Monica shrugged. "Are you really going to say no to anything she wants this week, Cooper?" she challenged and then moved up the path.

  "Doesn't your dad hate me?" she asked Cooper. "Is this a setup? Am I going to step inside, and you'll all finally have a chance to rip me apart?"

  "Do you think my family would do that to you? My mom just gave you a hug."

  "Which made little sense to me. You've made it clear that you blame me for what happened to Kyle. Do they feel differently?"

  He hesitated, then nodded. "Yes, they feel differently. They don't hold you responsible, Andi."

  She was seriously shocked. "They don't?"

  "Mom said you were just a kid. They were angrier with the police and the FBI than with you."

  "But now I'm FBI. So that still makes me the enemy."

  He shrugged. "You don't have to come in, Andi. It's up to you. You can drive away right now."

  She looked from him to the house that had once been her safe haven. She'd always felt comfortable in Cooper's house, far more comfortable than she'd felt in her own home.

  Joanne stepped back onto the porch and motioned them to come inside. "Come in, Cooper and Andi. I won't take no for an answer."

  She couldn't ignore the plea in Joanne's voice. "I guess I'm going inside."

  "I guess we both are."

  When she stepped into the home, she was assailed with memories, but none stronger than the smell of something sugary and delicious. Joanne and Monica had often been baking when she'd come over, and there was usually some tasty hot treat waiting for her.

  She stiffened as Cooper's father came down the hall. He had white hair now instead of brown, but otherwise he was an older version of Cooper, same green eyes, same long, lanky body. When his gaze landed on her, his eyes widened in surprise.

  "I can't believe it. Is that Andi Hart?" he asked.

  "It's me," she said, thinking Doug had aged more than Joanne had in the time since she'd last seen both of them. She didn't know if that was because he was a few years older than Joanne or because Kyle's suicide had just ravaged him.

  "How are you?" he asked.

  "I'm doing well. I just moved back to LA."

  "That's great. I heard you're working with the FBI."

  "Yes," she said warily.

  "Do you like it? Are you good at it?" he asked in his usual pragmatic, no-nonsense manner. Cooper's dad had always had a way of breaking complicated issues into simple ideas.

  "I do like it, and I am good at it. I have to say that this house smells exactly the way I remember it," she added, wanting to change the subject. "What did you bake today?"

  "Oatmeal raisin cookies," Joanne said. "I leave the fancy stuff for Monica, now that she's a pastry chef."

  "I'm still learning," Monica said with a self-deprecating smile. "But I'm getting better each day."

  "Oatmeal raisin is my favorite kind of cookie," Cooper said.

  His mother laughed. "Like I don't know that. You and Kyle used to fight each other for the last cookie." She stopped abruptly, her smile dimming.

  "Well, can I have one?" Cooper asked.

  "Only if you stay for lunch. I made chicken salad. There's plenty for all of you. I always make a big batch. What do you say?"

  Cooper's gaze moved to hers. "Your call, Andi."

  She hesitated. She wanted to talk to Solange and Daniel, but she was hungry. And she couldn't get to Shana Grier until after three, so she did have time for lunch if she wanted to take it. But things were going to get awkward at some point. How could they not? On the other hand, some food might help fuel new ideas, which she desperately needed.

  "Lunch sounds good," she said belatedly, realizing they were still waiting for an answer.

  "Perfect. It will be ready in a few minutes," Joanne said.

  "I'll help you get it together, Mom," Monica said, following her mom into the kitchen.

  "I'll meet you at the table," Doug said, disappearing into his study.

  "And then there were two," she said lightly. She wrapped her arms around her. "This is weird, Cooper."

  "Very," he agreed.

  She lowered her voice. "Is your dad okay? He disappeared pretty quick."

  "I'm guessing he's watching the end of the Dodgers' game. They're playing in New York today."

