Operation Reunion. Justine Davis

To work on ourselves, but not to let them change who we were inside. We couldn’t change other people, but we could change ourselves, challenge the stereotypes.”

      “That’s pretty deep.”

      “That’s the kind of thing we talked about. We used to have long, esoteric conversations about the state of the world and how to fix it, what era of time we’d like to go back to and why, that kind of thing. Even though he was a couple of years older, Dane never treated me like a dumb kid who didn’t know anything.”

      She missed those days, she thought. And wondered if Dane did, too—missed those long talks about everything but themselves because they were fine and destined for a long, happy life together.

      “So, you set out to what, change what people assumed?”

      Kayla nodded. “Dane started working out and found he actually liked it. Pretty soon he was so fit and strong nobody bullied him to his face anymore. He could throw a football better than any guy in school, but no matter how much they recruited him he wasn’t interested. That caught people’s attention. He never changed who he was. He was still into computers, but he was making that cool.”

      “And you?”

      “I swore I’d never be ashamed of being smart. Never try to hide it. I’d kind of started to do that because I thought the cool kids might like me better.”

      “It’s been my experience,” Hayley said with a wry smile, “that most of the ‘cool kids’ are in fact anything but.”

      Kayla laughed. “That’s what Dane said.”

      “When did he stop being your surrogate brother?”

      Kayla blushed. “I always had a crush on him. But he…well, I was just a kid. The difference between fourteen and sixteen is a lot bigger than sixteen and eighteen.”

      “Is that when it changed?”

      “Sort of. At least, it started to, and then…my parents were killed.”

      “And Dane was there for you.”

      Kayla nodded. “Every minute. He never left my side. He took care of things I couldn’t, did things I didn’t have the presence of mind to even think of.”

      She fought off the memories, trying not to let them swamp her. It didn’t happen often anymore, but when it did, it was as fresh and vivid and horrible as if it had been yesterday.

      She felt the warmth of a touch and realized Hayley had reached across the table to put her hand over hers.

      “I can’t imagine.” Those vivid green eyes were fastened on her and full of warmth and concern. “That you’re even upright is a testament to your strength.”

      “Dane used to think that,” Kayla said with a sad smile. “Now I’m afraid he just thinks I’m crazy.”

      “Ten years is a long time.” Hayley’s voice was very even, and Kayla wondered how hard she was having to try to keep it that way.

      “So I should give up on my brother?”

      “I didn’t say that. You are between the proverbial rock and a hard place.”

      “Chad has his flaws—I’m not blind—but he’s no killer. I can’t just quit on him. People say I should forget about it, but—”

      “You can’t.”

      “No.”

      “That’s always irritated me,” Hayley said, as casually as if they were discussing the weather, “when people say forget about it, put it out of your mind. Like the memory is a physical thing you could grab and shove in a box and hide. You can’t. But you can reduce the time you spend on it, and the only thing that can do that is time.”

      “Dane says quit feeding it.”

      “Good way to put it. But it still takes time. You can not dwell on it, you can have other things ready to supplant it for when it pops into your mind, you can keep busy to distract yourself, but you have to do all that long enough that it recedes from the front of your mind. And you can’t when these notes keep coming.”

      Kayla was so grateful Hayley seemed to understand that she felt her eyes begin to tear up.

      “Thank you for understanding.” Something occurred to her, and as she looked at Hayley’s gentle smile—no wonder her Quinn adored her, she was wonderful—she decided to ask.

      “You’ve been there, haven’t you?”

      “Yes. My mom died last year, of cancer. And my father was a cop. He was killed in the line of duty when I was twelve.”

      Kayla’s breath caught. “How awful.”

      “That’s how I know forgetting’s not possible. Just like Quinn does.”

      “He…lost someone, too?”

      “He was younger than you were. Just a little guy. His parents were both on that airliner a terrorist brought down—bombed—over Scotland in 1988.”

      Kayla gasped. “I remember my parents talking about that, on the anniversary of it, when I was little. They were horrified, all those innocent people. They thought it was one of the worst things that would ever happen.”

      “I wish they’d been right,” Hayley said quietly.

      The unmentioned memory, of the even more hideous attack that had happened thirteen years later hung between them for a moment.

      “That was, in essence, the reason our foundation exists. When they turned the man who did it loose, the injustice of it, when those men in back rooms who had never suffered the loss made that decision, Quinn made one of his own.”

      “And started the Foxworth Foundation?”

      Hayley nodded. Kayla understood.

      “September 11 was one of the reasons we moved here,” Kayla said. “My parents wanted to be out of the city. My mother couldn’t even bear to look at a skyscraper, and my dad would stare at every jet that flew overhead until it was out of sight.”

      She stopped abruptly, the old, sad irony battering at her. She heard a bark from outside and wondered vaguely if it was Cutter.

      “And two years later, they were dead anyway.”

      Hayley’s words would have seemed cold, harsh even, had they not been spoken in such a gentle voice. And if they hadn’t been exactly the words Kayla had been thinking herself.

      She tried to pull herself together. Everything seemed so much closer to the surface than it had been for a while. It was like that whenever a note came, but she had to admit this was more. Because this time she was dealing with it without Dane’s help, without his steadying presence, without his unwavering strength bolstering her.

      “Yes. They were.”

      “What happened to you? At sixteen, you were too young to be on your own,” Hayley said.

      “My dad’s sister happened, bless her. She took me in until I went off to college. Aunt Fay never had kids of her own, couldn’t, but she loved me. She did her best, we got along great, she was fun and smart and the best thing that could have happened to me, under the circumstances.”

      “Dane,” Hayley said.

      “He was already in college by then. I—”

      “No. I meant…” She gestured toward the door to the meeting room. Kayla turned.

      He was here.

       Chapter 6

      Quinn, who had come into the room right behind Dane, signaled to Hayley and they left them alone to talk. It was, oddly, Cutter who seemed most reluctant to go. The dog, who had arrived with Quinn, lingered in the doorway, looking from Kayla to Dane as