by Angela Foxxe
“I thought you’d be happier to see me since I brought you food, but I see your dreams were kinder to you this time.”
“They were. I was remembering how I got into college without a high school transcript.”
“Why wouldn’t you have one?” he asked, furrowing his brow as he handed her the food he’d brought her.
“I didn’t go to high school. Until college, I’d never been to school at all.”
The revelation stunned them both, and Senora found herself scrambling for an explanation and came up empty.
“Do you know why you never went to school?” Ty asked, holding his fork in mid-air, the bite forgotten.
“I don’t. But there are a lot of things that I don’t remember prior to my parents adopting me. I just know that I was kidnapped at a young age, and I was found on Senora Street by a nice police officer. Actually, he was a State Trooper. When he and his wife asked to adopt me, we decided that Senora was the perfect name.”
“How old were you when they adopted you?”
“Around thirteen. We’re not really sure how old I was.”
“And you remember nothing from before that?”
“Bits and pieces, but it’s really hard to say what’s real and what’s from recurring nightmares. I have a lot of nightmares.”
“Senora, why have you never told me this before?”
“Because I just met you?”
“But this is important. This is a big part of what made you who you are.”
She nodded.
“It’s why J recruited me for missing persons. He knew that I would have a better insight into what happens to a kidnapping victim, and I would make a better agent because of it.’
“It seems to have worked. What did your parents think about it all?”
“They don’t know. They disappeared about a year after they adopted me.”
“Where did you live then?”
“I stayed at home. My mom worked as a virtual assistant online, and I just picked up where she left off.”
“And what, just lived in the house and pretended they were there? Did you tell anyone that they were missing?”
“Who was I going to tell? My dad retired from the force right after they adopted me, and my mom worked entirely online. There were a few times I helped her when she was sick and needed a few days off. It was easy work; mostly filing, data entry and answering emails. She helped me at first, and then sometimes, I did it on my own.”
“So, it was easy to just do it when they were gone?”
“It wasn’t really like that. At first, I thought they were just late coming home from the grocery store, or that they got stuck somewhere. So when the notification came through, I just did the job really quick and went on about my day. I was homeschooling still because I was still too afraid to leave the house without them, so learning at home was the best for me. I kept studying, and before I knew it, a week had gone by, and I started to worry.”
“A week?”
“You have to understand that this was the first time I’d had a family in as long as I could remember. My earliest clear memory is the day that I was found. I didn’t know how families were supposed to act, there was food in the house and I knew how to cook. So, I just kept living as if they were there, and eventually, I realized that something was wrong.”
“Didn’t anyone come by the house? How did you get groceries? How in the world did you survive so young?”
Senora shrugged.
“I just did. The house was paid for, and the bills came out of the account automatically. My dad’s pension was direct deposited, and any money I made working as my mom I transferred into the account, too. I had my own bank card for the account, which they gave me to teach me responsibility. I used it to order groceries online, buy clothes and everything else that was needed.”
“You make it sound so easy,” Ty said.
His hand twitched, and she knew that he wanted to hold her, but he decided against it. She was glad he did. If he would have touched her right then, she would have come undone, and that was the last thing she wanted. She couldn’t afford to be vulnerable with him. Not again.
“It was the only choice I had. There was nothing easy about it, but it was scary at times. When people knocked on the door, I had to come up with a good reason why they weren’t home. I always thought that I was going to get caught. When I finished my studies and I decided to go to college, I enrolled in the local college and convinced them to let me in without high school transcripts.”
“That’s impressive.”
“When strong is the only option, people tend to show their strength. It’s no better than anyone else would do in the exact circumstance.”
“I disagree, but that’s okay.”
“Of course, you do.”
“So what happened to the house? MSU is in Kentucky, right?”
“It is. The house is still there. I pay someone to clean it once a month, but otherwise, it’s empty. I keep the lights on and the house in good shape in case they come back one day.”
“It’s been over ten years. And you’ve never heard anything about them?”
Senora shook her head.
“Their car hasn’t ever been found. It’s like they just disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“Have you looked for them since working for the FBI?”
“I have, but there haven’t been any leads. My dad’s pension checks still come like they’re supposed to, and I use them to keep the house running. I make enough money now to cover anything else that needs covered, but with the house empty, most of my father’s pension is left in the account. There’s usually about five hundred left each month, sometimes more.”
“That adds up.”
“It has. If they ever come home, they have almost one hundred thousand dollars just sitting in their account. It won’t bring back the time they lost, but it’s something.”
