The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,34

she is?”

“No. Will you quit it with that? I already told you I didn’t.”

But she wouldn’t look at him.

“What if she got hurt?” Tean said. “What if she had an accident? What if she needs help?”

Hannah just shook her head.

“And what if it wasn’t the police following you?” Tean asked. “What if it was someone else?”

She wiped her cheeks, which were still dry, and took a deep breath. “It’s got to be connected to Joy. Maybe you could find her.”

“No, that’s not what I was suggesting.”

“Maybe you and Jem could find her. That would solve everything. The police would leave me alone. And if—and if it’s someone else following me, someone else looking for Joy, well, they’d leave me alone too. It’s all tied together; it has to be. Doesn’t it?”

“You need to talk to Ammon.”

“This is not a police matter, Tean. If they’re looking for her, it’s because they want to get her in trouble for something.”

“Get her in trouble for something? Can you hear yourself right now? This is Ammon we’re talking about. Yes, I’m really mad at him, but you and I both know he wouldn’t frame an innocent person.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what do you mean? Help me out here, Hannah, because I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“I want you to find her. You and Jem. Just to see that she’s ok. And then things can go back to normal.” The tears spilled now, and she slashed furiously at her cheeks.

“You need to talk to Ammon.”

“Please?”

Sighing, Tean rummaged through a drawer until he found a wadded—and, he was fairly sure, clean—tissue. He handed it over to Hannah. She stared up at him with bloodshot eyes, unmoving, the tissue crumpled inside one fist.

“If we get even the slightest whiff that something is wrong—” Tean began.

“Thank you.”

“Even the tiniest hint that this isn’t above board—”

“Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“But you have to tell me what’s really going on—”

“I love you.” She flung herself at him, wrapping him in a hug, and—in a very un-Hannah-like display—kissing him on the cheek. “I know you only like boys—”

“Ok.”

“—only California surfer boys like the ones in your Hollister calendars—”

“This is enough affection, please.”

“—but I just love you so much.”

Tean squirmed and wriggled until he was free. “You can thank me by never kissing me or hugging me or touching me or setting me up on a sex-predator app again. Maybe not necessarily in that order.”

“No deal,” Hannah said, dropping back into her seat. “Give me some paper. I’ll write down some places you can check, and I’ll text you a few pictures of her.”

13

After work, Tean called Jem. No answer, so he left a message. He walked Scipio—a good, long walk—and called Jem again, this time while he was pouring kibble into Scipio’s bowl. Still no answer. He looked through his cabinets, checked the fridge, and decided on stroganoff. He didn’t have sour cream, but he thought he could just double up on cream of chicken soup, and he only had zoodles instead of real pasta, and he had jerky instead of ground beef, but he figured it was probably going to be pretty much the same. He was slicing the jerky—well, trying to; it was splintering more than slicing—when he had another idea. He grabbed his phone to send a text to Jem.

Normally, he and Jem communicated by phone calls and voicemails. Tean was just old enough that it was a form of communication he’d grown up with, and Jem had lived so much of his life unable to read that, for years and years, texts hadn’t even been an option. Now, though, Jem was evolving into some sort of millennial-tween hybrid, texting constantly, and although the written content of the texts remained relatively low, Jem was a fiend for GIFs and emojis. Pushing his glasses back up his nose with one hand, Tean found a telephone emoji and then browsed GIFs until he found a black-and-white Hollywood starlet sitting by a phone, staring at it longingly. He sent the message.

Nothing.

He went back to the stroganoff. He was stirring the globs of cream of chicken soup together with the crumbled jerky, wondering if maybe this needed a can of mushrooms, when he heard steps. The door opened—it wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where Tean felt the need to lock the door every minute of the day. Scipio leaped to his feet, barking wildly for ten seconds before ending in a confused whuff. Jem