Hunter still sat on the bench in front of the house, waiting. Fretting. Worrying. Seething, but not at Trisha. Celia had left, but only after exacting a solemn promise that he would call her when Trisha returned. There’d been a heavy warning in her voice, one that he understood all too well. She expected him to make it all better. The responsibility didn’t daunt him; he was more than used to NASA and his family expecting miracles from him. “Call Hunter, he’ll fix anything” seemed to be a motto the people who knew him adopted. But this was different. Trisha had no family or work ties to him. She certainly hadn’t asked for his help, had in fact done everything in her power to avoid doing so. Which somehow only made the compulsion to solve the problem all the stronger. But what exactly should he do? She should have been back by now. Something had happened to her, something horrible. She hadn’t been thinking clearly, she’d been riding recklessly. His fault, dammit, his fault.
