A Hero in Her Eyes Read online

  He looked at her, stealing himself off from her words, his expression stoic. “Because they’ve been done away with.”

  She accepted the euphemism, understanding Walker needed to use it in order to keep the horror at bay. “Because they’ve been done away with,” she echoed. “Whoever took Bonnie from that parking lot wanted to have a child to love. That will keep her safe.”

  Usually, she added silently.

  That was something else Walker didn’t need to be made aware of: the fact that there were no hard-and-fast rules to this, only generalities that formed patterns.

  Eliza couldn’t help wondering how the man in her office would react if he knew she was acting as his protector, keeping things from him she sensed might be too devastating for him to deal with. Probably not well at all, despite the good intentions behind it, she concluded. Walker Banacek didn’t strike her as a man who took kindly to being kept in the dark.

  “You said ‘they,”’ Walker began, then hesitated. He couldn’t believe he was asking this. Moreover, he couldn’t believe that he was actually ready to believe whatever her answer might be. But Eliza had somehow known about the toe shoes, and no one but the FBI had been given that piece of information. That did make her claim more credible.

  “Did you see how many of them there were? In your dream?” he added, feeling foolish and agitated at the same time.

  Eliza continued watching his expression, knowing that the answer she gave wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “I didn’t see anyone else.”

  He could feel his frustration beginning to build again. “But then, how do you know it’s not just a man or a woman involved?”

  “I sensed them, their presence,” she clarified before he could say anything. “They were close by, looking for her.”

  “Looking for her?” He didn’t understand. Part of him still felt this woman was just toying with him, seeing how far she could lead him down the garden path before he yelled, “Enough!” “Why? Where was she? Did she run away from them?”

  Eliza shook her head. She knew how all this had to sound to him and she wished she could give him more concrete answers, but she wasn’t about to make up anything. One fabrication, one stretch of the truth, and any trust she might be able to build up in him would be irrevocably shattered.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe she was just playing in the field and had gotten separated from them.”

  It made sense, he supposed. But with the logic came a numbing realization. It felt as if something had died within him.

  “Then it was someone else she was calling ‘Daddy,”’ he concluded bitterly.

  “No—”

  The firm note in her voice surprised him.

  “It was you she was calling to.”

  He couldn’t tell if Eliza was just saying what she knew he wanted to hear. “How could you tell?”

  “I just knew,” she told him simply. “I could feel what she was feeling.”

  He couldn’t allow himself to get strung out on false hopes. Though it cost him, Walker tried to approach this as logically as he could. “Couldn’t you have just gotten confused—dreamt about the actual search that went on at the time of her kidnapping?”

  The background had been hazy, but not the feelings she’d experienced. “No, these were the people who had kidnapped her. They were looking for her. A man and a woman.”

  “A man and a woman,” he repeated. All right, if he was buying into this, he was going to go all the way and pretend she was telling him something that was real. “What did they look like? Can you describe them?”

  If it were only that easy. But at times, her gift just frustrated her, teasing her with pieces of a puzzle that refused to take its true shape. “I wish I could, but as I told you, I didn’t actually see them.”

  “You didn’t actually ‘see’ her, either,” he said pointedly. The disdain in his voice was aimed more at himself than at her.

  It was going to be a struggle for him to come around. But she already knew that. “Not in the sense you mean, no.”

  He didn’t want to be patronized. His eyes narrowed. “Not in any sense.”

  This wasn’t getting them anywhere. “If you want to help me find your daughter, Mr. Banacek, you’re going to have to stop challenging me at every turn, and accept some things on faith.”

  He laughed shortly. “Faith is something that I find in very short supply right now. And it’s Walker, not Mr. Banacek,” he reminded her.

  He realized that he’d snapped the last part at her, and took a breath to calm himself. He was coming at her like an angry timber wolf emerging from a gutted forest, and that wasn’t helping matters.

  Walker tried again, his voice lower this time. “What did you mean just now, when you said if I wanted to help you find my daughter?”

  She folded her hands before her, her gaze locking with his. She couldn’t make it any plainer than she had. “Just what I said.”

  “What you said made it sound as if you intended to look for her whether or not I hired you.” That couldn’t be right.

  To his surprise, she nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”

  No one did something for nothing. There was always an angle being played. He’d learned that the hard way, and until he’d learned it, he’d never gotten ahead. “Why? Why would you do that?”

  Her eyes never wavered. “Because I have to. It’s as simple as that.”

  It wasn’t as simple as that, not really, she thought. But he wouldn’t understand her reasons. They weren’t practical enough for someone like him. She felt compelled to find the girl who’d reached out to her so piteously. Somehow, Bonnie’s spirit had connected with hers, and Eliza knew that if she ignored that, ignored the cry for help, she was as guilty as the people who’d taken the child in the first place. She couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t help Bonnie.

  Walker continued looking at the woman before him in silent wonder. She’d moved him. Against all logic—and he prided himself on being a logical thinker, perhaps at times too logical—Eliza Eldridge had managed to move him. More than that, he believed her. Believed that she believed what she was telling him. As skeptical as he was about this whole process of clairvoyance and its accompanying mumbo jumbo, he found himself believing in this petite, determined young woman who’d shaken him down to his very foundation.

