A Hero in Her Eyes

by Marie Ferrarella

  They rode in silence all the way to Walker’s house, but when she stopped the car in his driveway, he didn’t get out immediately.

  This was awkward. He forced himself to face her. He owed her that much. Hating the way every word made him feel, he began haltingly. “Listen, I had no right to shout at you like that.”

  There had never been an angry word uttered that she couldn’t forgive if asked to. She supposed that was probably why her father had called her to his deathbed. He’d known she’d forgive him.

  “You’re under a strain,” she allowed.

  He would have felt better if she’d yelled back at him, or vented now. This drilled holes into his conscience, holes that filled up with guilt.

  “That’s no excuse, and I really wish you’d stop being so forgiving.” He was certain he’d never met anyone quite like her, clairvoyance notwithstanding. “Don’t you ever get angry?”

  She shook her head. “Waste of time and energy,” she replied.

  She meant that, he thought. The woman was incredible. “The rest of us haven’t tapped into sainthood yet,” he confessed. “In case I’m doing a lousy job, you should know I’m trying to apologize.”

  “I know. And I told you once, you don’t have to apologize to me.”

  “Yes, I do,” he contradicted. Walker lifted her chin to inspect her expression. He was no expert on women, and heaven knows, even if he were, he wouldn’t be able to understand this one—but he could tell the signs of hurt when he saw them. He’d seen them often enough on Rachel’s face and had ignored them. And that would be a guilt he would bear forever. “And I want to give them. I didn’t mean to yell at you that way.”

  Her shrug was small, delicate. “You’re not the first.”

  He tried to read between the lines. Was she referring to a man in her life? Like a pebble suddenly picked up in his shoe, the thought unexpectedly bothered him. “Then tell him he shouldn’t.”

  “He’s gone. And I could never tell my father anything, even when he was alive.”

  The relief, too, was unexpected. “Your father?”

  She nodded. “He would have made you look like a piker. So, don’t beat yourself up about raising your voice at me. I’ve been subjected to the worst and emerged unscathed.”

  Her answer left him wondering about her even after she drove away.

  Chapter 9

  Walker got out of his car, slamming the door shut behind him. Several people in the parking lot looked in his direction, but he ignored them. There was no containing his irritation.

  After Bonnie had been kidnapped and Rachel had committed suicide, it was as if all his emotions had somehow drained out of him. There were no highs, no lows in his life from there on in, just one flat line. Along with that was an endless parade of days that fed into each other, marked by the rising and setting of the sun, and work—nothing more.

  But ever since Eliza had knocked on his door, he’d found himself unwillingly holding a Pandora’s box. All his emotions had suddenly come flying out like jet-propelled spirits.

  And anger had headed the list.

  This time, the anger was not aimless. Anger had a direction. Eliza.

  In lieu of Eliza—because he was certain she’d gone off somewhere—he intended to give whomever he found in the office one hell of a dressing down for being treated the way he had been. In the past week he’d come to expect more from a firm that had such an impressive reputation and track record.

  He stormed into the reception area like Hurricane Andrew taking Florida.

  “She’s not in, is she?” he demanded without a preamble, his words directed at the petite secretary sitting behind the desk.

  Startled, recognition entered Carrie’s dark eyes. She offered a tentative smile as she made the connection. “It’s Mr. Banacek, right?”

  His hands splayed on either side of Carrie’s desk, he leaned forward, measuring out each word. “I know who I am—” he glanced at her name plate “—Ms. Scott. I wanted to know where Eliza Eldridge is.”

  “I’m right here.”

  The cool, soft voice was in sharp contrast to his own. Caught off guard, Walker looked to his left and saw Eliza standing in the doorway of her office. Framed in sunlight thanks to the orientation of her corner office, she looked like one of the blithe spirits that inhabited children’s fairy tales. Angry as he was, the stray thought that she should be wearing something diaphanous, dipped in pale, peach colors, came out of nowhere and surprised the hell out of him.

  Her appearance took some of the wind out of his sails. Retreating from Carrie’s desk, he straightened and turned toward Eliza. “So I see.”

  She’d spent the night in her office, poring over files and catching catnaps on the small sofa she kept there. Rusty had been prompt with his findings—which had led nowhere. And there had been all those files previously compiled on the case. Megan had managed to obtain them for Eliza via her connections at the FBI. They’d needed to be gone over, just in case someone had missed something the first time around.

  Eliza had read until her eyes felt as if they were crossing.

  The catnap on the sofa ended when she’d had the dream about Bonnie again. After that, she just kept on working. Cade had a shower in the bathroom in his office and she’d availed herself of that before anyone had come in this morning.

  She’d known Walker was coming the moment he’d set foot in the elevator. She’d just felt it. Funny how well she could read him. That had only happened once before, with her mother. Not that it had done her mother any good.

  His eyes were dark when he turned them on her. There was another storm brewing, she thought. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  Clearly not in the mood for conversation, Walker strode over to her. “I spent half the morning straining to hear my cell phone ringing, waiting for you to call me. I must have checked it half a dozen times to see if it was working.” The dark eyes pinned her. “Why haven’t you called me?”

