“Yeah, they’re looking into it, but they don’t really have many leads. The security cameras caught footage of a woman leading her away, but only her back and it’s blurry. There’s no way to know who she was.” Amanda looked up at Herne, her eyes filling again. “Can you please help me? I can’t bear to lose her. She’s my heart. She’s my everything.”
“I can’t promise anything, but we’ll try. Tell me what happened, as best as you can remember.” Herne leaned back in his chair, his arms open. He was always careful to use body language that invited the client to open up to him. The more information we had about cases, the better.
Amanda caught a deep breath, then slowly exhaled, wiping her eyes again. The bleak expression on her face tore at my heart.
“Saturday, I took Eleanor to the mall. She needed new shoes and a new jacket, so I thought we’d spend the afternoon at the mall and then go to dinner. I work long hours, so when I get a free day, I always spend it with her.”
Herne nodded. “Does your husband work as well, and do you have a nanny?”
“No. I’m a widow. My husband died a year ago in a freak accident. My mother—Eleanor’s grandmother—babysits for me. I drop her off before I go to work, then pick her up afterward. I don’t earn enough to hire a nanny. Luckily, my mother’s always willing to help me. Our pack—the West Seattle Wulfine Pack—is very supportive to single mothers.”
“Do you have a picture of Eleanor for us?” I asked.
She opened her purse. Pulling out a small notebook, she removed a picture from the pocket divider inside, handing it to me. I glanced at it before setting it on Herne’s desk. The little girl in the picture had a brilliant smile. She was fair haired, with bright blue eyes, and she was holding a stuffed panda.
“She’s lovely,” I said, glancing at her mother. “How old is she?”
“She turned three years old just two weeks ago. Lani’s my heart,” Amanda said. “That’s her nickname. I don’t think I would have survived after Ken died if it hadn’t been for her. She gives me a reason to keep on going.”
Herne stared at the picture for a moment, then asked, “What happened to her father, if I might ask? Sometimes facts that seem to have no bearing can actually help a case.”
Amanda straightened her shoulders, swallowing hard. “He worked for Puget Sound Power, Gas, & Light as a line installer. During that horrible windstorm last year—the one that knocked out power to over four hundred thousand people? He was out repairing lines when a tree that had been destabilized during a storm toppled. He was up in the bucket of the service truck when the tree came crashing down. It hit him full force, breaking his neck as it took out the upper boom. He was dead before the tree hit the ground.”
“I’m so sorry,” I murmured. That definitely counted as a freak accident, though I imagined more people were hurt during repair jobs than one might think.
“It was hard. We weren’t prepared. There wasn’t enough life insurance to cover our needs over the next few years, so I had to go back to work. And Ken…he was my high school sweetheart. We expected to grow old together.” She shuddered, then shook her head. “Sometimes life doesn’t work out the way you think it will.”
Herne nodded. “Unfortunately true. So, on Saturday, you took Eleanor to the mall. What time was it?”
“We got to the mall right around lunch time—about twelve-thirty. I remember because we stopped at Big Ben’s Burgers before we went to eat lunch. We had hamburgers and fries, and Lani had a fruit cup for dessert.”
“So she wasn’t hungry when you arrived at the mall, correct?”
“Right. She wanted candy, but she always wants candy. Anyway, we went to the Kingsgate Entrance, the one off the front where you walk in and find yourself facing Bon Chance, that fancy furniture store. I was holding her hand, and we headed to the Little Miss Boutique for her coat. She tried on several, but none of them were quite right, so I decided we’d find her shoes first, then look elsewhere. We went to the Shoe Bargain Barn. I bought her a pair of sneakers, a pair of Mary Janes, and a pair of bright blue rain boots. She wanted to wear the boots so we sat down outside the store, on one of those long benches, and she put them on.”
“What else was she wearing?” Herne asked.
“A pink sweater with butterflies on it, and a pair of jeans—blue. They have an elastic waist to go over her pull-up pants.” Amanda’s voice was shaking.
