Sneak Peek at Ghosting

I'm working away at Ghosting and am 90% certain this will be the opening chapter!  Strings. Life was strings. Almost like pushpins on a bulletin board with yarn connecting the dots. Everything was connected. Everything.
She’d always thought of life that way. Thought of science that way. It had been one of the few ways she’d consoled herself as a child when her mother would turn violent. When she’d think of the loving father who’d supposedly been dead since she wasn’t yet a teenager. When she’d think of the two sisters who she’d loved since the moments they were born.
Since her best friend had married the father she’d found when she was a full-grown woman. Since that best friend had given birth to her two youngest siblings almost six months earlier.
Everything and everyone was connected. Working forensics for the best federal agency in the country was just another string that made up her life.
Josh was a string, too. That was why she found herself opening the door to the house where she knew she’d find him. It wasn’t where he lived—but he owned it, along with four other property foreclosures that he was in the middle of rehabbing in his spare time. She’d tried two other properties first—one reason it was so late.
She had to be at work in seven hours. So did he.
That was one of the things that brought her to one of the up-and-coming St. Louis neighborhoods so late at night. The case he’d just finished had been one of those that everyone knew was a nightmare. One that would stay with you for years to come—if you ever escaped it.
And Josh had been the one to hold the twelve year old boy as the child had died. Had held him, talked with him, and from what she’d been told by her father in confidence a few hours earlier, had tried to reassure the kid that life on the other side would be better than the one the boy was leaving behind. Because they’d all known the boy, son of the perpetrator, would not live through the day. And he hadn’t.
And Josh had been the one to step up and stay with the little boy who’d had no one.
She found him in what would one day be a dining room, yanking up the hardwood and ripping each individual nail free with his hammer. His hair, longer than she’d expected from a Mr. Conservative like Josh, was uncombed and shaggy around his face. His glasses were missing, though she knew he really only used them for reading, and sweat trickled down his forehead. He’d yanked his shirt off and wore only a thin tank undershirt.
He definitely didn’t look all bookish and intellectual without his shirt, muscles flexing as he yanked and ripped. She’d noticed that before whenever she caught him doing something so physical. He didn’t have a football player build, but he wasn’t rail skinny either. And he was strong, extremely so.
He’d worked his way through college and post-grad doing construction. As smart as he was—he had two PhD’s compared to her one—and he’d still had to pay part of his way with manual labor.
As she looked at him, she couldn’t help but think how it had definitely paid off. Josh was damned hot, and she wasn’t too blind to see that.
But he was also one of her best friends and she hated to see him hurting. “Josh?”
It took her a few tries, but he eventually looked at her. It was then that she realized some of what she’d thought was sweat on his cheeks wasn’t.
Something about seeing a strong man weeping had her gut clenching and her own eyes watering. He wiped the tears, sweat, dust, all off it off his face with the waistband of his shirt, exposing a very well-defined set of abs. “Kelly Danielle, what the fuck are you doing down here this late? Are you trying to get mugged, or worse?”
“Hardly.” He was one of the only people on the planet who called her by her full name—something she usually snipped at him about. But not tonight. Josh rarely cursed. And never at a woman. Never at her. And she’d never seen him cry before. He’d always been so strong. She’d been the one to weep and break down in front of him dozens of times before. “Everyone was worried about you. And no one could get a hold of you. I took a chance on a hunch. Figured you were doing exactly what you are doing. It just took a little time to find out the where.”
“What I’m doing is trying to make this dump turn a profit. How did you get here?” He wiped his hands on a rag then straightened. Kelly looked up at him. Josh was six-four or five and had more than half a foot on her. Long, tall, and beautiful. If someone was smart enough to look closely at him, to look past the conservative dress and glasses.
“I took a magic carpet. Seriously? I took a cab, all three places.”
“You didn’t have to. I just…needed some time to think.”
“I know what happened.”
“Do you? How can anyone?”
There was so much bitterness in his words. Something she wasn’t used to hearing from him. Josh usually had an almost Zen attitude about the world. A sort of acceptance that there was evil out there, and that evil was balanced by hope. He was such an optimist it had driven her crazy the first few moths she’d know him.
But that attitude had been missing a lot lately.
And that worried her, just as much as worried the others who cared about him. Like her father. It was his concern that had really set her out looking for Josh. She didn’t like seeing the one parent who she actually loved and respected worried. Her dad had enough on his plate right now. But he’d been genuinely concerned for Josh.
And his concern had rubbed off on Kelly. “I just wanted to check on you, make sure you were as all right as you could be.”
“Hell no, I’m not.” He threw the hammer and it imbedded in the plaster wall. Kelly jumped, fighting the instinctive urge to back away. She didn’t deal with such violent emotions very well. And she never had.
A curl of fear went through her stomach but she ruthlessly pushed it away. She didn’t have to be afraid of this man and she knew that. Deep down where it counted she knew that. It was just the tenseness of the moment causing her anxiety. “Josh…”
He looked at her, from eyes that were so pain-filled she wanted to weep for him. “I held him. I held him for four hours because he didn’t have anyone else. Not so much as a second-cousin. He wasn’t any older than Ry, Kelly. And I kept seeing Ryan there. And I kept thinking why couldn’t that little boy have had someone there who loved him like we love Ryan. Why did he have to die knowing that the one person on the planet who should have protected him was the one who put him in that hospital bed to begin with? And why didn’t I see what was going on sooner?”
“It wasn’t your fault.” And it wasn’t. Her father had shared enough of the case specifics for her to know that. But Josh put so much pressure on himself sometimes. “You can’t protect everyone; we both know that. You did the best you could. And that little boy at least had you with him to help him not be quite as alone. That matters.”
Kelly did something she so rarely did, especially with an attractive guy, she hugged him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and she held on. It didn’t matter that he was covered in sweat and grime and heaven only knew what else, she just held him...