Trisha sucked in a nervous breath. It might be different if Milo had an exhausting job loading trucks for the army from six in the morning until four in the afternoon. But he didn’t. What Milo did was sit on his ass at a desk inputting data into a computer all day, keeping track of shipments coming onto and going off the base. Not exactly grueling work in Trisha’s mind. But she didn’t dare mention that at the moment. She didn’t want to fight. And because of that she went to the refrigerator and dug out the carton of eggs. “How about I scramble you up some of these?”
“Damn it, woman! That’s breakfast food. I want you to fix me supper. What about that don’t you understand?”
Now was probably not a good time to remind Milo that they still had another week to go till payday. He could eat a cheese sandwich, or the two scrambled eggs or the watery stew. Honestly though, Trisha was getting mighty tired of Milo’s temper flaring like a volcano over the least little thing like what he had for dinner. Trisha backed away from the fridge as Milo stormed over to the same appliance and yanked the door open to see for himself what was inside.
Trisha wasn’t taking any chances. She moved three feet away to the counter.
“There’s nothing in here but some ketchup, mustard and mayo. We don’t even have a hotdog to throw on the stove. Where the hell is the food?”
It wasn’t like she’d eaten it up herself. Beginning to shake now with fear that he might take it up a notch, which she’d seen him do lately, she did her best to remind him of their situation. “We have seven dollars in our checking account, Milo. It’s gotta last at least another six days before I can go to the PX. We’ve used up our allotment for food. Look, I’ve got a can of beans in the pantry I can throw in and add it to the stew. That’ll make it a lot thicker.”
But when Milo slammed the ice-box door shut and wheeled around with fire in his eyes, Trisha knew she was in trouble. “Don’t you dare hit me again! I didn’t move three thousand miles all the way across the country to a place where all it does is rain all the damned time for you to use me as a punching bag every single time you get mad about something! I’m not putting up with you hitting me anymore, Milo.”
“Oh yeah? Then leave. Get out of my face and my house. What good are you anyway? Can’t even fix a damn meal the right way,” he groused.
But when she reached for the keys on the counter to the only vehicle they owned, Milo’s truck, he slapped her hand away. “You ain’t takin’ my pickup. You wanna get out of here? Fine, you walk. You leave with what’s on your back.”
“That’s not right.”
“Yeah, well neither is me coming home and finding a crappy meal on the stove.” With that, he shoved her through the back door. “Now get your ass out of my sight before I decide to smack you.”
“Where am I supposed to go, Milo?”
“Hey, you wanna leave? What the hell do I care where you go?” He pushed her onto the narrow porch and then slammed the door shut in her face.
The minute she heard the lock turn on the other side, Trisha’s shoulders slumped. What was she supposed to do now? She took two steps and started pounding on the door. “At least give me my purse. Come on, Milo. I need my wallet! It has my ID in it.”
When the door cracked open slightly, she had hope. But then Milo tossed her handbag over her head and it landed on the wet patch of dirt and weedy grass behind her.
“There. Satisfied now? By the way, I took the checkbook out of it, too. I don’t want you writing hot paper all over town that I’ll have to cover. Now get out of my sight! You knock on this door again and I’ll bash your face in.”
Knowing he would do it, Trisha backed down the steps and ran over to retrieve her pocketbook. She brushed off the tan faux leather grain hoping all the grime came off.
It was beginning to get dark and already chilly for October. The sun dipped in the west over the tips of the evergreens as she made her way through the complex heading to the nearest pay phone, a good half mile away.
She didn’t even have her jacket. Asshole Milo, she thought, as she tromped off in the direction of the PX. What she had ever seen in the piece of shit, she could only wonder now.