  She smiled. Doug had taken her and Cooper to a couple of games at Dodger Stadium. Kyle had never been interested in baseball, but Cooper was, of course, a great player. Monica had refused to tag along, announcing that she'd watched Cooper play enough games; she didn't want to watch anyone else. So, Doug had taken the two of them and bought them Dodger dogs and cotton candy.

  "Are you still a Dodger fan?" she asked Cooper.

  "Can't be anything else in this town. What about you?"

  "I have paid little attention to baseball in a long time." She paused. "Is your room still your room?"

  "Not really."

  "Let's see," she said, moving toward the stairs. Every step felt like she was going back in time. She was running up the stairs with Cooper to play a game or plot some mystery out on the floor of his bedroom.

  When she reached the second-floor landing, she pushed open the door to his room. It was more the same than he'd admitted. Sure, a few things had changed, like the comforter and pillows on the bed were much more adult, and Cooper's posters of baseball players and rock stars were gone from the walls. But there were still books in the bookcase from his youth, including a stack of yearbooks.

  "You still have the yearbooks," she said, grabbing the top one off the shelf and sitting down on the bed to open it. "Freshman year. I must have signed this."

  Cooper pulled out the chair by his old desk and sat down across from her. "You wrote a Dr. Seuss quote."

  She laughed. "I forgot about that." She found it on the first page of signatures and read it aloud. "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind."

  "It was your favorite saying. You thought it excused everything you did that annoyed people, because you were just being yourself."

  "I was an obnoxious kid, wasn't I?"

  Cooper grinned in a way that she hadn't seen in a long time, because he was giving her an actual genuine smile.

  "You were…you," he replied. "You said what you thought even when most people didn't want to hear it. You barreled ahead, past every don't-go-past-this-point sign. You stood up for people you didn't think had a loud enough voice. And you always expected success, even when the odds were long. That just made you more determined."

  "So, a little obnoxious," she murmured.

  "Along with pushy and bossy. You'd get stuck on something, and you'd just gnaw on it like a dog with a bone."

  "Okay, now you're getting carried away. It's not like you were Mr. Perfect."

  "Well, I wasn't obnoxious," he said with a laugh.

  "No. You were annoyingly smart, often right when I didn't want you to be, and way too logical when I was brimming over with righteous indignation. But you also had a way with people. You knew how to make friends better than I did. When we got to high school, many people liked you, especially girls. You were hanging out with the popular kids; I was not. But that's when you started getting weird."

  "How so?"

  "I don't know. You just didn't act the way you used to. It's like I said before, you got sullen and quiet. And sometimes you gave me a funny look." She paused as his expression now reminded her of that funny look. An odd tingle ran down her spine as she realized now what she hadn't seen at fourteen. Cooper wasn't staring at her like he was mad at her, he was looking at her like he was attracted to her and didn't want to be.

  "You just got it, didn't you?" he asked, meeting her gaze. "I can see it in your big brown eyes. It finally clicked in."

  "You liked me?" she asked, surprised by that thought. "In a more than best buddy kind of way?"

  "Yes, and it was confusing. I didn't know what to do about it. You were my best friend since we were eight, and then suddenly you were a girl. I didn't want to lose you as a friend. But I also didn't like when you started talking about other guys, especially Jeremy." He curled his lip in disgust.

  "What was wrong with Jeremy?"

  "He was a jerk—stupid, arrogant, full of himself."

  "You just described every guy in our freshman class, including yourself." She shrugged. "Jeremy never looked twice at me anyway. He was too caught up in that slut, Kendall Richmond."

  "Kendall wasn't a slut; she was just friendly."

  "Oh, come on, Cooper. She had sex under the bleachers with Timothy Harding after a football game."

  His jaw dropped. "No way. You never told me that."

  "I think I found out about it after we weren't talking anymore."

  "Oh, right."

  Silence fell between them. "I missed you after it all went bad," she said. "It was hard to see your eyes burn with anger when you looked at me. I missed my best friend. It was almost a relief when my mom made us move. But it was sad, too." She swallowed a knot of emotion. "I can't believe your parents don't hate me."

