A Hero for All Seasons Read online

  Savannah nodded. “And a sweatshirt. An Angels sweatshirt.” At four, her daughter was a devout tomboy who shunned frills.

  Savannah fought against the implications of Sam’s suggestion. To do something like that required planning. It meant someone had been watching her for a while. Waiting. She couldn’t allow herself to believe that.

  “Why would anyone do that?”

  That was the million-dollar question. “If we had a specific reason, then we’d be able to narrow in on who did it.” The look in her eyes was too painful for his conscience to deal with. He found himself turning away. “Or at least—” he sighed, more to himself than to her “—that’s the theory.”

  Sam turned to look at Savannah just before he got out of the car. He could guess by the look in her eyes what she was thinking. She was devastated that someone might betray her like this. He would have felt the same way in her place.

  “You’ve got to focus on the positive aspect of that.”

  She stared at him as if he’d suddenly lapsed into a foreign language. “What positive aspect?”

  “If it’s someone you know—someone who’s gone to all this trouble and planning to abduct Aimee—they won’t hurt her.”

  It took her a moment to absorb that, to deal with the thought of betrayal and somehow find hope in it. With one theory, he’d knocked out the foundations of her world and then tried to rebuild on their site.

  “Right,” she said numbly, rallying around the single thought. Aimee was all right. Maybe she was nervous, and missing her mommy, but she wasn’t scared. It helped somewhat, believing that. “But then what are we doing here?”

  “It’s just a theory,” he reminded her. “What we are doing here is eliminating possibilities and checking out part of my theory.” As Savannah watched, Sam took several sheets of folded paper from his pocket and opened them up for her benefit.

  Savannah’s mouth dropped open as she looked at the pages, one after the other. “That’s Aimee.”

  Nodding, he took the sheets back. “I’m not much on the computer, but Megan has this program that can morph people, or add and subtract features.”

  In this case, Sam had disguised the girl in all the possible ways he could come up with at three in the morning. In one shot, he’d eliminated almost all traces of Aimee’s long blond hair, and put on a baseball cap—an Angels cap with a flying A. He had a hunch that was what the abductor had used, since Aimee had an affinity for the local baseball team.

  “We’re going to show these ‘photos’ around to the vendors and salespeople to see if we can jog a few memories.”

  He saw a light enter Savannah’s eyes for the first time since he’d met her. The pleased feeling that filled him was something he didn’t have time to dwell on. He filed it away for later.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” she pressed. “Let’s go!”

  Sam smiled a little at the eagerness, and hoped it wasn’t misplaced. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Chapter 5

  “May I see that one again, please?”

  Leaning over a section of the fine jewelry display case, the saleswoman reached for the last altered photograph Sam had shown her.

  Savannah didn’t bother trying to squelch the bubble of excitement that rose in her chest. She and Sam had been up and down the entire department store, retracing her steps and talking to every salesperson they came in contact with. Especially people whose sections faced one of the three possible exits from the store. But each question they’d asked about that day had been met with a negative response, and Savannah had been close to giving up hope that they’d learn anything here. The sales clerks all looked at the photographs and shook their heads. No one had seen either Aimee, or any of the various altered versions in the photographs Sam had brought.

  Until now.

  Without realizing it, Savannah urgently laid her hand on the other woman’s arm. “Do you recognize her?”

  Taking the photograph from Sam, the woman shook her head. “I’m not sure.” As she examined it, she held the photograph unusually close.

  “Do you wear glasses?” It was more of a guess than a question on Sam’s part. His mother used to do that until she’d finally broken down and gotten glasses; it had been a matter of vanity.

  The woman flushed as she set the ink-jet photograph on the counter again.

  “Contacts, actually,” she admitted ruefully. “The smog’s been bothering my eyes lately, and I can’t keep them in for very long. I start looking as if I’ve been crying all night.”

  “Were you wearing contacts on Thursday?” Sam wanted to know.

  Savannah’s heart sank. She knew where Sam was going with this.

  The saleswoman shook her head. “Couldn’t. Worse day than today.” She glanced down at the photograph again, an apologetic look on her face. “I think I saw someone who looked like that leaving Thursday morning. I don’t generally notice children, but the reason I noticed was because this one had this giggle—”

  The air all but stopped in Savannah’s throat. “An infectious laugh?” The question tumbled out. “Did it make you want to laugh, too?”

  Sam saw the look on Savannah’s face. Elation over their first breakthrough.

  “Yes,” the saleswoman said, looking pleased that she’d been able to help.

  Savannah’s heart felt as if it was about to burst right out of her chest. She clutched at Sam’s arm. “That’s Aimee. Everyone always said she had this wonderful laugh that made people want to laugh along with her. You can’t help it when you hear her.”

  Bingo, Sam thought. They had their eyewitness.

  “Who was she with?” But the woman began to move her head from side to side. “Think carefully,” Sam cautioned her.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t notice the parent—just the child.” The saleswoman frowned slightly. “When I looked, I thought it was a little boy.”

