Читать книгу Her Sister's Keeper - Julia Penney - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

TWO HOURS AFTER officially identifying Stephanie’s body at the Beverly Hills Regency, Melanie was waiting in numb silence at the police station, fingers curled around a cup of lukewarm vending machine coffee, staring blankly at the constant parade of officers, detectives and civilians that shuffled past the row of seats outside of Captain Carolyn Murphy’s office. She’d never been so cold in all her life, though she knew the chill she felt had nothing to do with the ambient temperature of the station house.

Stephanie was dead. She’d died at the Beverly, in the same top-floor two-bedroom suite Ariel had booked every time one of her movies was released. According to the investigators, Ariel had allegedly made the reservation over the phone, using her Harris surname instead of her stage name to maintain privacy, but according to the hotel clerk, Stephanie had checked into the room with a young infant. Baby things had been strewn throughout the suite, the baby was missing and nobody had seen any sign of Ariel…but she had been there.

Nobody had seen her enter or leave the hotel, but the little beaded bag lying on the floor near Stephanie belonged to Ariel. Melanie had spent most of the past two hours telling investigators almost everything she knew about her best friend and the missing Ariel. But Melanie was exhausted and so emotionally drained that some of her memories felt almost dreamlike now. It was hard to recall that last distraught message from her sister, word for word, so she hadn’t volunteered any information about Mitch. When Captain Murphy had questioned her about who the father of Ariel’s baby was, Melanie had told her the father was dead—and repeated the fact that she and her sister hadn’t been on speaking terms for the past six months.

Could Ariel have had something to do with Stephanie’s death? Was her sister somehow involved? Why had Stephanie been at the suite with Ariel’s baby? Where had Ariel been with her fancy beaded purse? She only carried that when she was going out someplace jazzy for the evening. It was one of her favorite little costume extras. The forgotten purse and baby things bespoke an ominous degree of haste and panic in Ariel’s departure from the room.

“Melanie?”

She heard Dr. Mattson’s rough, masculine voice and glanced up, feeling a welcome jolt at the sight of him.

“Sorry this is taking so long,” he said. “I know how hard this must be for you, but we needed to compile your notes as soon as possible. The first twenty-four hours of an investigation like this is critical.”

“I understand,” she said, clinging to his every word. “Have you located my sister?”

“Not yet. She’s not at her apartment and hasn’t been seen there for some time. We’ve put out an all- points bulletin to locate her and the baby. I’m sure she’ll turn up soon. Look, you’ve had a bad shock, and you really shouldn’t be alone. Is there someone I can call for you who could come pick you up? A relative or friend?”

“I’m fine, Dr. Mattson. Really.” To prove her point, Melanie tried to stand, but she sat back down abruptly as her knees betrayed her and a wave of dizziness darkened the edges of her vision. “I’ll be fine in a moment,” she amended, taking several deep, slow breaths.

In point of fact, the last place Melanie wanted to go on this ghastly day was home. She wanted desperately to talk to someone about Stephanie, but Rachel, her coworker and a friend of Stephanie’s, wasn’t answering her cell phone, and neither was Victor. He might be able to shed some light on Ariel’s activities. According to Stephanie, he had very generously offered Ariel the caretaker’s cottage at Blackstone to use until she and Mitch sorted out their lives, but to Melanie’s knowledge Ariel had declined. Ariel, addicted to the nightlife, was too fond of her apartment in the city, which was conveniently close to all the clubs and bars she loved to frequent.

Nonetheless, it had surprised Melanie that Victor had offered the cottage to Ariel. It had surprised her even more that Victor hadn’t mentioned this to her at all, that she’d had to learn about it from Stephanie. No doubt Victor had only been trying to help the struggling Ariel who, despite the high fees she’d commanded as a successful actress prior to her pregnancy, let money flow through her hands like water, saving little against just such a contingency as an unexpected maternal hiatus. And, of course, Mitch—damn the man, she still couldn’t think about him without feeling that sharp stab of pain— only made the big money when he was taking the big risks as a stuntman.

It was probable that the couple had faced grim financial restrictions as Ariel’s pregnancy had progressed. For the life of her, Melanie couldn’t imagine the two of them trying to make a go of it. Ariel was so ethereal, her head lost in the clouds, drifting and dreaming her way through life. Mitch was so animal, so basic and so dangerously sexual. Maybe that was what drew the women to him.

