hell at him but wasn’t sure as to why. Not really…
I went to the computer and opened up my photos folder. I flipped through the slide show I had compiled of dad and David. When the first picture came around where David was in his combat fatigues, I almost lost it. Still, it was good to see his face—to see his smile, so much like my father’s.
I sat in front of the computer for almost an hour, watching the slide show three times. After the third round, I closed the program and eyed the phone, thinking about calling Grandfather. This news about Jack’s connection to David was beyond huge, so I’d end up telling him anyway. But I decided to let it pass, to let the motion sort of sizzle away before I spoke to anyone else about it.
I didn’t know what to do. A large part of me wanted to storm over to Jack’s right there and then to demand that he tell me more about David’s death and why he’d kept it from me—even if it had only been a day or so.
But then there was another part of me that spoke up, smaller than the angry side, but still confident. It said: Seriously, girl. What the hell are you so mad at him for?
It was a good question, but not one that my anger would let me properly dissect.
To pass the time, I straightened up the living room, did a load of laundry, and put on some music. An hour or so later, I plopped back down in front of the computer to check my e-mail. As I typed in my log-in information, I saw glimpses of the day’s news headlines: more turmoil in the Middle East, some sports guy got drunk, Miley Cyrus did something stupid, Devlin Stone was still missing, there was a huge financial mess in DC, there was a—
I stopped skimming, my eyes catching on one of the small thumbnail pictures in the headline feed. The headline beside it annoyed me to no end: Seven Weeks Later, Still No Clues on Devlin Stone’s Whereabouts.
“Who gives a damn?” I said out loud.
I hated that guy. As far as I was concerned, he had sold his soul to Hollywood after serving heroically overseas in combat. He’d done something so truly great and then cashed it out for Hollywood. What an asshole. What a—
But my eyes returned to the picture again and I actually tilted my head a bit. Devlin Stone was slightly off center in the picture, his arm around some actress named Audrey or Aubrey or something. He was smiling thinly. His hair was combed nicely and he looked quite handsome. But there was something about his face that hit me the wrong way and for a moment I sat in the chair like a deer that was staring at an oncoming car.
Devlin Stone looked a hell of a lot like Jack. In fact, when I placed Jack’s beard on that pretty boy face of Devlin Stone’s they could have been brothers. Hell, maybe even twins.
Weird, I thought.
But it was more than weird. There was something there… something I wasn’t getting quite yet. Certain thoughts started to swirl together in my head, pushed by the forceful winds of rage that had been there ever since storming away from Jack.
Jack knew David… he said he had been there when David died.
David died in combat, in a heroic rescue attempt where just about every member of the team died.
Devlin Stone’s story was much the same; he had apparently been the sole survivor of a special forces team that had been sent in to evacuate a school.
My mouth came unhinged; my jaw quite literally dropped.
“No,” I said.
Devlin Stone saved my brother, I thought. And Jack… is he Devlin Stone?
It seemed like a stupid thought, but then I did the math in my head. I had met Jack a little more than six weeks ago… a few days before Devlin Stone had apparently disappeared. In any other case it could have easily been a coincidence.
But they looked exactly alike.
As it turns out, I needed that wine after all. I reclaimed the glass and took it back to the computer. I then did a Google image search on Devlin Stone. Many of the pictures were from his roles in movies, some of which had required him to almost never wear a shirt on screen.
The more pictures I saw, the more certain I became.
I raised the wine glass to my