Pawsitively Secretive

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  Chief Brown almost hit another parked car.

  “Kim says you’re clearly smitten with me and I need to back off before you do something we’ll both regret.”

  His nostrils flared. After mulling all of this over for a few seconds, he glanced at her again, this time giving her a quick scan from head to foot, then returned his gaze out the windshield. “No offense, Amber, but ew.”

  Amber cackled. “It’s a total ew for me, too!”

  “How dare you,” he said, deadpan. “I’m very dashing.”

  She laughed again.

  With a sigh, he said, “I guess I can see how our behavior lately could be seen as suspicious. And it’s going to have to continue to be that way until you’re ready to tell Kim—or anyone else—about your … gifts.”

  Amber groaned. “I know.”

  “But we need to nip this affair thing in the bud,” he said. “Jessica will have my hide if this rumor gets back to her.”

  “Want me to say something to her?”

  “No,” he said. “I’ll talk to her tonight. No idea what I’ll say, but I’ll figure out something.”

  Amber knew she would have to come up with something to tell Kim, too.

  When Chief Brown and Amber walked into the police station, Carl came bounding over with all the enthusiasm of a golden retriever who hadn’t seen his human in a week. “Hi, chief. Hi, Amber. What’s the good word? Find anything weird or creepy out there? I keep hearing rumors that Chloe was snatched by a cult.”

  The chief huffed a breath out of his nostrils.

  Amber stifled a laugh. “Hey, Carl.”

  The waiting area of the station was empty. No one sat in the mismatched chairs or on the lumpy sofa. The water cooler in the corner gave a gulg as it resettled, bubbles rising up in a rush and popping at the top of its gallon container.

  “We might have found something on the search, but nothing definitive yet,” he said. “I’ll debrief you in a few minutes, but first I need to discuss something with Miss Blackwood. Thanks for helping man the phones today.”

  Carl sighed. “Happy to take one for the team.” Then he shielded his mouth with one hand and stage whispered to Amber, “Even though I was a boy scout and can track animals like a boss.”

  Amber gave a snort, then tried to swallow it back when she saw Chief Brown sneer at her.

  “We’ll be in my office.” Then he moved past Carl. “Good afternoon, Dolores,” he said as he walked by the open window in the boxy wooden desk the grouchy woman seemed to live in.

  Dolores, or Sour Face according to Amber, said, “Afternoon, chief” in a flat tone. Then her eyes cut to Amber, her frizzy blonde hair wild. She didn’t say a word to Amber, as usual, just followed her with her eyes as Amber walked by, like one of those paintings in a Scooby-Doo cartoon. Once Amber was out of eyesight, the clack of Dolores’s keyboard started up.

  “I’ll just be answering the phone some more,” Carl called after them. “Doing paperwork. Filing.”

  Chief Brown was muttering to himself as he let Amber and himself into the office. He locked the door behind them. Hopefully, Carl wouldn’t come check on them, only to find he couldn’t get into the room. Amber had a feeling Carl could get gossip going in town just as well as Kim could.

  “I swear he’s upset that working here isn’t like something he saw on TV.”

  Amber knew better than to come to Carl’s defense, so she said nothing as the chief continued to mutter to himself as he cleared off a spot on his cluttered desk. She stared at the photo that sat facing out on the end—Jessica, the chief, and Sammy all smiling wide at the camera, Jessica’s hand on her belly, hinting at the new baby growing within. Amber truly hoped none of the ridiculous rumors about Amber and the chief ever did anything to wipe those smiles off his family’s faces.

  “All right,” he said, pulling the bagged-up phone out of his pocket. He set it down on a cleared section of his desk and then put his hands on his hips.

  Feeling a tad nervous all of a sudden, she said, “Seems like you already have experience with Scuttle?”

  The chief groaned. “That site is the bane of law enforcement’s existence. They keep virtually nothing on their servers so even if we request a log of a user’s communications, they often can’t provide us with anything. And it takes them a good six months to tell us they have nothing. We don’t have Johnny’s last name—assuming that really is his name. We don’t have his handle. Seems Chloe kept a lot of this a secret even from her closest friends. We have nothing on that front. We’re trying but it’s pretty much a dead end already.” He sighed, staring down at the device on his desk. “Which is where you come in. What do we do now?”

