Ghosts (Vance Davis Dossier #1)

by Heather Huffman

  GHOSTS

  THE VANCE DAVIS DOSSIER

  BOOK ONE

  HEATHER HUFFMAN

  Booktrope Editions

  Seattle WA

  2014

  COPYRIGHT 2014 HEATHER HUFFMAN

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

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  should be directed to: info@booktrope.com

  Edited by Erica Fitzgerald

  Cover Design by Loretta Matson

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.

  EPUB ISBN 978-1-62015-657-5

  DISCOUNTS OR CUSTOMIZED EDITIONS MAY BE AVAILABLE FOR EDUCATIONAL AND OTHER GROUPS BASED ON BULK PURCHASE.

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  Table of Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  WANT MORE VANCE?

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  For Kate.

  Thank you for helping me fall in love with words again.

  PROLOGUE

  Twenty Years Ago

  THE SANDY-HAIRED BOY studied the old farmer, his hazel eyes not missing a thing. He might only be ten years old, but he knew enough about life not to trust the man. However kind he seemed on the surface, the guy had to be after something. They always were.

  The farmer gestured with a work-hardened hand, and the boy inched a little closer, curiosity beating distrust as he peered over the man’s shoulder to get a better look.

  “You’re about to see a new life come into the world.”

  The boy peered down into the stall, his brow crinkling at the sight of the laboring cow. “That’s kinda gross.”

  “Well, sometimes things aren’t pretty in real life. But then you get through all the ugly stuff and find something beautiful in its place.”

  “Are you telling me what comes out of there will be beautiful?” The boy nodded toward the cow’s back half; he was having a hard time believing that.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you think when it’s all said and done,” the farmer suggested as he wiped a bead of sweat from his brow.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Present Day

  HE WAS DRUNK. He knew he was, and he knew he shouldn’t be, but Vance couldn’t seem to make himself care enough to not order another. He closed his hazel eyes, sinking his fingers into his sandy hair as he held his head to keep it from hitting the bar in front of him. His mind tried to reach back to a memory just out of his grasp. It hurt to think too hard, so he tried to let it go. Like a gnat on a summer day, the memory refused to leave.

  Thinking of the farmer and his wife only reminded Vance how he’d let them down. All of the effort they put into saving him had been wasted. He tried harder to push the memory away, only to have it replaced by an even more painful one: Soft brown eyes that shone with love, auburn hair, and musical laughter tormented him now. The image of her face sawed through his soul like a dull knife. He could feel the world crashing in on him, and he took another drink to stave it off.

  He glanced around the grungy little bar for something to take his mind on a safer journey. A blonde across the room smiled, trying to catch his eye. He turned back to the bar. It wasn’t in his nature to be rude, but he’d spent enough time in places like this to spot a huntress on the prowl, even from that distance. He had no intention of being her prey, and the kindest way to stop it was to not let it get started in the first place.

  Vance had never been particularly social anyway. Since Harmony, he’d become even more of a recluse. He was lost, drifting, and not sure how to get past the pain—or maybe he was afraid to move past the pain, afraid she’d go with it.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and eyed the screen speculatively, wondering if he had the courage to answer. Jessie was his only true friend in the world, and she’d have his hide if she knew where he was at the moment.

  The phone stopped buzzing and he sighed, his decision made. The second he dropped it on the counter, it buzzed one more time. He picked it back up to read the text that had come through. Not surprisingly, it was Jessie: It takes less than a week to get to my farm from anywhere in the world. You have that long to make an appearance or I’ll come find you myself. He knew her well enough to know she wasn’t bluffing.

  Vance signaled the bartender. “I’d better settle up. And while I’m at it, could you call me a taxi?”

  As it happened, he was less than a day’s drive from her farm, but he’d still need his week to look presentable enough to pass inspection. If Jessie had any inkling how he’d been whiling away his time, she’d start to worry about him again, which inevitably led to hovering. He wasn’t in the mood for hovering.

  CHAPTER TWO

  JESSIE HOVERED OVER VANCE, worry creasing her pretty brow. “Are you sure you don’t want more bacon? You look thin.”

  “Jessie has truly become an Ozarkian. She thinks bacon fixes everything.” Jessie’s husband, Gabe, reached across the table to take the piece of meat Vance had declined.

  A hint of a grin tugged the corner of Vance’s mouth. When he’d first met Jessie, she wouldn’t dream of touching anything as unhealthy as bacon. Of course, that could largely be attributed to being Harmony’s roommate. Harmony had always been a health nut.

  With that thought, sadness gripped his heart anew. Jessie could see it, and the wrinkle in her brow deepened, her lips pursing to further express her dismay.

  Vance gave his best impression of a smile and shook his head. “I’m fine, just full.”

