Still The One (Family Stone #4 Jack) (Family Stone Romantic Suspense) Read Online Free PDF

the guard we’d placed in town was at the ATM within ten minutes.”
    Jack raised his eyebrows. “You provided the cell?”
    Bliss said, “Yes. But her cell phone hasn’t moved. She left it at the safe house.”
    “Who would she call?” Jack tried to approach the problem analytically. But he kept getting caught up on one fact. If he was in trouble he could call any one of his siblings and they’d drop everything to help him out. And he’d do the same for them. But Maria Torres had been alone, abandoned, for what probably felt like forever. “She didn’t need the phone. She’s been alone for eight years. It wouldn’t occur to her that she had anyone on the other end who gave a shit.”
    Bliss’s mouth curved downward as Jack’s words hit home. “I gave a shit,” she replied softly.
    “I get that.” Jack resisted the urge to take her in his arms and comfort her. “But she probably didn’t believe you.”
    Bliss’s eyes were glassy as she blinked rapidly.
    Jack desperately tried to distract her before she started crying. “If she’s been underground and isolated for the last eight years, how did she know what to do?”
    “She was addicted to crime shows.” Bliss’s lips quirked. “CSI was her favorite.”
    Jack leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers clasped together and hung low between his spread legs as he reasoned out Maria’s plans. “She couldn’t possibly have figured out how to escape and evade someone like Fernandez.”
    “She’s smart, Jack,” Bliss countered. “She basically watched television and she learned.”
    “But this guy has been fooling the public and his staunch supporters for eight years without even a whiff of corruption or criminal activity.” Jack stood and stretched his legs. He needed to be doing rather than sitting. “This situation is going to send serious shock waves through the community. Especially the Hispanic community. The guy is practically a saint in my town.”
    Bliss snorted. As if she couldn’t restrain her curiosity any longer, she asked, “What are you doing in Monterey?”
    Jack raised a brow. “I live there.”
    Clearly she hadn’t been following up on him. Apparently not like he’d been keeping track of her.
    “In Monterey?”
    “Yeah.” He rubbed his palm over the back of his neck trying to ease the tension that had gripped him since this morning when he’d discovered that not only was he going to have to see Bliss again but he’d have to work closely with her.
    And now it appeared that while he had kept tabs on her, where she was and what she was doing, even when she’d been married, dammit, she had not given him another thought once she kicked him out of her life.
    If that didn’t deflate his ego faster than an inflatable pierced by a machine gun round, he didn’t know what would. “I started my own company about a year ago.”
    “That’s...great.” But her face had slipped back into that mask, as if she’d shut down the monitor and turned off the lights.
    “Yeah.” Jack was proud of what he and his family had accomplished in one short year. “Global Humanitarian Relief has managed to do a lot of good in a very short amount of time.”
    “So what does this situation have to do with a humanitarian relief company?”
    “I’m paying back a favor,” Jack replied shortly. He wasn’t about to admit any more than that. And they were wasting time. As much as he hated to take second chair, his job was muscle and resources. So he figuratively bit his tongue and deferred to Bliss. “So what’s the plan?”
    She raised a single brow in question.
    “You’re lead.” Jack shrugged. “I’ll follow, and offer my opinion, if requested.”
    “We need to figure out where she was headed.” Bliss rubbed her fingers over her mouth, worry etched in every line of her face. But Jack’s attention was riveted on her lips, on the sweet bow of her mouth. “Which could freaking be anywhere in the U.S.”
    “No passport?”
    “No. We