  Amber stood beside him, wondering which would be the best spell to use in a situation like this. She had to remind herself once again that memory spells were her forte, even if she was still unskilled. It made sense to her now that she’d had such success with the memory retrieval spell on Melanie’s body—it was something her magic understood instinctively.

  Objects from sites of high emotion held energies and memories like an insect preserved in amber. Energy became fused with an object; it only needed the right witch to set it free. When she’d touched her father’s watch—the one she’d found under her old house’s porch at 543 Ocicat Lane—the desire to know what had happened to her parents had been so strong, her magic had taken it as a command. She’d asked what had happened to her parents while holding an object from that very evening, and the simple act of asking her memory magic to show her had been enough … and she’d been hurtled somewhen else.

  She needed to do that again with Chloe’s cell phone. “Can I take it out of the bag?” she asked the chief, not taking her focus off the dark screen.

  “Sure,” he said, defeated.

  She picked up the bag, the inside damp, and pulled out the water-logged cell phone. The case was simple, dark blue, and thick, and there was a plastic protective sheet laid over the glass. When Amber turned it over, she found the back designed with giant black-and-white lilies.

  As she placed the wet bag back on the desk, keeping the cell in her hand, she said, “I’m going to try a memory retrieval spell.” She explained how it worked, then added, “It will only show me the last memory. And it will likely only work once, maybe twice. But if the memory was fused into it by a moment of high emotion, that same intensity of energy will be thrust back out at me, draining the object just as quickly as it had been infused.”

  The chief was silent for a moment. “I’m just going to pretend I understood that.” He walked to his desk chair and sat, pulling out a pad of paper and a pen. At Amber’s cocked brow, he said, “All this magic stuff still gives me the heebie-jeebies, so I need to be doing something other than watching you otherwise I’m going to break out in hives. What if you start speaking in tongues? I’m very good at taking shorthand in tongues. It was my minor in college.”

  Amber fought an eye roll. She knew he was being overly dramatic just to amuse her, but there was true unease there, too. “All right, here we go.”

  Holding the phone in both hands, she relaxed her shoulders, and closed her eyes. Her magic leapt to attention, a physical thing that happily awaited instruction. Amber had to keep her intention true. When she asked her memory magic to show her the phone’s last memory, it had to be for a pure reason.

  More than wanting to know if Chloe had run away or someone had taken her, more than Amber wanted to know who could have potentially hurt her, more than wanting to know where she was, Amber wanted to know if Chloe was okay—at least for now. If the mayor had hurt Chloe, if the girl truly wasn’t safe back home, she knew in her heart of hearts that she wouldn’t rat out her location to her father, not until she knew more. Her well-being was Amber’s only concern.

  Her magic sang beneath her skin, ready and willing to search out this answer for her.

  Is Chloe Deidrick safe? she asked.

  Almost instantaneously, white light tore through her vision.
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br />   Unlike the clear vision she received from her father’s watch, this vision was different. Distorted. Like sinking to the bottom of a swimming pool and looking up through the undulating surface. There were discernible shapes, the muffled sound of voices, but nothing was truly clear. Perhaps even the phone’s ability to hang onto the memories had been disrupted by the corrosive power of water.

  The sensations she got now were more like the ones she’d received from Melanie’s body. Feelings associated with colors when the images were too corroded.

  Amber heard the steady swipe-swipe of windshield wipers. Chloe’s crisp, sweet voice sang along to a song on the radio. A carefree and happy sound. The rumble of her car’s wheels on the uneven surface of Blue Point Lane was enough to set Amber’s teeth on edge even though she knew instinctively that she still stood in Chief Brown’s office.

  Then came a yelp and the telltale thwump thwump thwump of a flat tire. Chloe cursed colorfully, the foul words interrupted occasionally by the swipe of her wipers. The sound soon stopped, and Amber guessed this was when Chloe pulled over.