  “I’m the parent,” Savannah insisted. “And I wasn’t with her.”

  The words broke away from her before she caught herself. She’d promised Sam she wouldn’t break down. Savannah struggled to regain control. The woman hadn’t meant anything by the remark, and she knew it. It was just that she felt so very frustrated, so very exposed right now.

  “Please,” she begged. “This is very important. Can’t you try to remember?”

  Sighing, the saleswoman shook her head. “I already told you—”

  But Savannah wouldn’t be put off. She didn’t care what the woman had told her; she’d seen Aimee, and that meant she had to have seen more, too. “A man, a woman—who was holding her hand?”

  With a large sigh, the woman closed her eyes, apparently hoping that would somehow help focus her and help her to recall a seemingly insignificant memory, now buried deeply.

  But when she opened her eyes again, Sam saw no sudden light of revelation. Only a mute apology. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Savannah battling dejection.

  “I’m sorry,” the saleswoman told them sincerely. “I’d only be making it up. I don’t remember.”

  “But the child wasn’t struggling?” He wanted to be absolutely sure about that.

  “No, I told you, the child was laughing. If I’d noticed that he—that she—” the saleswoman amended “—was struggling, I would have looked at the person with her. Maybe even called security if I thought it was suspicious.”

  “Thank you.” Savannah’s disappointment was so strong that Sam felt he could reach out and touch it. Something protective stirred within him. He wanted to take her out of here. “If you remember anything else, you’ve got my card.”

  The saleswoman nodded. “From yesterday, right. Shouldn’t I tell this to the police?” the woman asked suddenly, as the significance of what she’d just told Sam hit her.

  “By all means,” Sam agreed. His hand on her elbow, he urged Savannah out of the store.

  “It was Aimee, I know it,” Savannah insisted. They finally had a piece of information, but it didn’t seem to lead anywher
e. Savannah was torn between elation and frustration. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  She looked as if she wanted to run in two different directions at the same time. Sam placed his hands on her shoulders to anchor her, forcing her attention back to him. He wanted to focus her on the good part. If she fell apart now, that would cost them tune.

  “Look, I know you’re frustrated, but at least we know that Aimee was all right when she left the store, and that she wasn’t afraid. That strongly indicates that she did know the person who took her. That also means that when we find her, there might not be that much of a trauma for her to deal with.” He knew that had to be something Savannah was worried about.

  When. He had used the word when. People had begun to say “if.” “If” they found Aimee, not “when.” They hadn’t said it directly to her, but around her. Savannah had overheard the police detective talking to his partner in the police station when they’d brought her in for questioning on Thursday. Even then, Underwood had said “if” they found Aimee.

  The small word had driven a shaft right through her heart.

  But Sam didn’t believe that the odds were stacked against them, and for that she was eternally grateful to him.

  As he saw Savannah raise her eyes to his, Sam felt something that at any other time he would have described as feeling like an electrical charge. But this wasn’t the right setting for one. He was working here, not looking at a desirable woman in the reflection of a smoky barroom mirror.

  “Thank you.”

  The words fairly pulsed in the air between them. “For what?”

  He knew “for what,” she thought. She said it anyway. “For making it positive.”

  Sam lifted a shoulder in a dismissive shrug. There was no need to thank him for what he considered standard procedure.

  “It’s the only way I operate,” he assured her.

  He glanced over his shoulder. The saleswoman was still looking at them through the glass door. She’d been the last of the people in the store to question. There were no vendors stationed by their carts outside this exit door. It led directly to the parking lot.

  Odds were that the kidnapper had hurried Aimee to his car. But nothing was ever written in stone.

  Sam nodded toward the cluster of carts gathered inside the outdoor mall. “C’mon, let’s show this photograph around to the vendors.”

  He figured it was a shot in the dark to question them again, but sometimes shots in the dark hit something Who knew? Maybe they’d get lucky.

  They didn’t.

  An hour of going from one vendor to another with the photograph that the saleswoman had picked out had yielded nothing more.

  Savannah tried not to give in to the despair rising within her. She was doing something, and because of Sam, they had found a new piece of information. That was all that counted.

  She turned toward him as they walked away from the last vendor. “Now what?”

  It was a toss-up between going to the police station and going to Big Bytes, the software company for which she worked. He figured the police station might be too daunting for her. She needed to see friendly faces.

  “Now we go to see the people you work with.”

  To question them, she thought.

  But she wasn’t about to argue with him on that score. She was beginning to believe in him. Sam had been right about the disguise the abductor had put on Aimee, and it looked as though he was right about Aimee being kidnapped by someone she knew.

  Maybe he was right about where they would find their kidnapper as well.

  She tried to imagine one of the people she worked with doing this—and couldn’t.

  How would being questioned about the kidnapping affect some of her co-workers? She was on friendly terms with all of them, had gone to their weddings and their children’s birthday parties. They were more like a family than people who labored side by side for eight hours a day. She didn’t want to offend any of them.

  Savannah got into the car and waited until Sam was behind the wheel.

