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Grandparents. Dylan had always wondered what it would be like to have grandparents, too. They never had. “Are our grandparents still alive?”
“I believe your grandfather passed away fifteen or sixteen years ago. He was a good man,” her father said quietly. A flash of grief crossed his face. “I…miss him every day, girls. But my mother is still living. I know my brother is. I don’t know about anyone else.”
They had a grandmother. Sisters. Anuncle.Probably an entirefamilyout there.
“How old were our siblings when you left them?” Dahlia repeated Dylan’s question. Something the quietest sister did. Dahlia had her own way of doing things. She always had. She’d had more struggles than Dylan and Devaney and Dorie—Dylan had privately thought Dahlia probably had mild autism, but she had never been diagnosed or anything. Her sister had struggled, but she’d triumphed now. She didn’t do that flicking thing with her hands anymore either. Mostly.
But sometimes she did. When she was upset. Like right now.
She was just quieter and more reserved than Dylan or Devaney, and even Dorie. Now Dylan had to wonder—how much like theseothersisters was Dahlia? Devaney? Dorie? Devaney wasn’t very extraverted either. But she was more confident than Dahlia. And Dorie was different from them all, too.
Dylan was the firecracker—she’d been told that more times than she could count. She was the voice of her sisters. She said what had to be said, whenever it was needed.
Usually battling with her father.
Her mother was a lot less hardheaded than her father. She always had been.
They’d been homeschooled Dylan’s entire school years. Now she understood why. “You hid us. You just kept us away from the entire world. So that no one would even know we existed. We hid. We didn’tlive. We justhid.Marking time while you kept secrets.”
“We did,” her father said in that infuriating this-is-fact voice that he used with Dylan when he thought she was being unreasonable. Dylan had always hated that voice. Nothing got under her skin faster. “We had our reasons.”
“I’m sure you did,” Devaney said just as calmly. She could be just as obstinate as their dad sometimes, but always in this calm, reasonable way that pushed his buttons, too. “But you have to see where we don’t really understand any of this.”
“Understood. If you girls will sit down. We need to talk.”
Maybe. But how did Dylan know she could trust anything her parents said ever again?
17
Dusty was still thinkingabout everything—including Ben, who just wouldn’t get out of her head tonight—when two men in business suits came in. It took her a moment, but she recognized where she’d seen them before.
The diner.
The two men who had been in the stiff suits over a week ago. The ones who had stared.
She felt the same sense of apprehension now as she did then. “Hello, welcome to the Talley Inn. What name is on the reservation?”
“We actually don’t have a reservation,” the younger of the two men said. He was so cold. Clinical. Even with the light of masculine interest in his eyes when he looked at her. He liked what he saw, but there was no heat. Just admiration and calculation. She fought a shiver.
“You are in luck then. We have several rooms still available. We had some cancelations because of the storm.” Hunter had had some people planning to join him to help plan his studio, including executives from Finley Creek and L.A., but they’d rescheduled. “Will you need two rooms or one?” Sometimes, businessmen shared to cut costs.
“Two,” the older man said. He was looking at her, too. In a way that creeped her out. Normally, guests didn’t creep her out.
But she hadn’t forgotten that first meeting. “I’ll need some identification and a credit card. From each of you.”
The first placed an open wallet in front of her. It showed his name as Wade Kellogg. With the FBI. But the identification didn’t look a thing like her sister Miranda’s. Or any of the FBI agents who had visited Masterson before. “My cousin Miranda is with PAVAD, out of St. Louis. Are you familiar with it?”
“No, I’m afraid I’m not,” the older man said. He handed her a credit card. “We prefer to be away from any crowd.”
“Of course.” She’d just put them a few doors down from Ben. Most of that floor was still open. “The dining room closes at ten tonight. We also offer room service for a slight upcharge. Menus are in the portfolio on the bureau in your rooms.”
“Thank you, Dusty,” the younger man said. “You are very beautiful to have such a name.”
“Family nickname.” And she’d told them this at the diner. She was sure of it—she hadn’t forgotten that conversation. She ran their credit cards without a problem, and had them sign the printed registration slips. When they disappeared into the elevators, she finally breathed a sigh of relief.
FBI agents who hadn’t heard of PAVAD? That was just strange.
She picked up her phone, dialed her cousin in St. Louis. When Miranda answered, Dusty explained about their new guests. FBI agents who had never heard of the biggest branch of the FBI ever created.
