A Hero in Her Eyes

by Marie Ferrarella

  He’d been a simple man who understood simple things. His own daughter had seemed like something out of a science-fiction movie to him. He was incapable of bridging the gap that existed between them. After her mother died, that gap had only grown wider.

  It had been hard on her father, she told herself now—as she had countless times before in an attempt to smother the hurt his words generated—having a daughter who was different, a daughter with “the gift” as her great-aunt called it.

  She’d spent a good portion of her early years wishing the “gift” had been returnable. At the time, she would have given anything to be just like everyone else, just like the “normal” girls her father was forever pointing out to her as a goal to strive for. Being a seer, someone in touch with other people’s pasts and futures, and having those timelines indiscriminately mix with her own present without warning, was more of a curse to her than a gift.

  It had certainly been a cross to bear that had made her fearful—until her mother’s aunt, who had endured the same fears, the same trials, had taken her aside to explain the good that could be done with the power she had.

  “To ignore it is a sin, Eliza. You have to find a way to use it, to help people. That’s why the good Lord picked you. He knew you could do good with it. Don’t disappoint Him, Eliza. And most of all, don’t disappoint yourself.”

  So here she was, with little to no sleep, staring bleary-eyed at an endless series of photographs of children’s faces. Looking for one in particular. Trying to make sense out of her gift and find a reason why she was dreaming of a child she did not know.

  It wasn’t the first time, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating, any less challenging.

  Behind her, the door to her office closed softly. Eliza blinked, trying to refocus her eyes. Trying to see the girl she’d been missing. The one she was certain was in the computer database somewhere. With a sigh, she reached for the coffee that had grown cold.

  About to push away from the computer to take a breather, thinking she might need some distance before she continued the search, something compelled her to look at the next photograph on file.

  Eliza’s mouth fell open.

  Afraid to blink, to look away, she pressed a key to zoom in. “There you are.”

  She had no idea why she was surprised—not when the feeling came, the one that led her to places she would never have thought of going. The feeling that went hand in hand with being clairvoyant. That forced her into people’s faces with bravado when she would much rather have retreated.

  Her body at attention, Eliza moved her chair closer to the monitor. “So, hello,” she whispered to the little girl in the photograph. The little girl in her dream. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  The moment she’d clicked on the file, seen the small, animated face, a sliver of the dream flashed through her mind’s eye, confirming the identification.

  If she concentrated very intently, Eliza could almost swear she heard someone calling for the child. Bonnie.

  An eagerness swept over Eliza, erasing her tiredness, erasing everything but the desire to find this child in real life, just the way she had on the Web site.

  Quickly she printed out the page with the information. She needed to contact the family.

  “Hang on, Bonnie,” she murmured. “We’ll find you.”

  He’d discovered that grief, like the possessions scattered within a child’s room, could be boxed up and put out of sight. But unlike the boxes that held his daughter’s clothes and toys, the box that his grief was stored in would periodically appear right before him, without warning, tripping him. Bringing a pain with it that was almost insurmountable.

  But he dealt with it.

  He had no choice.

  He’d made his peace and moved on, not once but twice. Moved on and kept moving. Moving so the box wouldn’t trip him. Moving so that he could pretend he was among the living instead of the walking wounded. Or worse, the walking dead.

  And in moving, he went through the motions of living. Those who knew him were taken in by the facade, the performance, and believed Walker Banacek to be a man who had healed from profound wounds that would have felled a lesser person. He had survived his tragedies and found the strength to continue. There was nothing more admirable than that.

  It wasn’t even remotely true, but he pretended, for his own sanity, that it was. It was how he got through each day and forced himself to get up each morning. All pretense.

  In place of a family life, he dedicated himself to his work. The irony of it never failed to strike him. He dealt with security. Computer security. He’d developed software that kept computers and sensitive information safe—while the security of his family had been breached.

  He was the first one in the corporate offices in the morning, the last one to leave at night. Weekends would find him there, as well, working so he wouldn’t have to think, wouldn’t have to feel. He anesthetized himself, and for the most part it worked.

  Until he tripped over the box again. Always without warning.

  Today had been just that kind of day. He’d tripped over the box, releasing a plethora of memories, of emotions, none of which he was capable of dealing with. Tripped, because today his daughter would have been six years old.

  Someone in the office down the hall had been celebrating a birthday. An off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday” was all that was necessary; the thoughts had hooked up to one another instantly, bringing him back to the emotional abyss he’d struggled, time and again, to flee.

  Worn from the inside out, Walker made it home, entering the house where lights went on automatically at sundown so that he didn’t have to contend with shadows. So that his mind wouldn’t play tricks on him and make him believe he was seeing an elfin, dancing figure out of the corner of his eye.

  Bonnie used to love to dance around the room, pretending to be a ballerina. He’d bought her toe shoes for her fourth birthday, over his wife’s protests. Bonnie had worn them everywhere in place of her shoes. She’d had them on the day she disappeared.

