Page 69

Reese stifled a smile. “My mistake.” He seemed implacable on the subject, so when he carried his duffel bag into the bathroom, she got up and unplugged her laptop to take it into the bedroom. There was just the solitary bathroom, she belatedly realized. Not that she wouldn’t be adequately covered in her sleep attire, but any trips to it would involve tiptoeing around the outspread sofa and a sleeping Hayes.
A mental image obligingly bloomed at the thought, and Reese shoved it away as she plugged the computer into an outlet in the base of the bedside lamp. Just another specter that would haunt her when sleep refused to descend. Although, if she had to choose between picturing a half-naked Hayes and them getting nearly blown up today, it wasn’t a difficult decision.
She went back out into the other room, grabbed her bags, and took them to the bedroom. Reese sat on the mattress, laid one of the pillows across her lap, and set the laptop on it, resuming her search. She heard him reenter the other room. Listened to the sounds of him making up the extra bed.
And then something on the screen had her leaning closer, her breath clogging in her lungs. She flipped through pages on the site, checking and rechecking the information she’d just seen. Finally, Reese said, “Hayes.” Her voice was little more than a croak, but his reply was instant.
“I’m not reading you a bedtime story.”
“You need to see this.”
He came as far as the half-open bedroom door. “What is it?”
He was bare-chested, wearing only a pair of basketball shorts. Her throat went even drier while her mind scrambled for the thread of thought she’d been following. Averting hergaze helped. “I’ve been researching Rivers. Not a lot of personal information available online. In fact, it almost appears as if he’s scrubbed it from the internet.”
“Not unusual. There are businesses you can hire online and off to do that for you.”
Although she knew that to be true, his words barely registered. “I checked ancestry sites for mention of him. If someone in the extended family has an account, it ends up naming even those people who’d rather not have their details online. It lists Gerald Rivers, same birthday as the trustee, as some sort of a cousin, a couple of times removed. Looks like Rivers had a son who died three years ago at age thirty-two. From the obits I checked, it sounded like the cause was a rare cancer.”
“That’d be tough.” He remained firmly in place as if crossing the threshold would somehow catapult him to a point of no return.
“The owner of the account is a Cynthia Washington. The family tree is pretty extensive. Multiple generations listed. Another cousin is Patti Wallace.”
He pushed the door open wider, a spark of interest crossing his expression. “The name sounds familiar.”
“It should. It’s Stephen Thorne’s mom. He’s listed here, too.”
He practically lunged to her side. “Did you check birth dates? Place of birth?”
She’d be annoyed if she weren’t so intrigued. “Yes and yes. I’m trying to figure out how close the relationship between Rivers and Thorne would be. I’m not good with the once or twice removed stuff.”
Hayes nudged her and Reese scooted over to make room for him on the bed. “Once a first cousin, always a first cousin. Each successive generation makes it once removed.”
“Whatever that means.”
“Look at Wallace and Rivers, specifically. Where do they link? Grandparents? Great-grandparents? Great-great?”
She scrolled, looking more closely. “Great-grandparents.”
Hayes reached for the screen to turn it a bit toward him. He took over the scrolling. “You count back generations… Okay, Wallace and Rivers are second cousins. Thorne would be his second cousin, once removed.”
“How do you know about genealogy?”
He was searching the other family tree branches. “I had a friend who got interested in the AncestryDNA deal and built a tree like this.”
A female friend, Reese knew intuitively. She squelched the questions that surged but couldn’t dodge an unwanted image of him with a faceless, nameless woman. Appalled, she elbowed it aside. She didn’t do jealousy. And she had no cause, regardless.
She shoved Hayes’s fingers from the keyboard. “There are a couple of family pictures of Rayburn family reunions. The people are labeled.” Reese took a couple of minutes to find them again. “Here’s one.” She clicked on it and zoomed in, scanning names for a minute. “This is Rivers.” He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten in the photo. Reese searched for Wallace. Found a wiry, dark-haired girl with a Band-Aid across her nose and scraped knees. Maybe a year or two younger. The next one showed Washington and Rivers but no Wallace. In the third, Rivers was pictured again, this time with a small boy between him and a woman. Wallace stood close by, holding a dark-haired toddler. Stephen Thorne.
Her skin prickled and she rubbed her arms. “Rivers grew up in Chula Vista. Wallace in National City. About eleven miles apart.”
“Any more pictures of Rivers and Wallace as adults?”
“The last Rayburn reunion photo was ten years later.” She found it and pulled it up on the screen. “Neither of them attended.”
A blast of arctic air filled her. She had cousins raised abroad who she’d seen only twice. But relatives nearby…fairly close in age… It didn’t prove that Rivers was aiding Stephen Thorne.
But the familial connection was undeniable.