Ty looked at her then with an expression that tore at her heart. She knew it wasn’t pity, but it was close to it. She didn’t want his pity. She was strong, and she had made it through worse and come out on the other side stronger and more resilient. Still, talking about the only parents she had ever known brought back old memories that had haunted her for over a decade, and she felt that old sense of loss that had eaten away at her over the years as she forged ahead, despite being young and completely alone in the world.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she blurted out before he could say anything. “It’s already been a brutal day, and I don’t want to think about everything else that has gone wrong in my life. I just want to eat dinner, look at Kaden’s laptop and go to sleep.”
“That sounds good to me,” Ty said.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
They finished their meal in silence. Ty cleared their plates while Senora went to work setting up the laptop and typing in the password. The laptop started quickly and easily, everything stored in neat files on the desktop.
“He obviously didn’t think anyone would get ahold of his laptop,” Senora said when Ty sat down beside her. “Nothing is encrypted. It’s all right here once the password is entered.”
She opened a file folder with Ava’s name on it and began perusing the files.
“Hey, do you have that list?” Ty asked.
“I almost forgot,” she said, pulling it out of her pocket and unfolding it. “Do you want to go through Ava’s file while I look through these?”
“I can,” he said, looking at the papers as she unfolded them. “Oh wow, they even have pictures beside the names.”
“I wasn’t expecting that, but that’s going to help a lot. I have sketches of my deceased Jane Does, and there are a few children that were found that ended up in the Foster Care system like me that have their pictures in my files. I can check off a few of these, I hope.”
Feeling energized now that she knew that there were pictures to match with names, she moved her laptop to the office table, wincing at th
e first step and making a mental note to soak her wound before bed. It still hurt so much, but at least it was starting to feel a little better.
Laptop up and running, she started with the list of Jane and John Does that were deceased. There were so many she had to stop and take a breath for a moment. She saved cold cases for her off days, and much preferred the immediate cases and the sense of relief they brought when they were solved. Cold cases were emotionally draining, and the missing persons department had so many that it was more than just a little overwhelming. There was a cold case unit in her office, but they focused on murders, financial crimes and everything else outside of missing persons. Senora had plead for funding for help with cold cases that fell under her caseload, but she was told that her record for solving cases was higher than expected, and there would be no more money allocated to her department.
The minutes dragged on and turned into an hour. Senora was only on the first page, and she’d already found a few decedents that were probably from the list. It was hard to compare a picture to a sketch, but she was more than ninety percent sure, and her heart was heavy.
“I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
“Do what? Work together? I told you I was willing to work together on your terms, even if I didn’t agree.”
“Not that. This. These cases. I’ve only made it past the first page, and I’ve found five shifter children and teens that I’m sure are dead. There were only eleven kids on the first page, Ty. I’ve been struggling with this for a while and trying to convince myself that I’m winning the battle, but this proves that I’m barely scratching the surface. What’s the point? No matter what I do, it only gets worse. How can I help anyone if I can’t catch one man?”
“Are they all one man?”
“Not always,” she said. “But the Gate Keeper is kind of like when you find out that a parent company owns all the different brands and there isn’t really any difference. He has his hand in everything, and even the operations that seem like they’re separate are paying some kind of fee to him to keep him from shutting them down. They’re all connected, and the Gate Keeper holds the keys.”
“Do you only work trafficking cases?”
“Almost all kidnappings in the US are trafficking of some sort. Very rarely is it a single pervert that people have to avoid. It’s grand networks of professionals that do this for a living. They treat people like merchandise, and they move so quick that they’re almost impossible to take down. Glen Rose was a huge win for us, because we were able to take down an entire branch. But with each branch we take down, three more seem to take its place. It’s never ending, it’s exhausting, and now I have a list of parents I’ll have to notify that their children are gone.”
“We’ll take care of that on our own,” Ty said quietly. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
He was standing behind her at the desk, his work on Kaden’s computer abandoned when he felt her need. Ty was a standup guy, a man who knew when to work and when to stand behind her and provide support. She didn’t pull away from him when his hands went to her shoulders and squeezed gently.
“But I still know about it,” she said after a moment of silence. “So many of these cases were mine. Do you know what it’s like to find Addie like we did, just hours later?”
“But we saved Hannah.”
“True. And we saved her friends.” She took a deep breath. “I just want to find the Gate Keeper and stop him. If I could prevent all of this, then there wouldn’t be so many families hurting. A college freshman could go out to party and not worry about never coming home. A young mother could go for a run and come home without incident. This affects everyone in one way or another, and I wish that I could make it stop.”
Ty took the papers from her gently, setting them down on the table and wrapping his arms around her from behind.
“We don’t have to do this tonight.”
“I want to get this over with. I have a list of five that are dead and a few pages to go. I don’t want to tell Ethan more than once that he will have to notify their family. I’d rather just get it over with.”
“I understand. Do you want me to help?”
“No. You can keep working on Kaden’s laptop. Did you find anything?”