  The thought of dinner came and went in a single heartbeat. He wasn’t hungry. He never was anymore. Eating was just something he did to keep going. He vaguely remembered having lunch, and decided that would be sufficient to sustain him until breakfast tomorrow. If he remembered to eat then. A housekeeper came daily, to wipe away the cobwebs and prepare simple meals that were hardly touched. Life went on, in a way.

  Walker debated turning on the television set, not because there was anything he wanted to watch, but because the sound of it might interfere with this overwhelming loneliness tripping over the box had triggered.

  He didn’t like being alone, but in all this time, he couldn’t make himself allow anyone in to witness the pain he was grappling with.

  Riffling through the mail on the counter that the housekeeper had brought in earlier in the day, he heard the doorbell. Ignoring it, he sorted the mail into two piles. Everything that wasn’t a bill went into the pile to be thrown away.

  The doorbell rang again. And then again, defying his determination to ignore it. He stopped sorting. Whoever was on the other side of his door obviously refused to accept the obvious—that he wasn’t about to answer.

  The ringing continued at one-minute intervals. They weren’t going to go away. There was a time when he would have flown to the door at the first indication of a knock, picked up the phone before the first ring was completed, praying each time that it was someone with news that Bonnie had been found.

  But each time, it wasn’t.

  Instead, there’d been a bevy of reporters, a squadron of ghouls calling with “sightings” of his daughter, all feeding off the situation. He’d gone on countless emotional roller-coaster rides, only to be disappointed over and over again. Until he’d shut himself off completely, knowing that the call, the knock he was waiting for, would never come.

  Expecting no one, angry at being invaded, Walker crossed to the front door. He yanked it open and
fairly growled out the single word.

  “Yes?”

  Startled, Eliza almost took a step back from the man in the doorway. It wasn’t his expression that had her temporarily thinking of retreat, or even the way he’d snapped out the word in something far less than an actual greeting. Rather, it was the aura of pain she felt hovering around him that had unsettled her. Pain so vividly present, she felt she could literally reach out and touch it with her hand.

  He was a man who had suffered a great deal, and her heart went out to him. He had Bonnie’s eyes, she thought, looking at him.

  “Mr. Banacek?”

  “Yes?” This time, the word came out a little more civilized sounding, though it was by no means intended to be friendly.

  He wanted to be left alone. Alone to repackage the box and find some way to store it away again. It was hard enough to find a place for himself tonight without having to deal with some wispy dark-blond stranger who looked as if the wind had literally blown her to his doorstep.

  “My name is Eliza Eldridge. I’d like to speak to you about Bonnie.”

  His jaw tightened so rigidly, had it been made out of glass, Eliza was certain it would have shattered.

  “What about her?”

  “I believe she’s still alive.” In her entire experience, she’d never found an easy way to say this. “I’ve had this dream about her—”

  His eyes darkened to the color of a storm. The next moment, he’d slammed the door shut in her face.

  Chapter 2

  The ringing began again, more insistent than the last time.

  Walker felt himself beginning a not-so-slow burn. Didn’t these people have lives? Didn’t they have anything better to do than torment people touched by tragedy?

  He strode back to the door, growing angrier with the woman leaning on his bell with every step he took.

  “Go away, Ms. Eldridge,” he shouted through the door. He made no attempt to sound civil. At this point, he just wanted her to get out of his life. “I’m not about to talk to you.”

  Eliza placed her outstretched hand on the door, wishing there was some way to touch the man behind it. Wishing she could make Walker Banacek understand and accept what it was that she wanted to do for him. But this part had never come about easily. It wasn’t quite like tilting at windmills, but it came close. People regarded clairvoyants as something between certified lunatics and fairy folk.

  “Just give me a few minutes of your time to explain, please.”

  The door didn’t open.

  “If you don’t leave now,” he called to her, “I’ll call the police.”

  If he thought that was a threat, he was going to be disappointed, she thought. She’d been subjected to far worse. “Ask for Lieutenant Trent Lanihan. He’ll vouch for me.”

  For a moment there was nothing but silence, and she thought that perhaps he had walked away, after all. And then, to her surprise, the door opened, but not enough to allow her to come in.

  “Look, trust me, I’ve heard it all,” Walker snapped coldly as he stood in the doorway. “So you can take your crystal ball, your tarot cards, your channeling persona, or whatever the hell you claim to use to bilk people out of their money and prey on their paltry hopes, and get the hell off my doorstep because I promise you, I am not in the mood for whatever bill of goods it is you’re trying to sell me.”

  But before Walker could close the door on her again, Eliza wedged her body into the doorway, deterring his attempts to throw her out. He would have to do it bodily, or be forced to listen to her.

  When he glared at her incredulously, she met his gaze not defiantly, but with such understanding that it took his breath away. Stunned, he stopped holding the door firmly in place and listened.

  “I don’t use a crystal ball, tarot cards or a channeling persona,” she told him in a soft voice meant to inspire confidence and soothe an impassioned beast. Her mouth curved slightly; she knew exactly what he was thinking. “I’m not a quack, Mr. Banacek. I have no explanation for my abilities, I only know that there are times when I’m made aware of things that other people aren’t, and at times I can see things that other people don’t.”