It was time to call her stepmom, Brandy Sue Grainger, collect back in Charlotte. Trisha hoped the woman accepted the charges. After all, it was her stepmother who had tried to warn her about marrying Milo. She wished now she’d listened to Brandy. Not only that, Trisha hoped she could talk Brandy Sue into sending her bus fare to get back home. If that didn’t happen, she’d have to hitchhike her way clear across the country. But first, she’d have to wait for Milo to go to work in the morning to go back to the apartment to get her clothes.
As Trisha contemplated where she planned to sleep that night, a Jeep pulled alongside her with the windows rolled down. That seemed odd to Trisha because she’d been here two months and not a single soul had gone out of their way to be friendly to her.
When the man behind the wheel brought the car to the side of the road and came to a stop, Trisha stopped walking.
“You need a ride, honey? It’s awful cold out here and you don’t even have a coat on.”
He seemed nice enough and wow was he ever cute all that dark hair and all. Maybe her luck in the man department had turned.
As she opened the passenger door and hopped into the front seat, Trisha had no way of knowing it was the last ride she would ever take.
Chapter 1 Book 3
Present day
Seattle, Washington
For a woman who’d never traveled farther south than the state of California, jetting to St. Kitts for her honeymoon in the middle of winter had been nothing short of heaven.
Skye Cree didn’t jet-set. She didn’t consider herself a fan of the glitzy or the privileged. She wasn’t particularly materialistic or fashionable. But when it came to touching down on the lush island surrounded by sparkling blue water, she’d been captivated by all the trappings that went with a luxurious resort hotel. She’d even taken advantage of the spa where some guy named Javier had given her a massage that made her feel like she could float on air.
After all, even the most dogged hunter needed to get away, needed to take a break from chasing down scum once in a while. Maybe that’s why she’d reveled in the trip. And not for the obvious reasons a new bride might have, who itched to get the man she loved all to herself for two weeks in a tropical setting. That was a bonus. The fact that she’d rarely gone anywhere in her life before meeting Josh Ander left her wanting to see places she’d only dreamed or read about.
So she’d taken advantage of every minute there. She’d used her camera like a pro, filling up the disc with no less than two hundred pictures. The trip had yielded plenty of things to check out, to explore, new things to experience. But like any other newlywed couple, she and Josh had rarely left their hotel room, opting instead to spend their nights languishing in bed, their days not that much different.
When they had ventured out, they’d acted like typical tourists. They’d sipped on fruity exotic drinks made with pineapple and mango and rum and topped with those little paper umbrellas. They’d danced to the sounds of acoustic guitars and ukuleles and drummers keeping the beat with their steelpans.
They hadn’t wanted any of it to end, not the twenty-four-hour room service nor the brilliant sunrises and sunsets that came with it.
They’d flown out of SeaTac with a cold wind breathing down their backs. Eight hours later they’d landed among bright green rolling hills, warm crystal blue water slapping at white sand, sand that glistened as though slivers of diamonds were lining the shores. With temperatures reaching the high eighties every day, their fourteen glorious days in the Caribbean flew by. The tranquil time had flown by way too fast.
She supposed there were rules to getting back into the swing of things. But it had ended and now, here she was back dealing with Seattle’s winter.
Temps had fallen overnight to a chilly record low of twenty-seven degrees. A light drizzle spat down from above
as she blew into the lobby of the gleaming Breslin Building.
Taking a deep breath, she prepared to step back into her role at the Artemis Foundation, the Foundation that located missing children.
When the polished steel doors opened to the elevator, she dashed into the car and punched the button for three. As it began its upward motion, she had to admit she’d missed her little office on the third floor. Okay, truth be told, she couldn’t wait to get back into the swing of things.
She’d gotten a late start though. She’d lingered over her toast and jam and her second cup of coffee too long while her husband of sixteen days had headed out the door for work.
She knew Josh had a brutal software schedule to keep. With his job as the CEO at Ander All Games he was often behind at work. Even before their wedding, he’d struggled to keep up. In fact, since his transformation he often had to play catch-up. She worried he didn’t get enough sleep. There never seemed to be enough hours in the day or night, especially that time after midnight when they searched Seattle’s streets. They’d negotiated the hours, times they’d set aside for themselves and compromised on everything else. Teamwork, he called it.
