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She shook her head. “So you live out here in this—palace—all by yourself?”
Pete got up and took his plate into the kitchen, started running water. “No. I travel quite a bit for my job. But I come here when I want some privacy.”
She leaned back in the chair. “Yeah, I imagine you get plenty of that here.”
Grange picked up her plate. She stood. “I can do that.”
“You and Jed cooked. Pete and I will clean up.”
She turned her attention on Jed. He shrugged. “It’s the rule. Whoever cooks, the other cleans up.”
She liked that rule, just didn’t expect them to follow it. Seeing two men in their fifties doing the dishes kind of surprised her.
She stood and leaned over the counter, watching them. “Your wives must appreciate all this domesticity.”
“Don’t have one,” Grange said.
Pete didn’t say anything, and since he didn’t offer information, she didn’t want to pry. Maybe he had an ugly divorce in his past and was still sensitive about it.
“So how do you two know each other?” she asked Grange.
“We did military time together. Met each other in boot camp, have been friends ever since,” Grange said.
“We had the fortune—or maybe misfortune,” Pete said with a laugh, “to be stationed at the same places time and time again. We kept running into each other, so we became friends. I never would have made it through some of the tough times in my life without Grange.”
Grange squeezed Pete’s shoulder. Pete nodded and they went back to cleaning the kitchen, laughing and cracking jokes as if that whole sentimental moment hadn’t just happened.
Elena wondered what that exchange was about.
When they finished the dishes, they led her down the hall and into Pete’s office. He had a giant screen and multiple computers going. It looked more like a war room. They sat at a large table in the center of all the whirring gadgets and multiple screens.
“Okay, let’s see what we can do to find your mother,” Pete said, grabbing a keyboard.
“We followed her cell movements, but as far as we’ve been able to track, her phone was last used at the pier at Daytona Beach over three weeks ago. No activity since, so the cell might have been tossed.”
Elena shook her head. “She’d never toss her cell phone. She’s always on the move and it’s our only way to stay in touch with each other. She might shun other modern conventions—like a regular job, computers, a permanent address and the like—but she does try to stay in touch with me via her cell because she knows I go crazy and worry about her if she doesn’t.”
“Ditto,” Grange said. “We have regular weekly check-ins and she doesn’t fail at those, which is why I was concerned when we had no contact. When I found the cell hadn’t moved from the pier, I knew she was in trouble.”
“You track her via GPS,” Elena said.
Grange nodded. “I had to for her own safety. Otherwise, I tried not to interfere in her life, or yours. Once I determined she was off the grid, I sent Jed in to cover you and I came in to try and locate her.”
“So you follow me via my phone, too?”
“Yes.”
At least he was honest. She wasn’t sure she liked that.
“No one follows you around, Elena. You just go about the business of your life. Your patterns are tracked, and as long as you don’t deviate from them, then I know you’re safe. But if someone took you, I had to know about it.”
There were all kinds of things wrong with violating her privacy, but she wasn’t going to get into it with him now. Her primary concern was finding her mother. “Your GPS tracking didn’t help keep my mother safe, did it?”
He didn’t flinch or look away. “No, it didn’t. But I’m going to find her.”
“How? She has one credit card she rarely uses. She likes to live by the cash rule.”