Melanie shivered and tightened her arms around herself, focusing on Dr. Mattson’s rugged face, the stubble darkening his jaw and making him look more masculine than ever. He was as weary as she, yet his eyes were clear and keen, and honest in a way that Mitch’s had never been. In spite of the horrors of the day, she felt drawn to him, safe in his presence, and she most definitely didn’t want to go home. Not yet, anyway.

“You really shouldn’t drive,” Dr. Mattson was saying. “Look, I’d be happy to drop you off at a friend’s house….”

Melanie was taken aback by his unexpected offer. “Thank you, Dr. Mattson. I’d appreciate that. And, if it’s not too much trouble…my car is still at the Beverly.”

“Not to worry,” Kent said. “I’ll arrange for an officer to deliver it to your house, just give the desk sergeant over there the address and your car keys.” He held up his hand as she began thanking him again. “It’s the least I can do, after all you’ve been through today. I’ll go round up an unmarked car, and you just point me in the right direction.”

BLACKSTONE WAS NEARLY an hour’s drive from the station house, not because it was all that far as the crow flies, but because the Santa Monica Freeway was choked with bumper-to-bumper traffic. Melanie was content to leave the driving to Dr. Mattson. Twenty minutes into the trip, as she gazed out the passenger window in a blank haze of exhaustion, he said, grinning, “Are we there yet?”

She cast him an apologetic look. “It’s not much farther. I’m sorry, Dr. Mattson. I should have taken a cab. You’ve had a long day, too.”

“I don’t mind.” He shrugged. “This is actually a pretty drive. Living so near the ocean you’d think I’d see it more often. Fact is, I hardly ever lay eyes on the Pacific, except when I’m flying to the ranch.”

“You’re lucky to have a place where you can get away from it all.”

“I couldn’t survive without it,” he said. “Especially with this job. There are days when it’s hard to find the good side of anything, kind of like today. But then I think about Chimeya at sunrise, when the sun rounds out of the east, the sky lights up from inside itself and the mountains glow like fire…. There’s nothing else like it, and no place better for centering the soul.”

Melanie felt the tension in the pit of her stomach ease as she listened to Kent. “It sounds lovely,” she said. “Are you really going back there tonight, with all that’s gone on today?”

“I do my best thinking there, and there’s no commuter traffic. Just a fast taxi and a straight one- hour shot to heaven.”

Melanie studied his profile as he spoke. She wanted to ask him if he was married, but didn’t know how to phrase the question without sounding nosy. How could he not have a partner in his life? He was damn near perfect. In fact, she was still searching for some annoying fault, some irritating quality that would reaffirm her belief that she was far better off without a man in her life. He had to have at least one or two bad habits, aside from drinking too much coffee.

“You told us that your sister had a lot of male friends,” he said, glancing at her, “and that you hadn’t spoken to her in six months, but maybe you could tell me a bit more about who the father of her baby was? Who knows? It might give us some clues to help us find her.”

His tone was casual, but Melanie felt the anxious knot form in her stomach again, even as a voice within whispered, Tell him. Tell him everything.

She wanted to. She sensed that Dr. Mattson knew she was withholding information. His long silences had been filled with the loudest unspoken questions that Melanie had ever endured. She bit her lower lip and stared out at the thinning blur of traffic as they sped away from the city. The irony of this situation was not lost on her. What she couldn’t, wouldn’t, talk about in Dr. Mattson’s office was no longer her secret to keep. Not as long as Ariel and the baby were missing. She drew a painful breath and released it slowly.

“The father was Mitch Carson, and he was my fiancé.”

AS KENT DROVE DOWN Blackstone’s private drive, access to which had been ensured by Melanie’s obvious acquaintance with the security guard stationed at the gatehouse, he was struck by how isolated and unique this property was. He liked the way the natural beauty of the place had been allowed to flourish, an unusual sight amidst this obsessive modern culture of manicuring every blade of grass.

He also liked the way Melanie had begun to open up to him, talking about her fiancé, her sister and her wedding day. It hadn’t been easy for her to broach the subject, but once she started, the words came faster and faster, tumbling out in a rush to release all the pent-up emotions of the past six months. When she had finished, she slumped back in her seat with a dazed look, as if she couldn’t quite believe she’d finally confronted the demons of her past. For the last five minutes she’d been silent, gazing out the window. Kent was glad for the break in conversation. It gave him a few moments to process her revelations and how they may or may not be connected to the day’s events.

