Page 6 of Sentinel's Kiss

Chapter 2

Josh Lehmen was still hot enough to melt her panties and, unsurprisingly, he was still a dick. Ashley didn’t know why she thought he might have changed in two years. He was also still angry, and still hiding something about his sister’s death. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. She’d get to the bottom of it sooner or later. Most discouraging, though, was that Josh could have still convinced her to fuck him in the backseat of his car, if he had only smiled more and kissed her.

“You don’t do things like that anymore.” She pulled down her rearview mirror to give herself a stern talking-to.

Ashley had promised her father after his heart attack that she would give up her daredevil ways and settle down. Driving back to Manhattan during rush hour was as much of a thrill as she got nowadays. No more jumping out of planes. No more ziplining through rain forests. No more volunteering to fly halfway across the world to report on people blowing one another up. No more standing out in a hurricane and daring the elements to do their worst, à la Lieutenant Dan. And no more screwing men on the first date.

Well, her father didn’t know about that last one. And Josh had been the only one she had ever done that with anyway. After Dawn, Ashley hadn’t had much use for men until Josh smoldered into her line of sight.

“Nope,” she told her reflection. “Not right now. Not today.”

Thinking about Dawn always made her a blubbering mess. She was not going to break down. It wasn’t fair that the pain was still sharp after twelve years.

God, twelve years. It was a lifetime ago.

It was yesterday.

A thought occurred to her and she turned on the recorder app on her phone.

“Double-check to see if all victims were pregnant.”

Sarah Stevens had been. The police weren’t releasing a lot of information, but if they were all tied up with the Poconos Hunting Club and the wives were all pregnant, it would be closing the noose around the son of a bitch who did this.

Ashley tapped the wheel impatiently as she sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic. She couldn’t wait to get back to her apartment in the East Village. It was her roommate Shelly’s turn to cook, which meant it was going to be either homemade ravioli or baked ziti. Either of which sounded fantastic right now. She had skipped lunch, just grabbing a PowerBar from a gas station because she wanted to make sure that her anonymous tip really was Stan Stevens going under the name Stanislav Petrov.

Unable to sit still, Ashley fumbled through her briefcase and checked her to-do list. She wasn’t due on the air until Wednesday, but she wanted to have something she could sink her teeth into before then. If only Josh or Stan had agreed to go on camera. The grieving husband who disappeared or the grieving war hero brother would be television gold. She was leaning more toward Josh because his rugged good looks would mean great ratings. But she sensed there was a deeper story with Stan that she could pry out of him.

Her mother called while she was listening to the traffic report, which announced she wasn’t going anywhere for a long while. Next time she was just going to take the train. Fiddling with her headset, she answered the call.

“Ashley, your father wants to know when you’re going to come visit.” Her mother sounded like she was talking inside a bell. The echo was almost painful. Ashley adjusted the volume. “He hasn’t seen you since he got out of the hospital.”

Little did they know, Ashley was only about forty minutes away. “I’ve been busy,” she hedged. She hated seeing her larger-than-life father so weak. It had scared her to see him in the hospital hooked up to all those monitors and equipment. Not to mention she’d had a full-blown panic attack in his room because she hated hospitals.

“He’s been worried about you.”

“I promised him I would take it easy,” Ashley said. And she had, although boredom dogged her every step, and the raw need to overdose on adrenaline was slowly chipping away her resolve. But every time she thought about going back on her promise, she saw her father hooked up to those tubes and machines. She shuddered. “I’ll come and visit soon.”

“Are you seeing anyone?”

She thought briefly about Josh. He’d be worth going back on the promise she’d made to her father that she would be more careful and stay safe. There was nothing safe about Josh Lehmen. Just like she liked it.

“No,” Ashley said, but even to her own ears it didn’t sound convincing. “Not really. There’s someone I’m interested in, but I’m not sure it could work out.”

“Why don’t you bring him around for Sunday dinner?”

Hysterical laughter bubbled up her throat and she couldn’t stop the grin that stretched across her face. “No, that’s not a good idea.”

She could just picture how that conversation would go.

“So, Josh, what do you do for a living?” her father would ask.

“I run a bar.”

**crickets**

“How did you meet my daughter?”

“At my sister’s funeral.”