Justine Davis - His Personal Mission

“Yes, you are lucky,” she said.

And she was stunned. His taking for granted the life he had had always irritated her. Was this appreciation sincere, or some effort to convince her he’d changed?

Get over yourself, she muttered inwardly. It’s not all about you, girl.

“I appreciate your taking the time to help me. And even being willing to, when the police wouldn’t.”

There was undeniable sincerity in the words, and again she wondered at the formerly uncharacteristic attitude.

“They have their criteria, we have ours,” she said. “Ours is relieving pain and worry.”

“I know. I’ve always…admired what you do.”

He’d told her that before, but in the aftermath of discovering how…well, face it, shallow he’d been at the time, she’d discounted that along with almost everything else he’d said as just surface chat to try to charm her.

Perhaps she’d been a little harsh before.

But right now there was something else she had to make clear. “You know that we can’t force your sister to come back if she doesn’t want to, now that she’s eighteen.”

“I know that.”

“But we can find her and make sure she’s all right.”

“That’s all I want. My folks want her home, but…I remember what it was like at that age.”

He spoke as if that age were many decades behind him instead of merely one. That, too, was new.

She glanced at him again. He was staring out the windshield, but she noticed he was digging his left thumbnail into the side of his index finger, a habit she’d noticed before, the only sign he’d ever shown of being concerned about anything. That it had usually been about a complex computer problem he was dealing with had been the part that irritated her.

“Don’t you ever worry about people?” she’d asked him once in exasperation.

He’d only shrugged. “With computers there’s always an answer. You just have to find it.”

She hadn’t appreciated the logic and, she admitted later, the wisdom in that at the time. It had seemed just another sign that much as she liked and was attracted to him, their attitudes about some critical things simply didn’t mesh.

“I don’t want you to get into trouble,” he said now, snapping her back to the present, his concern adding another layer to her surprise. “I know your focus is on kids, and technically Trish isn’t one.”

“But she’s connected, through you, to Redstone. That’s all Zach will need to hear. He’d do anything for one of Josh’s people. It’s once Redstone, always Redstone, for him. And of course, his wife is pure Redstone.”

Sasha smiled as she said it; she greatly admired Reeve Westin, and had when she’d still been Reeve Fox. She’d been a bit intimidated at first, what with the incredible reputation of the Redstone security team, but Reeve had been wonderful, and for her own reasons staunch in her support of what the Westin Foundation did.

And not just because she loved the man responsible for its founding; the foundation had arisen out of the tragic murder of the Redstone Aviation’s administrator’s six-year-old son. It was funded in large part by Redstone, and was now headed up by Zach Westin himself. Another layer had been added when Westin had married Reeve, the member of the stellar Redstone security team who had been assigned to his son’s disappearance. The latest in the growing string of Redstone couples.

“How are they? Zach and Reeve, I mean.”

“Nauseatingly happy,” she said with a grin.

“Figures,” he said wryly. “I swear, it’s in the water at Redstone these days.”

“So I hear. Don’t drink any, who knows what might happen to you.”

He went very quiet then, and she wondered what about her somewhat-lame joke—which, if she was honest, had probably been a bit of a jab at him—had shut him up. For a moment she was afraid he was going to bring up the past, and she didn’t want to deal with that. She’d put him safely and thoroughly behind her, and that’s where she wanted him to stay. She was sure he’d probably done the same. After all, they’d only dated a few months. It wasn’t like they had some huge, involved history between them. They’d had some good times, yes. If she were being honest again, some of the best times she’d ever had.

But you didn’t build the kind of life she wanted on just good times. Well, that and incredible chemistry, she thought. Yes, that had definitely been there.

But it still wasn’t enough. Not for the long haul. Not to end up where her parents had, married thirty-five years and still mad for each other. Or for that matter, like Ryan’s parents, married nearly as long and in the same condition.

But where she appreciated, adored and wanted to emulate her parents, Ryan was embarrassed by his. He took them for granted, more amused by them than anything, and by their staying together through thick and thin when their contemporaries seemed to split like a stream around a rock anytime the slightest difficulty came up.

And then there was his embarrassment when they would engage in displays of affection in public, groaning that he preferred PDAs to be of the computer variety. Sasha had found them incredibly sweet, people to be admired, not embarrassed by. And Ryan had seemed bewildered when she’d pointed that out to him.

“How are your folks?” she asked now. “This must be awful on them.”

“They’re pulling together, as always.” There was, Sasha noted, none of the usual embarrassment in his voice now.

“My mom keeps thinking it must be something she’s done, my dad keeps telling her she’s the perfect mother and it has nothing to do with her.”

“Chances are he’s right, it has nothing to do with her, or them. In a stable family like yours, it’s often simply…being a teenager. Thinking you know everything. Rebellion against the status quo, all that.”

It wasn’t lost on her that these were some of the reasons Ryan had gotten himself into trouble all those years ago. He’d never denied to her that he’d started down the path that had led him into big trouble early on. He’d hacked his first system when he was sixteen, a simple one, that of his high school in an effort to improve his grades. It had been so easy he’d graduated quickly to other hacks.

He’d never gone for banks or financial institutions. Money wasn’t his motivation. Once he’d taken on a gaming company, in an effort to get an advance look at a new game they were developing. Their security had been much tighter than the school’s, and it had taken him a long time.

Redstone he had tackled when he was twenty-one, simply for the challenge. He’d read an article on the brand-new Redstone genius Ian Gamble, who had developed a state-of-the-art firewall that had the computer security industry buzzing. It had taken him nearly a year to find a way past Gamble’s ingenious design.

And if Ian hadn’t been willing to take him on at Josh’s request, Ryan didn’t know where he’d be.

“They don’t have any idea where she might have gone?”

“They’ve thought and thought about it, and can’t come up with anything.” He seemed to hesitate, then said quietly, “I’m worried about them.”

“They’ll probably be fine once we find her.”

“I appreciate the confidence,” he said. “And I know if anybody can find her, you can. But they seem full of…selfdoubt. And part of that’s my fault.”

“Why?” she asked, startled at the sudden turn.

“First I go get into trouble, and now Trish essentially runs away from home? They thought they were doing a good job with us, but now they’re questioning everything they’ve ever done.”

Sasha had only met his parents twice, once by accident when they’d dropped by Ryan’s apartment when she was there, and once after the breakup, when she’d gone by Redstone to return a CD he’d lent her and they’d been visiting. She’d liked them both times. Enough to wish things had gone differently. They seemed to her the epitome of the backbone of America, the kind of people who really made things work, the kind she admired and respected.