“Did you notice anybody following you? Or paying attention to you?” Herne asked.
Amanda quirked her lip, a thoughtful look in her eye. “I don’t recall anybody. I mean, the mall was crowded, so there were people everywhere.”
“What happened next?” I asked.
“I was deciding where to go next when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, but sometimes I get calls from clients who really need to contact me, and so I always answer.”
Herne nodded. “What do you do?”
“I run a small catering company. I serve private dinner parties, small group events, that kind of thing. So I’m always looking for new clients. I have a store front, because it’s just easier than jumping through the hoops I would need to in order to get permits to work from home.” Amanda handed me one of her business cards. “This has my work address on it.”
“Was the call from a client?”
“Yes, a friend who knew my client from my last gig called to set up an event. Lani and I were on one of the benches in the middle of the mall. As I said, it was crowded. Lani must have slid off the bench, and somehow I didn’t notice. When I got done with the call, I realized she wasn’t sitting beside me. I panicked because she’s always such a good girl and when I tell her to stay put, she does. There were so many people milling around. I couldn’t see her anywhere and I started to scream. A security guard came over to find out what was going on. That’s the last time I saw her.” She came to an abrupt halt.
I glanced at my notes. It wasn’t much to go on. “What happened after you talked to the security guard? What did they do?”
“He immediately called in to their control room and they enacted a Code Adam alert. They called the police, who oversaw a mall-wide search. But there are one hundred and twenty stores in that mall, and so many exits, when you count the fire doors and so forth. They searched for three solid hours. But when they were looking over the security camera footage, they found a short clip of a woman leading Lani out of the mall, through one of the side entrances.” Amanda started to cry. “The woman had hold of Lani’s hand, but her face was turned away from the camera. The timestamp shows that she left the mall with my daughter while the police were still on the way.”
I closed my eyes, leaning back. Every investigator knew that every hour that passed after a child abduction significantly decreased the chance of the child being found alive.
Herne gave Amanda a moment, then softly asked, “Did you recognize anything about the kidnapper on the footage? Anything at all?”
Amanda thought for a moment, then gave us a resigned shrug.
“No. I couldn’t see her face. And from the back? I didn’t recognize her. The footage was blurry, and it didn’t show much other than she appeared to have light hair, and she was short and trim. She was wearing jeans and some kind of coat. Lani didn’t look like she was being dragged, so she must have trusted the woman.”
“Have you received any requests for ransom?” If she had, then we had more leeway. There would be a slightly higher chance Eleanor was still alive.
“No,” Amanda said, paling. “Do you think my daughter’s still alive?”
I let Herne field that question. He was much more diplomatic than I was.
“There’s always a chance. Why did you come to us?” He leaned forward. “What can we do, that the police can’t?”
Amanda hung her head. “They’re overwhelmed and understaffed. And when they talked to me in the mall, they seemed to… I think they blame me. But no parent can keep an eye on their children every single second. And all it takes is
that one small fracture—that single time you look away for someone to strike.” She paused, then whispered, “Is this my fault?”
“No,” Herne said. “Abductions happen every day, and there’s no way to predict when you’re being targeted. What matters now is that we do everything we can to find her.” He studied her face for a moment. “I’ll start a file and we’ll do whatever we can. I can’t promise we’ll find her, but we’ll do our damnedest.”
“I don’t know if I can pay your rates,” Amanda said in a hesitant tone. “I’ll mortgage my house if I have to.”
“No, you won’t.” Herne wrote something down on a piece of paper. “Give this to Angel at the front door. We’ll work out something that won’t strain your budget. Meanwhile, I need you to give Angel a list of everybody who has been in your house the past couple of months. Everyone. I’ll send Ember and another one of our investigators out to your house, if you don’t mind. It can help us to look through her belongings, to see if there’s anything there that seems odd or out of place. We need to figure out if this woman has had contact with your daughter before. We’ll also need to talk to your mother to see if she’s noticed anything out of the ordinary.”