  Jessie opened her mouth as if to disagree with him, only to be interrupted by a child crying in the next room. Instead of her planned argument for Vance, she muttered, “If they are fighting over that silly toy kitchen set again, I’m going to thump them both.”

  Gabe waited for Jessie to be out of earshot before leaning over to Vance. “You’ll have to thank the girls for their timing later.”

  “It was a well-coordinated attack.” Vance delivered the line in his typical deadpan way.

  Gabe nodded. Vance could see both amusement and concern written in the man’s eyes as he studied Vance a moment longer before leaning back.

  “You’re about to step in where Jessie left off, aren’t you?” Vance asked warily.

  “I’m not going to pretend to know what you’re going through. Not really. I mean, I can remember when Jessie and I first got together, when that scum Aleksander was after her, there was about an hour when I didn’t know if she was alive or dead. The not knowing was enough to make me forget to breathe. That’s about as close as I can get, man. So I’m not going to lie and say I understand your pain. I can’t even begin to grasp the depths of it.”

  “Good.”

  Gabe chewed his lip for a moment before plunging ahead. “But I do know that if Harmo
ny were here, she’d kick your butt for not letting her go.”

  “I should have known I wouldn’t get off that easy.”

  “Is it bad to have people who love you enough to worry about you?” Gabe asked.

  “It didn’t turn out so great for Harmony.”

  “That wasn’t your fault.” Gabe’s voice grew firm.

  “Are you sure about that?” Vance wasn’t. Daily, he recounted the events leading up to her death. Daily, he thought of all the ways he could have stopped it.

  Gabe met Vance’s gaze without flinching. “I’ve read the reports. I’m positive it wasn’t your fault.”

  “Says the small-town cop,” Vance snorted.

  “Play that game if you want, but we both know I wasn’t always a small-town cop. You’re using the blame game to hide from life.”

  “Is Jessie done with the kids yet?” Vance was beginning to wish she’d been the one to give the lecture.

  Gabe threw his hands up in defeat. “Alright, I’ll stop.”

  Vance tried to soften his scowl. He knew Gabe and Jessie meant well. “Thanks.”

  “Now for the important question: Are you going to eat the last piece of bacon or not?”

  “How have you not gained a hundred pounds down here?”

  Gabe’s grin was wicked as he swiped Vance’s bacon. “What can I say? Jessie keeps me busy.”

  “I’m going to tell myself you mean building barns or something.”

  “Yep. Lots of barns.” Gabe’s chuckle told Vance there were no barns involved.

  Vance’s eye-roll was more about playing a part. In truth, he was happy Jessie had found the real deal. Not many did. Gabe was a good man and a good friend. True to his word, he let the subject drop.

  After breakfast, Gabe headed into work. Jessie was elbow-deep in her morning chores, so Vance took the opportunity to lose himself in the vast expanse of woods surrounding the couple’s home. As far removed as it now seemed, there was a time when he felt perfectly at home in the woods. The farmer had been the one to teach him to hunt and fish and camp. At the time, the old man probably hadn’t a clue how Vance would apply those skills—but then, Vance figured, most people probably don’t look at their children and imagine they’ll grow up to be operatives in the fight against the modern-day slave trade.

  Of course, the farmer wasn’t his dad. Vance’s dad had been a hulk of a man with more temper than brains. When he’d landed himself in jail for a third time, Vance’s mother had found her solution in a bottle of pills. He couldn’t say he’d been sad when the pair left his life. Relieved might be a better word to describe it, at least where his father was concerned. For a while, guilt had plagued him—guilt over not being able to save his mother. Somehow, somewhere along the way, that guilt had turned to anger at his mother for wallowing in the awfulness that permeated her life. It was her job to make things better for them both. Instead, she left Vance to deal with it alone. It had taken him a lot of years to forgive her for that.

  A twig snapped to his left, drawing his attention in time to see a white-tailed deer bound away. Even after all these years, he was impressed by the way a deer could pop right over a barbed wire fence from a stand-still. He lingered a moment longer before heading back to the house to see if there was anything he could do to help lighten Jessie’s workload.

  ***

  Two hours later, sweat clung to Vance. He’d long since discarded his shirt; the sun beat down on skin that was already beginning to darken in response. Jessie had gladly put him to work digging fence posts. He alternated between welcoming the burn in his muscles and cursing the rock-filled soil of the Missouri Ozarks. With each hole he dug, memories swirled around his mind. Vance didn’t try to sort or separate them; he just let them dance about, one running into the other.