“That’s the guest cottage,” Melanie said, rousing as he rounded a curve and a simple gabled dwelling tucked in a grove of eucalyptus trees came into view. “The mansion’s on top of the ledges, another quarter of a mile beyond here.” She sat up straighter. “Look, the door’s open. Maybe Victor’s inside. If you’ll stop here, Dr. Mattson, I’ll go check.”

Kent parked the unmarked police car and followed her to the cottage. The spicy sweet scent of the rose bushes lining the brick path mingled with the salty Pacific air. Grapevines adorned both sides of the arbored entry and a purple wisteria twined against the shingled outer walls. Six o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun’s rays were strong and golden, spilling into this small Tudor-style cottage as Melanie pushed the door completely open.

“Victor?” she called out as she entered. “Vic?”

Kent stepped over the threshold and into the dim coolness that smelled faintly of cedar paneling, leather and wood smoke. He stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the lower light level, then followed Melanie into the living room, which was dominated by a beautiful fieldstone fireplace, the old andirons still cradling several half-burned logs. Built-in bookshelves lined both sides of the fireplace, and comfortable leather furnishings and a braided rug complemented the restful feel of the cozy space.

“We used to live here, Ariel and I,” Melanie murmured, looking around.

“For how long?”

“Three years.” Melanie walked to the bookshelves and scanned the titles. “Victor offered it to me a few months after I began working for him. He knew I was struggling to raise my sister and having a hard time making ends meet on a gofer’s pay. We lived here until Ariel landed her first big movie role and Victor’s wife had a few too many glasses of sherry and came here to tell us she thought it was high time we moved on.” Melanie glanced at him with a wry smile. “I never told Victor that the reason we left was because his wife was jealous of Ariel. At the time I thought that was ludicrous. Ariel was only nineteen. She was still just a baby…or so I thought.”

Kent followed Melanie up the narrow stairs, where four doors opened onto the landing. The first room Melanie looked in was big, with a queen-size antique sleigh bed and two dormer windows framing an ocean view over the treetops. “This used to be my room,” she said. “At night, with the windows open, I could hear the waves pounding against the Blackstone ledges.”

The bedroom was simply furnished and uncluttered. There was one framed picture atop the bureau, which Melanie studied for a few silent moments before turning away abruptly. Kent glanced at the photograph, a high quality black and white of a lean, athletic man on a Harley wearing an arrogant grin, leather pants and a dark T-shirt. Arms like Sylvester Stallone’s and features reminiscent of a young and virile Marlon Brando.

Melanie drifted out of the room and into the corridor. Kent followed as she passed a second door that opened onto a tiny bath. He glanced inside. Old-fashioned porcelain sink with brass bistro fixtures, small claw-foot tub, vintage pull-chain toilet. Everything clean and neat as a pin. A third door opened onto a smaller bedroom. “This was Ariel’s room,” Melanie said, stepping inside and looking around. “The wisteria vine growing against the cottage was so thick and strong that she’d climb down it like a monkey and spend the night raising hell with her friends. Ariel hated school, and couldn’t have cared less about her grades. It’s a wonder they graduated her.”

Melanie paused outside the fourth door off the landing. “This used to be what we called the study, but Ariel never used it for studying.” She was still smiling as she swung the door inward. She gasped and froze, hand still on the doorknob. Kent glanced over her shoulder and saw a charming nursery, painted in pale pastels, complete with a crib, baby toys and a changing table. A tiny writing desk set beneath the window and a day bed completed the furnishings. “Stephanie must have been wrong. Ariel did come back,” she said, gazing around the small space. “I knew she’d been trying to work things out with Mitch before he was killed. She must have hoped he’d move in with her here and help raise the baby.”

“What?” Kent burst out. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you tell Captain Murphy that your sister lived in Beverly Hills?”

“Yes. That’s true. She has an apartment there which she loves, but according to Stephanie, Victor offered the guest cottage to Ariel a few months before the baby was born. Stephanie told me she didn’t take him up on his offer, but she was obviously wrong.”

Kent stared, first at Melanie, then back at the baby things. He had to restrain himself from cursing aloud. “So you’re telling me your missing sister might have been living here?”

