She wished she had a little makeup. Her eyelashes were long and dark naturally, and God knows her eyes were shadowed enough right now without more help, but she’d let her eyebrows get thicker during her flight. Gil never liked them that way, despite the fashion shifting in favor of thicker brows. Gil had preferred a more delicate look.
But some cover-up, blush and lipstick would have been great right about now.
She hadn’t felt the urge to primp in such a long time. It was so different, with Nate behind those doors. She’d made an effort for Gil, certainly, but always with a sinking sense her best efforts would never be enough. Gil had never been pleased.
But Nate was. Intensely pleased, even when she did nothing in particular. And right now, he was out there, helping her while she snoozed and washed and anointed herself with scented lotion and scrubbed her teeth with minty toothpaste.
It felt sensual, and self-indulgent, being naked, with Nate right behind that door. Breathless anticipation built inside her.
She pulled on Nate’s T-shirt. It was black, and it was huge. It draped off her shoulders and hung down to mid-thigh. Which was lucky, since she’d taken the opportunity to wash out her one pair of underwear in the shower, as one did when on the run. It was now hanging on the heated towel rack to dry.
She was utterly bare down there, and intensely aware of it. Nate had said that sex wasn’t part of the equation, but that was bullshit. He’d showed her how good it could be. He’d let that genie out of the bottle, and he’d set the bar unimaginably high.
Now, he just had to deal with what he had created.
The floor planks in the bedroom were exquisitely smooth and cool against her bare feet as she went to the door and leaned on the doorframe.
She instantly recognized the video Nate was examining. It was the third of the TV interviews, the last one in which Josh appeared. She’d caught it in a motel lobby TV near Spokane. By now, she’d seen it hundreds of times. She knew every second of it.
In this video, Josh sat with his arms folded on the desk, and Gil stood behind him, his hands on Josh’s shoulders. An attractive redheaded journalist conducted the interview. She was simpering and flirting, not that Elisa blamed the woman. Gil’s manner was very charming and seductive. At least at first.
“…such a comfort,” Gil said. “Like he’s my own brother, and the only one who knows how special and unique Louisa is. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”
Elisa was motionless, and didn’t make a sound, but Nate must have sensed the stifled rage Gil’s words ignited inside her. He turned and looked at her, and then glanced back to the laptop to pause the video. “Hey, you,” he said. “Good nap?”
“Must have been,” she said. “I don’t remember any of it. Not even any nightmares, which is unusual for me these days. How long was I out?”
“Must be about ten hours.”
She gasped. “Holy crap, I’m sorry! You should have woken me up!”
“Hell, no,” he said. “I was glad. You needed that sleep. Don’t feel guilty. You have to power down regularly. It’s not a selfish thing to do, just practical.”
“Thanks, but I don’t think I’ve ever slept that long in my life. Certainly not since my troubles began.” She snorted. “Which is to say, the day I got engaged.”
His eyes flicked down over her body. Her awareness of her nakedness beneath the T-shirt intensified. “You’ve been watching these interviews the whole time?”
“I’ve watched everything the guy ever said that was archived online,” Nate said. “There’s a fuckton of it. The dude loves the sound of his own voice.”
“That’s the truth.” She gestured toward the screen. “Let the video finish.”
Nate tapped the touchscreen. “…you could say anything to your sister, what would it be?” the interviewer asked Josh, a soulful look on her eyes.
Josh’s face tightened, and he slapped his chest with his hand. “I just miss you so much, Lu,” he said, his voice shaky. “I’m just sitting here, night and day, doing my videogame geekwad thing a thousand times over. I’m sick of riding hograts through the desert. Come save me from this hole in the ground. I’m waiting, Lu.”
The camera cut back to the interviewer’s sympathetic face. “We’re all waiting,” she said, in that ‘wrap-it-up’ voice. “No one more than these two, but they’re not giving up hope. Because hope never dies—not when love is concerned.”
“It’s hard to listen to that bullshit,” Nate said when the video ended.
“Yes. Gil can project this incredible glow when he wants to,” Elisa said. “He seems so sincere and principled, but he’d tear out your entrails if it suited his purposes.”
“I want to rip his face off whenever he opens his mouth,” Nate said.
Elisa sat down on the couch, close enough to see the laptop screen, and discreetly tugged the bottom of the T-shirt around her thighs.
“How did you end up in Shaw’s Crossing, when you ran?” he asked. “It’s not on the way to anywhere. Except for camping, fishing, hunting, rock-climbing.”
“I went there once as a kid,” she said. “I did a summer camp program there. It was a wonderful summer. Joshie was there, too. I had happy memories.”
“He looks a lot like you,” he said.
She stared down at frozen image on the screen with a bitter laugh. “Yeah, we both have that pale, haunted look right now. He’s nine years younger than me. He was four when our mom died, so I became his mom. As best I could.”
“So you know him better than anyone,” Nate said.
“You could say that,” she agreed.
“He looks like a smart kid.”
“Absolutely brilliant,” Elisa said. “He gets that from Dad. Dad was a software engineering genius. Lucky Josh, that he inherited a talent Dad could appreciate.”
Nate nodded as he digested that. “Hmm. So, if he’s smart, then Josh wouldn’t be one to pass up an opportunity, would you say?”
“What opportunity do you mean?” she asked.
“What he said in that video,” Nate said slowly, still staring at the screen. “It’s strangely worded. It sounds forced. It could just mean he’s tense and miserable and nothing comes naturally. Or it could be…something.”
She was sitting bolt upright. “Something, meaning what?”
Nate dragged the video back to the point where Josh was talking, and set it to play. “Is there anything about the way he speaks, the gestures he’s making, or the words he chooses, that seems out of character for you?”
“Well, yes, of course,” she said. “All of it is strange and stiff and off-kilter. He’s a prisoner, after all. He’s speaking under duress.”
“What exactly seems off-kilter?”
“Well, there’s his tone. It sounds so flat. And the shirt he’s wearing. He’s worn that same shirt in every single video, and it looks stained. Josh is a neatnik, ever since he was little. A total hygiene freak. He always grooms himself carefully. But in this last video, he looks greasy, unshaved, uncombed. I figured he was just depressed.”