  He understood why Jessie worried; Vance knew he’d dropped out of life since Harmony’s death, and he knew it wasn’t a healthy place to be. But everything reminded him of her. Something as simple as a yellow light could trigger a memory that would squeeze at his heart and not let go. He’d thought it was merely an expression to say your heart hurt. Now he realized it was possible to miss someone enough for your chest to literally ache. And in those moments, he missed her so much it was hard to breathe.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” Jessie interrupted his reverie, extending a glass of sweet tea as she approached.

  Vance accepted the offering, draining the glass before responding. “I can’t imagine they’re worth that much.”

  Jessie regarded him quietly for a moment. “I wish you could, just once, see yourself as others see you.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that, so he crooked his arm around her neck and pulled her against him, planting a kiss soundly on the top of her head, despite her squeal of protest.

  “Ack! You smell awful. Let me go.”

  “Hey, I got that stink digging holes for your fence,” he defended himself.

  “I don’t care how it got there—I don’t want you to get it on me.”

  “You’re a cold, hard woman, Jessie Adams.” He chuckled and let her go. Despite her protests, he could see that this glimpse of their old camaraderie had set her mind at ease.

  She moved a safe distance away, eying him as if she was deciding something. He raised his eyebrows in silent question, and she sighed.

  “Jeff called looking for you. He said you haven’t been answering your phone and wanted to know if I had a way to find you.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I said I’d see what I could do.”

  “Maybe he should get the hint. I told him I retired.”

  “And you know how I feel about that. But, Vance, I think you should talk to him. It’s Henry and Martha Barnett.”

  The farmer and his wife. Vance stiffened, bracing himself for news that couldn’t be good. “Were they in an accident or something?”

  Jessie hesitated before plunging ahead. “One of their foster kids has turned up missing. When the local police said their hands were tied, they refused to let it drop. Somehow this thing made it to the FBI. Jeff must have flagged anything related to you, because their file ended up on his desk.”

  Vance leaned on the post-hole diggers he’d been using, processing the information. He knew as well as anybody that, under normal circumstances, a missing foster child might as well have been dropped in a black hole. Once gone, they were forgotten. There were too many other children with known whereabouts to spend resources on kids who were more than likely runaways—at least that was the system’s view. Vance knew from experience that the kids were just as likely—if not more so—to be victims of human trafficking.

  Henry and Martha weren’t the kind of people to let a child in their care drift quietly into the night, not on their watch. Inwardly, Vance smiled at the thought of Martha’s eyes snapping fiercely as she marched into the FBI, demanding someone do something. Not even Jeff Talbot’s suave demeanor would have placated that mama bear. To say he loved her as a mother would be too strong; she’d come into his life at a time when he was too wounded to love. No, he might not love Martha, but he respected her and owed her a debt he knew he’d never be able to repay.

  Vance rested his forehead on his hands for a moment, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. Whether he was ready or not, his retirement was over.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT HAD BEEN A LONG TIME since anything could make Vance Davis quake in his boots, but he was pretty close to it at the moment. As if roots had sprung from the gravel driveway and wound themselves around his ankles, he stood watching the aged red door, willing himself to find the courage to cross the yard and knock on it. Eight years of memories lay behind that peeling red paint, but it was one memory in particular that kept him rooted to his spot.

  “I can understand wanting a little adventure in life, son, but there’s a lot to be said for having a place to call home.” Henry had placed his hand on Vance’s shoulder.

  A teenage boy filled with ang
er and no particular place to aim it has a tendency to explode whether provoked or not, wounding anyone close with the shrapnel—at least that’s what Vance told himself now as he remembered his next words: “Only I’m not your son, and this isn’t my home.”

  Looking back, it was the closest thing to a home he’d ever known. The little farmhouse had been a safe place where he had learned so much about being a man. But he hadn’t been able to look either of the Barnetts in the eye after slamming the door on the eight years they’d invested in him.

  At first he’d been fueled by his cherished anger at the world. Then by regret. There was a time, with Harmony, when he considered finding the Barnetts to let them know what had become of him. And then he was reminded they were better off not knowing.

  A dog was barking in the distance, the sound drawing nearer. He shifted his gaze from the door to the approaching canine. It didn’t look happy with his presence. He debated climbing back into his truck while he had the chance. But then the red door opened, and his debate was settled.

  He saw the barrel of the shotgun before he saw her. “Who’s there?”

  Vance didn’t answer right away. Instead, he blinked to be sure time and distance weren’t playing tricks on his brain. “Allie? Allie Walker?”

  “Nobody’s called me Allie Walker in a long time.” The woman inched closer, the tension in her body not easing up. “Do I know you?”

  A happier memory of just how well she knew him flashed through his mind, but he wasn’t about to bring that up by way of reintroduction. He cleared his throat, shoving his hands in his pockets and dipping his head momentarily to hide his fleeting embarrassment. When he looked up again he flashed her something reminiscent of his old smile. “It me, Vance.”