Chapter 14: Not on the List

On Monday morning Shea invited Wyatt to brunch at the villa, and he said yes.

I sat beside him in the truck and told him he didn't have to.

"She has my address," he said. "I'd rather see what she does with it."

On the patio, Shea had set up a ring light and a table of pastries nobody was going to eat.

Jared stood behind a tripod with his sleeves rolled, and my mother sat in the shade with a glass of iced tea and her eyes on her daughter.

"There he is!" Shea said, and the red light on her phone came on.

"Hi, everyone. I have a special guest this morning. Say hi to Ranger Wyatt, the man who found my sister."

She said it to the lens in the voice I knew from fourteen months of videos.

Her phone was propped on a stand beside the pastries, and I could read the live count on it.

Three thousand and some, and climbing.

Those were her members, and they were all watching Wyatt's face.

"Hi," he said.

"Isn't he the sweetest? Mel, come stand next to him."

I stood next to him.

"So I've been telling the girls that Melinda's wedding is Saturday, and Wyatt has agreed to come."

She laid her hand on his arm and squeezed it.

"And I told him there's one tiny thing we'd love him to do. A callback to the desert."

"The water," Wyatt said.

"The water! He remembers. Wyatt, would you promise everyone right now that you'll hand Melinda a bottle at the wedding?"

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