His Personal Mission

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.

“So she’s a homebody?”

He shrugged. “She liked life here. Her friends, going to the beach. And she volunteered a lot at Safe Haven.”

“Safe Haven?”

“It’s an animal shelter, sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“It’s mainly for the pets of people who have to go to the hospital, or older people who have to go into a nursing home, to take care of them while the owners can’t.”

Sasha smiled widely. “That’s a wonderful idea.”

Ryan nodded; even he had had to admit his little sister had found a worthwhile cause. “It’s the main reason Trish wanted to be a vet, to come back and work for Safe Haven one day. They take care of the animals until the owner can take them back, and when it’s an option, they take them to visit their owners until then. That’s one of the things Trish was doing as a volunteer.”

“Good for her.”

“She was helping with adoptions, too, when they knew the owners wouldn’t be able to take their pet back. They always try to place them with people willing to make the effort to continue the visits.”

Sasha blinked. “To their original people?” Ryan nodded. “That’s beyond wonderful, that’s beautiful. Whoever thought of that should be very proud.”

“Actually, there’s a Redstone connection. Emma McClaren runs it. She’s married to Harlan McClaren. Also known as Mac McClaren.”

Sasha blinked. “The treasure hunter?”

“The same.” He wasn’t surprised she knew the name; anybody even vaguely aware of world happenings had heard of the man who had such a knack for finding and salvaging fortunes both sunken and buried.

“Wow.” Her brow furrowed. “But what’s the Redstone connection?”

Ryan grinned. “Who do you think bankrolled Josh Redstone when he was starting out?”

Her eyes widened. “Really?”

“And now he’s Josh’s right-hand financial go-to guy. He’s got as much of a knack with finances and investments as he does finding treasure. And he’s available to anybody who’s Redstone. He’s why even our file clerks have a retirement plan that’s the envy of the corporate world.”

“I had no idea.”

“Few people do. Neither he nor Josh brags much.”

“You’re quite the Redstone booster, aren’t you?”

He bristled slightly. “Redstone doesn’t need me to boost it. It speaks for itself.”

“That wasn’t criticism. I have the highest opinion of Redstone, and Josh. We wouldn’t exist if not for them, and him, and if we didn’t, I’d be trying to get a job there.”

“Oh.” He felt a bit foolish.

“I like that you want to defend it, though.”

He shrugged, tracing a path through the condensation on his glass. “I don’t know where I’d be if Josh hadn’t…been who he was.”

She knew his story, he’d told her himself when he’d realized he wanted to keep seeing her. He’d told her before she’d heard it from someone else, not wanting her to get some slanted version of his youthful exploits as a malicious hacker who’d tackled Redstone just because they were the biggest kid on the block.

“So how’s your retirement looking?” she asked. Startled, he looked up. Saw the twinkle of humor in her dark eyes. Felt the smile start to curve his mouth before he even realized he was doing it.

“Great,” he said. “Even my dad approves. Thinks I’m finally being responsible. I haven’t had the heart to tell him I signed up half because I wanted the kick of Mac McClaren doing my investing for me.”

She laughed at that, but then, rather more intently, asked, “And the other half?”

Of course she hadn’t missed that. He hadn’t forgotten how rarely she missed anything. The very trait that made her so good at what she did also made her sometimes uncomfortably observant to be around. Especially if you were prone to sliding easily along the surface of life.

“I’m trying,” he said at last. “Somebody told me once I didn’t worry enough.”

Her dark, arched brows shot upward. He’d startled her with that, since she’d been the one who’d said it.

“I doubt they said exactly that,” she said.

“Close enough.”

To his amazement, she seemed flustered. He’d never been able to manage that before, and he wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad sign that he’d done it now. Before he could decide, their food had arrived.

The cheeseburgers were as good as always, but he wasn’t able to give his the attention it deserved. Not with Sasha sitting across the table from him. He was grateful when, between bites—he’d always liked the fact that she enjoyed food—she turned back to the reason they were here.

“So this is uncharacteristic of your sister?”

“Very. Like I said, she loved living here, and her friends, and what she did at Safe Haven.”

“Have you talked to them? The shelter?”

