Asher stepped inside Faith’s foyer with her then moved into the family room while she locked the front door.
“Ash!” Suddenly his arms were filled with soft, warm curves as a young woman threw herself against him. “It’s been too long.” She squealed as she continued to hug him.
“Uh, hey, Daph. Need to breathe here,” he teased as he gently extricated himself from her grasp. Just in time, too, because Faith was now glaring at him from beside her younger sister. “If I’d known you were home from that joke you call a university, I’d have come over much sooner.”
“Hey, my Tennessee Vols can smash your Memphis Tigers any day.”
“Says the sophomore who still hasn’t been to her first football game.”
Daphne rolled her blue eyes, reminding him of Faith, who tended to roll her eyes when she was exasperated—which was often. But where Daphne’s eyes were blue, Faith’s were sparkling emerald-green that lit up whenever she smiled. And even though she and her sister both had blonde hair, Faith’s was darker, a shade she called dirty blonde. Asher called it pretty.
“I don’t have to go to boring games to show school spirit.”
He laughed. “I suppose not. Why aren’t you in Knoxville? I thought you were taking classes over the summer semester.”
“Finals finished up a week ago and I have another week before summer classes start. I figured I’d catch up with some friends and grace my big sis with my amazing presence.”
It was Faith’s turn to roll her eyes.
“I head back a week from tomorrow,” Daphne continued. “I told Faith to tell you I was home.”
“I must have forgotten.” Faith’s tone clearly said she hadn’t forgotten. “And his name is Asher, not Ash. Want a soda anyone? Water?” As if deciding the crisis of Asher holding her sister had passed, she moved into the kitchen area and opened the refrigerator.
“I’m good,” Daphne said. “I know Ash would like a high-test soda. But since you only have diet drinks around here, get him a water.”
Asher chuckled. A cold bottle of diet cola was soon thrust into his hands.
“Asher doesn’t drink the hard stuff anymore,” Faith said. “He’s trying to watch his weight.” She stood beside her sister, a water bottle clutched in her right hand.
“That can’t be true, Ash. You hiding some extra pounds beneath that suit jacket?” Daphne started to run a hand down his flat stomach.
Faith knocked her hand away. “We have work to do. I thought you were meeting some of your high school buddies for lunch.”
Daphne’s eyes widened and she pulled her phone out of her jeans’ pocket to check the time on the screen. “Shoot. They’ll be here soon to pick me up. I need to finish getting ready. Don’t worry, Ash. I’ll say bye before I leave.” She waved at him and headed down the hallway toward the back of the house.
As soon as Daphne was out of earshot, Faith said, “Leave my sister alone.”
“Whatever do you mean? We were just catching up.”
“She’s jailbait. Don’t. Touch.”
“I think you’re confused about what that word means. Daphne’s twenty, a legal adult.”
“I’m not confused at all about the definition of jailbait. It means that if you touch her, I’m going to jail. Because I’ll shoot you.”
He chuckled. “Careful, darlin’. Your jealousy is showing.”
“I’m serious, Ash. My sister is off limits. It would make things too...awkward working with you.”
He leaned down to her, enjoying the way her eyes widened and her breath hitched in her throat. True to her stubborn personality, she refused to back away, which was what he’d counted on. When his lips were mere inches from hers, and her expression had softened from anger to confusion, he turned his face to the side and whispered in her ear.
“You going to stand there all day, Faith? We have work to do.”
He headed for her home office on the front right side of the house, chuckling when he heard her swearing behind him and jogging to catch up.
Seeing the empty spot in the middle of the incredibly neat and organized stacks of paper on her desk, he paused and turned around. “Organized chaos, as usual. But also kind of bare-looking without your work laptop to put there.”
“TBI jerks.” She paused beside him. “I’ll have to dig up Daphne’s old laptop, the one she ditched after I bought her a new one for school. Hopefully, I can find a power cord that fits.”
“I still can’t believe you never use a personal computer when you aren’t working. Everyone has a computer in this century.”
“It keeps me sane not going anywhere near one when I’m not working. I’m a TV girl in the evenings. It’s called relaxing, recharging. You should try it. You work way too hard.”
“Maybe you can teach me this TV concept—after we do everything we can to save Leslie.”
She blinked, her eyes suspiciously bright. “Poor Leslie. She’s twenty, Daphne’s age. Just two years younger than her sister when she disappeared. She has to be so scared. Assuming he hasn’t already—”
“He hasn’t. I don’t think so, anyway. If it’s the same guy who took Jasmine, then he’s toying with the family. He’ll keep her alive long enough to send them pictures or a token of some sort to prove he has her, so he can cause them more pain. If it’s not the same guy, it could be a copycat. He heard about the first daughter on the news and decided to go for his fifteen minutes of fame by taking the other daughter. Again, if that’s the case, I would think he’d keep her alive until he milks all the attention out of this that he can get. Either way, I choose to believe that we have some time. Not a lot, but we might have enough to find her before it’s too late.”
“That’s not usually the case in abductions, especially if it’s an abduction by a stranger.”
“True. But with all the media attention on this one, it’s automatically different. The statistics don’t talk to this particular situation. I say we have a chance.”
“I pray you’re right. The odds of finding anyone alive more than a few hours after being taken like this are abysmal.”
“But not zero.”
Her smile was barely noticeable, but a smile nonetheless. “Not zero.” She squeezed his hand in thanks before looking down at the stacks of paper on her desk.