“I did. Lilith died about a year after Ava was taken. Kaden exhausted every lead, including the name of one of the two men who showed up to collect Ava that night. Peter Ageke.”
“Was he the dragon?”
“Kaden didn’t know. He only happened to see the dragon flying out the window when he walked by an open curtain a few minutes after Ava left.”
“How long ago was this?”
“As far as I can tell Ava was taken right around eleven years old and should be nearly eighteen now.”
“Seven years? He looked for her for that long?”
“And he found nothing. I don’t see anything that turned into a solid lead.”
“How awful for him. No wonder he did what he did.”
“I don’t think anyone blames him for how he turned out. A person can only take so much pain for so long before they snap.”
“Peter Ageke,” Senora said, repeating the name a few more times in her head.
“Do you recognize the name?”
“No,” she said. “But it sounds familiar, I guess? I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Don’t push it. Just let it come to you. Why don’t we look at some of the kids that were brought into foster care and see if we can find some happy endings in this list?”
“That sounds like a good idea,” she said, switching to another file and starting from the beginning of the list again.
She skipped over the ones that she knew were already gone, her heart aching for the losses that didn’t have to happen. But human traffickers were notorious for eliminating anyone who didn’t cooperate, and it would make sense that shifters would fight harder than most. It didn’t make their losses any easier to bear, and they needed to find out what the common connection was so they could stop it from happening again.
She pushed the sadness out of her mind, focusing on the pictures of the children that had been placed in the system when their families couldn’t be located. She was scrolling through a bunch of pictures in the age group of one girl on the list when she scrolled past one photo, paused and went back to it.
Looking back and forth between the two of them, she turned to where Ty was, the excitement overwhelming her.
“Here’s one!” she shouted excitedly. “I found one. This girl right here is on the list. She’s not one of my cases, but she was found in a raid two years ago, and she’s been in a group home ever since. The first name she gave even matches her name here. Etienne.” Senora let the name settle on her tongue before reading further. It was a beautiful name, and the teen was just as stunning as her unique and almost melodious name. “Apparently, she runs away from foster homes.”
“I’m not surprised,” Ty said. “Can you give me the information so we can get her out?”
Senora shook her head.
“She’s a federal placement, so a federal agent will have to deal with removing her.”
“Where is she located?”
“Oklahoma,” Senora said, writing down the address. “Not far from the Colorado border. Can we find out where her parents live?”
“I’m sure Ethan knows.”
“Perfect.
“Let’s keep going and see if we can work through the entire list or a good portion of it. You’re right; I think we should come to him with all the news in one meeting and not piece it out. I think I’ve found out everything I can about Ava’s case at this point, so I can help you.”
“Okay,” she said, moving to the side and making room for him.
He pulled up the only other chair in the hotel room and moved in close so that his arm was against hers. She almost moved away, but it was the only way he could see, and he wasn’t doing it to entice her. Too bad it was still working.
; She closed her eyes, inhaling the scent of him as quietly as she could before moving on to the next page.
They perused the files and came up with a few more possible leads, but most were obviously not in her cold case files. In the end, they had the original five that were deceased and only the one that was in a group home. The rest were still missing, and it almost tripled her caseload.
“I’m exhausted just looking at these,” Senora said.
“I know the feeling. Should we call it a night?”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
Ty let out a heavy sigh.
“Listen, Senora. I promise that I’m not going to try anything. You’ve made your feelings on the matter clear, and I get that. I don’t know what happened between us, but I understand that you don’t want to pursue a relationship with me, and that’s fine.”
“But?”
“But I watched helplessly as an angry dragon dangled you in the air hundreds of feet up and slapped you against every hard surface he could on the way. And that was after he attempted to burn you alive. Call me old-fashioned, call me a fool if you will, but I want to feel you in my arms and know that you’re safe so I can sleep. Otherwise, I’m afraid that I’ll struggle all night to sleep.” He leaned closer and cupped her cheek, kissing her forehead in a move that was so tender it almost broke her heart. “I’m not asking for sex. I’m asking to hold you while you sleep. I promise that’s all I am asking for and nothing more.”
“That’s all you want?” she asked, then wished she hadn’t.
What a loaded question.
He chuckled, dark brown eyes gazing into her hazel ones.
“That’s not all I want, but there are more important things than my wants right now. You’re more important. I realized that before, but nothing will remind you of how important someone is to you as quickly as watching them nearly die.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“Hardly. It takes a lot to shake me up. I was thoroughly shaken today, and I don’t ever want to feel that way again.”
“I know the feeling.”
She looked at the stack on the desk, then shook her head.
“There’s nothing more to be done tonight,” she admitted. “I hate to say it, but I guess it couldn’t hurt.”