Page 20 of One Last Promise

He pulled out and spotted Flynn and Axel coming out of the house, followed by Oaken and Boo. He backed into a spot on the drive, then pulled out along his driveway, the motion-detector lights popping on as he headed toward the road.

She sat quietly beside him, her hands in her pockets.

He reached Old Glenn Highway and turned onto it, headed for Highway 1. “Can I ask how?—”

“No.”

He glanced over at her. “I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

“How would you?” She looked at him, her expression stoic in the wan dash light. “I’m not in the habit of sharing my personal life with the customers who come into the diner.”

He’d sort of thought . . .

But he nodded. He wasn’t her boyfriend, and she didn’t want him to be—she’d made that pretty clear when she turned him down for a date. And sure, she’d clung to him at the door when he’d embraced her, but he could easily attribute that to fear, or maybe relief.

Now, she sat staring out the front windshield, almost a soldier’s expression on her face.

On herwoundedface.

His entire body burned. Talk. He was just going totalkto this guy.

“How’d he find you?”

“I’m not sure—except the house we live in is in my sister’s name, so probably that’s the connection.”

“How does he know your sister?”

She looked out the window. “He got her hooked on heroin in high school.” She wiped her cheek. “She got clean, but . . . it probably caused her liver cancer.”

That still didn’t connect the dots, but when Tillie went quiet, he didn’t know what to say.

So he just reached out, across the console, and found her hand. Squeezed it.

She glanced at him then, her jaw tight. “I’m sorry.”

“Nope. We’ll get your daughter back, and then . . .” He offered a quick smile. “Then we talk.”

Her mouth made a tight line, and she looked away.

And the fist in his chest tightened.

“Where in Anchorage are we going?”

“Earthquake Park. It’s a little ranch house.”

He said nothing as they passed Eagle River and then entered the city limits of Anchorage.

“Turn right on Northern Lights,” she said, pointing.

“Is this where you live?”

“No. My house—my sister’s house—is in Eagle River.”

No wonder Dawson hadn’t found her when he’d searched Anchorage for Tillie Young.

They passed Minnesota Drive, all the way to McKenzie, and he took another right.

No sidewalks in this part of town, but the houses were small and on tidy city lots, built after the 1964 ’quake. Some had since been remodeled or torn down, creating an eclectic array of styles.

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