Yesterday's Gone (Two Daughters Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

noticed the resemblance?”
    Her shoulders sagged. “No. A couple of others have said something.”
    “All it would take is someone getting excited and telling a reporter. Think what a coup it would be. Doing it this way, we have some control over the flow of information. You can give exclusives to reporters who will treat your experience with sensitivity, say ‘No comment’ to everyone else. We’ll hold a press conference, then ask everyone to give you and the Lawsons the privacy you need to come to terms with this new reality.”
    He’d always thought the idea of drowning in someone’s eyes was idiotic. Unable to look away from her, he discovered different.
    “But...my life,” she whispered.
    He had to say this. “Will never be the same.”
    “Oh, God,” she said again. Her struggle to regain her balance was visible. “I should never have told you my name. I could have made one up. Then I could dye my hair. Wear colored contacts. I could still do that,” she said on a rising note.
    He didn’t say anything.
    Defeat flattened her expression. It was a long moment before she nodded. She bowed her head and seemed to notice their linked hands for the first time.
    He gently disengaged them, however reluctant he was to sever the connection.
    “When you called her, why didn’t you tell Mrs. Lawson you’d found me?” she asked suddenly. “They probably think you’re bringing bad news.”
    “Me finding your body wouldn’t have been bad news.” He frowned. “It would have hurt in one way, but been a relief in another. They’d have had closure, at least.”
    “I can understand that,” she conceded.
    “The answer to your question is, I don’t know.” He heard his own uncertainty. “Maybe I just want to see their faces.” And it could be that was the answer. He’d worked hard to effect this reunion. Usually his greatest reward was to make an arrest, then see the jury foreman step up and say, “Guilty as charged.” He hadn’t been able to wall out Karen Lawson’s pain as effectively as he usually did. Seeing her joy—he needed that.
    “Okay.” She sat tensely as he backed out of the slot, then drove across town. The sheriff’s department headquarters was on the outskirts of Stimson, the county seat that still had a population of only thirty-five thousand or so. The Lawsons had never moved from the house they’d lived in when their daughter was snatched. He’d read and knew from experience that was usual. People believed they had to be there when their missing family member magically made his or her way home. There was probably a subconscious fear that, if they weren’t there, everything as much the same as possible, the lost one wouldn’t be able to find them.
    He stole glances at Bailey Smith, sitting marble still and almost as pale, staring straight ahead through the windshield. Scared to death and refusing to show it, he diagnosed. She didn’t like giving away what she felt.
    And him, he kept watching for every tiny giveaway. His heart had taken up an unnaturally fast rhythm from the minute she turned around and their eyes met. He’d felt as if he’d taken a blow to the chest. Attraction multiplied times a thousand, an unfamiliar hunger to know everything about her, to soothe her fears and heal her wounds, a breathtaking need to protect her—and pounding at him the whole time was terror that she’d walk away before... What?
    I can find out whether she might feel the same. Even
close
to the same.
    “Here we are,” he said quietly, pulling to a stop in front of a nice two-story white Colonial-style house with dark green shutters. He was willing to bet the Lawsons had never even considered changing so much as the shade of green on the trim when they repainted. Kirk Lawson’s pickup was in the driveway. Lawson’s Auto Body, it said on the door. So Karen had called him to come home, as Seth had suggested.
    Bailey’s head had turned and she stared now at the house where she’d grown up.