  “How are you going to word this?” She buckled up after he did. “They took up a collection for me to offer a reward for any information leading to the kidnapper’s apprehension and conviction.”

  And Sam just bet the police were thrilled to learn that. An offer like that really brought the crazies out. Sam decided to keep that to himself.

  Sam guided the car out of the lot. The fact that she was worried about hurting people’s feelings told him that she was in control of herself as much as she could be. It was a good sign.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not about to fling accusations around.” He saw that the answer didn’t satisfy her. Sam thought a minute. He knew she wouldn’t want to tell them he was a private investigator. That would generate the exact impression that she was trying to avoid. “You can introduce me as your friend if you’d rather handle it that way. All I want to do is just get a feeling.”

  “A feeling?” she echoed, turning in her seat to look at him. “You mean, like a psychic?”

  It would be nice if it were that easy, if he could just concentrate and pick up vibrations or whatever it was that psychics claimed to pick up.

  “No, more like someone working with hunches ” Experience had honed that ability for him. “Mine sometimes pay off.” Actually, more often than not—but that would sound like bragging, so he didn’t bother mentioning it.

  “Like the altered photographs.”

  He grinned. “Like the altered photographs.”

  “You’re the boss.” Containing the urge to fidget, Savannah sat back in her seat. Just keep me together until this is all over, she prayed. But she said, “You make a left when you get to MacArthur.”

  “Savannah, has there been any news?”

  Sam stepped back as a tall, moon-faced older man, wearing faded brown slacks that looked as if he’d slept in them more than one night, came up to envelop Savannah in a bearlike embrace. She was all but lost in his arms.

  The low, comfortable buzz within the rusticly decorated, glass-and-wood office receded as Savannah’s presence suddenly became apparent. He heard chairs being scraped back all through the high-ceilinged, two-story room.

  It was all Savannah could do not to sink into Larry Abrahms’s hug, and sob. She thought of him more as a second father than as her boss. But she wasn’t here to cry. She was here because Sam wanted to look around, and because she wanted to prove a point to him. That no one here could possibly be involved in the ugliness that had found her.

  Moving her head back, she shook it. “None.”

  Compassion was etched over his wide face with bold strokes.

  “I’m sure the police are doing all they can.” And then Abrahms looked at the man next to Savannah—an unspoken question in his deep-set brown eyes.

  “This is Sam Walters.” Savannah didn’t like lying, but the truth was harsher to deal with. So, feeling awkward, she added, “A friend of mine.”

  “Good.” Abrahms nodded his head in approval. “You shouldn’t be alone at a time like this.” The eyes were kindly, but they still managed to pin Sam down. If this man had daughters, he pitied any guy who came to his door, Sam thought. “I hope you’re doing what you can to comfort Savannah.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Sam, this is my boss, Larry Abrahms,” Savannah said belatedly.

  Abrahms chuckled, and, to Sam’s fascination, the man’s rounded belly actually shook.

  “More like her mentor.” The pawlike hand went around his, completely dwarfing it. “We like to keep things informal here.”

  It certainly looked that way to him, Sam mused The crowd around them was growing, as more and more people left their desks to gather beside Savannah. Sam watched and listened as people reexpressed their concern, their support and their offers of help to her. It appeared that Savannah was well liked by everyone.

  This was good for her, Sam thought, and was making her feel that she wasn’t alone. A kidnapping tended to drive a wall
between the victim’s family and the rest of the world, isolating them. It was important not to allow that feeling to become overwhelming.

  As for him, he looked at the swelling circle around Savannah with a discerning eye. On the surface, everyone seemed genuine enough in the concern they expressed. But actors were found everywhere. He reserved final judgment for later.

  “What are you doing here?” a dark-haired woman who Savannah had addressed as Angela wanted to know. “Larry said you were taking a leave of absence.”

  Stumped for a moment, Savannah grasped at the first excuse that occurred to her. “I am, but I remembered that the Kwan project is due next week—”

  “Good lord, Savannah, you’ve got more important things on your mind than a foreign account,” Abrahms chided in surprise.

  She thought on her feet, Sam observed in appreciation. Not everyone could do that.

  “I know, but—”

  “No ‘but,’” Abrahms cut in. “You’re not to give that another thought.” He nodded toward the man standing next to him. “Elliott’s handling it for you.”

  Elliott Reynolds, a slight man with thinning brown hair and a subservient manner, had been the second one to come up to Savannah. He appeared even more surprised than Abrahms to see her in the office.

  “Elliott’s handling all your projects,” someone else volunteered. “Won’t let any of us touch them.”

  “It’s the least I can do,” Elliott told her. His eyes were moist as he looked at her. “Anything you want, Savannah—anything at all, you got. You just have to tell me what you need, you know that.”

  “I know that,” she affirmed. Savannah smiled at the other man, and Sam caught himself feeling a little envious of Elliott for being on the receiving end of the warmth that he saw pass between them.

  Elliott shifted uncomfortably. “Claire feels just awful about what you’re going through. Her thoughts are with you. She’s been wanting to call you, but she just doesn’t know what to say.”