  A ringing in Amber’s ear. Chloe had called someone that night.

  Ring.

  Ring.

  “Hey! It’s me,” said Chloe. “I was on my way to Beth’s and I got a flat tire. Any chance you could … come get me? I still want to see you.” Amber could hear the wince in Chloe’s voice, like she was on unsure footing with this person. Whether it was because of the person, or because Chloe was asking him or her to brave the storm, Amber couldn’t say. “I can come get my car in the morning; you can drop me back at Beth’s later. I’m sure her mom won’t mind if I crash there tonight. Yeah, we had a huge fight. He’s the last person I want to talk to right now. Really? Oh, you’re the best. I’m halfway up Blue Point Lane, which is a little street off Korat Road. Google the Sippin’ Siamese—it’s not far from there. No one else is out here, but I’ll leave my emergency lights on so you can find me.”

  Swipe. Swipe.

  Chloe hummed to herself as tinny beeps, chimes, and happy music echoed around her. Amber guessed she’d been playing a game on her phone while she waited.

  Bright light filled Amber’s mind and for a moment, she thought she was going to be yanked back out of the memory, but then she realized it was the arrival of a car behind Chloe’s, the high beams on.

  Rain pattered down on her head, arms, and face.

  A tall figure silhouetted against the bright light, followed by the warm burst of orange anticipation.

  The figure moving out of the light to reveal a face she didn’t know, followed by the red flare of fear.

  “Who are you?” came Chloe’s voice. “No, you’re not. Who … no. I don’t know you. Let go. No!”

  A surge of adrenaline as she turned for her car, grabbing the still-open door, only to be grabbed from behind. Strong hands gripped her waist and she screamed, throwing back an elbow. The “oof!” of expelled air in her ear, blowing past her damp hair. The heel of a foot slammed against toes. A curse, a loosening of grip. Then Chloe was off like a shot.

  Branches clawed at her face and hair. She stumbled, tripped, got back up.

  The person thundered behind her, calling her name.

  “No, no, no,” Chloe muttered as she ran, breath coming in gasps. From exertion, but from fear, too.

  The cell phone’s screen lit up—a bright burst of blue in pitch black.

  “One bar?” she hissed in disbelief. The screen went black and then Amber and Chloe were careening in the dark once more, not knowing where she was going. Thunder continued to rumble. When the lightning flashed, it lit up everything out here. It kept Chloe from slamming headlong into a tree, but it also gave her pursuer a way to track her. The rain came down harder now, as if the sky wept for her just like she wanted to do for herself.

  The person behind her cursed and called her name. “I just want to talk, Chloe!”

  She had to get away.

  Then her foot slipped and she went tumbling down into what felt like a river. Her hip hit a large rock and she cried out in pain. It momentarily stunned her; the pain was so acute, her vision swam. And then the person was there, yanking her to her feet. An arm went around Chloe’s neck. Her pursuer’s chest was flush with Chloe’s back.

  “Hold still,” the gruff voice said. “It didn’t have to be like this.”

  Chloe screamed for help.

  Something pressed to the side of her neck, like the round, warm pad of a thumb. Then everything went fuzzy, then black, then back to fuzzy. The threat of unconsciousness tugged at her.

  Is she still okay? Amber frantically asked her magic, sensing that her hold on this memory was fading, knowing that the girl’s cell phone couldn’t hold memories from a location that it hadn’t been—wherever Chloe went after the cell phone had ended up in the stream would remain a mystery.

  Light slipped in and out of Chloe’s vision, and she swayed, as if she were on a boat. Back and forth. A glimpse of water running over rocks. A mossy shore. Gray toothpick trees.

  Chloe groaned.

  “Just keep still, kid. I’m not going to hurt you,” came a disembodied voice.

  “I don’t believe you,” Chloe croaked.

  “I guess I wouldn’t believe me either.”

  “Do you have … a thing for … young girls or something?” she managed, but her words were a bit slurred, as if she was trying as hard as possible to hang onto consciousness.

  The man scoffed. “No. I got a kid bout your age. I’m just in it for the money, okay? I got nothing against you.”