I jotted down everything Herne was saying, given I’d be doing some of the investigating.
Amanda murmured a thank you, but I could tell the woman was on the edge of collapse.
“You need to get some rest. I’ll bet you’ve barely slept since Saturday. Am I right?”
She nodded. “I’ve probably managed about three hours of sleep. I can barely think.”
“Can your mother stay with you for a few days? So you can rest up?” Herne asked.
“No, but my best friend can,” Amanda said. She lowered her eyes to the ground. “It’s so hard. It makes me want to start drinking again, but I don’t dare go down that route again.”
Neither Herne nor I commented. She had enough to deal with, without us prying into what sounded like an addiction. We’d have to check into it, but we could do so later.
Herne stood, pressing the intercom for Angel to come in. “Amanda, we’ll do all we can. Angel,” he said as she popped her head through the door. “Will you take Amanda to your desk and set up a file for her?”
As Angel led Amanda away and closed the door behind her, I turned to Herne. “What do you think? Do we really have a chance of finding her daughter? Alive?”
Herne shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t know. The chances of finding her alive are probably slim, but you never know. And if Eleanor is still alive, we can’t just walk away. We have a lot of legwork to do with this one, though, and we have to balance it along with looking into the Tuathan Brotherhood. Morgana made it clear that’s our top priority.”
I nodded. “Late nights and busy days, it looks like. Are you going to set a meeting this afternoon about the new case?”
He glanced at the clock. It was ten-fifteen. “Actually, give the others a heads-up that we’re meeting again at ten-thirty. Then I’ll assign tasks for the day and get you guys out on the street. Time is of the essence for both cases.”
I gave him a quick kiss. “Thank you, for caring.”
“What do you mean?” He looked bewildered.
“What I mean is that you actually give a damn about a little lost wolf shifter. And that, my love, makes you special.” I drew back, holding his gaze. “I mean it. So many people would just refuse to take the case because of the odds, or because she can’t pay a huge fee. But you…you don’t shy away. You’re a god, but you care about mortals and their heartaches.”
Herne reached for my hands and I gave them to him, closing my eyes for a moment as his warm fingers closed over mine. He brought them up to his lips, kissing them gently.
“Ember, in the realm of the gods, you have two choices. Or at least, I believe you do. You can either ignore mortal-kind, or you can get involved. There’s no real space for in-between. You meddle a little, and you chance changing the course of history, but skip the responsibility. You ignore it? Well, then you remove yourself from the realm and begin to look down on humans.”
“And if you choose to get involved?”
“If you get involved, you’d damned well better care because you’re going to be stirring the pot. And you can stir it for good, or for ill. My father loves mortals, as problematic as humans and the SubCult can be. My mother was mortal—one of the magic-born—who chose to become a goddess rather than enter the Force Majeure. I have her blood in my veins as well and I’m proud of it.” He ducked is head, smiling. “They brought me up to respect the world of mortals as well as the world of the gods.”
I nodded. “I know. And yet, your father and you…even Morgana…are so far removed from our experiences that it never fails to amaze me when you empathize with us.”
“Well, we do. We may not be able to understand it from a personal point, but we’ve all lost people we love, and we’ve all experienced heartbreak and sorrow.” He kissed me on the head. “We’ll do our best to find Eleanor. Now go tell the others to meet in the break room while I make a few phone calls.”
Once again, we gathered in the break room.
“Viktor,” Herne said after briefing the others on the new case while I filled in the gaps from my notes, “I want you to check with Erica on this case as well. See if there have been any other missing children in the past year that might somehow connect with this one.”
Viktor jotted down Eleanor’s name and a few pieces of info. “Right. Looks like I’m going to be buying Erica lunch. You guys better hope she never gets kicked off the force, because my other lines of communication aren’t all that cooperative lately. At least not here.”