He let out a slow breath and focused on not revealing how that touch, that barely-there-smile, affected him. She didn’t think about him the way he did about her. There was no changing it. And even if he were to try, now was the worst possible time.
She rifled through one of the stacks of paper, somehow managing to keep it aligned and neat at the same time. “To believe it’s the same guy who abducted Jasmine, we have to accept that he’s stayed in the area all this time. That supports your theory that her abductor was a local. Of course, that burial ground we discovered pretty much confirms it, unless all of the victims there were part of a spree of killings done years ago and the killer moved on somewhere else. Maybe he was just passing through, if that’s what killers like him do. Someone completely unrelated to the original incident abducted Leslie. Coincidence.”
“That’s a hell of a coincidence.” He leaned against a corner of the desk, careful not to disturb her papers, and crossed his arms.
“Yeah. It would be. Let’s toss that aside for now, assume he is local, is still around.”
“Same guy.”
She nodded. “Same guy who killed Jasmine. Although, we’re making leaps of logic without evidence. We don’t have confirmation from the medical examiner that we’ve found Jasmine among all those bodies.” She shivered and ran her hands up and down her arms. “If it wasn’t for the media, no one would even realize that we suspect Jasmine is among the dead. The timing of Leslie’s abduction is too quick, just a few hours after the first media report that mentioned Jasmine. That makes me think this really is a crazy, devastating coincidence. Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place.” Her eyes were unfocused, her thoughts directed more inward than on anything in front of her.
“World War Two, the Sullivan brothers.”
She frowned and looked up. “The Sullivan brothers?”
“Five brothers who all died in 1942 during the Second World War. Lightning does sometimes strike twice in the same place. Or more than twice in the Sullivan case.”
“And this is why I’m not a history buff. Stories like that are too depressing.”
He smiled. “I’ll try to keep my depressing historical references to a minimum in the future.”
She smiled, too, the shadows of grief lessening in her eyes. “It’s actually impressive how much trivia you store in that amazing brain of yours.”
He waggled his eyebrows and flipped his suit jacket open, resting his hands on his belt. “If you think my brain’s amazing, you should see my—”
She lightly tapped his arm. “Stop it. You’re such a guy. Be back in a few. If I can find that dang computer and the cord.” She hurried from the room.
He sighed at her inability to see him as more than a friend. His jokes fell flat, his lamebrain attempts to get her to see him as...more, never seemed to gain traction. He was about to sit in one of the two office chairs that Faith kept behind the desk because they worked together so much, but Daphne entered the office.
“‘You’re such a guy,’” she mimicked her sister. “The woman’s blind. You need to jump her bones before you’re both in retirement homes.”
He coughed to cover a laugh. “And you need to quit stirring the pot. Faith doesn’t think about me in that way. I doubt she ever will.”
“Then do something to open her eyes. Something outrageous. I’m no longer living at home. She can’t use me as an excuse to make you go home when you’re here working late. There’s absolutely nothing to stop you two from going at it like rabbits except that she’s an idiot.”
He coughed again, nearly choking at her amusing audacity. “Daphne, you really do need to stop—”
The sound of footsteps on the hardwood floor outside the office heralded Faith’s return. After setting a power cord and a bright pink laptop on the desk, she hesitated, eyes narrowed suspiciously as she glanced back and forth between them. “Why did you both stop talking when I came into the room? What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Unfortunately.” Daphne winked at Asher then pulled her sister close for a quick hug and kissed her cheek.
Faith stepped back, a serious look on her face. “No barhopping. It’s too dangerous. Come back here if you and your friends want to drink. If the worst should happen, leave bread crumbs—not actual bread, of course, but some kind of clue to help me find you. You’re going to the mall, right?”
“The mall? Seriously? I’m not sixteen anymore. And it’s not barhopping, it’s plain, clean, having fun. Everyone goes to bars—men, women, young people, old people. It’s a place to unwind, catch up, stop off on your way home. You really need to loosen up.”
“Daphne—”
“Relax, smother-mother. I wouldn’t want you to have a heart attack worrying about me. We’re just going to a movie.” She wiggled her fingers at Asher. “Have fun, you two. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Faith shook her head as her sister jogged out the office door. “Don’t stay out too late. Text me once you get there and before you leave. And make sure that Find My Exasperating Sister app is turned on this time.”
Daphne raised a hand in the air without looking back. A moment later, the sound of the front door closing had Faith letting out a deep sigh.
“She’s going to be the death of me.”
He shoved his hands in his pants pockets, mainly to keep from doing something dangerous—like pulling Faith in for a hug. “If you get this worried when she’s in town with people she knows, how do you survive when she’s at school with thousands of strangers?”
She shuddered. “Don’t remind me. It’s hard, harder than you can imagine. She’s like my own kid. I practically raised her.”
In spite of his misgivings about her potential reaction, the lost look on her face had him taking her hand in his. “You were about her age now when your parents died, weren’t you?”
She nodded, tightening her hand in his rather than pulling away, probably not even realizing it. But he felt that touch all the way to his heart, and only wished she’d accept more.
“She was a preteen, a baby in my eyes. I’m surprised my whole head hasn’t gone gray just getting her to this stage. I’ll probably never have children of my own. The worrying would likely kill me.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe if you ever meet the right guy, you’ll change your mind.”
She shook her head. “Fat chance of that. I’m always working or trying to recover from working by bingeing TV shows. Heck, I spend more time with you than anyone else. When would I ever have a chance to meet a guy?” She chuckled and tugged her hand free. “Come on. We’ve—”
“Got work to do. I know.” His heart was a little heavier as they rounded the desk.