Melanie shook her head, puzzled. “It doesn’t really look like they were living here. I mean, there are no personal belongings, just that damn picture of Mitch and a nursery that looks as if it’s never been used. I’m sure Victor would have told me if Ariel had moved in.”

Kent stood beside her, analyzing every detail of the small room. The entire cottage had an empty feel to it, and this room was no exception. Even the desktop was bare, although… Kent spotted the small, cream-colored envelope propped against the base of the table lamp at the same time as Melanie did and they crossed the room together. On the face of the envelope, in a childlike scrawl, a name had been written and underlined twice.

Mel

Kent heard Melanie’s sharp intake of breath. “Oh, Ari,” she said as she reached to retrieve the message.

“Wait,” he said, staying her hand with his own. “You shouldn’t touch it. It’s evidence….” Her hand was ice-cold in his, and as she lifted her pleading eyes, he felt his resolve begin to crumble. After a few moments he sighed and reached into his jeans pocket for the fresh pair of latex gloves he’d grabbed earlier at the Beverly Hills Regency. “All right,” he said. “I’ll open the letter and lay it on the desk for you to read, but you can’t touch it. Understand?”

She nodded.

The envelope wasn’t sealed, which made things easier for Kent. He withdrew the folded sheet of matching stationery, acutely aware that Melanie was clinging to the edge of the desk and her face was even paler than it had been before. He hesitated, caught between knowing what was right and what his heart was telling him to do. Not only did he stand to lose his badge twice over for doing this, but Melanie was probably going to faint on him again.

And yet, she deserved to read the note. Hell, if it was his sister that was missing under suspicious circumstances and his best friend that T. Ray was examining probably at this very moment in the hospital morgue, wouldn’t he want to study the note before the investigators arrived and took it to the crime lab? Damn straight he would, no matter what it said, good or bad. And so Kent carefully unfolded the piece of stationery and laid it flat on the desktop.

Dear Mel, I’ve messed up everything so bad…

The words seemed to float up from the pages to her eyes. As she read, the unmistakable delicate scent of CK One, Ariel’s favorite perfume, wafted up from the paper. Melanie swallowed hard, blinked a tear from her eye and prayed that the letter would hint at Ariel’s whereabouts, and reassure her in some way that her sister was all right.

I’ve ruined my life and, worst of all, I’ve de¬ stroyed the lives of the people I love most. I don’t blame you for not wanting to talk to me. I don’t even blame you for hating me. After what happened with Mitch, I guess it’s what I deserve. But, I have to tell you—beg you to understand— I never, ever meant to hurt you. What I did was selfish and stupid, I know, but when I first met Mitch it was love at first sight, or at least that’s what I thought. You must be able to understand that.

Melanie certainly could. It was the same effect Mitch had had on her when Victor had introduced them on the location of Hammerhead Row. The movie was full of explosions, fights, high-speed car chases and numerous other risky stunts, and Mitch had been the body double for the lead actor.

Melanie remembered the almost electrical charge she had felt when she and Mitch met. Hammerhead Row had been shot almost entirely on location in San Francisco, and that required Melanie’s constant presence. The initial mutual attraction between them had led to lunches, which soon evolved into dinner dates at various city hot spots. By the time the movie was into its third week of production they were sleeping together. In fact, Melanie could still blush recalling those first passionate encounters in Mitch’s trailer. By the time the film wrapped they were living together and by the premiere, they were engaged. And all that time, Mitch was playing both Melanie and Ariel.

Melanie forced the memories out of her mind and turned her attention back to the letter.

I don’t expect your forgiveness, but maybe one day you will want to meet your new niece. She’s so beautiful, and I hope she takes after you. Strong, smart, brave and dependable. All the things I’m not. All the things I admired so much about you. All the things I lost. And please try to forgive Mitch. I think, no, I believe, he realized how much he had hurt both of us. He wasn’t a bad man. He was just caught up in the Hollywood scene and he let it go to his head. He really wanted it to work between us and to support this baby. I regret she will never know her father.