  “I didn’t have anything to call you about.” She still didn’t, not really. But he was here now, and she knew he wouldn’t just leave if she told him to. That wasn’t him. She moved back from the doorway. “Why don’t we step into my office?”

  She saw Carrie looking at her, one eyebrow raised in a silent query. She knew what the secretary was asking. If she needed Carrie to call someone for help. That wasn’t going to be necessary. She could take care of Walker Banacek on her own.

  Eliza shook her head, then closed the door.

  Walker was by her desk, waiting for her. He flipped through the list of people Savannah had compiled for her last week. “We’ve talked to everyone on that list you made up, right?”

  She crossed to the other side of her desk, automatically straightening the files into stacks. Somewhere toward three in the morning, neatness had stopped counting. “Yes.”

  “So where do we go from here?” Without waiting for her answer, he picked up one of the files she’d just stacked and flipped through it. The date jumped out at him. “Are these the old files?”

  She nodded. “One of our operatives, Megan, used to work for the FBI. She pulled a few strings, got us the files. I thought they might help.” Or at least keep us from recrossing old ground, she added silently.

  “The FBI just gave you all of them?” Walker asked. They hadn’t been willing to share anything while they were working the case, just counseling him to be patient and to let them do their job.

  “Not exactly,” Eliza replied evasively, “but we have them.”

  Glancing by her desk, he saw that there were boxes filled with files behind her, boxes that hadn’t been there the last time he’d been in her office. “How?”

  She sidestepped the answer. “Some things are better left unsaid.”

  Though there was something about Walker Banacek she trusted implicitly, the explanation as to how the material had gotten to her desk wasn’t hers to give. It had taken the combined efforts of Megan and Savannah. Especially Savannah. Sam’
s wife was invaluable to the office, and whatever methods she used to access information for them were her own business. Eliza wasn’t about to turn the spotlight on her.

  Eliza was a woman who could keep a secret, Walker thought. He rather liked that. “I can respect that.” Squatting down, he gave the first box a cursory rummaging. There was a lot here. “How long will it take you to get through all this?” He tried not to sound as impatient as he felt, but wasn’t sure if he was successful. In any event, he was beginning to believe she could read between the lines better than most.

  “I already have.”

  There looked to be several thousand pages here. Eliza had to be putting him on, Walker thought. “How, by passing your hand over them?”

  The man could definitely do with a refresher course in charm. “No, by speed reading. Comes in handy in my line of work.”

  She didn’t add that it had also come in handy when she was studying, or that she’d graduated from college at the age of twenty-four with a PhD in paranormal psychology. Intelligence tended to frighten people away, and she was already laboring under one handicap; she didn’t want another one with him.

  He took a closer look at her. “Have you gotten any sleep?”

  “Some.” She looked at him pointedly. “And when I did, I had that dream again.”

  He didn’t want to talk about the dream. At the moment, he didn’t think he was up to hearing about his daughter calling to him. Instead, he gestured toward the boxed files.

  “Did you find anything there that…?”

  Very slowly, Eliza shook her head.

  Impatience rose another notch. “So where are we, back to square one?”

  “Not exactly.” She’d been mulling over this latest idea for the past hour. Right now, it seemed the only way to go. “I told you I had that dream again last night. Each time I have it, it becomes a little clearer. This time, it was so vivid, I could sketch the details if I had to.” She closed her eyes now, summoning the images as she’d seen them. “There’s tall grass, tall enough to reach a six-year-old’s hips, and a dilapidated farmhouse in the distance. Near it is a barn with no door, as if the animals left and are never coming back.”

  With her eyes closed like that, reciting, she almost seemed as if she was in a trance. Sleeping Beauty, he thought, only with words.

  Walker roused himself. He wasn’t supposed to get distracted by the seer, but concentrate on what she had seen. And what she had seen wasn’t very helpful. “You’re describing a scene that could be found anywhere in about thirty of the fifty states,” Walker commented.

  “I know, I know, but I have a feeling it’s here.”

  He surprised her by not waving away the notion. She was getting him to come around, she thought with a sense of triumph.

  “Here? As in Southern California?”

  What she was feeling told her it was even closer than that. “As in Tustin, or maybe the older parts of San Juan Capistrano.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?” he asked.

  She slipped a map into her purse. “Find it.”

  That was what they both ultimately wanted to do, but she still hadn’t answered his question.

  “How?”

  She came around from behind her desk and joined him. “By driving around.”

  He stared at her incredulously. Just when he was beginning to think she made sense, she said something like this. “What, aimlessly?”

  She trusted her instincts. Somehow, she’d know if she was going in the right direction. Something would tell her. She had complete faith in that. She had to. “In part.”

  He didn’t know whether to laugh at her and walk out, or just follow her. “Don’t you even get a divining rod?”

  Her smile was soft, and he felt something within him being pulled toward her, even though he didn’t want it to be. “I guess I am the divining rod.”

  He wasn’t exactly sure how the small bit of distance between them had disappeared, but it had. He was standing much too close to her to think clearly. “Does that mean I’m supposed to hold on to you?”

