Chapter 14
Noah scrambled eggs on the balcony over a camp stove. They were in the fridge, still good, and he thought of Hannah’s comment about Post-it notes. A simple thing like the eggs being fresh enough to eat was the opposite of comforting. His sister had just been in this world.
Now she was gone.
He’d spent the last hour and a half reading Lizzie’s journal.
While he did find out who she was dating—her boss in the accounting department at the hospital, Eric Manning—he didn’t find anything suspicious or otherwise interesting, and he wanted to get into her office at Hilton Head Hospital even more.
He looked down at the water, the level now halfway up a window it had previously covered.
He had the inflatable boat he’d taken from HERO Force, but if he headed for the hospital, Hannah and Brady would need to come with him, and he wasn’t sure it was the best idea to take the boy out in these conditions.
“Hi.”
He turned to find Brady standing in the doorway, wide-eyed from sleep. “Hey, buddy. Are you hungry?”
The boy nodded.
“Is your mom awake?”
“No.”
He imagined her curled up beneath the covers. “Just you and me, then.” He scraped the eggs onto a plate, passing it to the boy. “You sleep okay?”
Brady nodded.
“What grade are you in?”
“I’m not in a grade.”
Noah narrowed his eyes. “Kindergarten?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“You get to take a bus?”
“Yep.” He took a bite of eggs and spoke with his mouth full. “Do you have a dog?”
“No. I travel a lot for work.” Or at least I used to.
“My dad said we could get a dog. We just had to convince my mom.”
“Convince her, huh?”
“That means make her think she wants a dog, too.”
Noah smiled. “What kind of dog would you get?”
“A big one. It would play fetch with me and sleep in my bed every night.”
He cracked more eggs into the tiny pan. “Do you know how to swim?”
“Uh-huh. I’m a minnow.”
“A minnow?”
“I used to be a polliwog. Now I’m a minnow.”
He nodded, understanding. “Swimming lessons.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Hannah appeared in the doorway. “Tell me you’re not going swimming in this mess.”
Her cheeks were flushed from sleep, her skin creased between her breasts. “Boating. I’ll have to rig a life vest for Brady.”
“You’re kidding.”
“We need to get inside the hospital.”
“And you just happen to have a boat?”
He smiled. “Actually, I do.”
“Why?”
“I was headed to a condo on the beach in the middle of a hurricane. It seemed prudent to bring a boat.”
“Who does that?”
“I do, and look, we need it.”
She crossed her arms. “I still don’t think it’s a good idea.”
He finished cooking the eggs, handing her the plate when he was done. “Come inside. I want to show you what I found.”
She was eating, which was good, no matter she was less than enthused about the first step in his mission to find out what happened to his sister.
He pulled out the stack of papers he’d taken from Joe’s desk, spreading them out on the dining room table and selecting the one he’d read at her house that was addressed to the administration. “Read this.”
She sank into a chair and put down her eggs, taking the letter from his hand. Noah sorted the other papers into piles by what they were.
“He never told me any of this,” she said. “Why wouldn’t he tell me?”
“Maybe he wanted his suspicions confirmed before he shared them with you.”
“We told each other everything. Or at least I thought we did.”
“All couples have their secrets.”
She flipped through papers. “What else did he keep from me?”
“All of these are accounting discrepancies he encountered during the accreditation.”
She picked up a wallet-sized picture of herself, staring at it before her eyes met his accusingly. “Where did you get this?”
“In the desk. Top drawer.”
“It was Joe’s favorite picture of me. He always kept it near him.”
“I’m sorry. I was looking at it and it must have gotten mixed in with the papers.”
“It wasn’t yours to take.” She shook her head. “I’m grateful to you, Noah. You helped us shelter against the storm. I wasn’t prepared and you were.”
“I hear a but coming.”
“But all the rest of it needs to stop.”
He thought of her sitting on the edge of his bed in the night, his body’s reaction to her, and how badly he’d wanted to do something about it. “That’s fine.”
She gestured to Brady on the balcony. “And you need to stop ingratiating yourself with him.”
“I didn’t encourage that.”
“You didn’t discourage it, either. It’s been hard enough for him losing a father. He doesn’t need to get attached to you just so you can disappear in a few days.”
He set his jaw. She was blaming him for what was happening between them, the nagging attraction that begged him to act. But she was also blaming him for Brady’s reaction to him. “I won’t be mean to him because it suits you. He’s a good kid. I like him.”
“If you like him, you’ll spare him the pain of growing attached to you.”
“Are you sure we’re talking about Brady here, Hannah?”
She glared at him.
“The picture is what upset you,” he said. “And it has nothing to do with your son. I think you like that I took your picture, that I wanted to look at it, and that scares the bejeezus out of you.”
She stood abruptly. “I don’t want him going across the island in a boat.”
“That’s fine, but the longer it takes us to get into that hospital, the longer you and I will be stuck together. Are you sure you want to wait for the water to recede on its own?”
He had her between a rock and a hard place all over again, and he watched her thoughts play out on her beautiful features. He wanted to be angry with her, but what he felt for her—protectiveness, admiration, lust—was a far cry from anger.
“Go without me. I’ll give you the codes and the keys. You don’t need me there.”
“You know the players. You know the layout of the offices and building. It’s not just the access you can provide.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. We’ll go today. The sooner we can get away from each other, the better.”