“You’ll find the one, Drew. Be patient.”
“Fortunately, finding a man is not my top goal in life. I’m more interested in getting my PI biz off the ground, and…” She trailed off, took a breath, bit her lip.
“What?” Willow asked.
Drew said, “This is between us, but Orrin doesn’t want to.”
“What? But you two were planning to be partners, go into business together. Brand & Brand Investigations.”
“Iknow.”
“Well, what does he want to do instead?” Willow asked.
“Says he doesn’t know, but it isn’t this.”
“Aw, poor Drew.” Willow slid an arm around her younger cousin’s shoulders. “What are you fixin’ to do about it?”
Drew shrugged. “He only just told me on this trip, so…I’m still processing.”
Willow gave her shoulders a squeeze, then let go and rubbed her own arms against the chill that came in as soon as the sun went down. “You think we’ll ever know for sure what happened to my brother?”
“I think somebody, somewhere, knows something. I don’t know if we’ll find that person or not, but I think they exist, and as long as the truth is out there, we have a chance of finding it. We haven’t failed. This might take some time, though.” She sighed heavily. “Publicity would help. One of those missing persons TV shows, you know? But your mom?—”
“She couldn’t take it. Dad would be furious. He’s so protective of her.”
“It’s sweet, isn't it?”
“He loves her,” Willow said. “I don’t blame him. I think we’d better exhaust every other possibility before we talk about publicity.”
“I concur,” Drew said. “We should canvas the nearby towns, and maybe the employees at the campground. See if there are any local legends about a river-baby, hmm?”
“River-baby,” Willow repeated, rolling her eyes. “I love you, Drew.”
CHAPTER TEN
Camellia
Camellia kept her apprehension to herself, because this was such an important moment for Wolf. They’d lingered all day in the place where he’d spent the first four years of his life, talking to someone who’d witnessed a small part of it, recovering memories long since tucked away, reading snippets of his past in his mother’s diaries.
Now the sun was setting, and Camellia’s feeling of dread had still not faded.
As they started hiking back, she held it inside. She’d started to relax when they’d left Hobbsville to drive from the top of Texas to the bottom—right up until she’d seen that black Blazer on the highway, so much like Earl’s. And then that shape in the darkness last night, walking up the trail. And the footsteps she was sure she’d heard behind them today.
She was nervous and half-convinced it was just the old PTSD, reactivated by Earl’s phone call. And so there was nopoint distracting herself, or Wolf, from his quest for his family. Especially not when it was going so well.
“Are you worried that we don’t have another clue yet?” he asked as they walked.
“A sheriff from upriver? You think that’s not a clue? There are only so many counties between here and there.”
“He might not even be alive by now.”
“But he might.” She walked a little closer beside him, then reminded herself he didn’t feel the way she did and allowed a bit more space between them. “It gives us a next step. That’s all investigative work is, you know, just finding the next step, and then the next. You never see the whole path. It’s like driving at night. You see only as far as your headlights reach.”
“That sounds like a wise outlook.”
“That’s a direct quote from my instructor in that accelerated licensing course I took.”
“The one where you met your nemesis.”
