A Forever Kind of Hero Read online

  “I’m not about to give up, and neither are you. So why don’t we work together?”

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Also by

  Books by Marie Ferrarella writing as Marie Nicole

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Copyright

  “I’m not about to give up, and neither are you. So why don’t we work together?”

  “What makes you think I want your help, Megan?” Garrett asked.

  “You haven’t caught Velasquez yet, have you? Maybe you need a fresh angle. The alternative is to keep wasting time dodging me.”

  She had a point. And he had to grudgingly admit the woman had style and ability. The fact that there was also this undercurrent of electricity running through him, this growing desire to find out just what the lady was truly made of, won him over.

  “If I say yes, we play by my rules.”

  She laughed for the first time, and there was something about the sound that went right through him. “Partners? Don’t worry, Wichita, I know exactly where I stand with you.”

  That, Garrett figured, put her one up on him.

  Dear Reader,

  It’s summer, the perfect time to sit in the shade (or the air conditioning!) and read the latest from Silhouette Intimate Moments. Start off with Marie Ferrarella’s newest CHILDFINDERS, INC. title, A Forever Kind of Hero. You’ll find yourself turning pages at a furious rate, hoping Garrett Wichita and Megan Andreini will not only find the child they’re searching for, but will also figure out how right they are for each other.

  We’ve got more miniseries in store for you this month, too Doreen Roberts offers the last of her RODEO MEN in The Maverick’s Bride, a fitting conclusion to a wonderful trilogy. And don’t miss the next of THE SISTERS WASKOWITZ, in Kathleen Creighton’s fabulous One Summer’s Knight. Don’t forget, there’s still one sister to go. Judith Duncan makes a welcome return with Murphy’s Child, a FAMILIES ARE FOREVER title that will capture your emotions and your heart. Lindsay Longford, one of the most unique voices in romance today, is back with No Surrender, an EXPECTANTLY YOURS title. And finally, there’s Maggie Price’s Most Wanted, a MEN IN BLUE title that once again allows her to demonstrate her understanding of romance and relationships

  Six marvelous books to brighten your summer—don’t miss a single one. And then come back next month, when six more of the most exciting romance novels around will be waiting for you—only in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

  Enjoy!

  Yours,

  Leslie J. Wainger

  Executive Senior Editor

  Please address questions and book requests to

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S : 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian P.O. Box 609, Fort Ene, Ont. L2A 5X3

  MARIE FERRARELLA

  A FOREVER KIND OF HERO

  To Alison Okazaki,

  With fond thoughts,

  From Jessica’s mom

  Books by Marie Ferrarella

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  *Holding Out for a Hero #496

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  The Offer She Couldn’t Refuse

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  Books by Marie Ferrarella writing as Marie Nicole

  Silhouette Desire

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  MARIE FERRARELLA

  lives in Southern California. She describes herself as the tired mother of two overenergetic children and the conten
ted wife of one wonderful man. This RITA Award-winning author is thrilled to be following her dream of writing full-time.

  Chapter 1

  “Gotcha.”

  Garrett Wichita muttered the single word under his breath, a feeling of minor triumph flowing over him. The word was directed at the photograph of the young teenage girl he had just called up on the computer monitor.

  Because he’d trained himself to double-check everything, even when he was certain, Garrett held up the ink-jet printout he’d made earlier, comparing it to the picture on the screen. The printout represented a single frame from literally miles of surveillance tape taken five nights ago at the Zanadu Casino in Las Vegas. It was a blowup of a girl walking beside a man wearing a white suit. What had struck Garrett originally was how young she looked. Too young to be there.

  It was a shade less than a three-quarter profile, and calling it blurry was being charitable—but it was a match. He was almost positive.

  Sometimes, “almost” had to do.

  At least investigating the man’s companion was something new to go on. Something that might help spring the trap faster, catch the quarry a little sooner.

  Pressing the appropriate combination of keys, Garrett listened as the ink-jet printer on his desk came to life, printing the girl’s photograph from the web site and the few lines of information that went with it. Her home was in a Southern California neighborhood, not too far from L.A.

  Once he’d realized her age, Garrett had called up several internet sites that dealt exclusively with runaways and missing kids. She was one of a sea of countless faces. Garrett counted himself lucky that he’d found her after only a couple of hours, before he went cross-eyed—or worse, missed her because he’d become less discerning.

  He leaned back, impatient for the printer to finish. Garrett drummed his fingers on his desk.

  The site had been only the second one he’d pulled up Sad how many sites like this there were these days, he thought. Sites devoted to kids who’d disappeared, thinking they could make a go of it in a world that they were ill-equipped to face.

  He couldn’t help wondering how many of those faces would have deceased stamped over their files before the year was out.

  There but for the grace of God...

  Hell, he thought, he had gone that route.

  Except that he’d been one of the lucky ones. Lucky to have had the sense to pull himself out before he was found dead in some alley, before he had traded his soul for his next meal.

  Before he’d gone down the route that his brother Andy had.

  His mouth curved into a smile that had no feeling behind it—only memories.

  It had been a little like old home week, scrolling through the endless parade of faces, most smiling as they posed for their picture before things had somehow gone sour in their young lives, for one reason or another. The faces had changed some from the ones he’d known. But not all that much. There was still hope there, in the eyes of some of them—hope for the future. The eyes he’d looked into when he was that age—and his own—had been dead.

  Hopeless.

  He wondered about the girl’s eyes as the color reproduction inched its way out of the mouth of the printer. Was there still hope there? Or had she gotten sucked into a world she had no control over? A world that was most likely a hundred times worse than anything she’d found to rebel against at home.

  Most likely, he thought again. But not always.

