Page 55 of Lost Then Found
We head downstairs, and I do my best to focus on the steps in front of me instead of how good she still looks. Her jeans hug her in all the right places, sweater pulled snug across her back. I remember how she used to run every morning before school. Wonder if she still does. Wonder if she has time to.
At the bottom of the stairs, she glances over her shoulder with a grin. “That went better than I expected.”
I nod, a smile tugging at my mouth. “He’s a solid kid.”
Her face softens. “I like to think so.”
She walks into the kitchen and rummages through a drawer, pulling out a photo. She hands it over. “His most recent. You should have one.”
I take it, careful not to smudge the edges. Hudson’s in his uniform, bat over his shoulder, that cocky little half-grin like he already knows he’s going to win.
“You sure?” I ask.
“I’ve got plenty.”
I slide it into my wallet and glance at the counter behind her—papers, folders, envelopes stacked in that way people do when they’ve got too much on their plate and nowhere to put it.
“Looks like you’ve been up to something.”
She sighs, rubbing her forehead. “Yeah. Diner stuff.”
“Good or bad?”
She leans on the counter, eyes on a folder like it personally offended her. “Not sure yet.” Her fingers tap once, then stop. “Wendell Tate wants to buy the Bluebell.”
I straighten. “Wendell Tate?” My voice comes out harder than I mean it. “What the hell does he want with the diner?”
She gestures to the paperwork. “Says the land’s worth something now. Oil, supposedly.”
She shakes her head and flips through the papers. “I’ve been trying tomake sense of it all, but it’s a mess.”
“Can I take a look?”
She nods, and I step in beside her, close enough to smell her shampoo. Lavender and honeysuckle . Same as before. Same scent she wore when we were kids, when she used to crawl into the bed of my truck and press her body against mine like she was trying to block out the whole world.
I push the thought aside and skim the papers. Geological survey report. A bunch of numbers and terms I haven’t seen in years, but I can follow it well enough.
If these projections are legit, there’s a shit-ton of oil under the Bluebell. He wasn’t bluffing. The valuation, the barrel estimates—hell, even the drilling specs. It’s all here.
I glance at her. “You trust this?”
“I don’t trust Tate farther than I could throw his smug ass. But the docs seem legit. I’m just trying to wrap my head around it.”
We both know Wendell Tate doesn’t make a move unless he’s getting something out of it.
I nod, still flipping through the documents, my mind turning over everything I’ve just read. “Miller looking at these? She’d probably know what all this meant.”
Lark nods. “Yeah. I gave her a copy. We’re meeting for lunch tomorrow to go over everything.”
I glance at her. “How’s she doing?”
Lark snorts. “Still Mills.”
I smirk at that.
Miller Ashford has always been a force of nature. You always heard her before you saw her, and she never backed down from a fight, never bit her tongue when she had something to say. She was the girl who could convince a teacher to extend a deadline one minute and then turn around and talk a cop out of giving her a speeding ticket the very next. She’d been wanting to be a lawyer since our freshman year of high school.
She and Lark have been thick as thieves since before I can remember—practically attached at the hip, finishing each other’s sentences, alwayson the same wavelength. And if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that Miller would go to war for Lark without a second thought.