Mel, I love you. If nothing else, please believe that. I would like to tell you that in person, and maybe someday in the future I can. We’re going away for a few weeks but maybe when I get back we can come visit you. Motherhood is going to be the toughest part I’ve ever played. It’s going to be hard and it’s going to be lonely, but I can do it. I have you for a role model, after all. You’re so strong, and I’ve been so weak, but that’s going to change, I promise you that. And I ask you to promise me one thing. No matter how you feel about me, if anything ever happens to me, please, I beg you, take care of my little girl.

So, for now this is goodbye. When we get back, I’ll call you. I can only hope it is a call you will take.

All my love,

Ari.

These were the most honest, self-aware and heartfelt words she had heard from her sister in years. And, thanks to Melanie’s obstinate refusal to talk to her sister, this last communiqué was one- sided. “What a fool I’ve been,” she whispered.

“Are you all right?” Kent asked.

He was standing very close. Probably ready to catch me again.

“Just give me a minute,” she said, not turning. Instead, she looked up from the letter and out the window. The sun was over the Pacific and the waters gleamed with a thousand jewels on the waves. It had been their favorite time of day. In happier times, it was the kind of late afternoon when she would have come home from a long day on set with a huge bag of Chinese takeout and a wealth of Hollywood gossip to share with her little sister. The two would take the food and a blanket down to the private beach below the estate and have a feast, staying until the last golden rays fell below the waves.

“We never did see it,” she said out loud.

“Excuse me?” Kent said.

“The green flash, we never saw it in all the time we were here.”

Kent was looking at her oddly. Perhaps he was thinking the letter was the final straw needed that day to break the back of her sanity.

Without turning from the window, she said, “You mean to say that you live and work on the California coast and you’ve never heard of the green flash?”

“Hey, I just work on the coast. I’m a mountain man, born and bred.”

She finally turned toward him. “Few people have seen it and lots of folks don’t even believe it ever happens. But the story goes, on evenings when the conditions are right, as the sun sets behind the ocean its last rays, just for an instant, shine through the waves far out to sea. In that instant the sunlight flashes green across the sky. Ari and I spent a lot of nights down on the beach waiting to see it.”

In the ensuing silence, Melanie was able to collect herself and, for the first time in those awful months since the aborted wedding, think clearly. It was as if a fog was lifting and she could look inside with brutal objectivity. She had spent the last six months foolishly blaming everyone but herself for her misery. She had blamed Mitch for his philandering, she had blamed Victor for introducing her to Mitch and most of all she had blamed Ari for ruining her life. Now she realized the only blame belonged on her shoulders. She had been faced with a choice: deal with what had happened and move on, or wallow in self-pity and melancholy, thereby punishing everyone around her.

Her choice had cost her dearly. One by one her friends, all but Stephanie, had given up on her, leaving her to her own state of misery. Her work had suffered to the point that even Victor had warned her that her career was in real jeopardy. And the heaviest toll of all had been the erosion of her relationship with Ariel. Well, no more. The dreadful, endless day that had started with the desperate move of seeking help from an outside professional had somehow brought her to this point of realization: The only one who could help her was her. On the spot she made a series of promises to herself. No more excuses. No more self-pity. No more wallowing in the past.

She straightened, squared her shoulders and turned to Kent. “Dr. Mattson, we have to find my sister as soon as possible.”

SOMETHING IN Melanie’s voice made Kent look closely at her. Gone was the vulnerable patient who had bolted from his office. Gone, too, was the bewildered woman who had just suffered through the discovery of her best friend’s corpse, the official identification of the body and nearly two hours of police questioning.

Instead, he had the distinct impression he was seeing the real Melanie Harris for the first time, and he marveled at the change. Kent would have predicted months, if not years of intensive therapy to put back together the broken woman he had met that morning. He raised an eyebrow.

“Do you know where she was planning to go?”

“No, I don’t, but at least we know she’s all right. This letter was dated two days ago. She knew she was going away and must have been planning to have Victor give me that letter,” Melanie said. “Victor might know where she’s gone.”

“Who’s this Victor you keep mentioning?”

“Victor Korchin. He owns this estate. He’s my boss, and a good friend.”

“Why is that name so familiar?”

“Victor’s a film director.”

“Ah, yes. Korchin Studios.” Murphy had mentioned that name to him earlier. This time, Kent did curse aloud. “No doubt Victor has close ties to your sister, who happens to be a successful actress,” he prodded.

Melanie hesitated. “Yes. Victor’s been like a father to her.”

