Damn. She hated feeling vulnerable. It turned her into quite the bitch. Double, triple, quadruple damn…

Shaking her head at herself, she made a face. “Sorry,” she mumbled, biting the inside of her cheek. “I’m just…I can’t…” She stopped, rolling in her lips. Then all she could do in her own defense was shrug.

The look on Zoelner’s face was one of sympathy. But Mac?

Well, Mac was tougher to read. The high king of inscrutability. And, man-oh-man, on the list of things that annoyed the ever-loving shit out of her, that usually ranked right up there close to number one. As a dyed-in-the-wool bartender, having seen and served drinks to every kind of man from the fanciest-schmanciest big city politician to the simplest, down-home shift worker, she liked to think she was pretty good at getting a bead on people.

She’d never been able to get a bead on Mac.

Thankfully, his next words provided the reassurance his familiar stony expression did not. “It’s okay, Delilah.” His low, rumbling voice always reminded her of Sam Elliott’s. “You’ve got nothin’ to be sorry for.”

She had nothing to be sorry for? Could that be true? She sure as hell didn’t feel like it.

“If I’d taken the time to ask Uncle Theo just a few simple questions this morning before he took off…” She stopped, squeezing her eyes closed, and replaying the scene in her head. “If I’d asked him to tell me exactly where he was going instead of rolling over to pull the covers over my head, I might’ve—”

“Coulda, woulda, shoulda,” Zoelner interrupted. “There’s nothing you can do to change this morning.”

“He’s right,” Mac added. “You can’t go beatin’ yourself up for things you had no way of knowin’. After all, there’s that whole hindsight and 20/20 thing.”

Stop beating herself up… It was good advice. And even though this was one of those situations that fell under the heading of Easier Said Than Done, she figured she better do her damnedest to take it. Because agonizing over what she could have done, what she should have done, was only pushing her closer and closer to the brink of a total mental and emotional breakdown. And that wouldn’t do anyone any good. Not her. Not these fiercely capable—even if slightly drunk—guys who were trying to help her. And certainly not her uncle.

Squaring her shoulders, she jerked her chin in a sharp nod. “You’re right.” Then, hoping she was demonstrating far more aplomb than she was feeling, she marched up to the tall, wrought-iron gate surrounding the front of her uncle’s newest property. The same gate she’d watched him lock only the evening before.

Holy crap… One day? Really? Had it really been just over twenty-four hours since she agreed to the road trip that landed her here? Now? Her uncle God-knows-where and her entire world turned upside down?

Jesus, she felt like she’d lived a lifetime…

“It all started yesterday afternoon when my uncle got a text from his old Marine buddy, Charlie…something. I don’t know the guy’s last name, and that’s part of the problem. Truth is, I’ve never met the man even though Uncle Theo usually makes a trip out to see him at least once a year.” She was determined to oblige Mac’s request to fill him in on what she knew so far, this time without the sarcasm. Sheesh. “Anyway, Charlie invited Uncle Theo down for a visit. But Uncle Theo told me he didn’t really feel like making the ride by himself. I convinced him to go. Told him I’d go and we’d make a road trip out of it. I said it’d be fun.”

And it had been fun. Up until the point when her uncle didn’t show up when he was supposed to. She lifted the key ring only to discover that, despite her best efforts at composure, her hand was shaking as badly as an alcoholic’s after twenty-four hours locked away in the drunk tank.

Don’t panic. The two words flitted through her head for the millionth time. Only now it appeared her psyche was fed up with the mantra because it quickly answered back with Yeah right, sister. Not gonna happen.

Okay, and great. That’s just what she didn’t need, her own subconscious mutinying.

Mac crumpled his empty coffee cup and lobbed it toward a nearby trash can before gently taking the keys from her hand. And with far more dexterity than she would’ve thought possible given the amount of scotch she suspected he’d consumed—she didn’t know if it was him or Zoelner or the two of them combined, but the air around them reeked so strongly of whiskey she feared what would happen if they chanced by an open flame—he neatly inserted the key in the lock, twisted his big wrist, and pushed the gate open. It squeaked on its hinges, and the eerie sound streaked up her spine like the tip of a steel blade, further abrading her already raw nerves. What the hell is wrong with me?

