“Yeah, but you didn’t tell me he was going to hire Lily.”

“Because you didn’t call me back.”

Aidan shook his head. “When?”

“A couple of weeks ago,” his brother said, with a vague wave of his hand as he dove back into Aidan’s fridge. “You were on a call fighting that Eagle Peak fire or something.”

“You mean when I was gone for nine straight days working twenty-four seven fighting that seventy-five-thousand-acre fire, trying to save a hundred homes and uncountable livestock?”

“Maybe.” Gray pulled out some leftover Chinese. He sniffed it, shuddered and grimaced, then shoved it back into the fridge. Next he found a plate of brownies and his eyes lit. “Score.”

“What about our rule?” Aidan asked. “The no working with exes rule.” He yanked the plate from Gray’s hand. “And those are mine. A woman brought them by the firehouse. For me.”

“The statute of limitations regarding working with exes is long over as it applies to Lily,” Gray said, and managed to steal a brownie off the plate, licking it to claim it.

“Are you serious right now?” Aidan asked. “How old are you?”

Gray grinned. “And plus, Lily’s not a real ex. She’s more a fantasy ex.”

That it was mostly true just pissed Aidan off. Yeah, okay, so he’d fallen hard and fast for Lily. Unfortunately the recovery from her leaving without so much as a Dear Aidan letter hadn’t been nearly so fast.

“Did you ever find out what she thought she was doing up near Dead Man’s Cliff?” Gray asked around a mouthful of brownie.

“We both know what she was doing. She wanted to see the last place Ashley had been.”

“Well she didn’t. She didn’t get more than halfway up there.”

“She will,” Aidan said with certainty. Lily was tough to the very bone, and she didn’t give up. At least the old Lily wouldn’t have given up. “What I don’t get is why Cedar Ridge now, after all this time?”

“Now, see, if you followed Buzzfeed you’d know why,” Gray said smugly, licking residual chocolate from his fingers.

“What’s Buzzfeed?”

Gray shook his head. “One of these days you need to do something on your iPad other than watch porn. Lily was working at some fancy spa in San Diego where the rich and famous go, not just for hair but stuff like Botox and chemical peels too.”

“What the hell is a chemical peel?”

Gray shrugged. “Beats me, but they do it, all far away from the Hollywood eye. Lily had worked her way up from cosmetologist to assistant manager. Then it got out that some celebrity client used hair extensions or some such shit like that, which was a problem because she’s in all these shampoo commercials. Word is that Lily leaked it.”

“She lost her job over hair extensions?”