But it didn’t matter if they’d reached an agreement. Skye still felt responsible for the crazy workload he had. It was a waste of time to talk herself out of it. Wasn’t it her fault? All of it.
Native American blood coursing through her veins might make her susceptible to its folklore but it was her Nez Perce spirit guide, a silver wolf named Kiya, that made her a believer. If not for Kiya, she would never have escaped from Ronnie Whitfield at the age of twelve.
That was long before she and Josh wound up in the woods outside Whitfield’s cabin. Long before Kiya had saved Josh. That day, her mystical wolf—her protector, her guardian, had come through again by merging her life forces with Josh’s to save them both.
Such drastic measures had come at a steep price and changed Josh forever. But they would never have been there in the first place if not for her obsession, her stubborn refusal to stop looking for the man she felt had gotten away with a slap on the wrist. Her fixation on Whitfield had almost gotten both of them killed.
She had to take responsibility for that.
Unlocking the door to the office suite, Skye stepped inside as the silver wolf nipped at her heels. These days, Kiya went everywhere with her—too many crazies out there not to. It had taken the wolf months to regain strength, to adjust to the cells from Josh so that she could fully make use of the human traits she’d acquired in the merge.
As the wolf prowled the suite, checking out every corner, Skye had to concede Josh acted much the same way at times. Amused at her own wit, she understood the analogy. Even though Josh didn’t actually walk around on all fours, he did prowl and pace. Often. Plus his persistent, stubborn ways could get annoying at times. Since taking on Kiya’s qualities, his dogged pursuit was one of the qualities she most admired, while at the same time accepting blame for that, too. He certainly wasn’t the same man she’d met that night in a dark alleyway.
If he were standing here, he’d no doubt argue that those differences made him a better man, improved him as a team player, someone she could count on in a fight. Lately, Josh tossed out the word “team” a lot. It could be maddening at times. After all, he was now more skilled at tracking than she was. Thanks to a keen sense of smell and the wolf blood that ran through his veins, his strength was a hundred times what it had been before the merge. But no matter how much his abilities had improved, Skye still hoarded a major chunk of guilt. There was no way around it. She didn’t think it was likely to go away any time soon. She’d carry that burden of guilt for years to come.
But not today. Today she had to dig in, get a ton of things done to catch up.
She took a moment to glance at the huge map hanging on the back wall, the best place to keep track of all child abductions that had taken place in the Pacific Northwest. Most were teenagers. Colored pushpins and photos indicated where each had been last seen. Recently she’d started including the disappearances of males and females gone missing in British Columbia. Since the area was less than a hundred miles to the north it seemed practical to cover Canada as well, or at least that little part of it.
She stared at the snapshots tacked around the map, at the fresh faces. A reminder to her or anyone else who walked through the door of what the Artemis Foundation was all about—finding those who’d vanished without a trace, who’d left behind heartbroken loved ones without a word, families that still didn’t know what had happened to their children.
She knew some of them had invariably ended up in the human trafficking trade, shipped out like cargo, destined for other parts of the world where no one could trace their movements. She’d vowed to find them, every last one, even if it took her years to do so. In their spare time, she and Josh had already spent hours going over manifests. So far, their efforts had not turned up a single missing teen.
But that didn’t mean she’d give up. In fact, her latest project was making sure the kids and teens were all listed in every available national databases and agency that allowed her to add them.
She looked around the office and recognized she was stalling—nothing like coming back from a long vacation and stepping back into a mess. She could barely see the top of the makeshift folding-table she used as her desk, cluttered with an assortment of cards and letters. The floor was littered with boxes stacked in hap-hazard fashion, no doubt wedding gifts still pouring in from well-wishers.
