew that if you reacted poorly to finding out about Adrian, I…”
He trailed off and Jessie looked over her glasses at him, trying to urge him to finish his sentence. “You what?”
“I wouldn’t be able to disguise my concern. Having Richards and his task force take over the hunt for your sister would be a good thing. They’ve got a lot more resources than the sheriff’s department does. But I don’t want him involved just because he thinks I slipped up.”
Jessie felt like making a comment about male pride, but then she remembered that Steve hadn’t told her what kind of background work he’d been doing today. “We both know you haven’t slipped up, Stephen. Now tell me why you looked so pleased with yourself a few minutes ago. It wasn’t just for producing this sketch.”
“You’re right. I’ve been showing it around a few places. Did you know where Laura liked to take her breaks from work?”
“Sure. Aunt Charlotte’s Tearoom about half a block from the salon she worked in, and once in a while when our schedules meshed we even met here.”
Steve smiled again. “And the most observant people on the day shift behind the counter both here and at the tearoom recognized this as a man they’d seen with her in the week or so before she disappeared.”
“So he’d been trying to make contact with her? Why not with me?” She felt a little left out even though the attention from Adrian had gotten her sister in serious trouble. Jessie felt a pang of guilt knowing that she could have been the one kidnapped instead of her sister but instead he’d chosen Laura. She wished it had been the other way around.
“I wondered that, too. I’d say Adrian knew how to best approach the two of you. He’d been searching for you using computers and missing persons Web sites, and he figured out that Laura was the one most likely to be interested in his services as a Web site designer.”
“He had that right. Agent Richards showed me the Web page Adrian made up with our photo. Do you think he was as surprised to find out about us as I was to find about him?” How different would this whole situation be if Jessie had agreed with Laura that they both needed to advertise something online? Looking across the table at Steve again, she could tell he wasn’t through. “Okay, what else do you have to show me?”
“You don’t give up. I feel like I should take you along next time I have to talk to somebody who’s hard to deal with. You’re reading me like a book.” He sounded more surprised than upset, leading Jessie to think that she had been complimented in an odd sort of way.
Reaching into the portfolio again, Steve put another sketch on the table. “Using what we already knew, and another still from the videos taken from the Brandino compound I was able to put together a decent composite of your mother.”
Jessie looked at it. “It shows a lot more detail than what we saw online.” The woman was quite attractive, especially for someone middle-aged. Contrasting this picture with Linda Turner seemed to indicate that this woman had led a far more pampered life. “She looks a lot like Laura might in twenty years.”
“I’ll take your word on that. Personally I think that in the photos I’ve seen your sister has a more open look and kinder eyes.” Steve was blushing again for a moment. “Anyway, when I showed it to Adrian’s neighbors one of them recognized her. She said that the sketch looked like a woman who showed up on Adrian’s doorstep two days before the fire and waited for him to get home.”
“Do you think that means that she and Laura actually met…maybe got to talk to each other?”
“I’m not sure. I guess we’ll have to keep working on finding Laura so you can ask her.” The determination in Steve’s face made Jessie lose whatever shreds of resentment she’d been holding on to for his reticence earlier. This was a man she could get used to having around. The thought surprised her more than anything else had today, which on a day like this one was saying a lot.
Sometimes Steve thought that he lost all his common sense around Jessie Barker. What crazy notion had made him invite her to a wedding? He should have gone alone and had a nice, quiet afternoon and evening watching his friends tie the knot. Instead here he was all slicked up in a dark suit and tie with Jessie standing next to him giving off a heady scent of perfume that made him think of his mother’s flower garden in May. It was nice to see her dressed up in a different way, too. The only other time he’d seen her in anything but business casual had been the navy suit she’d worn to her mother’s funeral. Tonight the dress she wore, patterned in warm autumn colors did a lot more to enhance her attractive features.
Rachel made a beautiful bride. Even a hardened old bachelor like him could see how happy she looked, holding hands with Tom and looking into his eyes. He watched them, marveling at Tom’s rapt expression. How did it feel to do that, to be in a church full of people and only hear and see one? He stole a glance at Jessie and was surprised to see tears running down her cheeks.
Fishing around in his jacket pocket he found the clean handkerchief he’d put there and handed it to her. “What’s up?” She just didn’t strike him as the type to cry at weddings.
“I don’t usually do this,” she said in a whisper so low he could barely hear it. “Laura’s the one who cries at weddings. I thought of that and I miss her so much….”
The minister invited everyone to sit down for the exchange of vows. Once they got settled Steve reached over the back of the wooden pew and put his hand on Jessie’s shoulder. She’d had a rough week again, which he figured contributed to the tears tonight. After Monday’s revelations about her family, things stalled a bit and they knew little more than they had five days before. Richards assured them that there was a constant watch on the Brandino compound but so far it yielded no sign of Adrian or Laura. And he hadn’t given Jessie the information he’d apparently promised her on Monday, either.