And either she winced, or Mac simply used those superpowers of deduction he’d been bequeathed upon his graduation from the FBI Academy, because he frowned fiercely. “Take a breath, Delilah,” he instructed sternly. “You look like you’re either about to toss your cookies or faint.”

And that made sense, since she felt like she was either about to toss her cookies or faint. Or maybe she’d toss her cookies, then faint.

For crying out loud, get it together!

“I didn’t know your uncle was a Marine,” Zoelner said, supporting himself against the gate and sipping noisily at his coffee.

“He doesn’t like to spread that particular bit of information around,” she admitted.

“Why the hell not?” Zoelner asked. “What happened to the proud part of The Few, The Proud, The Marines?”

“Because of his age.” Just breathe, Delilah. Just…breathe. “When he tells people he was a Marine, they all assume he did a tour in Vietnam.”

“He didn’t?” Zoelner lifted a brow.

And, okay, it was that expression right there that made her understand why her uncle preferred to keep his stint in the military on the DL. So many good men had died in that war—or else come home irreparably changed or damaged—that to admit he was a Marine who never saw any action seemed somehow worse than saying he’d never been in the Armed Services at all.

“No. He was an analyst or an engineer or something,” she said, grateful when Mac suddenly interrupted their conversation with, “I seriously doubt her uncle’s combat status of thirty-some-odd years ago has anything to do with his disappearance today. So, let’s get back to the point, shall we?” Yes. The point. Of her uncle missing… Dear God! “Delilah, I need you to take me step-by-step through the last day.”

And perhaps it was the fact that his electric-blue eyes never wavered from her face, or maybe it was the grounding effect of seeing the soft summer breeze ruffle his thick brown hair over his brow, but the sharp edges of the fear she’d been carrying around all afternoon and evening seemed to smooth out. Just a bit.

“Uncle Theo and I rode down to Marion yesterday evening.” Was it her imagination, or was her voice a little steadier than it’d been only seconds ago? “We checked into a motel because Uncle Theo said Charlie’s house is a dump not fit for company. I gather Charlie doesn’t actually live in Marion but outside of it somewhere. And the fact that I have no idea where is another part of the problem.” She shook her head at herself. Why, why hadn’t she asked her uncle more questions? “But anyway, this morning Uncle Theo woke up early to drive out to Charlie’s. He told me they’d likely do nothing but talk about the old days and I’d be bored to death. So, he left me to sleep in and catch up on some reading. He was supposed to come back for lunch. We were going to go to the diner across the street to grab a burger before hopping on the bikes to make the return trip. It was all going to be easy peasy.”

It occurred to her then that it was funny—not funny “ha-ha” but funny “sucky”—how quickly things could go from easy peasy one minute to freakin’ shitty the next.

“He didn’t show up for lunch. He’s not answering his phone. The local hospitals haven’t admitted a man with his description. And the Marion police told me I’d have to wait twenty-four hours before they’d open an investigation. But I can’t wait twenty-four hours.” She reached out to grab Mac’s muscular forearm where the sleeve of his motorcycle jacket was shoved up. His coarse male hairs tickled her palm, and his flesh was hot against the pads of her fingers. A zing of awareness shot up her arm. She tried to ignore it. It worked. Sort of… “I know something’s wrong. He wouldn’t just disappear like this. Something’s happened to him, Mac. S-something bad.”

And just like that, all her momentary calm disappeared. A sob she fought desperately to control strangled the back of her throat.

Don’t panic.

The words of the mantra had lost their meaning and, with that, their power. Truth was, she was beyond panicked. She was straight-up, without-a-doubt terrified. Terrified with a capital T. Terrified right down to her very soul.

A muscle ticked in Mac’s five-o’clock-shadowed jaw, and the look on his face was—

“Shh, now. You don’t know that for sure,” Zoelner whispered, throwing an arm over her shoulders.

“But I do know that for sure,” she insisted, her eyes imploring Mac to believe her. Despite all rationale, despite their rocky relationship—or more like their rocky non-relationship—it was only his opinion that mattered.

She thought she saw him nod, just a quick jerk of his dimpled chin. Then again, perhaps the dim light of the street was playing tricks on her, because the words he growled were, “We’ll just have to wait and see.”