“Just keep everything quiet, and make certain that she’s down with this. I don’t want to put her job in jeopardy. Especially with this mess about the Tuathan Brotherhood.” Herne turned to Talia. “Talia, do some sleuthing into Amanda’s family. Does she have any siblings? Are there any problematic uncles, brothers, even sisters?”
“You mean, are there any sexual predators in her family?” Talia said, leaning back in her chair. “We all know that most children are hurt by people they know. Charity begins at home and sadly, so does abuse.”
“Right. I wasn’t going to put it so bluntly, but that’s exactly what I mean.” Herne motioned to Yutani. “Yutani, you and Ember go talk to Eleanor’s grandmother. See if there’s anything out of the ordinary there. Also, drop by Amanda’s house and just…get a feel for things. I’ll go visit the victims of the beatings in the hospital. Check in with Angel if you’re not going to make it back here before seven-thirty.”
“Is there anything Charlie can do?” I asked. Charlie was our recent hire. He was a vampire—a good sort, actually—and he worked remotely most of the time, doing data entry and some research for us. He was barely nineteen, turned only recently, and smart as a whip.
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you all about that,” Herne said. “I’m planning on sending Charlie back to college. I’ve been watching his work the past few weeks, and he’s brilliant with numbers. I talked to him last night about his plans before he was turned.”
“Didn’t he want to be an accountant or something?” Yutani asked.
“Right. But he couldn’t afford to go full-time, and then when he was turned, he just assumed that was the end of his plans. The job at the VN Worldwide Bank didn’t pan out, and he quit his baking job to work with us. I decided to pay his tuition to an online university so he can follow his dream job, which is accounting. In exchange, he’ll work for us as a full-time accountant. That will take one big responsibility off both Angel’s and my hands when he finishes with his degree. He’s entering an accelerated program.” Herne chuckled. “I’ve never seen anybody so happy about numbers. But Charlie was born to it, I think.”
“So what does that mean for his work with us now?” Talia asked.
“What it means is he’ll be doing mostly data entry, so that he can focus on making it through the accelerated class. I
f he keeps up with the work, he’ll graduate in half the time.”
Viktor grunted, but he was smiling. “I’m glad the runt is getting a chance to follow his passion. He’s a super-geek, but he’s okay. And he’s trying to get a handle on the vampire thing. He’s not comfortable with it, which is probably a good thing, but he’ll have to find his way sooner or later. At least being around us, he can hold onto his humanity a bit better.”
“Do you want us to meet back here before end of the day?” I asked. We had all afternoon, but it was amazing how long some interviews could take.
“No, we’ll compare notes at the staff meeting tomorrow. So, go ahead and head out after the meeting. Keep me updated if you feel I should know about anything. And Viktor, when you talk to Erica, see if you can get a copy of the security camera footage that shows Eleanor being led out of the mall by the unknown woman.”
Viktor nodded. “Will do. All right, I’ve set a lunch date with her, so I’m heading out.” He stood and stretched. Viktor was half-ogre, half-human, and he had the frame of a massive body builder. With his bald head, tattooed on one side with a tribal design, and trim waist, he was more than impressive. He was also one of the most sensitive men I had ever met, and the dichotomy was oddly mesmerizing.
I leaned across the table and tapped Yutani’s laptop. “You ready to go?”
He shook his head. “Give me fifteen minutes and I will be. Why don’t you get the addresses for Amanda and the grandmother while you wait?”
Gathering up my tablet and notes, I headed toward the door. I had transferred the notes I took with Amanda to my own tablet. “Will do, but we need to stop at the Coffee Shack along the way, for caffeine and some food.”
“Yeah, yeah. But you’re paying,” he said. “And I’m not riding in your car if you insist on drinking a quint shot mocha again. You were buzzing so loud that I wanted to smack you.” He wrinkled his nose at me, but he was smiling, and I laughed back.
The Hallowed Hunt: A Wild Hunt Novel, Book 5 Page 3