style="font-size:15px;"> She needed to get out of here. Getting one of these notes always revved her up, and she needed to calm down, to think. How she was going to do that when she no longer had the option to go to the one person who had always helped her with that, she wasn’t sure.
Oddly, the moment she decided to get up and leave the dog awoke from his snooze and scrambled to his feet. Before she could rise he was there, as if he’d somehow read her mind and was once more preventing her from leaving. The animal leaned into her, resting his chin on her leg as he stared up at her. And suddenly it was impossible to move.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Quinn suggested.
“And pet Cutter,” Hayley added. “It’s remarkably soothing.”
Kayla nearly smiled at that; people got so silly about their animals. But maybe if she did pet the dog, he’d be satisfied and get out of her way. She lifted a hand and ran it over the dog’s head, then, remembering what Quinn and Hayley had done, added a scratch below his right ear. The dark eyes never wavered, but he let out a sound that was amazingly like a happy sigh.
It was soothing, she thought, startled. She felt calmer, steadier. And when Quinn again suggested she start at the beginning, to her surprise, she did.
“Chad is my big brother. We moved here when I was fourteen. He was sixteen. Two years later, ten years ago, our parents were murdered in a home invasion robbery. The police suspected Chad. He ran. I haven’t seen him since.”
“Well,” Quinn said to Hayley without any of the horrified reaction Kayla was used to whenever she told the tale, “that could give Rafe a run for his money for succinctness.”
“I’m sure she’s had to tell it a few times,” Hayley said.
Although there was a world of sympathy in her voice, the auburn-haired woman didn’t gush. Nor did she recoil from the blunt, grim story. Kayla was a little amazed at how comforting that was. Like petting this darn dog, a motion she only now realized she’d continued the entire time she’d been speaking. And it really did soothe her at a time when she needed it.
“That,” Quinn said, gesturing at the note that began it all, “is from him?”
She nodded. “I get one every few months. He never says where he is, or has been, just that he’s sorry he had to leave, he didn’t do it and he loves me.”
“Where do they come from?” he asked.
“Oregon. Northern California. Idaho. Montana once.”
“So he stays in the northwest, generally.”
She nodded.
“And what do you do when you get one?” Hayley asked.
Kayla shrugged. “The only thing I can do. I go there, wherever he sent it from.”
“Have you ever found anything?”
She sighed. “Nothing useful. I don’t have a current photo, obviously. I tried an agency that aged up an old one for me, but it didn’t help. A few times in the beginning someone thought they remembered seeing him, but most times it’s like he was never there.”
“He’s gotten better at it,” Quinn said, sounding thoughtful.
They both seemed so open, so willing to listen, unlike the police, or even Dane, who had grown so weary of it all.
“I set up a page on a couple of social media sites,” she said, “but it’s the same problem. And I got more junk than genuinely helpful stuff. Even got some real creeps, pretending to want to help.”
She shivered at the memory; if Dane hadn’t insisted on going with her every time who knows what would have happened. Twice, guys who looked nothing like their own profile photos, had shown up obviously with something other than help in mind. They’d taken one look at Dane and departed hastily.
“It’s definitely a cold case after all this time,” Quinn said.
“That’s what the police say, too. So why would you help me?”
“I know something about worrying about a brother,” Hayley said. “I have one I haven’t heard from in months. Walker’s not on the run, or in trouble that I know of, but I don’t know where he is or how he is.”
So the empathy in the woman’s voice had been real, Kayla thought. It helped her decide.
“I believe Chad. He didn’t do it. I don’t care what the police think they know—I know he didn’t. He couldn’t.”
“If it’s true, then we’ll prove that,” Hayley said. “You’re not alone any longer, Kayla. You have—”
She broke off as Cutter’s head came up suddenly. His eyes had been closed as Kayla petted him—in fact, he’d seemed to be snoozing as she stroked her fingers over his soft fur—but something had clearly brought him to alert. She’d heard nothing, but her ears weren’t as keen as a dog’s. As Kayla glanced around, she saw nothing different than it had been moments ago. There had been a few people coming and going while they’d been here, and the dog hadn’t reacted at all.
She would have written it off to unfamiliar dog behavior if not for two things; Hayley never finished her sentence, and Quinn immediately stood up. And suddenly he was no longer the friendly man with the nice smile, but someone altogether different, alert, ready and capable. He glanced around much as she had, but then he looked at the dog, watching, waiting, as if for some signal.
Cutter’s head moved sharply in what looked, impossibly, like a nod.
“What have you got, boy?” Quinn’s voice was low, and Kayla heard something in it that hadn’t been there before, some edge that made her think Quinn could be a very dangerous man. The dog made an answering sound she couldn’t quite describe. Hayley stayed silent, her gaze flicking from man to dog and back, waiting.
The only thing Kayla was sure of was that this, or something like it, had happened often enough that none of the three found it unusual.
She shifted to look around again, wondering what had set the dog off. He seemed to have settled on a direction now, looking out toward the street. And then, unexpectedly, his tail began to wag just slightly. She looked that way and saw nothing amiss—an older couple walking arm in arm, a kid on a skateboard, a man crossing the street from the post office parking lot, a car—
Her gaze shot back to the man. A man heading quickly toward them. The way he moved, with that easy grace and long stride, the way he held his head, the gleam of the morning sun on dark hair….
Dane.
Her pulse kicked up, as it always did at the sight of him. But how had the dog known, of all the people around this morning, that this was the one? And what was he doing here anyway?
Hope leaped in her, but she quashed it; Dane hadn’t been angry when they’d parted, or she would have nurtured that hope that he would, as he always had before, get over it. He’d been quietly weary in a way that told her as nothing else could that he was done.
“It’s not that I don’t admire your loyalty,” he’d said. “I do. I just could
