I’ve seen him before,” he said, his smile gone, his voice serious.
“Where?” she demanded. “When?” Was he all right? Was he safe? Was he in trouble?
“First, tell me who he is. And who he is to you.”
“He’s my brother. My older brother. Scott.”
Something—surprise?—flickered in Luke’s eyes. Followed by sympathy. He definitely didn’t look as threatening. “He was in London,” he said. “At the Tour of Britain.”
“Oh.” She put her fingers to her lips, too late to hold back the cry. To think that she’d been so close to him but hadn’t seen him.
“You’re looking for him, aren’t you?” Luke’s voice was gentle, his blue eyes full of understanding. “That’s why you freelance—so you can travel around and look for him.”
“Yes.” She swallowed, reining in her emotions. “He disappeared ten months ago. But before that, he was a bicycle racer. A really good one. He was part of the US Olympic team in London. Then the trouble started.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“He began disappearing. He claimed to hear voices—his devils, he called them. He tried to hurt himself. Doctors diagnosed schizophrenia. They put him on medication and he began to get better. But he had to give up racing. He continued to follow the races and found work as a photographer.”
“When I saw him on the surveillance videos, he had a camera.”
She closed her eyes, summoning an image of her brother with his camera. In the memory, he was taking pictures of her, laughing and joking around. This was the memory she wanted to keep, not the one of the troubled young man who had left their family so bereft and confused.
She opened her eyes again and found Luke watching her, calm and patient, waiting for more. “We thought everything would be all right,” she said. “The medication had side effects—he gained weight, he couldn’t sleep—but we thought he had accepted that. That he was building a new life for himself. And then one day he just...vanished.”
“No signs of foul play?”
She shook her head. “Later, when we put all the pieces together, I realized there were warning signs—things we ignored because we wanted so desperately for things to be all right. He was unhappy. He stopped socializing with friends. And then we learned he’d stopped seeing his doctors. He didn’t refill his medication. He lied to us and told us everything was fine, but we should have known better. We should have seen the signs...”
His hand covered hers, warm and strong, pulling her out of the mire of guilt she’d almost allowed herself to slip back into. “Beating yourself up won’t bring him back,” he said.
She nodded and gently pulled out of his grasp, though reluctantly. He was so calm and steady, not freaking out at the mention of mental illness and not pulling away from her. She didn’t normally associate law enforcement officers with such empathy. The police who had responded when they’d filed a missing persons report on Scott had been coldly suspicious and unhelpful. They didn’t have time to waste searching for a twenty-six-year-old who’d decided to drop out of society; especially a twenty-six-year-old who was crazy.
“I’m going to ask you a question that’s going to be hard for you to hear,” Luke said. “But I want you to answer honestly.”
She nodded. Hadn’t she already asked a million hard questions of her own over the months since Scott had left?
“Do you think it’s possible that your brother has had anything to do with the bombings at bike races?”
“No!”
“But when we spoke yesterday—when I said I was looking for the bomber—that’s what you were afraid of, wasn’t it? That’s why you showed me his picture this morning?”
Reluctantly, she nodded. “I thought you might believe it of him, but I don’t believe it,” she said. “Scott was never violent toward anyone else. Even when he was at his worst, he only tried to hurt himself, not others.”
“Mental illness can make people do things they wouldn’t otherwise do,” he said. “He may have a grudge against professional cycling since he’s no longer able to participate in a sport he loved.”
“But you only saw him at the one race, right? He wasn’t at the Paris Roubaix, where the first bomb exploded?”
“He wasn’t in any of the videos I saw.” He didn’t add that it was possible her brother had avoided the surveillance cameras; she was grateful for that.
“I don’t think he would be comfortable in a place where he didn’t speak the language,” she said. “Unfamiliar situations upset him, but he knew London from his racing days. He always liked it there.”
“Do you think your brother is here, in Denver?” he asked.
She nodded. “He trained in Colorado for the Olympics and he loved it here. For a while, he even talked about moving here. He has friends competing in the race, so that’s one more reason for him to be here.”
“What will you do if you find him?”
“I think if I could just talk to him, I could convince him to come home with me. There are other medications he can try, ones without as many side effects. I can help him get better if he’ll only give me a chance.”
“Do you think he’ll listen to you?”
“I hope so. We’ve always been close. Our mother died when I was seven and Scott was nine. My dad worked a lot, so it was just the two of us a lot of the time. I could always talk to him when no one else could.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for him, and if I see him, I’ll let you know.”
“I’d really appreciate it.” It was probably the kind of offer anyone would make, but coming from him, it carried more weight. He was going to be looking closely at everyone associated with the race, and since he never forgot a face...
“If you see him, call me at this number.” She pulled a pen and notepad from her purse and scribbled her number, then slid the paper across to him.
He studied the number, then folded the paper and tucked it into his pocket. “I guess that’s one way to get a pretty woman’s phone number,” he said.
His teasing tone surprised a laugh from her. She sipped more coffee and pretended to contemplate her now-cold breakfast, though she was really watching him through the screen of her lashes. A man who could make her laugh despite her sadness was remarkable, indeed. “I hope you’ll be in touch,” she murmured. And not just because of her brother.
“See anybody familiar?”
“By this time, everyone here is familiar.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Then,