The most surprising request had been for Jessie to come in to a clinic specified by Richards and have a blood sample drawn. Other than hearing it was for an idea Kyra had from the detailed examination of Dawn, Jessie hadn’t gotten a lot of explanation but she went willingly. Steve still felt badly about not being able to go with her, but she’d turned down his offer, saying she wanted to go alone.
“If you change your mind…” he’d offered, but she broke in telling him that if that happened she had the support of a new friend at work. He should probably be glad that the department secretary decided to take Jessie under her wing, but something about the friendship made him a little uncomfortable. Was that warranted or just a bit of jealousy that someone else was comforting her? He’d hoped to introduce Jessie to his mom by now and let her form a friendship there. A tiny sniffle from Jessie drew him back to the present. At the front of the church Tom’s brother handed the groom a ring.
“This all looks and sounds a little different to me,” Jessie told him. “I never paid much attention to the church part of a church wedding before. Once we get to the reception I’m going to have some questions for you.”
“Feel free,” Steve told her, ignoring the vibration of his cell phone from the same pocket he’d taken the handkerchief from. Nothing ranked important enough for him to look at that call during a wedding, especially not with Rachel at the altar and Jessie right next to him. If either of the women saw him answering a call now they’d wring his neck.
The wedding looked and sounded different to him, too, but he probably wasn’t going to admit that to Jessie. Not when he was seeing it through a new lens because of her. Had he ever tried to imagine himself up there getting married before? Even now it was a vague image because of all the barriers between them. At least the FBI had taken over enough of the investigation that he didn’t feel out of line taking her to an event like this one.
But her life was on hold right now and he had no idea what part he’d play in it once things resolved. The longer the case dragged on the harder it was to believe they’d find Laura alive and well. He’d tried to entrust that problem entirely to God but it wasn’t easy. It would be a foreign concept to Jessie: how he could take one of the heaviest problems in his life and turn over the worry like that.
Therein lay the rest of his hesitation. For him, faith was an everyday part of life; for Jessie that was a new concept. Until their beliefs came a little closer to matching he couldn’t really consider marriage. While he didn’t share the fervor of some Christians to avoid being “unequally yoked” to a nonbeliever he’d always taken for granted that if he ever married it would be to a godly woman.
The minister introduced Tom and Rachel for the first time as a married couple and the applause through the church made Steve smile. He couldn’t get too discouraged about his situation while watching the couple in the front of the church. If God could bring Rachel together with the right man through a bad softball play, surely the obstacles between Jessie and him weren’t insurmountable, either.
Jessie perked up a little by the time they left the church. “So, on to the reception?”
He fished the cell phone out of his pocket. “In just a minute. I need to see who called me during the wedding. I wasn’t about to look then.”
“Good idea. No matter how good a friend Rachel is, I don’t think she would have wanted that distraction during her wedding.”
The number didn’t mean much, but there was a message and he listened to it. Joshua Richards identified himself and told him he was looking for Jessie. They’d settled into Steve’s car by then and he looked over at her in the passenger seat. “You have any idea why Joshua Richards would be looking for you this time of evening on a Saturday?”
She frowned slightly. “Checking up on me, I guess. Maybe I should have taken what he said Thursday more seriously.”
Okay, now she had his interest. “And what did he say that you decided to ignore?”
She waved a hand at him. “That makes it sound a lot more serious. Once I went to the clinic for my blood tests he told me he wanted me to keep a low profile for a little while.”
“How low a profile are we talking?” Steve asked, neck and shoulder muscles starting to tense.
“I’m not under house arrest or anything. He said that I could go to work and other necessary trips, but otherwise he wanted my cooperation in keeping my life quiet.”
“Maybe I should be flattered you think going to a wedding with me is a necessary trip, but I expect Agent Richards might think differently.”
She looked away, like a guilty kid. “Maybe so. Does this mean you’re going to take me home?”
“Not yet. Let me call Richards first and see what he has to say.” He thought for a minute. “I’m going to step outside the car to talk to him, and while I do that I’m going to lock you in.”
“Isn’t that a little much?”
“Not until I find out why that FBI agent is looking for you. If you’re in danger I’m not going to be the person that fails to protect you. And knowing your stubbornness, Jessie, this is the one way I can think of to keep you right here.” She made a face, but she didn’t argue and Steve called the FBI man. “Jessie’s with me. We’ve been at a wedding. Something happened?”
“Not really. We’re getting close and I don’t like what we’ve found so far. There’s more going on than just the Brandino family involvement. Make sure you keep very close track of that woman, since she won’t listen to me, and be careful.”
“I won’t let her out of my sight.” They signed off and Steve looked through the window at the lovely woman in his car. It was nice to have an excuse to be close to Jessie all evening. Steve could hardly wait to get back in the car and tell her they were together for the rest of the night.