At Risk

by Inc. Thriller Writers

  “Yours—and I’d like it to be mine again,” she said softly.

  He stood and looked back. Tony was in the room. “I got it, Greg. I’m on the crime scene unit, the M.E., you name it. You get out of here.”

  Greg nodded. He took Ali’s hand and drew her to her feet. She was still shaky. She leaned against him. She loved the feel of him and the smell of him, and she trembled, thinking how lucky she was; she had almost died to find out that pride and fear were ridiculous.

  And that monsters were real.

  “Home,” Greg whispered to her. He clapped a hand on Tony’s shoulder giving him a gruff, “Thank you.”

  He looked back into the room for a minute. She realized that he was looking at the wax figure of Blake Richards.

  “He was a wonderful man,” Ali said. “I almost feel as if he was watching over me tonight.”

  “A great man,” Greg agreed. He was still staring at the wax figure. He smiled. She thought he winked.

  She blinked hard herself. She could have sworn that, for just a minute, the wax figure was alive, that Blake Richards smiled in return.

  And winked.

  “Home,” Greg said.

  Ali nodded. And still, she wondered, had Blake Richards helped save her life that night?

  Yes, quite possibly, because Greg spoke up then, after clearing his throat.

  “Thank you, sir. Thank you,” he said quietly.

  Yes, she thought. Yes, he had helped save her.

  Her life. And her love. The way that Greg had looked at the wax figure…

  “Thank you!” she whispered. A foolish thing to do? She’d probably never know.

  She turned, her hand tightly held in Greg’s, and they left.

  They were going home.

  * * * * *

  WITHOUT MERCY

  Mariah Stewart

  This story is as real and emotionally gripping as a current headline. Surely nothing strikes more fear in us than the report of a missing child.~SB

  Mallory Russo stood and eased the kinks from her back. She’d spent most of the afternoon sitting in the same spot, reading résumés that had flooded in to her employer, the Mercy Street Foundation. Ever since her boss, megamogul Robert Magellan, announced that he was funding an organization to investigate unsolved missing persons cases and needed to hire the best law enforcement personnel he could find, the flow of résumés had been nonstop.

  The foundation was a private investigative firm with a unique twist: once a case was selected, their services were free. So now, they needed staff to handle the number of cases that were coming in. Mallory was wavering between two hopefuls—a retired detective from Miami and an FBI profiler who was looking for some new challenges—when the phone in her pocket rang.

  “Hey, Charlie.” She swiveled her chair around to look out the window. It was already dark. She stole a glance at her watch. It was almost seven. “Are you already home?”

  Charlie Wanamaker, the detective who’d been hired by the local police force to replace Mallory when she left the job two years ago was also her fiancé. “I’m on my way. Thought I’d stop and pick up something for dinner. You call it—Chinese or Italian.”

  “What kind of detective asks a girl whose last name is Russo if she wants Chinese or Italian?”

  He laughed softly. “Lasagna or ravioli?”

  “Surprise me.”

  “I’ll see you at home.”

  The reports and résumés lost their appeal. They would still be there in the morning. Mallory tucked the files into neat stacks, piled them onto the corner of her desk and left for the night.

  * * *

  “Mal, does the name Karen Ralston ring any bells?” Charlie reached into the cupboard for wineglasses.

  “Ralston.” Mallory paused, a serving spoon in one hand. “There was an old case of the chief’s, must be ten or so years old by now. Thirteen-year-old girl went missing on her way home from school. Her mother used to stop at the station to see if there’d been any developments, but there never were.” She walked to the table and spooned ravioli onto Charlie’s plate. “Donna Ralston, the mother, was a waitress at the Conroy Diner. Joe wasn’t chief when the girl first disappeared, so he handled the case from day one. He always had time for Donna whenever she stopped in, no matter how busy he was.”

  Mallory served dinner in silence, then asked, “Has Donna Ralston called the department?”

  Charlie nodded. “She called this morning. I let Joe know when he checked in. He asked if you’d be willing to give the woman a few minutes, just as a favor.”

  He poured wine into both their glasses. “You don’t have to, of course. You don’t work for the department anymore.”

  “Of course I’ll call her, if that’s what Joe wants.”

  Joe Drabyak had been more than Mallory’s chief: he’d been her mentor, her friend and the father she’d never had. She’d never refuse a request of his.

  “Joe thought you might want to look through the file,” Charlie said, nodding toward the folder he’d placed on the counter. “He was hoping you’d stop in at the diner and just have a word with her, if you weren’t too busy.”

  “Oh. Sure.” Mallory nodded. “I’ll just let Robert know I’ll be a little late tomorrow…”

  * * *

  It was just before eight the next morning when Mallory walked into the Blue Moon Diner and scanned the counter for Donna Ralston. She found the waitress at the far end, where she was handing a check to a diner who had already risen to leave. Mallory walked to the end and took the seat that had just been vacated.

