"I don't know. I thought about searching for articles or police reports about missing girls or runaways in a larger area around the city, but I have to ask Annabeth how wide a net she's cast."
"You know how to find that on the internet?"
"Most of it, yeah. Police reports and logs are public information, and sometimes they're online. The rest is just internet searches, but you need to try a bunch of combinations of keywords to see if anything pops up. Don't you know all this from your job?"
"I don't do computer shit. That's all Annabeth and sometimes Young."
"Oh, well, it's not that hard. See?"
For the next few minutes, Tristan showed Cade how to search for police and court records. It was nice to feel like he was doing something useful to find Natalie, that he could be of some value to the investigation, and he hoped that explaining things out loud might magically give him some insight or ideas to help his search.
But he struggled to concentrate as Cade leaned into his space, their faces mere inches from each other as he studied the screen. Tristan's body was tingling from the closeness, from the brush of Cade's thigh against his own. He managed to arrange words into sentences, but just barely.
"How'd you learn how to do all this?"
Tristan turned his head to see Cade pinning him with a serious stare. God, they were close. His eyes dropped to Cade's full lips before he caught himself and jerked his gaze back to the screen.
"Most of it is just general computer knowledge, but I did learn some tricks in my college classes," Tristan said, relieved when his voice sounded normal.
Cade hadn't yet moved. He was still close, too close for comfort. "You went to college?"
"Yeah. I have a degree in journalism."
"So you're, like, smart," Cade concluded, looking mildly impressed.
"Who me? Nah, not really," he answered honestly. "I wasn't the greatest student, but I got by. What about you? You said you dropped out of high school. How come?" He wasn't confident Cade would answer, but thought he'd try to satisfy his curiosity. Cade shrugged, and Tristan was starting to think the gesture was his go-to when he was about to deflect.
"Why does anyone? I hated it."
"Yeah, I think that's pretty common. What did your parents have to say about it?"
Cade's demeanor shifted, and Tristan instinctively knew he'd pushed too far.
"Nothing at all. I'll let you get back to work."
Tristan watched the other man's back as he retreated to the kitchen, knowing he had hit a nerve. What kind of parents didn't care that their kid dropped out of high school? That tidbit left Tristan with more questions, but he knew no answers would be coming anytime soon.
He went back to searching the web, trying dozens of different word combinations to target any information related to missing girls in a larger geographical area around the city. He should have waited to see if Annabeth had already done it, but he wanted to feel like he was doing something. When that went nowhere, herefocused on the girls' socials until the nonsense abbreviations and emojis started to scramble his brain.
When another couple of hours passed without success, Tristan threw up his hands in disgust.
"Arghh! This is so frustrating! This isn't helping! I need to do something useful to find her."
Cade's voice came from behind him. "You are, and so is my team. These guys aren't easy to find for obvious reasons."
Again, notions of random men doing unspeakable things to his sister popped into Tristan's brain. He dropped his head to his hands and growled. He let himself feel the emotions, let them run wild for a moment, and then, as he'd learned to do in the last week, reined them in and jammed them into a box.
Because feeling wasn't doing. Feeling wouldn't help him find her.
Itching to reset, he sprang to his feet. "I'm going to take a shower," he barked in the general direction of the kitchen.
After a quick shower, Tristan exited the bathroom with a towel tied around his waist. In his anger and frustration, he had forgotten to bring clothes into the bathroom to change. Irritated with himself and preoccupied with thoughts of his sister, he grabbed a pair of boxers from the bag of new clothes on top of the dresser and dropped his towel.
A faint choking sound came from behind him.
Startled, Tristan whirled around without regard for his nakedness. His eyes locked with Cade's, and he gasped at what he thought he saw.
Hunger.
