“I didn’t say a word.”
“You don’t have to. I can hear your judgment from here.”
He stood up and leaned his hip against the counter. “Yeah, what am I thinking, then?”
“That I’m a terrible person. But you don’t know the first thing about me.”
“Nope.” Nor did he want to—too much to unpack, he thought, as his eyes did a covert slide down her body. “Hey, I’m staying in my lane. No judgment.” Which wasn’t altogether true.
“Good, because you don’t have a clue of what’s going on here.”
A lot of bumping and grinding, according to her texts. Hell, she’d sounded like a veritable sex machine.
Really, he didn’t know why he was even getting involved. He wrote about peoples’ problems for a living, he didn’t need to do it in his spare time. But something about her made him want to figure her out. She was like the SaturdayNew York Timescrossword puzzle, a challenge. And there was nothing Sawyer loved more than a challenge. Even one who was a full-time pain in the ass.
They wound up eating her lamb tagine between phone calls and temper tantrums. He could only imagine how she must’ve reacted to the photo, which he’d finally gotten around to searching on the internet. It had been your typical paparazzi wide-lens beach shot. Grainy but clear enough to make out Gina and Danny having a good time. The photo wasn’t as salacious as the texts, but it was provocative enough to leave no doubt that the subjects were involved romantically.
Gina cleaned up her dishes and went home, leaving him enough leftovers to last the week. Not such a bad deal. He considered calling his mother and getting her take on Gina’s situation, but it would probably be hopeless. Dalton and Associates had a strict confidentiality policy when it came to their clients, as they should.
Instead, he went over the notes he’d taken from interviewing a woman who’d lived on the commune with Angie in New Mexico to see if he’d missed anything.
Five years ago, his sister, Angela, had dropped off the edge of the earth. Angie had always been unreliable, jumping on every cause known to mankind, joining up with fringe groups and traveling to remote areas, living a nomad’s life. High-risk? Maybe. But his sister lived by her own rules. It wasn’t uncommon for her to disappear for a while, then reemerge a few months later.
But not this time. This time, she’d completely ghosted them, which was so out of character for her that they’d assumed something terrible had happened.
He and his parents had filed missing person reports, hired private investigators, and offered large monetary rewards for any information that would unravel the mystery, without any success.
Then, a few months ago, Sawyer had gotten good information that Angie had been living on a commune in Taos, New Mexico. He continued to plumb the lead but so far had come up dry.
In June, he’d met a woman from the commune who was now living in Santa Fe. But she’d been reticent to talk. It was almost as if she was afraid of something or somebody. She’d been visibly uncomfortable throughout the entire interview, which told Sawyer she knew more than she was saying.
He was considering taking another stab at her, but had a sinking feeling it was hopeless.
He’d lost count of how many times he or his parents had dropped everything to hop on a plane or get in a car and chase down another fruitless tip.
“Hey,” came Jace’s voice from the bottom of the stairs. “Anyone home?”
“Come up.” Sawyer quickly flipped his reporter’s notebook closed. His cousins were of the opinion that Sawyer should stop turning his life upside down every time a private investigator found a trail to follow.
But it was his baby sister, for God’s sake.
A few seconds later, Jace joined Sawyer at the dining room table. “Damn, it smells good in here.”
“Chef Boyardee was over to cook.”
“Chef Boyardee is welcome at my house anytime,” Jace said while sniffing his way to the inside of Sawyer’s refrigerator. “This it?” He held up a covered glass dish with the leftover lamb.
“Yep. You want me to nuke some for you in the microwave?” Sawyer went into the kitchen and made Jace up a plate. “What’re you doing home so early?”
“That’s what I came to talk to you about. I’ve got an interview with what may be our first tenants. Two UC Davis grads who want to lease land to grow and start up a flower stand. Charlie’s sister hooked them up with us. You remember Allison?”
“The one who owns a nursery in Portland, right?” Jace nodded. “How much land do these Davis grads want?”
Jace stood sentry by the microwave as if hovering would make the food heat quicker. “A few acres.”
“A few acres would feed a cow and her calf for a season. That’s money in the bank.” In the scheme of things, 500 acres wasn’t all that much land to run a profitable cattle operation and to lease even a small parcel might not be cost-effective.
“I hear ya. We’ll definitely have to make it worth our while financially, otherwise it’s a lose-lose.”