As she set her bag down she realized the first order of business had to be catching up on all the messages left on the office phone. The voice bank was full. After listening to some thirty calls, most were goodwill wishes. She jotted down names and numbers on a legal pad to get back to them later.
But one warranted another listen and an immediate response.
Skye could tell even over the phone that Karen Houston was frantic and worried. Karen was the mother of Shawna Langley, a teen who’d gone missing while they’d been out of town making Shawna’s case the most recent. It seemed on the first day of school after Christmas break, the fifteen-year-old had boarded her regular bus that morning and headed for class. According to her mother, the teen never made it inside the building. Somewhere between getting off that bus and her first-period math class, Shawna Langley had disappeared.
As Mrs. Houston explained in her message, she hadn’t discovered her daughter missing until five-thirty that evening when she’d gotten home from work. With the house empty and no sign of Shawna, she’d called all Shawna’s friends and learned they hadn’t seen their classmate at school that day. After that, Mrs. Houston had checked her answering machine. One of the messages had been from the vice principal telling her that Shawna had been marked absent from all her classes. That’s when Karen had panicked and called the police.
Skye listened to the woman’s detailed message a couple of times, and heard the voice of a mother in agony, worrying and frantic with fear. Since the time stamp on Mrs. Houston’s message was from two days ago, that meant Shawna might still be missing.
Before dialing the number, Skye took several deep breaths, steeled herself to cope with another missing child.
As soon as Mrs. Houston picked up, Skye identified herself and began with an explanation of sorts. “I’m sorry for the delay in returning your call. But I’ve been out of town for two weeks and just got your message this morning.”
“Call me Karen, please. I remember seeing you on the news. The news anchor reported you’d gotten married. But you had to come back eventually. And when you did, I wanted Shawna to be the first one you helped.”
“Then why don’t you tell me more about your daughter’s disappearance?”
Karen went into the fine points and ticked off specifics while Skye continued to make notations on the legal pad.
“The cops think she ran away. Shawna wouldn’t do that,” Karen urged.
“That seems to be a very typical response from law e
nforcement.”
“I didn’t appreciate being told that. I tried to tell them Shawna loved school, that she was a member of the honor society. She had tons of friends. She was active in numerous social events. She had cheerleading practice the afternoon she went missing. Why would she run away from all that? She had no reason to.”
Unfortunately, Skye had heard it all too often before—popular teenage girl with a routine life vanishes without a trace.
“Let me ask you this. Do you know if the police questioned the bus driver?”
“Yes, they did. And I called her myself. Her name’s Lori Denny. She’s fifty-seven, a grandmother who picks up extra money by driving the bus. Lori says she watched Shawna exit the bus that morning like everyone else did.”
“Okay, did they check video of the kids entering the school? Because most high schools these days have security cameras installed.”
“You’re good, very thorough. I knew you would be. I like that. But the police told me they did look through surveillance tapes which covered the hallways. Look, I want to hire you to find my daughter.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Karen. I’m not for hire.”
“Then I’ll make a donation to the Artemis Foundation. I want to do something.”
“A donation to the Foundation is fine. How about this? I’ll follow up, make some calls to law enforcement myself and see what turns up. I won’t give up.”
Karen sighed. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
After assuring Karen she’d do everything she could, Skye ended the call on a depressing note. Would children ever be safe to walk down their own streets, live their lives without fear of being snatched? It was a sobering thought.
With that, she booted up her laptop. For thirty minutes she perused the over one hundred and eighty emails sitting in her inbox. Getting rid of the obvious spam first, she opened each one in methodical fashion, reading, and then replying to those requiring a response.
Suddenly the smell of caffeine drifting from another office on the same floor got to her. She remembered she needed coffee. She pushed to her feet, went into the little kitchenette to start a pot of strong java. As it brewed she attacked the mound of cards and letters stacked on her desk. The pile was so high she couldn’t see around the twelve-inch mountain of paper.
Skye Cree Boxed Set Books 1 - 3 Page 55