Chapter 3
Kendra gave Grayson her phone number. "Call me when you get back. Maybe we can get together on this unless you want to separate forces to look for this guy."
"I'll let you know when I return." On the one hand, Grayson felt they needed to separate and look for the guy on their own to have a better chance of finding him, yet another part of him worried that Kendra could be at risk.
She wasn't as young as his sister, but she was still about twenty-six.
He could see that Younger might be interested in grabbing her to fulfill his sick fantasies.
"I'll ask my friend Amy and her husband, Cedric, if they can also help. They're grizzlies like us, but have psychic abilities and might get a read on him," Kendra said.
Grayson was surprised to hear it. He hadn’t ever known anyone who could do that. It could really come in handy.
"You need to go with Kendra," Ivy said, as if she were in charge of the operation.
"This guy is dangerous, and she'll need extra protection.
" Then she frowned as she read his shirt.
"Where did you get that shirt? I mean, it's totally you, but I've never seen you wear it before.
You look like the Hulk, and you're about to break out into the green man.
Couldn't you have gotten one a little bigger that would fit you better? "
He scoffed and folded his arms. "You ripped my shirt to shreds. I didn't think you could do that as a human."
"It was an old shirt. Besides, I have long nails, and you broke two of them." Ivy showed him the evidence.
He smiled, then frowned. "You shouldn't have been ripping off my shirt in the first place."
"They wouldn't let him in places without wearing a shirt. I think he nearly made one of the elderly Winston twins faint at the sight of his naked torso when they were at the bank," Kendra said.
"Hell, she winked at me. I think she was ready to take me home with her to help her with some yardwork." Smiling, Grayson shook his head.
Kendra laughed. "Yeah, she would too. Or she would have had you help her and her twin sister stock shelves in their shop."
"So you bought him the shirt?" Ivy asked, sounding surprised.
"Yeah. They wouldn't let him in the grocery store without a shirt. 'No shirt, no shoes, no service.' They didn't have anything larger than extra-large, and if I had gotten him anything else, they were too girly. A pink unicorn shirt, a purple fairy shirt, nothing that would have worked for him."
Ivy laughed. "I would love to see him wearing one of those shirts."
The nurse came into the room. "Half an hour is up." She checked Ivy's cast. "It's all dry. You can go now." She smiled and gave her some paperwork to sign.
Grayson countersigned it since he or Marcus was her guardian when their dad wasn't available. "Okay, let's hit the road."
Kendra walked out with them, and she shared her phone number and home address with him. Then he put it on his phone.
"You don't know anything about him, really," Ivy said, as if she were the adult now in the situation. "Are you sure you want to give him your home address too?"
Kendra smiled. "After he was trying to rescue you from harm, I would say he's one of the good guys. See you when you return, Grayson. And, Ivy, take care."
"Yeah, no meeting guys online. I'll stick to guys in high school, though they can be trouble too, you know."
"How well I know," Kendra said.
"You rode here with me. Do you want me to drop you off somewhere?" Grayson asked Kendra.
“Oh, yeah, you can drop me off where I tased you. My car is parked there.”
“Will do.”
They drove in his SUV to her Toyota SUV, and she got out and thanked him for helping her take down the bail skipper again. “See you in a little while.”
“Aren’t you going to kiss her?” Ivy asked. “She did buy you a shirt, even if it’s a little too snug.”
If he was going to kiss Kendra, he wanted it to be his idea, and right now it didn’t seem appropriate. Certainly not in front of his kid sister, as she had suggested. “See you, Kendra.”
Then he waited for her to wave goodbye and get into her car. Once she did, he drove off toward Whitefish.
“She was waiting for that kiss, you know.” Ivy sat back against the seat.
“Quit trying to play matchmaker.”
“I like her after I got past the part where she tased you. I hope you’ll take some time to date her when you return. See? Something good came out of me running off.”
“Everything bad could have happened. Don’t excuse your running off for any reason as a good thing.”
Ivy sat in silence for a long time, then finally said, “I’m sorry. Thanks for coming after me.”
“If you ever need to talk about anything, you can. Don’t ever feel like you can’t.”
“So about Kendra…”
He glanced at his sister, whose mischievous look showed how intrigued she was by his meeting and working with Kendra. “Except that subject.”
“Hey, Amy, I need you and Cedric to help me locate a man who kidnapped a teen girl,” Kendra said as she called her psychic friend, who was a private investigator. “She’s safe now, but can we meet, or are you busy?”
“I’m busy, but I can sure look into the case. I take it Rowland’s working on it,” Amy said.
