Easy Prey. Lisa Phillips

when the snow leopard that was in labor had gone into distress. “I have no more answers. I don’t know who took the files and attacked me, and I don’t know where Fix is.”

      When she looked at him, she saw Jonah’s face had softened. He set a hand on her shoulder. “Take it easy.”

      Seriously? “Where’s Nathan?”

      “I’m right here.”

      Elise looked at the door. She hadn’t even noticed him standing there. She held out her hand and Nathan strode over to sit beside her on the bed. Apparently it took her getting seriously hurt before the teenager would willingly show her affection in public. Go figure.

      She gave him her most stern face. “Are you okay?”

      He nodded. “Yeah, Mom.”

      She looked at Jonah. His gray eyes were black despite the fluorescent lights, glaring at her with frustration and anger. “You had a baby and you didn’t think to tell me?”

      If she’d been standing, she’d have slammed her hands on her hips. “Like you’d even have cared. You left for the marines and never looked back. Not once. Don’t lie to me, Jonah. After Martin died you didn’t even want to know.”

      Nathan sighed. “Are you two really going to argue?”

      Elise looked back at Jonah in time to see his jaw flex. He said, “Where’s your brother, Elise?”

      Eighteen years and that was all he had to say to her? “I haven’t seen Fix since before I left town.” Right after she’d buried her husband, when the best friend she’d needed hadn’t even come home. Emotion stuck like a hair ball in her throat.

      She said, “You wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t disliked Fix from the moment you met him. My brother never did anything but try and impress you and Martin, and you turned your back on all of us. Well, guess what? Apparently you were right about Fix. Congratulations.” Elise poured all of her emotion into that last word.

      “This has nothing to do with me. Fix made his own choices.”

      “You’re right about that. You only think you have that much power over people. But guess what? We weren’t all put on this planet to sit around and wait for you to tell us what we can and can’t do. We made our own lives just fine without you.”

      Elise closed her mouth. The simple fact he was standing in front of her now made her brain twirl like a spinning top, merging losing Martin with Jonah’s...desertion. That had sure been what it felt like. Why did he have to come to the hospital? She’d learned not to need him in her life.

      Jonah was looking down at her with a dark expression. He’d never worn that face before, not directed at her. Jonah had always had a serious side that meant he never failed to do what was right. It had been hard to coax a smile, or even laughter, out of him—something that hadn’t happened too often, even in all the years they’d known each other.

      Martin had been much more lighthearted. The partyer, always chasing a laugh. Their relationship had been nothing but fun, until Elise lost both of them.

      This Jonah was entirely new. The disappointment on his face had formerly been reserved for his mother’s disapproval of Elise’s friendship with the Rivers boys. Elise had never before been the recipient of it from him. He had better not look that way at Nathan.

      Jonah studied her. “You’ve changed.”

      She clenched her jaw, not willing to dignify that with a response. Elise wasn’t a perky twentysomething anymore. She dressed like what she was—the single forty-year-old mother of a teenager, who also happened to have a hard-earned doctorate in zoology. Her best friend was always talking about makeovers, but who had time for that?

      Jonah, however, looked as though he never missed a workout. His T-shirt was tight on his biceps, and the rest of him just looked...incredibly strong. As though life had forced him to weather the years, always leaning in to the wind, trying to control the direction of it with sheer willpower. Had Martin’s death done that?

      It was plain to see nothing about her impressed him at all. And why would it? It wasn’t like she’d spent seventeen years trying to catch a new man. She’d been way too busy with work and Nathan.

      She said, “I’m not the only one who’s changed.”

      “Regardless, I’m going to make sure you and Nathan are safe until we find the guy who hurt you tonight.”

      “What about Fix?”

      “If you say you haven’t seen your brother, I believe you. But if you hear from him, I need to know. I am going to catch him. I know he’s family, but he’s hurt people since you’ve been gone, Elise.” Jonah paused. “Why haven’t you talked to him?”

      Elise looked aside. She’d known she was going to have to explain it sometime. It might as well be now.

      “With you and Martin gone it was like Fix lost all the restraint he’d had. Before I left, things were...bad. Cops coming around, asking if I knew where he was.” She bit her lip and looked at Jonah. “When I was told Martin died, I called Fix. He never picked up. I left.”

      “I’m sorry.” Jonah’s voice was quiet.

      “Can I at least talk to him after you bring him in? I’d like to say something to my brother before I lose the chance.”

      Jonah stayed silent for a moment. Then he said, “You have my word.”

      After his pronouncement, Elise didn’t figure there was much else worth arguing about. At least not when it was so late, and they’d had such a long day. Tomorrow they would figure out where to go from here. Tomorrow she would look at mug shots and help the police find the bomber. Right now she was so exhausted she just wanted to crawl into bed, pull the blanket over her head and forget she’d ever thought coming back here was a good idea.

      But for the one lingering thing she still needed to do—the one thing that would give her the closure to move on with her life—maybe she never would have come back. She’d have found another way to pay for Nathan’s college, or help him do it.

      But for the fact that one of these days she needed to finally go visit Martin’s grave.

      In the backseat of Jonah’s truck, Elise could barely make out the whispered conversation going on between him and Nathan, who sat up front. Did she want to know what they were talking about?

      Elise tried to rouse herself enough to lean forward and listen, but her eyelids were drooping fast. The doctor had given her some good pain medication, the kind that knocked her out.

      Jonah hit the brakes, and she flung her hand out to brace against the back of Nathan’s seat. “Please tell me that’s not your room.”

      The door to Elise’s motel room was wide-open. Even from feet away, inside the car, she could see that her stuff had been deposited everywhere around the room.

      Someone had broken in.

       FOUR

      “You can’t stay here.”

      Why did Jonah feel the need to state the obvious? Elise turned to glare at him. “Where do you expect us to go?”

      There was no way she was about to take Nathan to her mom’s trailer, the one she’d grown up in. She’d have to find another cheap motel, preferably on the opposite side of town.

      Once again they were surrounded by police officers, only this time she’d had to write them an embarrassing list of everything that had been stolen from her ransacked room. A list that included her laptop.

      Thankfully Nathan’s room, which was next door, hadn’t been touched. It was a small comfort that he wasn’t being targeted.

      “Why don’t you come to my house?”