She grinned.
“Does this mean last night didn’t work?” he asked, the love-sick puppy inside him holding its breath waiting for her reply.
“Not even a little bit. Guess we’ll have to try again.” She grabbed his hand and tugged him into the bathroom.
It had beenanother long day for the two of them, but this time Beau had kept Sierra in the cabin. They hadn’t risked going out again because Officers O’Brien and Fletcher had documented no fewer than five sightings yesterday by witnesses who believe they’d seen someone matching Esteban’s description. If it truly was her brother they’d seen, then he’d kept to the outskirts of town, away from the more populated parts of Mystic Lake. And he was definitely searching for something. Or someone. That was enough for Beau to decide his primary duty today was as Sierra’s bodyguard. He was leaving the knock-and-talks to his former team.
Time passed quickly. Their relationship was fresh, new. They both wanted to know everything they could about each other. Of course, he already knew a lot about her family, having read many law enforcement briefs and bulletins about them over the years. And she’d studied up on him online and learned more by planting those cameras—which he’d forgotten to follow up on—in the police station and the mayor’s office. She wasn’t perfect. No one was. But she wasn’t her father either, not even close.
She shared the personal side to the statistics and facts he knew about her family. Like that her mother had passed away a year before Esteban had allegedly died, and how hard both of their losses were on the family. Her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was determined to fight it, then when the treatments weren’t going well, she’d decided to take her own life. She’d overdosed on pain pills and had been found by Sierra’s father.
“He was devastated, of course,” she said. “We all were. I still don’t understand why my mom did that. But I haven’t been in her situation either. If I was in all of that pain, feeling miserable every day, maybe I’d give up too.”
He’d hugged her and offered what comfort he could. But in the face of a loss like that, he felt completely inadequate. One thing was clear: she’d worshiped her mother and adored her father. And she felt the same way about her brothers, both biological and step. Even knowing that Esteban might be her enemy now, until she understood why, she couldn’t quite accept it. It was obvious that part of her desperately hoped there was another explanation.
When it was her turn to ask questions, she’d wanted to know about his family and what he’d been like as a child. He told her some of the details about his rather average life. A schoolteacher mom. A father who was an engineer. He had three younger brothers.
“An engineer? And you lived here, in Mystic Lake? Where did he work?”
“Chattanooga. Lots of people here work there since our only real industry is tourism. Long drive, a little over an hour and a half each way because of it being across town. When I was in middle school and my brothers were starting elementary school, he and my mom both got jobs in Florida, down near Tampa where some of our distant relatives live.”
“That’s quite the move. How did you end up back here?”
“I never left. I pitched a fit, ran away. Dad tanned my hide when he found me and brought me home. But I ran away again. I was a brat, not wanting to leave my friends. My dad pretty much gave up in disgust. Mom worked out an agreement with some close family friends to let me stay with them until I graduated high school. Remember me telling you about the chicken farmers not far from the safe house?”
“No way. Is that where you ended up? At their farm?”
“No. I lived on a horse ranch, in a valley at about the farthest corner of the mountains where you can go without leaving theofficial Mystic Lake town limits. But those nice people I still owe egg money to are distant cousins of the family who took me in.”
“Small town.”
“Small town,” he agreed. “That’s pretty much my story. I went to college after high school, never moved to Florida. I see my family at Christmas every year, when my brothers fly in from where they’ve moved and started their own families. That’s our annual reunion, more or less.”
“You only see each other once a year? But you’re family.”
“Without much in common, little to talk about.”
“That’s sad,” she said. “I can’t imagine not seeing or at least talking to my family on a regular basis.” She grimaced. “Then again, it’s been a ridiculously long time since I’ve seen, or at least really spoken to Esteban. The jerk. Pretending he was dead.”
She’d gone on to fuss and cuss about her brother, as Beau would expect. They’d discussed other things, details about the investigation too. But what she never mentioned was any regret over spending last night with him—or this morning. There was no awkwardness between them. And the hungry looks she gave him off and on had him wanting to take her back to bed. But with so much unresolved around the shootings, and neither of them wanting to have to hide out the rest of their lives, they were determined to be proactive. They agreed that they needed to focus on trying to solve the mysteries surrounding her brother.
To that end, they sat at the kitchen table for hours, reviewing information they and the officers had gathered the day before. They only got up for bathroom breaks and food. Then they would come right back to the table to pour over reports and old files on other disappearances in case there were any similarities.
There weren’t.
He sat back and stretched. “When I briefed you earlier today on the status meeting you missed, there’s one thing I forgot to mention. There’s evidence the tunnel that we used to get to thesafe house was how Esteban and his men found us. They had cut away the vines and bushes that camouflaged the entrance. Shoeprints in the tunnel matched ones found outside the safe house, prints that were in addition to yours and mine.”
Her eyes widened. “Do you think they found it because I used that burner phone to talk to Rafael? They somehow traced a call in the area and it helped them find the tunnel?”
“Tracing the call wouldn’t have helped them discover the tunnel entrance. It would have only gotten them to the general area of this mountain. Did you mention anything to Rafael about the tunnel?”
She briefly closed her eyes as if in pain. “You asked me that once before and I didn’t think I had. But I’ve replayed that phone conversation with Rafael in my head plenty of times since then. I think I did mention the tunnel, kind of as an aside. Nothing specific. It’s not like I gave him the location. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t have explained right where it was. All I did was brief him about the shooting at your cabin, then us being shot at on the road and having to head up the mountain and use a tunnel to get to safety. But that wouldn’t have mattered unless he called Esteban after that.” She blinked, her eyes widening. “No. No, he wouldn’t have. Couldn’t have. He didn’t even know Esteban was alive until I told him. Esteban’s old phone number is out of service. Rafael wouldn’t have any way of contacting him.”
Beau sat back. “I think you just fit some puzzle pieces together for us. I’ll bet that’s exactly what happened. Rafael called Esteban and told him what you said, and Esteban used that information to search the mountain and then used the tunnel. At some point, since faking his death, Esteban has reached out to your other brother and they’ve kept in touch.”
She crossed her arms. “That sounds like unsubstantiated theories and conjecture to me. Isn’t it possible that Rafael has had no contact with Esteban and has nothing to do with himfinding us at that first cabin? Maybe Esteban just kept searching the mountain trying to find us and stumbled onto the entrance to the tunnel.”
“Anything’s possible,” he conceded.