  For a little while, the street had seemed like a blessing to him, too.

  Garrett shut his memories away as the printer came to a whining halt, spitting out the end of the paper. Garrett picked up the photograph and examined it. The girl who looked up at him from the page was very pretty: blond, blue-eyed. She appeared to be a typical teenager—happy.

  The likeness he’d seen on the tape hadn’t been. Watching her, she’d reminded him of a puppet whose strings had been cut, but who hadn’t realized it yet. She hadn’t yet sank bonelessly to the floor. If it was the same girl, she’d lost weight. Too much weight.

  Jorge Velasquez liked his runners thin, Garrett recalled. Velasquez had started out as a two-bit hustler, but through cunning, luck and a ruthless disregard for life, had managed to work his way up to the better sections of the southwest. Garrett had become aware of him before the transition had taken place.

  “What are you up to, Kathy Teasdale?” he asked the photograph. “And what made you run away?”

  “It was that boy, I know it.” Judith Teasdale’s voice hitched as she spoke. For a moment, she couldn’t continue.

  Looking helplessly at her guest—her last hope—Judith struggled to remain coherent, if not calm. Calm was something that had been cruelly wrenched from her grasp the morning she’d discovered the note on her teenage daughter’s rumpled bed. The note that echoed Kathy’s last words as she had stormed out of the house the previous night—“I’m out of here.”

  Warren Teasdale had dragged his daughter back that night, grounding her and sending her to her room. But neither Judith nor her husband had heard Kathy slip out sometime during the night. Slip out of the house and out of their lives.

  After three weeks with no word from Kathy and no positive word from the police, Judith was terrified that the disappearance was permanent.

  Her stomach tied in gargantuan knots, Judith turned toward the woman standing beside her—the woman she’d called when the police had told her that they were doing all they could to find Kathy and it hadn’t been enough. The woman, Judith fervently prayed, who would hand her a miracle.

  Judith drew in a huge breath, trying to sound more in control. “Ever since she met that boy, Joe Something-or-other, Kathy’s been different. Defiant. I don’t even know who she is anymore.” Her eyes filled with tears, reddening again. “Or where she is.”

  Beginning to sob, she turned her face away, burying it against her husband’s shoulder. Built like a linebacker, a position he’d played in college, Warren Teasdale closed his arm around his wife’s shoulder. A silent appeal was in the eyes that he turned toward his guest.

  Judith gave it sound. “Megan, please...”

  “Megan, please, find him. Find your brother and bring him home.” Even after two decades, Megan Andreini could still hear her mother saying those words. Time hadn’t made the voice any softer, or made the acute stab of helplessness she had felt in response any duller.

  But then she hadn’t been able to fulfill the request She’d only been eight at the time. Things were different now. She had experience and training, and this was her calling. She would find this missing child, just as she had found all those other missing children for the clients who came to ChildFinders, Inc. It was her destiny, her mission in life. And the only clear reason, Megan felt, that she was put on this earth: so that other people wouldn’t suffer endlessly the way her mother had.

  The way her brother had.

  And the way she had.

  Megan covered Judith’s outstretched hand with her own. “Don’t worry, we’ll find her,” she promised.

  The promise was firm, unshakable. Megan knew firsthand just how much Kathy’s parents needed to hear that. It was all they had to cling to: a promise from a woman they knew in passing through a mutual friend.

  But at closer examination there was more to it. Megan knew what gave them solace was the fact that she was one-third of ChildFinders, Inc., an agency devoted to finding missing children throughout the country, founded by a man whose own son had been abducted. Cade Townsend’s agency now had a sterling reputation and a perfect track record....

  Except for one case. Its first one. But that was still open, ongoing. Megan had every faith in the world that one day, it too would be closed. Cade Townsend wasn’t the kind who would ever accept defeat.

  And neither was she.

  Megan smiled kindly at Judith, who seemed to be drawing up her courage. “Thanksgiving is almost here. We’ve never been apart for the holidays. Kathy—” Judith’s voice broke.

&n
bsp; Megan could feel her heart twisting. She knew what this felt like. She knew, too, what it was like to witness the pain without being able to say or do anything to help.

  But Thanksgiving was only a few days away, and Megan was practical.

  “Maybe I won’t have her here in time for Thanksgiving—” her voice was soft “—but I’ll try to have her home before Christmas,” she promised them.

  “Warren, why don’t you go get Judith a glass of water?” she suggested politely. “And then you can answer some questions.”

  “More questions?” Warren asked impatiently as he crossed to the kitchen.

  Megan heard him running the water. She made sure there was not a hint of doubt on her face as she looked at him when he returned. Doubt would only serve to stimulate their imagination and cause them further anguish. She was here to help alleviate that, not add to it.

  “I’m going to need as much information about your daughter as you can give me.”

  Judith pursed her lips and nodded. Warren pressed the glass of water into his wife’s hand.

  “Why don’t you sit down and be more comfortable?” Megan coaxed, indicating the sofa. She was accustomed to taking charge. She had been doing it for as long as she could remember.

  An hour later, Megan’s hand was beginning to cramp as she wrote quickly, trying to keep up with what Kathy’s parents were telling her. Their voices overlapped, each hurrying to answer her questions. As if faster answers would bring Kathy back to them more quickly.

  The more she wrote, the more unlikely a candidate Kathy Teasdale seemed to be for the role of a runaway.

  Megan was surprised how much the Teasdales seemed to know about their daughter’s habits and her friends. Most parents of teenagers Megan had dealt with had a shadowy knowledge, at best, of their children’s activities and the people who inhabited those children’s lives. The girl who was emerging from all this information had been a bright, sunny, well-adjusted fourteen-year-old who made the dean’s list every marking period.