A Forever Kind of Hero

by Marie Ferrarella

  Kathy seemed to be every mother’s dream of a daughter. What had turned the dream so sour? Was it just sudden teenage angst, or was there more to it than that?

  She raised her eyes to the couple on the sofa, their hands clasping in a united front against a world that had taken their daughter from them.

  As she asked her questions, Megan studied their faces carefully, looking for any nonverbal indication of darker secrets hidden in their family closet.

  “No arguments, no hostility?”

  Judith bit her lower lip and shook her head.

  “None. Not until she started going out with this Joe character,” Warren said bitterly. He looked at Judith, a helplessness entering his eyes. “I told you she was too young to start seeing boys.”

  “I know,” Judith whispered. “You were right. But she begged so—”

  Megan wedged her question in before the discussion could break down into accusations. She’d witnessed it happening before. “Do you know if he’s missing, too?”

  Warren and Judith looked at one another before turning toward Megan and shaking their heads in unison. Joe What’s-his-name was a person completely outside their realm. It was obvious that it had never even occurred to either of them to find the teenager and question him.

  “We have no idea,” Warren told her.

  Megan saw how tightly Warren was holding onto his wife’s hand throughout the questioning. They were drawing strength from one another. To the outside observer, they seemed like the perfect family.

  A perfect family, Megan thought, that was shattering.

  She had nothing but empathy for them. Her own family had shattered a long time ago. Just how fully, she hadn’t realized until several years later, during the first of her mother’s stays at the hospital.

  Megan looked down at her notes, counting on memory to help her decipher them later. Her handwriting was every bit as awful as Sam Walters, her other partner, said it was. Maybe worse.

  She flipped to the next empty page. “I’m going to need a last name for this Joe.” Megan looked from one parent to the other, waiting.

  But they had no answer for her.

  A light came into Judith’s eyes. “Sharon would know.” She turned to Megan. “Sharon is Kathy’s best friend.”

  Megan had already noted Sharon’s last name and her telephone number. She planned to talk to the girl, as well as to several of the other teenagers that the Teasdales had mentioned.

  But there might be a quicker way to find out the last name of this Joe, who had taken a perfectly lovely suburban girl and hypnotically transformed her into every parent’s nightmare. Megan rose to her feet. “May I see her room?”

  “Yes, of course.” Indicating to her husband to remain where he was, Judith rose from the sofa and led the way to the stairs.

  Megan noted that her gait appeared much heavier than that of a trim woman of thirty-eight. It was as if she’d aged twenty years in the last twenty days: one year for each day her daughter had been missing from her life. Megan thought of her own mother and the two-and-a-half year vigil that Margaret Andreini had kept, waiting for Chad to be returned.

  No one should have to go through anything like that.

  Stopping at the second room to the right of the stairs, Judith opened the door. She stood there, at the threshold, peering in, as if willing her daughter to appear.

  “I haven’t touched anything,” Judith said softly.

  Megan lightly touched Judith’s shoulder as she passed. She understood, recalling her own mother’s words.

  I’m keeping your brother’s room just the way he left it. So when he comes home, he won’t be upset.

  Entering, she looked around slowly. It was a typical room that might have belonged to any upper middle-class fourteen-year-old, maybe a little neater than most. Megan remembered that when she was Kathy’s age her own room had always looked like a hurricane had passed through.

  There were posters taped to the walls. Current heartthrobs of the puppy-love set, she mused. No clothes on the floor.

  Maybe the girl wasn’t all that typical, Megan decided. She looked over her shoulder at Judith. “I need to poke around.”

  Judith’s head bobbed up and down. “Anything. Anything that might help,” she whispered.

  The doorbell chimed, and Judith looked flustered at the intrusive noise. Indecision washed over her thin, pale features.

  “I think someone’s at your front door. Why don’t you go and answer it?” Megan coaxed tactfully.

  It was just as well. She did better without someone looking over her shoulder.

  A flicker of light entered the other woman’s eyes. “Maybe there’s news.”

  Clutching to hope as if it were a talisman, Judith Teasdale turned and flew down the stairs to see who was ringing her doorbell.

  Megan wasted no time.

  Quickly, efficiently, she opened closets, riffled through drawers, turned up the mattress. She touched on all the places that a young girl would use to hide things from her parents and discovered, amazingly enough, that Kathy seemed to have no secrets. There were no drugs of any type, no condoms or contraceptives. Not even a racy video or forbidden magazine.

  For all intents and purposes, Kathy seemed squeaky clean and as straight as an arrow.

  Except that she was a runaway.

  It looked as if Joe What’s-his-name was Megan’s strongest lead. The power of first love was overwhelming, Megan mused.

  The only thing that Megan found, after her search of the small, stuffed-animal-filled room, was a diary. It was the garden-variety type, obtained at any stationery store or card shop. It came complete with a gleaming, gold-plated lock. The key was nowhere to be seen.

  But that wasn’t an obstacle. Megan worked open the lock with minimal effort. “Sorry, Kathy,” she apologized to the absent teenager as she flipped through to the end of the book, looking for the place where Kathy had left off, “but this is for your own good.”

