orange-cranberry muffins out of the fridge and took it and her mug over to the table. Patricio grabbed a couple of plates out of the cupboard and followed.
“So what are you doing here?” Sabrina asked as they sat. “I wasn’t expecting you, and unfortunately, I’ll have to go to work soon.” Her house sat on the southern edge of Port Renegade, so it had an unobstructed view of the mountains from the kitchen and dining room. She scanned the ridge as she sipped her coffee, knowing that it wouldn’t yield any clues about Tara’s disappearance from this distance.
“Handling security for a political fund-raiser,” he replied. “Jessie told me about Tara when I called you last night. Said you were down with a migraine and she was here taking care of you, so I came over and sent her home.” Wrapping his big hands around the mug, Patricio looked at her…no, through her would have been a more appropriate way to phrase it. Of all of her brothers, he seemed to be the one who read her best, who could understand her even when she hadn’t said a word.
Still looking out the window, Sabrina pondered the mountain.
“So what’s up with this Donovan dude?”
Whipping her head around, Sabrina could only stare at her brother. He took a drink of his coffee, considering her serenely over the mug.
“He was hanging around the house when I got here, but Jessie wouldn’t let him in,” he continued. “I’m thinking anger issues.”
She shrugged, trying to look nonchalant.
“Do I need to make him go away?”
The piece of muffin between her fingers crumbled at the sudden pressure of her hand, raining crumbs down on the tabletop. “What? No!” Patricio was a well-known bodyguard with training in a million different ways to “make someone go away.” And as uncomfortable as Aaron now made her, she hardly wanted to sic her mad, bad and dangerous-to-know brother on him.
Then again, with Aaron’s cop training and all that muscle, maybe he’d be the one to give Patricio a run for his money.
Something on her face as she contemplated Aaron’s muscles must’ve tipped her brother off, because he set down his coffee cup and leaned forward.
“Are you involved with him?”
Whoa. Now there was an awkward question. Wrapping her hands around her own mug, trying to leach some of the warmth from it, Sabrina dropped her gaze to the maple tabletop and shook her head. “No.”
“Sabrina Inez.”
Might as well confess. Patricio and his weird intuition would figure it out anyway, damn him to everlasting torment. “We’ve known each other for a while. We flirted, but…” She paused, thinking about the time she’d run into Aaron at the annual Police Ball. She’d been someone else’s date, but they’d danced, they’d talked and they’d danced again. Then she’d said good-night to her date, and she and Aaron had gone to an all-night café, where they’d had coffee and had talked some more, until the sun had risen over the snow-capped Olympic Mountains and the waitress had offered them breakfast. She’d thought about him nonstop for the next few days, thrilled at the sound of his voice when he called her and told her how he was trying to get away to see her again. Before that had happened, his daughter had gone missing. But she didn’t want to share all of those details, not even with her brother.
“I think he almost asked me out once, but that’s it.” Basically, that was all the details boiled down to.
“You were interested in him,” Patricio said, not a shred of doubt in his voice at the idea.
“Yes. But…” She bit her lower lip, considering her words. “He’s Rosie’s father,” she told him quietly.
Patricio leaned back in his chair with a low whistle. He knew all about Rosie—she’d spilled her guts to all three of her brothers after declaring Rosie’s trail cold. “And you called off the search for his daughter. They never found her, did they?”
Sabrina shook her head, wincing a little at her brother’s choice of pronoun. She was the “they” who had never found Rosie Donovan. She was the one who’d had to give up, who’d convinced the entire SAR network and the police it was time to declare the trail cold. How painful that must be to a parent, to have someone get in their face and deliberately kill any last bit of hope they were clinging to. She knew Aaron hated her now, and she had never blamed him for that.
Patricio tapped his fingers against the smooth, green ceramic of his mug, looking as if he was weighing his words as he stared out the window at the mountains. “There are similarities between Tara’s disappearance and Rosie’s,” he said. “But you already knew that.”
She nodded, unable to form words around the lump in her throat.
“Before he left last night, Donovan said the police are considering the possibility that you have a serial kidnapper at large. He seemed pretty sure of it, himself.”
She knew that, too, but to have it put into words was just too much. Abruptly, she pushed her chair back from the table, leaving her coffee cup full and her muffin barely touched. “I have to shower.” I need a minute.
Patricio just nodded, a movement which she barely processed before whirling around and heading up the stairs to the master bath. Kicking the door closed once she reached it, she stripped off her sweatpants and fitted T-shirt and turned on the water, closing her eyes with relief as it pounded the skin of her back with its warmth. Steam rose in thin curls around her, and she leaned back and let the water stream over her hair, the sound of the shower jets drowning out everything else.
A serial kidnapper. She could barely bring herself to consider the possibility, although of course it had been lurking in the back of her mind like a malignant shadow.
Rosie Donovan had vanished over six months ago. Which meant that the serial kidnapper was most likely a serial killer—Patricio just hadn’t wanted to voice that possibility. And if they had a serial killer on their hands…
Tara was already gone.
One more colossal failure to add to a growing list. One more search she’d have to call off when the trail went cold. One more set of parents whose hearts she’d have to break. One more young girl sacrificed to the whims of a madman.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit.” She reached her hands up to tangle her fingers in the thick, wet ropes of her hair. And then her hands moved around to her face, scrubbing at her eyes, blending the tears into the water running down her cheeks.
She’d never forget the day Aaron Donovan had started hating her.
“Aaron, it’s been two weeks, with no new sign of Rosie.”
She mouthed the words in the shower as every last detail of that horrible day came back to her, playing in her mind like a motion picture she couldn’t turn off.
She remembered how his mouth had twitched ever so slightly when she’d said his daughter’s name. She’d reached up to wipe the rain out of her eyes. She hadn’t had time to put on a hat or rain hood, and her hair had been soaked through with icy water just like his. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but you know the likelihood of her surviving up there isn’t…” Sabrina hadn’t been able to bring herself to even finish that sentence.
His jaw, dusted with more
