No doubt about it, Tyrell Mercer would make some woman very happy someday. Something about a man doing household chores was a definite turn-on. And a man who cooked and did the laundry? It just didn’t get any better. Any woman would be thrilled…

Again, just thinking about Tyrell with another woman shot a bolt of jealousy through Jama. Whoever he married, she’d better be good to him, or she would answer for it.

He was a man who worked hard at a job he loved. For a time, that was as an agriculturalist at the state university. Now he ran the ranch and vineyard. Jama knew he loved the work, as well, but the primary reason he’d returned home was because he loved his family, and Monty had needed help.

Five hundred acres of prime, fertile bottomland and hillside vineyards was more than one man could handle, even with all the best, most modern farm equipment and hired help during the planting and harvest. With Daniel-the younger Mercer brother-now working with Homeland Security in Kansas City, and the twins, Renee and Heather, both living with their families in Kansas City, that left Tyrell. As Jama had assured Fran, Tyrell was perfectly happy to make the change.

“Do you remember the age-old question?” Tyrell settled his smoky-dark gaze on Jama again. “What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?”

“Injury?”

“Most likely. Unless the irresistible force isn’t as irresistible as it seems.”

“Or if the immovable object isn’t as immovable.”

“So which are you, and which am I?” Tyrell asked.

Jama grimaced. Here she’d thought he’d given up on that subject. “Shouldn’t we just focus on Monty for now?”

“You don’t think Dad will want the same answer as soon as he wakes up? Don’t you want to be ready for the poor man, considering his weakened condition?”

“Have I reminded you lately that you have a manipulative streak?”

“So are you saying I would be the irresistible force? That would make you the immovable object.”

“One of the theories is that the immovable object will be smashed to pieces at impact.” She paused, closed her eyes. “Even if it wants to be moved, it can’t.”

“Or both could be destroyed,” he said. “Or both could carry the scars of that impact forever. Or the two could meld together and become stronger than either was before.”

She opened her eyes. He couldn’t know how much she wanted the last possibility to be true. And how frustrating it was to know that it was her own fear that prevented it.

A nurse approached the table as Jama and Tyrell prepared to leave, announcing that Monty was out of surgery.

She handed Tyrell his cell phone. “Your mother says you need to call your sister, Heather. She’s asking to speak with you.”

Tyrell took the phone, pressed Speed Dial and walked to a quiet corner of the cafeteria.

As he listened to Heather, Jama saw his expression turn to stone.

Tyrell’s fingers went cold all of a sudden, and he felt a tightening in his chest as his sister, the solid, calm, sensible twin, sobbed at the other end of the connection.

“Missing? How long? What happened?”

“We don’t…we don’t know. Oh, Tyrell, I’m so scared. She never went to Renee’s this morning. She told me she felt sick, and she was caught up on all her subjects, and the cousins were driving her crazy-you know how they can be. All over the place all at once, and they never stop talking. I can’t imagine how Renee manages to teach them so much when they never sit still, but she’s so good with them, and Doriann has just blossomed under her schooling-”

“Honey, slow down.” As a cardiothoracic surgical chief resident, Heather had nerves of supersonic titanium. Which was why her sudden jabbering frightened Tyrell badly.

“What is it you’re trying to tell me?” he asked.

“I let Doriann stay home this morning. Alone.”

“That’s not unusual. You’ve done that before.” Not that he approved, and he’d made his opinions known quite strongly in the past.

“I know I shouldn’t have,” she said, “but I understand how it feels to need quiet time to yourself.”

“What happened, Heather?”

“I called her at home, and she didn’t answer. I tried her cell, and it sounded as if she answered, then hung up. I kept calling, and got her voice mail. She hasn’t answered any of my calls.”

Now he was getting really scared. Doriann Streeter was a strong-willed eleven-year-old, but she would not frighten her parents like this.

“Perhaps she’s in a place with no cell reception,” he suggested.

“You know how she is. She doesn’t sit in one place for more than five minutes, and even if cell reception is sketchy, I’ve tried enough times, I surely should have gotten through.”

“So you went home and she wasn’t there, either?”

“That’s right. She and I had a few words the other night about how much I’m away from home, but I thought we’d gotten that straightened out. She understands the demands of my residency program.”

Tyrell had his doubts about that. Sure, he was proud of his sister, but it didn’t seem to him that leaving a daughter at home alone most of the time, or handing her over to your sister to raise, was something any kid was going to completely understand. But what would he know? He wasn’t a parent.

“She is probably still mad, and just doesn’t realize you’re worried,” he said.

“I know she likes to go to the park alone sometimes,” Heather said. “She goes to see the animals in the zoo, and she’s mature enough to go by herself.”

Tyrell held his reply. An eleven-year-old had no business walking unaccompanied along the streets of Kansas City, even in the bright morning sunlight. But remarking about that right now would not be helpful.

“Any ideas?” he asked.

“One, and it terrifies me. We heard a report that two people were seen earlier this morning abducting a redheaded child only two blocks from our apartment. The police are following all leads.”

Tyrell closed his eyes as a sick dizziness threatened to flatten him. He felt a hand on his arm. Jama’s hand. She squeezed, and he saw her eyes filling with dread.

“So if that is what happened,” he said over the phone, keeping his voice calm for the sake of his sister and Jama, “are there any leads?”

“Reports are that this couple has headed east on I- 70.”

“Toward St. Louis, then.”

There was a catch in his sister’s breathing, and a gasp from Jama, who squeezed more tightly-no longer giving strength, but needing it.

“Heather Danae, you’ve got to keep it together.” Remaining calm no longer seemed possible, yet he needed to do so anyway.

“She’s everything to me,” Heather said. “If I’d paid more attention to her this morning-”

“Right now regrets and second-guessing yourself won’t help.”

“This could be something more than a random incident,” Heather said.

“Why would you think that?”

“The couple are suspected to be killers. They may be the two who went on a rampage and killed several people across state lines, two of them doctors. This couple is on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.”

The words were a kick in the gut, and the strength went out of Tyrell. He found a chair and sat in it. Jama sank down beside him, close.

“Mark was moonlighting on an E.R. shift a week or so ago, and a man came in demanding painkillers,” Heather said. “Mark didn’t comply.”

Tyrell understood. He’d heard enough of his brother-in-law’s stories to imagine the variety of people treated in the Emergency Department. Weekends were the worst, when “patients” tried to con the E.R. docs into giving out narcotics, opiates and other addictive drugs. Mark had been around long enough to know when he was being scammed.

“One of the other docs had his car window smashed in the doctors’ parking lot that night,” Heather said. “Mark parks there, too.”

“You think Mark was the target, but the guy got the wrong car?”