  Voices from the first floor floated up to Megan. She heard a deep masculine one, as well as the Teasdales speaking. Megan couldn’t make out the words as she read through the last entry, but the tone registered nonetheless, piquing her interest. The man had a deep, authoritative voice. It was the kind of voice that belonged to someone who naturally took charge of things. As she walked to the head of the stairs, she continued to scan the diary.

  The portrait of a very young girl, naively in love for the first time and willing to do anything for a teenage boy she considered exciting and dangerous, began taking form.

  A teenage boy called Joe Stafford.

  She had a name.

  Pleased, Megan shoved the diary into her shoulder bag on top of the notes she’d taken. It was a good start. Hopefully, it would be good enough.

  That settled, curiosity came at her from a different direction. Wondering why Judith hadn’t returned to Kathy’s bedroom, Megan made her way down the stairs. The voices were clearer now.

  Intrigued, Megan stood quietly in the doorway, intent on observing the man sitting in the Teasdales’ living room.

  Her first impression was that the dark-haired man with his back to her was in some branch of law enforcement. She was well acquainted with the breed, having worked with the FBI before finally throwing her lot in with Cade.

  She could smell a cop—any sort of cop—a mile away. She thought she smelled one now.

  There was something in the set of the man’s shoulders, in the way he held himself, that gave him away. She doubted that he was a policeman. He wasn’t in uniform, so at the very least he would have to be a detective. But somehow, she didn’t think so.

  She knew most of the detectives in the area. This one didn’t sound familiar. She caught a glimpse of his profile, and it confirmed her suspicions. She didn’t know him. He appeared tall, even sitting down, and had the kind of rugged profile that would send a sculptor running for his chisel.

  If he wasn’t in law enforcement, he should be, she mused. He had an air about
him that took center stage, the kind of bearing that made people sit up and listen even if they were disinclined to.

  Megan crossed her arms before her, content to listen for a moment. She wondered how this man figured into the Teasdales’ lives, and whether he was bringing them bad news.

  Garrett sensed her presence even before he glanced toward the doorway. He’d gotten that back-of-the-neck-itchy-feeling maybe a second before he judged she’d made her appearance. He wasn’t sure just why.

  From the look of the petite, slim blonde, he would have guessed that she was Kathy’s sister. Probably older, but if so, not by all that many years. And while the face of the girl, both in the photograph he held and in the framed one on the mantelpiece, was definitely clean scrubbed and sedate, one glance at the blonde in the doorway told him that she was probably a handful, by any definition.

  There was a feistiness about the girl that telegraphed itself to him across the room. If he had been asked to pick which of the two sisters was the most likely to run away, Garrett would have picked her, rather than Kathy. She looked as if she could handle whatever was dished out with a great deal more ease.

  Garrett had learned to be a quick judge of people and situations a long time ago. When you lived on the streets, you were either a quick judge, or a victim. And he allowed himself to be a victim only once. Never again.

  Seeing Megan standing in the doorway, Warren motioned her into the room, rising from his seat. “Megan, this is Garrett Wichita. He’s with the DEA.”

  “He thinks that he might have seen Kathy,” Judith added excitedly.

  Following Warren’s example, Garrett rose to his feet as Megan approached. Watching her, he judged that he was about a foot taller than she was. Her size made him feel larger than he was.

  The smile curving her mouth told him that she was aware of that.

  Politely, he extended his hand to her. “Ms. Teasdale.”

  Judith looked confused for a moment, then recovered, shaking her head. She set the agent straight. “Oh no, Mr. Wichita, she’s not related to us. This is Megan Andremi.”

  Judith said the name as if it was supposed to mean something to him. It didn’t. Curious, Garrett raised an eyebrow. “A neighbor?” he guessed.

  More than likely, Megan was one of Kathy’s friends. So much the better. In his experience, the friends of a runaway usually knew considerably more than the parents did.

  “A private investigator,” Megan corrected. “The Teasdales have hired me to find their daughter.” She smiled at him.

  His eyes narrowed. He was rarely guilty of misjudging, but it was obvious that he had this time. Big time. But even if she wasn’t Kathy’s sister, she certainly didn’t look old enough to have a detective’s license. Someone had to be pulling his leg.

  “Exactly how old are you?” The question came with no apology.

  “Old enough.” Megan was purposely evasive. “Obviously a lot older than you think I am. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it wasn’t nice to ask a woman her age?”

  It was one of her assets, looking far younger than her actual age. It gave her the ability to blend in with crowds of young people. She’d done some undercover work, posing as a high school student, but that had been while she was with the Bureau.

  Still, at twenty-nine she knew she could still pass for eighteen if she had to. But it did at times get in the way of having people take her seriously. She could see it happening again with this DEA agent.

  “Are you going to make my job easier?” She paused, looking into his eyes. “Or harder?”

  Chapter 2

  The last thing Garrett would have pegged the petite blonde with the heart-shaped face for was a private investigator.

