Page 294 of Silent Target

“I'm a very good student. Ask around.” I prop my chin on his chest and look at him, his thick gray-streaked black hair a mess from my hands. “I'm staying, Holt. Not just through the holidays. I'm staying in Wildwood. I want this too.”

He wraps both arms around me and holds on like something in him has been waiting years for permission, and kisses the top of my head.

“Good. I’m going to need to build a bigger kitchen.”

I'm smiling into his chest, half asleep, warm to the bone for maybe the first time in my life, when his phone buzzes on the nightstand.

It lights the ceiling blue. He reaches over me easily, and then he sees the screen and his whole body tenses.

The name on the screen says Dane Oakley.

“Who's Dane Oakley?” I ask.

He puts the phone face-down without answering, and pulls me closer, staring at the ceiling in the dark.

Chapter Eight

HOLT

I wake before five with Juliette's gorgeous hair spread out on my pillow. The phone on the nightstand feels like an unexploded grenade.

She sleeps sprawled out, one arm flung across my chest, one bare foot hooked over my shin, like she’s claiming territory. Six got the door open at some point in the night and is a warm weight across both our feet, and for about ninety seconds I lie in the dark grinning.

Then I ease out from under her arm and tuck the quilt up over her shoulder. I pick up my phone and go stand in the cold woodshed.

Dane picks up on the second ring.

“Newell.” His voice is smooth and unhurried, a voice built for telling billionaires their itinerary changed. “You didn't call back yesterday. That's not like you.”

“Busy. What do you want, Dane?”

“A favor, maybe. Or to do you one.” Paper rustles. He's at his desk already. “We took a locate contract three days ago. Family out east, serious money. Daughter went missing from her own wedding, and the family's worried sick. Twenty-four years old… a Juliette Ashton."

Ashton. She’s been living in my house and I get her last name from a contract brief. It goes through me like ice water, and I keep my voice level and bored, the way all those years on the job taught me.

“And this is my problem how?”

“Her car was flagged on a traffic cam on Route 20, headed into the high country. Your general direction, big guy. Thought I'd ask if you'd seen anything before I send bodies up there to freeze.”

“What's the brief say about why she ran?”

“That's the sad part… father says she's unwell. Off her medication since the spring, episodes, paranoia, the works. Wedding stress tipped her over. There's a fiancé, Corbin Vance, even more serious money, apparently still deeply in love, still wants to go through with it.” Paper rustles in the background. “Family wants it quiet, no police, no press, just their girl home safe before she hurts herself.”

I look at the axe in the chopping block. Dane's not a bad man. He talked me down, after the hospital, sat with me and said the right things.

But Dane is good at his job. If I give him Juliette’s name and location, it goes in a file, and the file goes to the client. Suddenly it'll be lawyers and a family with the money to make “unstable” official. And I don’t believe she’s unwell for a second, that’s just their cover story.

“Haven't seen anything,” I say. “But I'll keep my eyes and ears open.”

“You do that… good to hear your voice. Don't be a stranger."

I stand in the shed, clenching my fists. The name of Juliette’s fiancé rang a bell. I have one more call to make, and it can't wait for a decent hour. He answers on the fourth ring, his voice gravelly with sleep.

“Somebody better be dead.”

“Good morning to you too, Hawk.”

“Holt.” My cousin is awake fast. Nothing like the military for training that into you. “What's wrong?”