  He sincerely doubted that. She didn’t “see” things; what she accomplished she did with hypnosis. In his opinion, there was no other explanation for why he’d momentarily ceased pushing her out. No other explanation why he wasn’t pushing her out this second. It had to be hypnosis. One look into her eyes would convince anyone of that. They were a light shade of blue, so light that it made him think of the nylon used in making translucent nightgowns. Even now they seemed to be invading his very mind.

  He blinked, rousing himself. Whatever tricks she was attempting to pull, they weren’t going to work on him. He’d been through too much already. “Go away,” he ordered sternly.

  Eliza hated being put in the position of forcing herself on someone, but this was too important for her to turn away. A child’s life could be hanging in the balance.

  “Not yet, Mr. Banacek, not until you hear me out. When I’m finished, if you still want me to leave, I will. No calls to the police will be necessary.”

  Walker was torn. He didn’t like being played for a fool, but he had to admit that no matter how hard he tried to smother it, to bury it, there was still a small part of him that clung to irrational hope, hope that flew in the face of all the statistics to the contrary. Hope of finding Bonnie.

  His eyes held hers. Then, after a beat, he opened the door a little wider. But his body remained in the way, blocking access to his house. He wasn’t about to let her mistake this for an invitation.

  “What is this to you?”

  He had a right to question. “A lost child, Mr. Banacek,” she replied softly. “What is it to you?”

  How dare she? His eyes dissolved into angry slits as he glared at her. “A trick, a ploy. I don’t know whether you’re a reporter, a tragedy groupie or just a crackpot—”

  And he had been besieged by all of them, Eliza thought. In large numbers. There was nothing she could do about that. But to have his help, she needed to change his mind. “There is a fourth choice.”

  “Which is?” His tone was guarded. Hypnotically beautiful eyes not withstanding, he wasn’t about to be suckered into anything. Those days were gone.

  Her eyes looked straight into him. “That I’m on the level.”

  Looking away, Walker laughed shortly. Even if he might once have been inclined to believe the kind of nonsense she was spouting, he’d learned his lesson the hard way. His wife had paid clairvoyants to help. All they had done was help separate Rachel from her money. Bonnie was dead and he had to accept that. Had accepted it. He wasn’t about to retrace his steps or retract his decision, the decision it had taken him months of soul-wrenching searching to reach.

  He placed his hand on the door, ready to push it closed again. “Sorry, I don’t believe in things that go bump in the night.”

  Her hand touched his as she moved to stop him. A volley of lights blazed before her eyes. House lights. Bedroom lights. “Is that why you keep the lights on at night?”

  Because he couldn’t summon a single word to answer her with, Walker stared at her in stunned silence.

  “When you go to sleep at night,” she continued in a gentle voice, knowing that he desperately needed comfort, needed hope, not someone who raised her voice to match his in a dual of words, “is that why you don’t turn off the lights?”

  “How did you know…?” For the briefest of moments, Walker actually entertained the thought that she was on the level. And then he came to his senses. There was a logical explanation, there always was. He just had to look for it. “You read that somewhere, didn’t you?”

  Although, in all honesty, he didn’t remember ever telling anyone that, not even his sister. It was just something between him and the memory of the child he still carried in his heart. The child who was no more.

  “No.” The single word was devoid of guile. “Until this morning, I didn’t
even know who you were.” She’d missed the news media’s coverage of the tragedy, missed the stories on page one and then page three until they had worked their way to the back of the newspaper. “I wasn’t in the city the month your daughter was kidnapped. I was in Georgia.” Holding the hand of a man who had never accepted her. Holding his hand as he lay dying.

  Eliza pushed the memory away. She was here to offer her help because Bonnie Banacek was missing, not to remember things that caused her pain. Pain only interfered with her ability to see things clearly.

  Walker crossed his arms before his chest, a physically and emotionally immovable force. “Uh-huh. And just what is it that brings you to my door now?”

  He didn’t believe her, she thought. She’d caught him off guard with her question about the lights, shaken him up, but he still clung to his disbelief. In his place, maybe she’d do the same.

  All she could so was tell him the truth. “I’ve been having dreams about Bonnie. I think she’s using me to get a message to you.”

  A sneer crept into his eyes, over his lips. He’d caught her in a lie. “I thought you said you didn’t ‘channel.”’

  “It’s not channeling,” she corrected gently. As far as she knew, that had never happened to her. “Channeling a spirit supposedly involves someone who’s passed on. Your daughter is very much alive, Mr. Banacek.”

  Walker wanted to shout at her, to shake her until she recanted. He didn’t know how, but he managed to hold on to his temper. “Oh, and I have your guarantee on this, Miss—” He broke off in frustration.

  “Eldridge,” she repeated quietly. “Eliza Eldridge.” Opening her purse, she took out a business card and handed it to him.

  Now they were getting to it, he thought cynically. The pitch. He glanced down at the card.

  “ChildFinders, Inc.?” Angry, he shoved the card back into her hand. “What is this, some alternative form of ambulance chasing?”

  She had no choice but to take the card back. “No, that’s just a number where you can reach me during the day.” And she hoped he would. “This has nothing to do with the agency.”