  "Like I said, they didn't blame you as much as law enforcement."

  "But their opinion didn't change your mind."

  "Because I was with you that night. I saw what you saw, and I told you the car you saw wasn't my brother's. But you wouldn't listen. It felt like you wanted it to be true, so you could take it to the police, so you could work with the cops, be a detective. It's like you wanted to find your way into a real investigation."

  She couldn't believe that's the way Cooper had seen her actions. "I didn't make it up, Cooper. I thought that was his car that I saw. And I was ahead of you. I had a better view of it."

  "It didn't stop with the car. You started talking to other people in the neighborhood, and you got some girls to say they saw Kyle hanging around the park one day when Hannah was there with her nanny."

  "I didn't get them to say that," she corrected. "I overheard them talking, and I just asked if they'd told the police."

  "Well, it just snowballed from there. Kyle was taken in for questioning. Everyone thought he did it. People would call him names like child molester, kidnapper, and murderer. Our cars and our house got egged. And it didn't just end with Kyle. I got a lot of hate, too."

  She felt bad about all that. Things should never have gone so far in that direction, especially since Kyle was never charged for the crime.

  "There were no other suspects but Kyle," Cooper continued. "He was found guilty in the court of public opinion based on absolutely nothing."

  "There were other persons of interest. They also thought Mr. Montgomery might have had something to do with it, too," she reminded him.

  "I don't remember people hounding him the way they did Kyle. Maybe there was some suspicion, but he also got a hell of a lot of sympathy."

  "You're right. Kyle's reputation was smeared," she admitted.

  "And my brother couldn't handle it. He had difficulties relating to people even before that. He had trouble making friends, communicating. You knew all that."

  "I think I know more of it now than I did then," she defended.

  "Come on, Andi. You knew."

  "I felt horrible about what happened to Kyle and to your family. I didn't know any of that was going to happen. I wanted to find Hannah; it wasn't just a game, Cooper. I babysat that little girl. I could hear her laugh in my head. I could see her smile. I wanted to bring her back. But I couldn't. And in the end, I just drove my best friend away."

  "Would you change anything if you could go back and do it again?"

  She thought about his question for a long minute. "I can't go back, and I can't change it, so whatever I say doesn't matter. I did what I did, and you did what you did. We both thought we were right, and apparently we still do."

  They were interrupted by the sound of his mother calling them down to lunch. That put a small smile back on her face. "How many times did your mom call us down for a meal?" she asked.

  "Too many to count."

  "We have a lot of history together, Cooper. Not all of it was bad. From the age of eight to fourteen, we were cool. You were a great friend. And your parents were the best role models I had."

  "My mom always liked you. She told me once you were like a little bird struggling to fly. You were flapping your wings as hard as you could, but you weren't ready to soar, and it was making you crazy."

  "That describes how I felt back then. I wanted to leave the nest because it didn't feel safe. I didn't feel loved. I was trapped in a war between two people who were obsessed with destroying the other. When I came over here, it was a different world. There were warm cookies, siblings, and lots of laughter. There were parents who asked about your day, so much so you were often annoyed by their questions. But I loved when your mom asked me stuff, because my parents rarely knew what I was working on." She drew in a breath and stood up. "We should go downstairs."

  "We should. Before my mom thinks something is going on up here that she needs to interrupt," he said dryly, as he got to his feet. "You might have been oblivious to my changing feelings about you, but didn't you ever wonder why my mother was suddenly bringing in my laundry and leaving the door open every time you came over? I swear she had a radar for whenever I was thinking about kissing you. Suddenly, she'd show up."

  She stared at him in astonishment. "It never crossed my mind that you wanted to kiss me or that your mom was worried about that happening."

  "You were great at observing everyone else but yourself and your best friend."