“But somehow you just forgot to mention to us this little connection between the two of them?”

Melanie dropped her eyes from his accusing stare. “I’m sorry.”

“I hope he knows something about your sister’s whereabouts, since she didn’t leave many clues in that letter and the only other person we might have questioned is dead. I’ll have a couple of detectives dispatched here immediately to question him and search this place properly, now that we’ve messed up any potential evidence.” He reached for the cell phone clipped to a holder on his hip, but before he could make his call, it rang.

“Mattson here,” he said.

Melanie could tell that Kent was on the receiving end of a call from his boss.

“Hold on a sec,” Kent was saying as he fished a notepad out of his pocket and leaned over the desk, pen in hand. “Okay, what do you have?” He listened, scribbling furiously. “Got it. Thanks. And Murph? You might want to send a team out to Victor Korchin’s estate. Ariel Moore and her baby might have been living at the guest cottage here. We found a letter that she wrote two days ago to her sister, and she could still be somewhere on the premises. We haven’t approached the main house yet.” He gave her the address before ending the call and turning back to Melanie.

“Do they have any leads?” she asked.

“No, but they’ve made a positive ID of the other victim found earlier this morning.”

“There was another victim? Who?”

Kent paused. “What the hell. You’ll probably hear it on the evening news.” He flipped through the pages of his notepad. “Her name was Rachel Fisher, age thirty-seven, and she lived at…”

“Sixty-five East Corinth, right on the beach,” Melanie said, her mouth going dry as her heart skipped several beats.

Kent appeared stunned. “Don’t tell me you’re psychic.”

Melanie shook her head, trying unsuccessfully to rid herself of an all-too-familiar feeling triggered by one of her earliest childhood memories. When she was a little girl and Ariel just a newborn, their parents had taken them to a family gathering at an aunt and uncle’s farm in the country. It had been a day of picnics, games, cousins and, to a young Melanie, seemingly endless fussing over “baby Ari.” By midafternoon she had grown resentful of the fawning over her new sister. Determined to recapture some of the attention, Melanie was drawn to the huge and ancient apple tree behind the barn. She knew Uncle Tukey loved red apples and set out to prove her worth by scaling the tree and fetching the biggest, reddest apple she could find. As it happened, the biggest, reddest apple was hanging from the tree’s uppermost branches. With scarcely a thought to her mother’s standing admonishment to remain in sight of the grown-ups at all times, she skipped around the back of the barn and clambered up the tree.

Melanie had climbed higher and higher, until she was a full fifteen feet off the ground. She looked down only once, and that was enough. She was an accomplished tree climber, but this was certainly higher than she had ever gone before. Smiling in anticipation of the look of happy surprise on Uncle Tukey’s face when she presented him the trophy apple, she shinnied out onto the branch, which was swaying a bit under her weight. Clinging to the rough bark with one hand, she extended the other and, just as her fingers brushed the red fruit, the branch gave one last mighty sway and snapped.

She remembered feeling not as if she were falling, rather as if she were suspended in midair and the ground was rushing up to meet her. Everything was pretty hazy after that. She must have screamed because there was a knot of adults and cousins around when she came to, all with the same concerned look on their faces. Melanie’s plan to divert their attention from Ariel had worked, but the price had been a costly one—a broken arm and a month-long grounding. All of that was a dim recollection, however. What had stayed with Melanie was that feeling of inertia while inevitable events rushed toward her. It was one that had followed her all her life and, as she looked at Kent, she felt it again for the second time that day.

“Dr. Mattson, I know Rachel. I know her address because mine use to be Sixty-seven East Corinth. We were next-door neighbors until I moved closer to the studio. She’s one of Victor’s best screenwriters, and I’ve known her for years.”

A DOZEN THOUGHTS were competing for Kent’s attention, but rising fast among them were these: two young women had died mysteriously, mere miles and hours apart. Both were affiliated with the movie industry, and both knew the missing Ariel Moore and her sister, Melanie. It was obvious from the expression on her face that Melanie had made the same sinister connection.

“What’s going on?” Her eyes reflected her confusion and fear. “Dear God, do you think Ariel and the baby might be in some kind of danger?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Kent said, putting his hands on her shoulders as he looked at her. “But I can promise you this. We’ll find your sister and her baby as quickly as we can. In the meantime, I’m not about to let you out of my sight.”