  Chloe’s stomach roiled.

  A pair of hands hung limply, one clutching a cell phone with a blue case designed with black-and-white lilies. The hands seemed to be floating. Every few seconds, there was a glimpse of a man’s boots, but only the heels.

  Her vision swam again and Chloe whimpered.

  Body heavy, hands weak. The cell slipped from Chloe’s fingers, unable to hold on any longer.

  And then everything went black for good.

  White light ripped through Amber’s vision and she stumbled back, crashing into a bookshelf. The chief was there in an instant, hands on Amber’s shoulders to help her back to her feet.

  She was crying, a hand to her chest.

  “My God, Amber,” the chief said, doing his best to angle his head to get her to look at him. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  “Someone took her. I think … I think someone paid a guy to kidnap her,” Amber got out, trying to speak while heaving, trying to keep her tears from turning into sobs. “She called someone to come get her, but the person who showed up wasn’t who she was expecting and he chased her through the woods.” She placed a hand to her neck, to the spot just below her ear. “He used … I think he used a pressure point to knock her out. Then he just … carried her away. She dropped her cell phone when she went unconscious. The guy knew her name, called her ‘kid,’ and said he wouldn’t hurt her. But … who knows if he meant that. I …” She swallowed, the threat of tears coming back. “I don’t know where she is now. It’s possible he took her out of Edgehill.”

  She started to sink to her knees, but the chief hoisted her up again and guided her to the chair behind his desk.

  “Sit,” he said. “I’ll go get you some water.”

  Then he was dashing to his door, unlocking it, and hurrying down the hallway, his door still open.

  Amber blew out slow and steady breaths, staring at the dark-screened cell phone lying on the floor by the bookshelf. “Where are you now, Chloe?”

  This time, the phone didn’t have an answer.

  Chapter 7

  Once Chief Brown had been convinced Amber was okay—though “okay” was a relative term; her mind had new fodder for even worse nightmares now—Carl had driven her home. If people in town were starting to think there was something inappropriate happening between herself and the chief, they had to minimize the number of times they could possibly be seen together.

  Tho
ugh it was only a little after one in the afternoon, she decided to keep the Quirky Whisker closed for the rest of the day. She was exhausted both from a terrible night of sleep, the search through the woods, and from what her spell had revealed.

  When she trudged up the steps to her upstairs studio apartment, Tom was there to greet her at the top. He yowled at her.

  Right. She was a whopping hour late to feed him.

  He yowled again and then bounded toward his bowl. Alley was sprawled out on the bench seat, one paw hanging over the side. It twitched slightly; she was so deeply asleep, she was dreaming. Tom meowed his protest about Amber taking so long. He was, obviously, starving to death. Didn’t she care? Didn’t she know that if she didn’t feed him in the next thirty seconds, he would expire right there on the floor?

  “I’m very sorry, Tom,” she said, dropping her phone, wallet, and keys on her dining room table and then going about getting the cats’ lunch ready. Alley didn’t bother to wake up until there was food in her bowl.

  Amber took a long, hot shower, got dressed in her pajamas, pulled the curtains shut, and crawled into bed. After the adrenaline of the memory retrieval spell had worn off, and Amber had been sitting in the passenger seat of Carl’s car, fatigue had hit her so hard, she had worried she wasn’t going to be able to stay awake long enough to even get into her shop.

  But now, warm and comfortable, and with two cats curled up beside her, she was suddenly wide awake, even if her limbs still felt as if they weighed a million pounds each. She couldn’t stop replaying those images of Chloe. She had been scared, chased, and then carted off by a man apparently paid to do it.

  When the mysterious man had first shown up in the memory, Amber had been sure she could definitively tell the chief that their culprit was male. That would narrow the suspects down by gender, at least. But, based on the man’s comments, he hadn’t snatched Chloe for his own sick purposes; he simply had been following orders. The suspect pool had widened again. The person the chief needed to find was anyone who had both the money to hire the kidnapper, and the desire to either hurt Chloe, or, she supposed, who wanted to use Chloe to get to the mayor.