  Garrett weighed his options before giving his answer to the question Megan had put to him. This operation had lasted too long and cost too many lives. His main concern was trapping Jorge Velasquez and stopping the flow of cocaine and heroine into the upper-crust locations the man dealt with. Granted, Velasquez represented only one head of the Hydra, but for Garrett there was more at stake than just bringing down an established, large-scale drug dealer. Much more.

  Tracking down Kathy Teasdale was just a means to a far greater end. A shaky means at that. By the time he found her—if he found her—Kathy might no longer have any contact with Velasquez or anyone in his far-reaching organization.

  But to these people whose home he’d just entered, finding Kathy wasn’t a means to an end. It was everything. He knew that.

  He knew, too, that they were hoping for the teenager to return to them just the way she’d left—as brighteyed, sweet-smiling and innocent as the girl in the photograph. They had no idea how impossible that was. They probably had no idea just what was out there.

  You have to live it in order to understand it. And maybe not even then, he thought.

  The girl they would get back—if she ever returned at all—would be a different person from the girl who had run away.

  Garrett had the distinct impression that the woman who was making him squirm internally knew that.

  “You still haven’t answered my question, Mr. Wichita,” Megan said, interrupting his thoughts.

  “Actually, I was hoping that you—” he shifted his eyes toward Kathy’s parents, for the moment ignoring Megan “—could do that for me.” Both parents looked at him blankly. “Give me a clue as to where she was,” he explained. “Have you heard from her?” He gazed at them intently, looking for signs of evasiveness, for lies that were badly covered. “Has she made any effort at all to contact either one of you in the last three weeks?”

  “No.” Accompanied by a strangled sob, the single word came from Judith.

  “I wouldn’t be asking for your help finding her, Mr. Wichita, if Kathy had called her parents,” Megan pointed out mildly.

  She congratulated herself on keeping her temper under control. Couldn’t this big lug who was way overdue for a haircut see that? Why was he poking questions at these people when they were obviously both hurting so badly? With little effort, she remembered the police detectives who had come to question and re-question her mother after Chad had been kidnapped. They’d all but come out and accused her of killing her own son and then doing away with his body. It was that kind of treatment that had begun to send her mother over the brink.

  Megan clenched her hands at her sides.

  Warren squared his shoulders as he covered his wife’s clasped hands again.

  “What has she done?” His voice shook as he struggled for strength in the face of this newest turn. “I mean, why the DEA? Why are you here? Is Kathy in some kind of trouble?”

  “She’s—”

  Garrett didn’t know exactly what made him glance at the pint-size private investigator before answering Warren’s question. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was because she was staring at him so hard that he could feel her eyes boring into his skull.

  But whatever it was, when he did, he saw the warning look in her eyes. She was being protective of these people, letting him know that they were both in a fragile state and had to be treated accordingly.

  He didn’t particularly like being dictated to, even silently.

  Garrett noted Megan’s clenched hands before continuing. What was that about?

  “No.” As he spoke, he mentally amended his words. “She’s not in any trouble. It’s only that one of our surveillance tapes picked her up in the same area as a man we’re looking to question.” He showed them the photograph he’d had freeze-framed and printed. “We thought she might be able to tell us where he is.” It was ground in the truth, but he knew it sounded flimsy.

  Judith looked at the photograph, and a little gasp punctuated the bolt of recognition that shot through her. The girl in the picture was wearing a dress that was years too old for a fourteen-year-old.

  Her hand was shaking as she handed the photograph back to Garrett. “What kind of man?”

  Garrett heard the protective tone in Judith’s voice. Protective and a
nguished at the same time, because there was nothing she could do for Kathy.

  He left the photograph on the coffee table for now. There was no way to say this—except straight out. “His name is Jorge Velasquez and he’s suspected of—”

  “He has some information the DEA is trying to pin down,” Megan interjected. She deliberately avoided looking in his direction. “Velasquez was in the witness protection program, but the system lost track of him.

  “Witness protection program?” Warren echoed, appearing confused. “Is he dangerous?” he demanded, taking hold of Garrett’s arm. “Is my daughter in any danger?”

  Yes, Megan thought. Your daughter’s in a lot of danger.

  But it would do the Teasdales no good to know that—not when they had no way to get in contact with her, no way to help. They didn’t need to have this additional cross to bear.

  “Velasquez travels in completely different circles from a girl like Kathy,” Megan assured them, her voice soft, comforting. She looked up at Garrett, warning him not to contradict her in front of the girl’s parents. “I’m sure it’s only a matter of her being in the same vicinity as Velasquez. Mr. Wichita is probably trying to find out if she might have overheard something that was being said.” Her expression was pure sweetness as she faced him again with the Teasdales looking on. “Isn’t that so, Mr. Wichita?”

  Garrett felt as if her green eyes were digging into him with tiny, sharp points. There was no need for overkill; he got the message. Not that he cared for it much. He’d been right about her. The woman was trouble with a capital T.

  And how does she know Velasquez and his reputation? he wondered.

  “Yes, that’s so,” he agreed. “Then you really haven’t heard anything at all from her? Not even an aborted communication?”

  The tears that welled up in Judith’s eyes answered his question for him. His sympathies were with them, but that couldn’t be allowed to get in the way of this operation. He had to cover all bets.