“I talked to one of the other volunteers. She said Trish left Emma a note saying essentially the same thing.”

“Did she have a work schedule there, or as a volunteer did she just drop in whenever?”

He frowned. “I’m not sure.”

“We’ll check that out, then. And the girlfriend. Anyone else you can think of?”

The French fry Ryan had just swallowed seemed to jam in his suddenly tight throat. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d needed somebody to believe, somebody to take his word for the fact that something was wrong with the way his sister had just up and left everything she knew and loved.

“You’ll help?” he said, almost wonderingly.

“Of course,” Sasha said. “It’s what I do.”

And if he was wishing she meant that personally as well as a representative of the Westin Foundation helping someone from Redstone, that was his problem, Ryan told himself. It didn’t matter what he wished, or that he wished it from Sasha Tereschenko.

What mattered was that they find Trish.

Safe.

Chapter 3

“Is this taking you away from something else?”

Sasha glanced at Ryan in the passenger seat before pulling out into traffic; they were taking her car out to Safe Haven because he was low on gas and it was a long drive. And, as she’d pointed out, she got paid mileage.

“Not at the moment. That case we just finished was the only thing right now.”

“You and…Russ.”

“Yes.” She saw something flicker in his eyes; he’d never liked Russ. And she was female enough to be flattered when she’d realized why.

“Is he still…”

“Hitting on me? Tirelessly.”

“Did you ever give in?”

“No. Not,” she added, “that it’s your business.”

“I know that.”

He said it so quietly she changed her tone. “He only wants me because I don’t want him. He finds that…hard to believe.”

“He would,” Ryan muttered.

Sasha stifled a smile.

“Happy ending?” he asked.

It took her an instant to make the shift. “The case?”

“Yeah.”

She had to turn her attention back to her driving as a chance to get out of The Grill driveway presented itself—not something to be bypassed even midday in this busy area. It also gave her a chance to process the thought that she was surprised he’d asked. The old Ryan, the two-years-ago Ryan, wouldn’t have even thought of that.

That she doubted he would even have cared back then was one of the reasons she’d walked away.

“Yes,” she said once they had merged safely into the number two lane. “We found him in time.”

“Little one?”

Again she was surprised. “Yes. Eight years old. Noncustodial parent took him.”

“That’s kind of common, isn’t it?”

Now she was really surprised. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

“I’m lucky my folks stayed together. Seems like all my friends’ parents divorced, remarried, had more kids, divorced, and on and on.”

“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.

She didn’t like the thought of them second-guessing their entire lives.

“I’ll talk to them. Maybe I can help them see that’s not true.”

He seemed relieved at that idea. So he did care, she thought.

“Will they be home tonight?”

He nodded. “Dad gets home about six, and mom’s always home in the afternoons.”

“Is she still working for that doctor?”

“Yeah. And Dad’s still crunching numbers at the bank.”

She remembered suddenly how he’d once told her his dad had to be the most boring guy on the planet. Same boring work, at the same boring place, for over twenty years. That had been, she realized in retrospect, the beginning of the end. The dismissive assessment had angered her. She couldn’t be with someone who didn’t realize the value of that, who didn’t make the connection between that kind of steadiness and his own comfortable, carefree life.

And she’d told him so, in no uncertain terms.

“Almost as boring as sitting at a computer all day,” she said, not bothering to keep the snap out of her voice. And then wondering why; it wasn’t like it mattered anymore.

“Computers aren’t boring!” His defensiveness was quick, instinctive. “They’ve changed the world, made amazing things possible.” He gestured at the GPS screen set into the dash of her car. “You’d be fumbling with maps if you didn’t have that thing to give you turn-by-turns right to Safe Haven’s front door.”

“True enough,” she had to admit.

“They’re not boring at all.”

As they pulled to a stop at a red light, she turned slightly to look at him.

“Did you ever think that maybe numbers aren’t boring to your father? That maybe he likes the…the logic of them, the symmetry, the balance? Did you ever think that your blessed computers are based on numbers, and that you probably inherited some of your father’s knack with them, and that that’s the reason you’re good with them?”

She could see by his expression that he hadn’t.