“You didn’t tell me about her. ”
“I didn’t really know her, either. ” That was a lie, though; Bryn remembered Sharon well. Sharon was pretty, with flowing red-blond hair, a teasing laugh, big lovely eyes. “She was a lot older than I was. ”
“You refer to her in past tense, you know. ”
“I know. She’s dead. I mean, the family party line is that she’s missing, but she’s been missing for a long time, and you know the odds on that. If a pretty eighteen-year-old girl with no history of behavior issues goes missing …”
McCallister nodded slowly. “Still, she could be out there somewhere. ”
“If she is, she’s got no interest in contacting any of us. Not even Mom, and they were close right up until the day she walked out of our lives. ” Bryn took in a deep breath. “No. She’s dead. Whether it was an accident or murder, she’s lying out there somewhere, waiting to be found. I know it, and so do you. ”
“I’m sorry,” he said. It sounded like he meant it.
“Then it’s your turn,” she said. “I’ve been talking for more than an hour, spilling my entire family history. What about you?”
“Bryn—”
“I’m not asking for classified secrets. Just tell me about your family. ”
He didn’t want to—she could see it—but he finally said, “Nothing much to tell. Rich people are remarkably boring; they’re either big philanthropists, like my mother, or self-absorbed, like my father. Either way, the effect was the same. They didn’t spend much time at home. I had more in common with my tutors and nannies than I did with my parents. ” He shrugged. “I’m not trying to be poor-little-rich-boy about it. It’s what it was. My mother was a good person; she just felt that the family’s responsibility was to do good with what we had, so she was always out at fundraisers, contributing to causes, attending charity events. She was beautiful, and I think she would have made a ruthless businesswoman if she’d been required to do that. She wasn’t. ”
“And your father?”
Patrick just shrugged and said nothing, but she saw the skin tighten at the corners of his eyes. Not a smile this time—something else. Something darker.
“Liam said your brother’s name was Jamie. ”
“That’s right. ”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And what happened?” Nothing. He might have been a mannequin, for all the emotional response he gave to that. “Oh, come on. I spilled about everything, including Grace’s secret adoption. I went all talk-show about it. And you won’t even give me more than his name?”
McCallister said, “What made you go into the funeral business?”
“Oh, no, you’re going to tell me something. No changing the channel. Was he older or younger?”
“Older,” McCallister finally said, after what seemed like a pretty fierce internal argument. “Two years older. ”
“Did you get along?”
“I was the younger brother of a fi
lthy rich family. The surplus child. No, we didn’t get along. ” From the way McCallister’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, then deliberately relaxed, that was putting it mildly. “Jamie died. That’s all the story you’re going to get. ”
“And you were disinherited. ” He didn’t bother to answer that one at all. Silence fell, deep and uncomfortable, and Bryn finally sighed and said, “When I was in Iraq, I saw a lot of death. Not just our people, but the Iraqis, too. I didn’t mind helping gather bodies after a bombing; some couldn’t handle it, but I could. It felt like something I could do to restore some kind of dignity to them. So when I came back, I thought … I thought it might be a good thing to do for a living. There’s something honorable about it. Something real. ”
McCallister looked over at her, nodded, and said, “I was in the military, too. I can kill, but gathering bodies—that always bothered me. It takes a special kind of strength to devote yourself to that. ”
“True believers,” she said, and smiled.
“What?”
“Something one of my instructors said. Two kinds of people in the funeral business: true believers and freaks. I guess I’m a true believer, after all. Except that what you did to me does make me a bit of a freak, I suppose. ”
“Different kind of freak, perhaps, than what he was referring to. ”