  Faith, huh? She wanted him to have faith. Well, maybe he would give it one more try—even though it was a little like crossing a chasm on a bridge made of whipped cream, he thought, mocking himself.

  Very slowly, Walker nodded. “All right, if you’re going to do it, anyway, then I might as well pay you for your time.”

  She smiled at the way he put it. “Cade will be happy to hear that.”

  Cade Townsend. The man who founded the agency, Walker recalled. Just what manner of people were the members of this organization that had found its way into his life? “But he would have let you undertake this investigation even if I didn’t? Or did you intend to look for Bonnie on your own time?”

  He was being won over, Eliza could see it. Feel it. “Both. Whenever any of us are on a case, there is no ‘own time.’ Every waking moment is devoted to the case. And yes, Cade would let me undertake the investigation even if you didn’t hire ChildFinders.”

  That made no sense to him. It just wasn’t practical. And yet, it gave him immense comfort. “That must be some boss you have.”

  “He is.” There was pride in Eliza’s voice. She’d never felt as close to any person before—aside from her great-aunt—as she did to the people she worked with. “But Cade prefers to think of himself as just a partner, not a boss. We’re all partners in the firm from the moment we join,” she explained. She had no idea just how well he’d had ChildFinders investigated, but there was something he needed to know. Something that he would find encouraging. “Five of us have experienced kidnappings firsthand. That’s part of what makes the agency so dedicated and so effective.”

  “Five?”

 
; She nodded. “Cade began the agency when his son, Darin, was kidnapped. Megan Wichita and Rusty Andreini are brother and sister. Their brother Chad was abducted from in front of their house when he was eight. He’s part of the agency, too.”

  “That’s four.” His eyes narrowed. “Are you the fifth?”

  She knew he’d probably be comforted if she said yes. She knew that to his way of thinking, that would give her a more personal insight. But she had to disappoint him. “No, Savannah Walters is. She came to the agency when her daughter was kidnapped in the middle of a crowded department store. Sam was the one who found her. They were married shortly thereafter,” she added with a smile.

  Five. The number astounded Walker. “Maybe I am in the right place, then.”

  Eliza smiled at that. But she knew he couldn’t be pushed. He had to proceed at a pace that he set himself. “Maybe you are.”

  Walker shifted in his seat, bracing as he opened himself up to the business of reliving the most anguish-laden days of his life. “All right, what do you need to know?”

  She wanted to spare him as much as possible. “I’m already aware of most of the details of the actual kidnapping.” To support her statement, in case he thought she had somehow divined the details, she indicated the open files that littered her desk.

  Curious, Walker turned one of the files around to face him so that he could glance through it. Though he’d accepted the fact that she was on the level about deciding to work on the case, he couldn’t help being impressed by the preliminary data she’d gathered.

  Finished, he turned the folder back around. “You weren’t kidding about taking on the case on your own.”

  “No, I wasn’t kidding.” She needed to get the unspoken words that existed between them out of the way so they could proceed. The part about his wife. She made her way through the minefield cautiously. “I know how Bonnie was taken from the parking lot of a grocery store in the middle of the day, and how every lead the FBI followed turned out to be a dead end.”

  He knew where she was going with this. “And that my wife committed suicide two months later because she couldn’t live with the grief and the guilt.” That, too, had made the newspapers.

  Sympathy infused every syllable Eliza uttered. “She had nothing to feel guilty about.”

  According to the reports she’d read, Rachel Banacek had only turned away from her daughter for less than half a minute to load the nonperishable groceries into the back seat of the van. The van’s rear door was open, blocking her view of Bonnie, who was sitting in the shopping cart’s child seat. It was the kind of thing that happened countless times throughout the country every day—careless acts by women who were otherwise excellent, caring mothers. No one watching Rachel would have thought anything of it.

  Except that this time, there was someone watching her. Someone who took the opportunity to quickly snatch the little girl out of her seat and whisk her away in a car before Rachel was even aware that anything had happened.

  Walker could feel his heart constrict within his chest as he thought of his late wife. He’d found her in bed when he’d come home from working late, an empty bottle of sleeping pills standing beside a glass holding the remnants of a gin and tonic. She’d left a note addressed to him with two words on it: I’m sorry.

  “Rachel didn’t see it your way,” he said. Because she could easily read the feeling evident in his eyes, Walker looked away. “And maybe I’m to blame for that.” He had no idea why he was telling her this. He’d kept it bottled up inside for so long. But now it felt as if his chest would explode if he kept it in a moment longer. “As the days go by after a child’s stolen from you, you start looking for reasons, start pointing fingers at each other because you can’t deal with the pain you’re feeling. Rachel was in a fragile state of mind. I knew that. Her doctor even called me at the office to tell me.” There were days when he felt as if the guilt would tear him apart. That’s how he knew how Rachel had to have felt at the end. “I wasn’t as much of a comfort to her as I could have been.”

