Justine Davis - His Personal Mission

And apparently a friend of Sasha’s, which he hadn’t known.

“Your colors,” he said, not sure what else to say; that she was friends with someone he saw almost every day bothered him somehow.

“Liana called it ‘Fright of the Bumblebee,’” she said with a grin.

He couldn’t deny it fit; the explosion of yellow and black did look a bit like a bumblebee gone berserk.

The waitress arrived with two large glasses and set them down, along with a couple of menus, then left to give them time to look. Sasha looked at the glass, then at Ryan.

“I took a chance you’re still into Diet Coke,” he said.

She smiled. “As long as it’s not decaf. I mean, what’s the point?”

He laughed, and the knot in his gut loosened a bit. “Order something. I’m buying.” She lifted a brow at him. “I called you,” he pointed out.

“Point taken,” she said, picking up the menu. “And since they fund us as well, I know how Redstone pays.”

“I’m not hurting.”

She looked up from the menu. “Not about that, anyway.”

For an instant he thought she meant hurting about her, and he winced inwardly. Then he realized she had to mean Trish, and he felt like a fool, and worse, an uncaring idiot, for even momentarily forgetting the matter at hand.

“Tell me about your sister,” she said in that soft, encouraging tone that had always made him want to go out and climb a mountain or slay a dragon, and not in any virtual world, but the real thing.

She’d never met Trish during the short time they’d been together, but he knew he’d told her about his little sister, probably with that exasperated tone most older siblings used. Although with ten years between them, he’d moved out on his own when she was nine, so he hadn’t had to deal with the teenage angst on a daily basis.

And then he’d hacked himself into that colossal mess and she’d become a staunchly furious eleven-year-old defender, changing his view of his pesky little sister.

“She was there for me when I was in trouble,” he said, only vaguely aware, lost in the memory, “and now I’m afraid she’s in trouble.”

“So you’re going to be there for her,” Sasha said, and the approval in her tone warmed him. “Tell me what’s happened. Was there trouble at home?”

“No,” he said quickly. “Not the kind that would make her take off. My folks are great.”

“You’ve always said so,” Sasha said. “But sometimes siblings see things differently.”

He shook his head. “Trish got along fine with them. No fights, no blowups. Just the usual teenage stuff. She thought they were overprotective, but so did I.”

“Sometimes,” Sasha said again, this time carefully, “parents are different with girls.”

Ryan considered this for a moment. “My dad was, a little. Extraprotective. But Trish could get around him, too, in a way I never could.”

“Girls and their daddies,” Sasha said. “It’s a fact of life.”

“Yeah. I envied her sometimes, when I was still at home. There she was, seven years old, wheedling things out of him that I couldn’t get at seventeen. But it was hard to stay mad at her when she…” He trailed off awkwardly.

“When she adored her big brother?”

A sheepish smile curved his mouth. “Yeah.”

“That’s the natural order of things, too,” Sasha said.

There was a pause as the waitress took their order—she still went for his own favorite cheeseburger, which likely meant, given she hadn’t changed at all, she still worked out like a triathlete—and then she continued.

“You said it’s been a week.”

He nodded.

“And she just turned eighteen?”

He nodded again. “On the ninth.”

“Any reason to think she didn’t just take off on some celebration of her newly gained adulthood?”

And there it was, Ryan thought. The same wall they’d run into with the police. “Concrete reason? Like something I could show you?” He sighed. “No. The opposite, in fact.”

“Opposite?”

“She left a note.” To her credit, Ryan thought, her expression didn’t change. “Not a suicide note,” Ryan said quickly, since that was the first thing the cops had asked.

“I assumed it wasn’t, or you wouldn’t be talking to me, the police would be investigating. Are they?”

“No.”

She merely nodded. “Do you have it?”

“No. My folks do.” He shifted in his seat. “They didn’t know I was going to call you.”

“Will it bother them?”

Not nearly as much as it bothered me, he thought.

“I don’t think so. They just want somebody looking for Trish, and obviously the police won’t unless we come up with some evidence something’s wrong. I mean they took a report, but it was pretty clear it wasn’t going to go far.”

“They have some big limitations,” Sasha said. “So what did the note say? Any clues?”

“Thank you,” he said impulsively. At her questioning look he tried to explain. “For not…instantly writing this off. For not giving me that look the cops did, the minute I told them about the note.”

Although she looked pleased, she waved his thanks off with a gesture and refused to bash the police. “They have different priorities, and too darn many rules. We don’t. And we have access to Redstone’s resources. That’s why we’re so successful. So what did the note say?”

“Just that she had to go somewhere, not to worry, and she’d call when she could. But she’s supposed to start college in the fall, at U.C. Davis. She wants to be a vet.”

“And did she? Call, I mean?”

“No. And she’s not answering her cell.”

“Didn’t even call friends?”

“Her best friend is spending the summer in Australia. Graduation present. She said she didn’t know anything, even laughed at the idea of Trish taking off on her own.”

Sasha nodded thoughtfully.

“Boyfriend?”

“No. She never dated much. She was focused on school. She was seeing one guy a year or so ago, but they broke up. I don’t know why.”

“Nasty break?”

Ryan looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know. I only barely knew about the guy.”

“Would your parents know?”

“Probably. They keep a close watch—” He stopped, as if realizing that however close his parents had watched their daughter, it apparently hadn’t been close enough.

“I’ll talk to them about it,” Sasha said. “And I’ll want to see the note.”

“There was nothing in it about where she was going, or how long she’d be gone, or even if she’d be back. Nothing,” he repeated in obvious frustration.

“Did she have a car?”

“Yes, my dad’s old one, but it’s at home still.”

“How about finances? Credit card?”

“She had a checking account, and savings, but that’s it. My folks wouldn’t let her have a credit card, afraid she’d do the kid thing and get in way over her head.”

“She’ll get a million credit card offers once she gets to college,” Sasha pointed out, refraining from stating her opinion on that common practice.

“They knew that. They just flat out told her she couldn’t have one while she was underage and they might be held responsible for her irresponsibility, and that if she got one once she left the house, they wouldn’t help her with it.” One corner of his mouth quirked upward. “I got the same lecture at the same age.”

“Good for your folks.”

“I knew you’d say that,” Ryan said, but with a smile.

“She’s never expressed a desire to take off when she was old enough, see the country or the world?” Sasha asked.

“Trish? Hardly. She didn’t even like going on family vacations. She’s never even talked about wanting to go anywhere. She was looking forward to going to school, but she was even a bit nervous about that, it being so far away. In her eyes, anyway,” he amended, as if realizing that to many people, especially those connected to a worldwide entity like Redstone, a distance of less than five hundred miles was almost negligible.