  "Apparently, so. But the whole boy-girl thing also made me nervous. I tried not to think about it much. I'd pretend to have crushes on someone just to be in the conversation, but most of the crushes weren't even true."

  "I didn't know that." He gave her a thoughtful look. "What would you have done if I had suddenly made a move on you?" he asked curiously, moving closer to her. "Do you think you would have slugged me or kissed me back?"

  The air was suddenly charged between them. They weren't kids anymore. And she was definitely not oblivious to how attractive he was. Her palms started to sweat unexpectedly.

  What would it be like to kiss Cooper?

  It suddenly seemed like a very tantalizing question.

  His gaze darkened as the silence between them grew tense.

  She could feel the pull between them. Her gaze came to rest on his full, sexy lips.

  And then the door swung open, and they both jumped.

  Joanne appeared, giving them a questioning look.

  "Everything all right in here?" she asked.

  She smiled to herself as the tension between them vanished with that question. Cooper rolled his eyes, then said, "It's fine, Mom. We were just coming down."

  "Well, hurry up," she returned, heading back into the hall.

  "See. Every single time," he said with a sigh.

  She laughed. "You move too slow, Cooper." She ran down the stairs, giving him time to think about that. She didn't know what she would have done if he'd tried to kiss her when they were fourteen. She also wasn't sure what she would have done thirty seconds ago.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lunch was bittersweet. Joanne and Doug were as nice to her as they'd always been, especially Joanne, who kept up a steady stream of conversation, asking her about her mom and stepfather, and then talking about the trip to Rome she and Doug had taken a few months earlier. Joanne urged Doug to join in with his favorite memories, which he did with slightly less enthusiasm than his wife. It felt like there was a weight on Doug's shoulders, probably because of Kyle and the impending anniversary of his death.

  Monica seemed quieter than she used to be, her gaze speculative as it moved between her and Cooper, clearly trying to figure out what their relationship was now. She silently wished Monica good luck on that, because she couldn't figure out what they were to each other.

  Sometimes, it felt like they could be friends, but then the past always came back—the pain, the betrayal, and so much anger…

  She couldn't imagine that they could ever get beyond all that.

  As they finished with lunch, the topic came back around to her and her work as an FBI agent.

  "I know you can't tell us anything, but are you hopeful that you can find Neil's little girl?" Joanne asked.

  "I try to never lose hope." It wasn't a very good answer, but it was all she had.

  "I don't know how anyone can be hopeful," Monica said. "So many people never come home, like Hannah Montgomery." Her words brought the mood down even lower. "I can't help thinking about her with another little girl missing from her bedroom. Every kid should be safe in their house. I remember how scared I felt going to sleep after Hannah was kidnapped. I was terrified someone was going to sneak into my room and steal me, too."

  She could relate to that. She'd checked her windows every night after Hannah was taken. "Fortunately, it doesn't happen that often, that a child is taken from her home," she said. "It's shocking and terrifying when it does. But I'm doing everything I can to find Elisa."

  "There's just not much to go on," Cooper put in. "We need something to break, someone to have seen something."

  His frustration matched her own. "There's someone out there who knows something," she said. "We just have to find that person."

  Doug cleared his throat. "I'm going to see what happened with the end of my ballgame." He got to his feet. "It was nice to catch up, Andi. Glad you're doing well. Say hello to your mom, won't you?"

  "Of course. It was good to see you, too."

  "I shouldn't have talked about the kidnapping," Monica said, regret in her eyes. "It made Dad think about what happened to Kyle when Hannah disappeared, and how that sent his life into a spiral. I should have kept my mouth shut."

  Monica's words sent a cloud of pain through Joanne's eyes, and Cooper's mother's gaze was no longer as warm as it had been. Just like with Cooper, things went along fine for a while and then everyone remembered the role she'd played in the destruction of their family.

  "I should get back to work," she said.

  "Now, now, don't run off," Joanne said. "You haven't had your cookies yet, Andi. Let me get them."