Page 183

“Possibly.”

“And concerning.”

Torin's mouth twitches. “You won't get an argument from me on that score.”

I laugh despite myself, a small relief from the tension holding me together.

Torin smiles. Dimples appear, softening his chiseled features.

The tension crackles between us like a live thing, waiting in ambush beneath every glance and touch and loaded silence.

Somewhere between searching for Maggie and learning how these men move around me, the lines between comfort, attraction, fear, and hope have blurred badly enough that I can’t separate them anymore.

And I’m not even sure I want to.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Torin

We eat in the restaurant of the hotel where Ashby’s booked us a room. Once we get upstairs, Ashby claims the table, spreading out his notes. Briggs immediately occupies the only comfortable chair in the room.

Laurel showers and changes into a blouse and skirt, then sets up camp on one of the double beds. She sits leaning back against the headboard, highlighter in one hand, map spread out before her. I stretch out on the other bed, hands folded under my head.

I keep catching myself watching her, which would be easier to ignore if Briggs didn't keep catching me doing it.

Her look of intense concentration and, occasionally, confusion is entirely Ashby's fault. He's arranged the shelter addresses into geographic clusters on the map, highlighted transit routes in three different, color-coded colors, and covered the margins with notes in small, neat writing.

Ashby leaves the table and perches next to Laurel on the bed, tapping a highlighted section of the map with his pen. "This route makes the most sense. If Maggie followed the shelter referral network, she'd probably head south before cutting east."

Laurel immediately leans in to look. "What about the outreach center on Pine?"

"Already checked."

"You called them?"

"Of course."

Briggs leans back in his chair, long legs stretched out in front of him. "Tell her how many spreadsheets you've made, Ash."

Ashby sighs the sigh of a man used to being attacked for being competent. "Effective information organization is a valuable skill."

"Yeah, but you built a command center."

Laurel presses her lips together, trying not to laugh. It doesn't work. We’re all watching her when the laugh slips out anyway.

Briggs grins like he's just won a bet. Ashby's expression softens in the same way as I can feel mine doing.

Laurel’s laughter lightens the intense mood in the room like it did in the SUV earlier. Suddenly, the search takes a backseat as we share more stories from the past.

Briggs tells us about setting a dumpster on fire when he was nineteen.

According to him, it was an act of anti-capitalist heroism. According to Ashby, it was an act of astonishing stupidity.

"I'm hearing a lot of opinions from a man who wasn't there," Briggs says.

"I'm hearing a lot of revisionist history from a man who nearly got arrested."

Laurel blinks between them. "You actually set a dumpster on fire, Briggs?"