Kendra knew she still had some reservations about Rowland after he didn’t take her parents’ murder seriously, believing they had just been involved in a car accident. Once that had been resolved, Amy still held a grudge.
“Yeah, have you or Cedric had any premonitions about the case?”
“Uh, no, not me. And Cedric is out of town, looking for an escaped convict who shot a police officer.”
Kendra was surprised. “Oh, okay, I heard about that, but I didn’t know they hired Cedric to help with it.” Though she shouldn’t have been, because he often worked on missing-person cases, and this would be a critical one.
“Yeah, after they learned how invaluable he could be, they call him on all the missing cases. Me too, when I’m not busy with my PI cases. So I’ll be glad to help. Do you want to meet at the Steaming Kettle and have a cup of tea?”
“Yeah, you know it’s my favorite place to visit. Meet you there in a few minutes?” Kendra asked.
“I’ll be there.”
Kendra headed over to the tea shop to get them a table.
Inside, the shop was dressed in summer—daisies, sunflowers, coreopsis—warm and inviting.
The intoxicating scent of lavender and cherry tea filled the room.
All the tables were covered with lace cloths, and each had a centerpiece—a tall glass container filled with yellow and white daisies.
She hadn’t been in here since Easter and loved how it was decorated differently for the holidays and seasons. Then the doorbell jingled, and she turned and waved at Amy, her red hair catching the sunlight as she entered the shop.
“Oh, great, you got us a table. I hurried right over to do the same thing.”
The rest of the tables were filled with mostly women enjoying their cups of tea.
Amy and Kendra ordered the iced white ginger pear and the iced orange papaya, then Amy asked, “What do you know about the kidnapper?”
Kendra explained everything she knew to her. “Jeb Younger is his name. Though he has used others.”
“Do you have anything of his that could help me to see a psychic vision of him? Or even of the girl who was kidnapped?”
“I knew you were going to ask me that. I don’t. Oh, I have the brother’s shirt.”
Their teas were delivered to their table, and Amy raised her brows as she considered Amy’s comment. “The brother’s shirt?”
“Yeah, his sister shredded it with her nails, he tossed it, and when he ran after her, I grabbed it, not wanting him to litter the area. I put it in my backpack and forgot all about it.”
“Oh?”
“I was going to give it back to him, though it was badly torn so I didn’t think there was any way to salvage it.”
“Hmm-hm.”
“I was. Don’t give me that look.”
“Okay, so his sister touched it. Let me see it, and I’ll try to sense anything I can from it.”
Kendra dragged it out of the backpack and handed it to Amy.
Amy held it and closed her eyes.
“Do you see anything?”
But Amy was trying hard to sense anything. Then she smiled. “Wow, he’s built, especially when you get to see him without a shirt.”
Kendra laughed. “No more so than Cedric is.”
“Did you give him your phone number?”
“Uh.” Kendra couldn’t help blushing. “Yeah. He’s coming back to help me look for his sister’s kidnapper. Grayson’s a bounty hunter like me. Younger skipped on a bail bond also.”
“Oh. Are you worried Younger will try to go after his sister again?”
“Yeah, and go after some other girl. I think he was worried that Younger might even go after an older ‘girl’.”
Amy frowned. “Like you if you get too close.”
“Yeah. Also, because he skipped going to a hearing, he’s on Grayson’s fugitive list.”
“Oh, wow, so how does that work? If you catch Younger and take him into custody, do you get the money for turning him in since you’re a bounty hunter too?”
Kendra chuckled. “It’s Grayson’s case, though I had one once where another bounty hunter had the fugitive on his list too, even though that’s not supposed to happen. We found the fugitive at the same time so we shared the bounty.”
Amy smiled. “I’ll let Cedric know what we’re up to. If he can find the escaped prisoner before we take down the kidnapper, he’ll join us. So when is—what’s his full name?”
“Grayson Stone.”
“And he’s a grizzly bear like us. When is he coming here to join you?”
“In a couple of hours. He has to drop off his sister, and then he’ll return. That’s about a two-hour round trip,” Kendra said.
“Are you going to wait for Grayson to return?” Amy sipped some more of her iced tea.
“Yeah, though Younger travels. He could be out of the state before we know it. Do you envision anything about him?”
“No. Just about the girl and her brother. She was taken after she touched her brother’s shirt, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so unfortunately, I have nothing on the kidnapper.”
“Well, it was a long shot.” Kendra also knew that Amy could “see” things about a situation or a person if she was closer to it. “Let’s get lunch.”