“If I were to hire you myself, how would you convince my brother to leave his cult and go with you?” Kelly asked.

“I’d need to tell him something that would compel him to choose freedom over Star Mother.”

“Like what?”

Sam shrugged.  “I know your father and brother had a falling-out, so my original plan was to tell him his father is sorry for what happened and wants him to come home.  I’d hoped that would be enough.  Sometimes it is.”

She rolled her eyes.  “You have no idea how wrong you are.”

“Oh, yeah?”  He slid her a sideways glance.  “You have a better one?”

On the tail end of a sigh, she said, “All it would take is a few words from me and Jake would follow me like a puppy.”

He nodded, his expression unreadable.  “I wouldn’t be so sure, but the idea has merit.  We’ll talk about it.  To come up with a concrete plan, I’ll need to know more about your brother, your relationship with him, and his relationship with his father.”

Not so fast, she thought, and reached up to flip on the dome light.  She had some interrogating of her own to do first.

“Now what?”

“I want a better look at you,” she said, studying his profile.  “I’m not so sure I should hire you.  You could be an axe murderer for all I know.”

He arched an eyebrow.  “What does an axe murderer look like?”

“Give me a minute and I’ll tell you.”  This was the first chance she’d had to study him up close.  When they first met, she’d been so surprised by his sudden appearance that she hadn’t paid much attention to how he looked except to notice he was big and scary, which immediately put her on the defensive.  While he used the caveman approach to carry her off, she could tell he was all muscle and sinew, a good six-feet and a few inches of it.  Now that she saw his face in the light, he no longer looked scary at all.  His thick brows were dark and expressive, accenting the deep gray of his eyes.  He had prominent cheekbones and a small bump on the bridge of his nose that told her it had been broken once.

As she watched him, Sam’s full lips tilted up in a sly grin.  She felt herself blush self-consciously.

“Do I pass inspection?”

She gave him an unladylike snort.  “The jury’s still out, but I’ll let you know.”