  “Hey, Detective.” The waitress’s weary face brightened a bit when she recognized Mallory. “Haven’t seen you in a dog’s age.”

  “It has been a while,” Mallory agreed. “But I’m not a detective anymore, remember?”

  “You’ll always be Detective Russo to me.” Donna finished clearing the place for Mallory, then leaned on the counter. “The guy I spoke with yesterday said the chief was in an accident but he was going to be okay.”

  “He has some mending to do, but he’ll be fine.”

  “Good, good.” Donna reached behind her for a white porcelain mug. “Coffee?”

  “Please.” Mallory waited until the mug was filled before asking, “Was there something you wanted to tell Joe? Something about Karen?”

  “I don’t know if it means squat, but the chief always said to let him know anything I heard, even if it seemed unimportant.” She glanced at the clock. “I’m on break in ten minutes. Do you have a little time?”

  “Of course,” Mallory assured her.

  Ten minutes later, Donna was back to refill Mallory’s mug, then led the way toward an empty booth.

  Donna took a thin leather case from the pocket of her apron and opened it flat onto the table. “This is Karen when she was a toddler. And here she is the year she disappeared.”

  Mallory picked up the photos and studied them, even though she’d seen them in the file. As a three-year-old, Karen had been the picture of innocence. She wore her blond hair in ponytails. Her yellow dress had a green collar and her hands clutched a stuffed animal. As a young teen, Karen’s hair hung straight past her shoulders in soft curls, and she wore a pink cardigan sweater over a sundress. She’d matured in the ten-year span between the pictures, but the smile had never changed.

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” Mallory asked.

  “Over the weekend, a couple came in, used to live here. Virginia and Don Greeley. They were back last week for a fam
ily reunion and stopped in for breakfast on their way out of town. Virginia was saying how she thought about my Karen from time to time, that sort of thing, but later, it hit me that something she said seemed off.”

  “What was that?”

  “She said, ‘I can still see Karen walking past my house with the Tripp girl on their way across that cornfield sometimes after school.’”

  “What was strange about that?” Mal asked.

  “Far as I knew, Karen hadn’t been friendly with anyone named Tripp. And there’s no cornfield she’d have to walk through on her way from school to our house. So I asked Virginia what cornfield was that, and she said the one out on County Line Road.”

  “Any chance she and this girl were friends and you just weren’t aware of it? Maybe they studied together at the other girl’s house.”

  “The rule was straight home from school unless she needed to stop at the library if she had homework. She wasn’t supposed to go to anyone else’s house after school. That was the rule.”

  “Donna, even really good kids stretch the rules every chance they get.”

  “I suppose. She just never said…” Donna sighed heavily. “Anyway, here I am, eleven years later, just finding out she had a friend I didn’t even know about.”

  “Why do you think this is significant?”

  “I just can’t help but wonder, maybe that girl knew something. Maybe there was someone who tried to pick them up on their way home, or maybe followed them.” Donna was close to tears. “After Karen disappeared, Joe asked me to give him a list of all of Karen’s friends, everyone she hung out with, talked on the phone with, walked home from school with, so he could talk to them all.” She looked at Mallory from across the table. “I don’t know if the Tripp girl knew anything about the day Karen disappeared, but I do know that her name wasn’t on that list because I created the list, and I didn’t know they were friends.”

  “Donna, I’ll go through the file again. There’s a good chance that Joe or someone else in the department spoke with this girl back then but you weren’t aware of it.”

  “Thank you. I know it’s probably nothing, but I can’t let it rest.”

  “I understand.” Mallory drained her mug of coffee. “Where did the Greeley’s live in Conroy, do you remember?”

  Donna nodded. “On Wister Road, the second to the last house before you come to County Line Road. There’s a farm across the street. I’m guessing that’s the field Virginia was referring to.”

  “Did the Greeleys leave a contact number?”

  Donna nodded. “I wrote it on the back of my pad.” She took the pad from her apron pocket and copied the number onto a napkin, which she handed to Mallory. “Thank you, Detective Russo.”

  It was on the tip of Mallory’s tongue to remind her that she wasn’t detective anymore, but she let it go.

  She paused outside the door of the diner, then speed-dialed a call as she made her way to her car.

  “Robert,” she said when her boss picked up, “I need to talk to you about a case….”

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later Mallory was seated at her kitchen table, going through Karen Ralston’s file looking for the folder that held the witness statements. It took her all day, but by late afternoon, she’d read every report in the file. Nowhere did the name Tripp appear. So how to find this girl, whose first name she didn’t even know?

  She called Virginia Greeley and explained that she was following up at Donna Ralston’s request. Did she recall when she saw Karen Ralston with the Tripp girl? And did she know the girl’s first name?

  “It was pretty close to the time Karen disappeared,” Virginia Greeley told her. “I remember telling my husband right after we heard the news that I’d just seen the two girls walking off across the back field. I don’t recall the girl’s first name, sorry. Don’t know for sure where they were headed or where the other girl lived.”

