Smokescreen by Meredith Fletcher and Vicki Hinze Doranna Durgin Read Free Book Online Page A

in trouble.
     
    “Jeth.”
    Jethro spun away from the lure of the hospital vending machine, so certain he’d been alone…and yet there she was. Leaning against the corner, one ankle hooked over the other. Still looking not quite as he kept expecting, no matter how many times he saw her. His eyes kept looking for details and edges that simply weren’t there.
    But they were on his camera.
    “It’s Jethro,” he said, correcting her yet one more time.
    “Sure,” she said, but there was something in those honey-amber eyes of hers that failed to convince him she’d heed that detail. The eyes, now…those were the same. He hadn’t known for sure until they’d reached the hospital and he’d seen her blinking under the well-lit emergency entrance.
    Twins, he decided. Identical twins, without quite being identical at all. That could explain two women so similar. Explaining how one of those twins had shown up in his pictures instead of the young woman and the hooker to whom he’d actually spoken…that was something else altogether. He wished he had the camera here right now—the temptation to take a picture of Sam was overwhelming.
    He suspected she wouldn’t allow it.
    And in the end, it didn’t matter. Other than satisfying his natural compulsion to dig down to the truth of things, it didn’t matter.
    What mattered was finding his sister…and withevery moment that passed, he felt her slipping away. Madonna had told him how quickly they moved through the system. Sam had confirmed it any number of times. Lizbet had been gone only a matter of days, but for all Jethro knew, those days had been plenty of time to send her along her way. To her new life. Away from the scum of a husband who’d beaten her.
    Jethro had tried to help. He’d given Lizbet a place to stay, the name of a good divorce lawyer. He drove her to support meetings when she was afraid to go by herself.
    No doubt someone at one of those meetings had first spoken to her of the underground. And now—after her husband had tried to get her back, failed and gone out and killed someone on a raging spree of drunken anger; after Lizbet and Jethro had both thought her finally, truly, safe; after the trial had been delayed and that son of a bitch had somehow come up with the considerable bail—
    Now she was gone.
    I hadn’t given up, he thought at her, wherever she was. I would have seen it through with you.
    “Jeth?” There Sam still stood, still silhouetted in black against a worn desert sand wall, the same casual pose—this time with a tilt to her head and concern in those eyes.
    “Jethro,” he said without thinking. “Where’d you go? I turned around and poof, I was alone.”
    “Thought I’d run out on you, did you? That explains the vending machine. There’s solace to be found in junk food.” She unhooked her ankles and leaned back against the wall. “You might try bribing me with a Milky Way.”
    He didn’t want to bribe her. He wanted answers. Any answer that would get him closer to Lizbet with the clock tick-tick-ticking away. But he saw the fatigue inher eyes and counted up the time they’d been together and surmised that they could both use food. They weren’t likely to find any such thing in this machine, only a close approximation thereof….
    He bought her a Milky Way.
    She took the first bite and closed her eyes as if heaven had descended upon her, chewing with obvious delight. Shoot, if that’s what candy did for her, what would she do if he—
    He blinked. He hadn’t expected that thought. Not in the middle of this particular night and this particular crisis. He quickly thumbed change into the machine and pushed the keypad to drop another candy bar into his waiting hand.
    Sam swallowed. She didn’t open her eyes when she said, “Madonna sang a pretty song to the creeps who beat her. She wasn’t going to tell them anything—not even as much as she told you. She said she liked you but they were mean even before they quit