  They’d gone off into their separate corners, to nurse wounds that refused to heal. Rachel had blamed him for never being around when she needed him, leaving her to run their home and raise Bonnie on her own, for the most part. He’d blamed her for being careless. For losing Bonnie. It had come to a head one morning when he’d found her drinking before first light.

  It was the last time he ever saw her alive.

  “Your wife blamed herself for the kidnapping.”

  He looked at her, his eyes cold. He’d said too much to this stranger. “Is that a guess, or do you just ‘know’?”

  He was being hostile again, she thought. “It’s a safe assumption. Just as it’s a safe assumption that you blame yourself for your wife’s suicide.” Her eyes were kind. “Don’t.”

  The last thing he wanted was someone’s pity. “Just like that, huh?” It wasn’t easy keeping the bitterness out of his voice.

  “It’s a first step. No one makes us do things we don’t give them permission to. Your wife lost hope. She wasn’t as strong as you.”

  That was where she was wrong. He found it oddly comforting that she didn’t know everything.

  “I sure as hell don’t feel very strong now.” Impatient to get on with it, he raked his hand through his hair. “Look, can we dispense with the emotion and just concentrate on the facts?”

  He was uncomfortable with his emotions, she thought. Was that because he didn’t think a man should display them, or because he couldn’t handle what he was experiencing? “You’re going to have to accept that on some level they’re inseparable.”

  He damn well didn’t have to accept anything of the kind. “I’d like to operate on the level where they’re not for a while, okay?”

  It would come. In time, it would come. For now, she let it drop. “Okay.”

  He wasn’t fooled. She’d agreed too easily. But he was so glad to change the direction of the conversation, he didn’t care if her retreat was sincere. “All right, what do you need from me?”

  That could be summed up in one all-encompassing word. “Cooperation.”

  “Done. And in return—”

  This part was easy, Eliza thought, anticipating his words. He wasn’t the first to make the request. Several of the investigators had found themselves unexpectedly partnered with the clients they were working for. The need to be active in the search for a loved one was a common one.

  “You want to take part in the search, be there every step of the way.” He was staring at her uneasily, she noted, amused. “Go where I go, know what I know.”

  Maybe there really was something to this clairvoyance nonsense at that. Or maybe he was more of an open book than he’d ever thought. “Is that another one of your safe assumptions?”

  A little mystery was a good thing, she thought. Eliza smiled at him. “Are you going to keep questioning me about everything?”

  He had a need to make sense of things, even when no sense was evident. “From where I’m standing, you’re the one with all the answers.”

  It made her laugh softly. Nothing could be further from the truth. At times, she felt as if she was more in the dark than anyone.

  “Not all,” she assured him.

  Walker was struck by the honesty he saw in her eyes. Hope, small, unformed, like wisps of smoke, vaguely stirred within him. “The only thing I care about is the important one.”

  She slipped her hand over his, making a silent pact. “So do I.”

  Chapter 5

  “Why do we have to move for?” Despite her girth, the heavyset woman cowered before the tall, slight man when he looked at her sharply in response to her question, his dark eyes narrowing to slits. “I like it here.”

  “You liked it in the place we were before, too.” Fingers permanently blackened from axle grease wrapped around the stub of a cigarette hanging from his thin lips, and removed it. The man flicked the butt onto the dingy vinyl flooring, then crushed it beneath his boot. �
��You’ll like it in the next place.”

  His tone warned her not to pursue the subject.

  Deaf to the warning, the woman threaded nervous fingers through her dirty, stringy hair.

  “But I don’t see why we have to,” she whined. She looked around the tiny apartment. It had come furnished with someone else’s castoffs, but she had tried to make it a home for the three of them. “I just got all my pretty things laid out the way I like them.” Her face fell into a mournful expression. “Can’t we please stay this time?”

  The edge in his voice became dangerous. “And live on what?”

  She read the look in his eyes. The look she knew so well. Defeat seeped into her large bosom. “You lost your job again?”

  He kicked over a chair, and it came crashing to the floor. The spark of fear that leaped into her eyes pacified him somewhat.

  “Hey, don’t make it sound like it’s my fault. It ain’t. It’s just bad luck. Bad luck,” he reiterated. Like tiny black marbles, his eyes rolled over toward the child sitting in the corner. The little girl appeared to be playing with imaginary playmates, oblivious to the sound of arguing voices around her. His expression deepened into stark ugliness. “Bad luck ever since she came into our lives.”

  Suddenly terrified of the words that were hovering in the air about to be spoken, words she’d heard before, the woman jumped up from the small, wobbly table.

  “Well, if we’re moving, I’d better get started packing,” she announced quickly, her voice breathless. “How long do we have?”

  Placated, he fished a half-empty pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and coaxed out a single slender cylinder. “I got another job at a garage in Reno. It starts tomorrow.”

  “Reno?”

  “Yeah, Reno. You got a problem with that?”

  “No.” The answer was automatic, wrapped in self-preservation.