“Have you seen a man around here?” He interrupted what had obviously been a very serious conversation between two women he didn’t recognize. “He’s tall. Probably had on a sweatsuit?”
“Are you looking for Darin?” one of the women, a redhead, asked.
“Yes. You know him?”
“We all do,” the woman said. “He works at the cafeteria at lunchtime. He’s really sweet. And kind.”
“He’s my brother.”
“We know,” the plump blonde answered this time.
“You do the landscaping. Darin told us.” The redhead again.
He didn’t have time for chitchat. “Have you seen him?”
“Yeah,” the blonde said. She turned and Grant saw the faded bruising on the left side of the woman’s face, continuing back to her ear. A bright pink jagged scar ran from her ear down her neck and into the neckline of her shirt. “At lunch.”
Grant tried to focus on her eyes. They seemed to dare him to blanch.
“He showed us that he could use his left hand to serve the potatoes,” the redhead said quickly. “He was proud of himself.” Her smile was in such direct contrast to the rest of the emotion suffocating the moment.
“And you haven’t seen him since?” he asked. Telling himself to calm down. The world wasn’t filled with evil.
Darin was fine.
“No.” The redhead shook her head. The blonde did the same.
He hurried through the garden, anyway. Looking under benches Darin couldn’t possibly fit under, behind trees and in the natural underbrush that he’d been careful not to disturb during his renovation. He even took a peek into the waterfall pond he’d constructed. It wasn’t deep, but it was long enough to hide a man who was submerged.
Darin wasn’t there.
“Did you check the park?” the redhead asked as he approached their bench on his way out of the garden.
“No, but I will, thanks,” he said.
“He likes the park,” she added while the blonde woman silently watched the exchange, her expression pained. Grant had a feeling she wouldn’t have known if Darin had crawled across her feet.
He obviously hadn’t covered his reaction to her injuries well enough.
He felt bad about that.
But he had to find Darin.
Clicking on his phone, he did the only thing left he could think to do at the moment.
He called Lynn.
* * *
LYNN HAD JUST finished with a patient when Grant’s call came in. She heard the panic in his voice as soon as he started speaking.
“Where are you?” Locking her office door behind her, Lynn held her phone to her ear and, checking each of the exam room doors to make certain she’d locked them, headed out the back door.
“At the park.”
Grant sounded as frantic as she’d ever heard. More harried than he’d been four years before when Darin had come from surgery and they hadn’t known if his brother was going to survive his brain surgery.
“I’m on my way.”
“I have no idea where he’d go,” Grant said. “If we were home, or on a job, I’d go to my truck. He hangs out in the backseat sometimes. I found him asleep on the floor in the back once.”
Looking around her as she half ran across the complex, she let Grant ramble, trying to think of anyplace Darin might have gone.
“Is there anyone at the park?” It was still early enough in the afternoon that all of the kids would be at school.
And the private day care had its own little fenced-in playground.
“No. There was a woman here with two small children, but she said she hadn’t seen Darin. They left.”
She could see him, standing there in his jeans and black Bishop Landscaping shirt, looking strong and virile and lost.
“I’m here,” she said. Turning, he saw her, returned his phone to its holster as he approached and grabbed her hand as soon as he was close enough to touch her.
“Thanks for coming.” The words were plebian compared to the panicked look in his eyes.
“We’ll find him.” As soon as she’d taken Grant’s call, she’d sent the one resident in her waiting room, a well-check appointment, over to Lila. She’d need to have someone reschedule the rest of her afternoon.