  “Did you mention this to the police at the time?” Mallory asked.

  “No. Should I have?” Virginia paused. “It didn’t seem unusual. I mean, it was just two girls walking home from school. Why would I have told the police that?”

  Because Joe would have talked to the other girl at the time and filled in that blank and I wouldn’t be trying to do it now, eleven years later.

  “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Greeley. If you remember anything else, would you please give me a call?”

  Mallory hung up, then grabbed her bag and headed for the local library, where she scanned shelves of the local school’s yearbooks. Mallory found Elizabeth Tripp in the same eighth grade book in which she found Karen.

  The city directory had one listing for Tripp. She jotted down the address and phone number. It wasn’t likely that Elizabeth Tripp would answer the phone after all this time, but stranger things have happened. She dialed the number, but no one picked up, and the call never went to voice mail.

  Maybe just a quick drive-by.

  The Tripp home was located in a rural neighborhood of small farms. Mallory counted off the house numbers and stopped when she got to the mailbox that bore the one she was looking for. She paused at the entrance to a long driveway.

  The farmhouse at the end of the lane was small and in need of fresh paint. A shiny new black pickup was parked in front of a barn, behind which a stockade fence enclosed an area that appeared to stretch all the way to the back of the house. Mallory continued up the drive slowly and parked behind the truck. She was just about to open the door when a man appeared from behind her car. He was tall with shoulder-length dark hair, a dark beard and piercing dark eyes—and he looked as if he meant business.

  “Help you?” he asked before she could get the door open.

  “I hope so.” Mallory flashed her best smile. “Is this the Tripp home?”

  “Maybe.”

  “My name is Mallory Russo. I work for the Mercy Street Foundation.” Mallory had to suck in her stomach to slip out of the car, the man stood so close.

  “That’s that place that looks for missing people.”

  “Right.” Mallory took a few steps back. She felt ill at ease with him so close. “I’m looking for Elizabeth Tripp.”

  “Lizzie?” He frowned. “Last I heard, she wasn’t missing.”

  “Are you a relative? Do you know where I could find her?”

  “I’m her brother,” he replied. “What’s this about?”

  “I just wanted to ask her a few questions about someone she went to school with.”

  “Far as I know, Lizzie doesn’t keep in touch with anyone from around here, but if you leave me a card, I can ask her to give you a call.”

  Mallory was about to protest when a child of three or four came running around the corner of the barn. Her pale blond hair was cut short, and she wore a too-long sundress. She froze when she saw Mallory.

  “Hi,” Mallory called to her and waved.

  The man turned to the child. “How’d you get out?”

  Shrinking back, the little girl pointed to an open gate.

  “Get on back inside.”

  The child tilted her head slightly, then smiled tentatively, a sweet little smile that turned up on one side. Mallory’s breath caught in her throat.

  “I said back inside,” the man growled. “And close that gate.”

  The little girl fled through the opening in the fence.

  “If there’s nothing else…” the man said flatly.

  “I was going to give you my card…”r />
  “Right.”

  Mallory dug in her bag until she found one. He didn’t bother to look at it before putting it into his shirt pocket.

  “If you could ask your sister to call me, I’d appreciate it.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that,” he said. “But don’t be surprised if she doesn’t.”

  “Why wouldn’t she?” Assuming you gave her my card, which you clearly have no intention of doing.

  He shrugged. “Lizzie’s just like that sometimes.”

  “Thanks.”

  It had been on the tip of her tongue to ask him about Karen Ralston, but something about him sent a chill right through her. Mallory could feel his eyes on her as she got back into her car. Shaking it off, she put the key in the ignition and looked up to see a young boy peer over the top of the fence near where the back door of the house must have been. Seconds later, a woman appeared momentarily in a side window, her hand holding back the curtain. Following Mallory’s gaze, the man turned, but the boy and the woman were gone.

  Mallory’s hands shook as she secured her seat belt. When she raised her hand to wave, the stony-faced man didn’t bother to wave back.

  The woman had been at the window for only a second and she was too far away for Mallory to get a good look at her. But Mallory had seen the smile on the face of the little girl, and she was pretty sure she’d seen that smile before.

  What if…?

  Don’t let your imagination run away with you, she cautioned herself. Don’t be looking for something that isn’t there. The idea is too preposterous for words.

  * * *

  Mallory tried to process what she’d just seen logically, rationally, but the thought bubbled up inside her like hot tar on a late August road. She knew that jumping to unfounded conclusions had landed many a cop in hot water—but, she reminded herself, she wasn’t a cop anymore. Still, she’d seen the child plainly, and the resemblance to the little girl in the photo Donna Ralston had shown her that morning was uncanny—the tilt of the head, the smile that turned up just slightly to the left. Mallory hadn’t imagined that.