The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,33
tried.
“A human smile. The way humans do. Like you’re happy.”
“I don’t—”
“That’s good enough,” she said, lowering the phone and tapping madly at the screen. “Beach or mountains?”
“What? What is this app? What are you signing me up for? I don’t want any weirdos—”
“For a vacation: beach or mountains?”
“If I want sandflies, heat stroke, and a third-degree sunburn that requires hospitalization and possibly skin grafts, the beach. If I want to break my ankle, drag myself around for days, slowly dying of dehydration, only to eventually be eaten by a mountain lion or a grizzly bear, the mountains.”
“I’m putting mountains.”
“Hannah!”
“It’s called Prowler.”
“Prowler? Are you kidding me?”
“I don’t know. It’s something like that.”
“Prowler sounds like the guys are going to lure me into a sex trap and have their way with me.”
“I don’t even know what a sex trap is,” Hannah said to herself.
“The guys on Prowler do!”
She lowered his phone long enough to look him in the face and say, “It’s the hottest thing for gay guys right now. I was just reading about it in Cosmo.”
“You don’t read Cosmo.”
“I didn’t used to. Now I do. I’m tired of the old Hannah. I’m making some changes. And so are you. If you could donate a million dollars, who would you give it to?”
“Nope. We’re stopping this right now. Give me my phone.”
“Tell me, or I’ll put down that charity that dresses cats like famous feminist figures.”
Tean made a noise that sounded an awful lot like a scream. “There’s this philosophy program that focuses exclusively on absurdism and existentialism, why life is meaningless and everything is a joke—”
“I’m going to put the World Wildlife Fund. That’ll be a good opener for you to talk about your career.”
Tean lurched out of his seat and grabbed the phone before she could pull it away. “Hannah, we’ve got to talk about last night.” She opened her mouth, and he rushed to say, “Ammon was there. With his partner. I think the police are the ones who’ve been following you.”
She had braced herself, as though expecting something terrible, but shock wiped her face blank. “What?”
“The police were at your house. They’ve been following you. They think you might know something about a missing-person investigation.”
“That doesn’t make sense. The person who was following me was a woman, right? We talked about that. The one on the trail. The one with the knife.”
“The knife was just a guess,” Tean said. “And Ammon’s partner is a woman. Kat is about the right height. She might have been doing surveillance.”
“Hold on, hold on. I’m still trying to catch up. I thought you weren’t talking to Ammon. I thought you had a big fight with him last year.”
Tean decided not to mention the phone calls. “Yeah, well, it’s pretty hard to avoid someone when he’s the point of the whole stakeout. Anyway, you’re focusing on the wrong part. He said they’ve talked to you and you’re stonewalling them, Hannah. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Why didn’t you tell me the police were involved?”
“I didn’t know! They called a couple of times. They tried to talk to me once at home. I don’t want to get involved with . . . with what they’re working on. I’m staying out of it. I had no idea they might be the ones following me.”
Tean perched on the edge of his desk. Down the hall, he could hear Norbert, eighty-something, and Miguel, twenty-something, having a ‘conversation’ about state politics. It was Miguel, not Norbert, who sounded on the verge of having a stroke.
“It’s really nothing,” Hannah said, her eyes dropping to her lap. She played with a crease in her cargo pants. “And I can’t help them.”
“Ammon thinks you can. Why would he think that?”
“I don’t know where Joy is,” Hannah said, her voice rising just like Miguel’s. Then, at a more subdued volume, she said, “I really don’t. And I don’t know why they care so much.”
It was a lie. Tean wasn’t sure Hannah had ever lied to him before this strange change in her life, whatever it was, had taken place. Worse, it was a bad lie.
“They think she’s dead,” Tean said.
“Oh my gosh,” Hannah said. Tears filled her eyes, not spilling yet, and she used the heel of one hand to rub out the crease in her pants. “Well, she’s not. Ok? She’s fine. She’s an activist, and she’s probably just staying out of sight. She’s used to the law looking for her. Anyway, she’d be furious if I got involved.”