Page 69 of Distress Signal

On the surface, West was the good-time twin. The one always down to party, always down to fuck, always quick with a joke to diffuse a tense situation. The flipside of his coin was me, the one who was more serious, more in my head, more…reserved.

But there wasn’t a fucking thing West wouldn’t do to protect the people he cared about, something me and all of my brothers had in common. And while he played the part of a himbo well, I also knew—likely only because I was his twin—that he felt thingsdeeply, possibly even deeper than me, who had been open about the way the shit I’d gone through in the service had affected me.

All that was to say, whether he ever spoke the words aloud, West was as concerned as I was with bringing Lainey home safely, though for entirely different reasons.

“Storm’s rolling in,” West said. “We better get back.”

We’d spent two hours in the sky, but we didn’t find anything that fit Reagan’s description, which left me irritated by the time we landed. I wanted to keep going, but if we were late for family dinner, Mama would have our asses. Plus, we barely touched down before the storm broke.

As we pulled out of the hangar to head home, West clapped me on the shoulder.

“We’ll find her, bro.”

“You’re goddamn right,” I answered.

For Reagan’s sake, I’d accept nothing less.

twenty

. . .

REAGAN

Last week,when I’d gone in to meet Lane for an update on the case, I’d had every intention of hanging some missing person posters. I planned to offer a reward for any viable information provided, as long as it helped bring Lainey back.

But after I’d found that note on my car, all thoughts of anything else had flown from my mind.

Today, I was going to fix that.

After locking up the house, I headed straight for the library as Aspen had suggested.

When I pushed inside, I was instantly greeted by an older woman, her hair a gorgeous mix of white and grey, secured in a neat little bun at the base of her skull. She wore a long, flowing white skirt, decorated in pale purple flowers, a matching sweater covering her upper half, feet stuffed into lavender orthopedic shoes.

“Hello, dear,” she said, her voice warm and inviting. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m Reagan Lindsey,” I said as I approached where she stood near the chest-height counter. “Aspen McKay sent me here for some help. Are you Ginny?”

“I am,” she said, smiling brightly. “Aspen is such a doll, isn’t she? This town owes her so much.”

“She’s great,” I agreed. “She’s helping me out with a case of my own, and told me I could come here to get some missing person fliers printed?”

She regarded me thoughtfully, mumbling my last name a few times, snapping her fingers when realization dawned. “Lindsey. Your sister is Lainey.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“I was sorry to hear she went missing,” Ginny said, clasping my hands in hers. I was shocked by how warm her skin was, instantly soothing me.

“Thank you,” I replied awkwardly. What the fuck else was I supposed to say?

“Come, dear,” she said, leading me toward a room at the back of the library. The space was lined with tables, likely workspaces, and she beelined for one, pulling out two chairs and sitting down as I took the other. “What sort of leads do the police have?”

I didn’t get the sense she asked because she wanted to feed the rumor mill around town—which, as was the case in small towns, had likely been at work for the last several weeks, speculating about what happened to Lainey.

“At the moment, not much,” I admitted. “That’s why I want to hang up these posters.” I navigated into my phone and my Canva app, where I’d spent a few hours designing something eye-catching but informative.

My reward offering was a measly thousand dollars, the most I could spare at the moment, when work was fairly low on my list of priorities.

“Let’s get them printed then,” she said.