  Eliza raised her head until her eyes just seemed to touch his. There was warmth shimmering in them. “Not while I’m driving.”

  Her choice of words intrigued him.

  They took his car this time, so that she could concentrate solely on looking, on searching. Walker had spent the better part of his life in Southern California, but there were regions he’d never ventured into. So he had no knowledge of the old farmlands that still dotted the land, disappearing slowly like some soon-to-be-extinct breed. He’d been only vaguely aware that once all of the ever-growing Orange County had been fertile farmlands.

  Armed with the map, they drove through the winding back roads of Tustin and along the terrain that buffed Lake Elisnore, until the light finally began to give out. They passed farms, some run-down, but all occupied, and fields. Each time they did, he would look at her, waiting. Each time, she shook her head.

  As dusk descended, his mounting disappointment became almost palatable.

  Eliza bit her lower lip, holding back her own frustration. She’d been so sure she could find it. “I’m sorry.”

  The apology sounded sincere. He glanced at her and noted how wan she looked. When they’d stopped to get something to eat, she’d hardly touched her food. She was that intent on what she was doing. Finding a child she didn’t even know.

  Walker set his own feelings aside. “Nothing to feel sorry about. You’re doing your best.”

  It was the first time she’d heard him say something like that. Touched, she reached out and placed her hand on his arm. A commercial about milk came on the radio. A cow was lowing in the background.

  The sound grew louder, drowning out the people who were talking, filling her head.

  Walker glanced at Eliza, and his words faded from his lips. Her face had gone completely ashen and her eyes were glazed, as if she was seeing something. But there was nothing to see, just open road beginning to be wrapped in darkness.

  Concerned, he pulled over. “Are you all right?”

  When she didn’t answer, he took hold of her shoulders, gently shaking her. “Eliza?”

  She heard his voice coming to her from a great distance and forced herself to reach out to it. To him. She blinked several times, until his face finally came into focus. She felt exhausted, as if she’d been running a long way. Exhausted and exhilarated. She knew.

  “Bedford,” she whispered half to herself, half to him. “They never left Bedford after they took her.” Her voice grew stronger. “There’s a farm on the other end, near the foothills, in Old Bedford.”

  He didn’t think to doubt her. “Which way?”

  “That way.” With no hesitation, she pointed north.

  He drove.

  There were no lights coming from the farmhouse as they approached. It stood almost shyly on the land it had once graced, a forgotten relic from an era gone by. The weed grass that surrounded it went on forever and was as high as she had described it. High enough to brush against a six-year-old’s hips.

  He’d been the one to point out that there were hundreds of places that fit the sketchy description she’d given, but at the sight of it, his heart pounded, anyway.

  He wanted to believe. With all his heart, he wanted to believe.

  Eliza could sense the change in him, and it energized her. Tangled with her desire to find the missing girl was the very real feeling that she didn’t want to disappoint him. She wanted to end his suffering.

  Walker looked at her. “Well?” The single word thundered like a demand, though he hadn’t meant it to sound that way.

  She nodded. “It’s the one.”

  “Are you sure?” Even as he asked, he pressed down on the accelerator, eating up the distance between them and the structure.

  Her eyes never left the farmhouse as it came closer to them. “I’m sure.”

  Walker let the certainty in her voice guide him. Hope battled against logic. There
were no lights. If Bonnie was there, did that mean…?

  He wouldn’t let himself finish the thought.

  Pulling up in front of the house, he leaped out of his car, agitation making him abandon decorum. “There’s a flashlight in the glove compartment,” he told Eliza. “Get it.” He hurried up the wooden steps, calling his daughter’s name. “Bonnie? Bonnie, are you in there? Bonnie, it’s Daddy!”

  Right behind him, Eliza grabbed his hand and pulled him back, just as the last step broke apart beneath his foot. If she hadn’t stopped him in time, he would have gone right through.

  Jolted, trying to regain his self-control, his emotions running rampant, he looked at her. “Thanks.”

  She had no time to answer him.

  Walker was pounding on the door. The second time he banged his fist against the surface, the door flew open. It hadn’t been locked.

  A sinking feeling took hold of his gut.

  “Bonnie? Bonnie, are you in here, baby?” He struggled to keep fear from overpowering him. “Hello, is anyone here?”

  Taking the flashlight from Eliza, he made his way from room to room. He called to his daughter, or to anyone who might hear.

  No one answered.

  Walker looked for signs that Bonnie had been here, or that any child had played recently in this rotting house. Room after room within the single-story, sparsely furnished house turned up empty. There was nothing to feed his hope.

  He stopped in the last room of the house—a kitchen that looked as if it hadn’t been updated since the early forties—and turned around to look at the woman who had shadowed his every step.

  “If they were even here, they left a long time ago.”

  Not that long ago, she thought. There had been people living here within the past year. “They were here.”

  He wanted to believe her, but she was going to have to help him. He needed reasons. “And how can you be so sure?”

  “Look over there—” She pointed to the window over the sink.

  The dirt on the panes made it almost impossible to see out, especially in the growing dark. Walker rubbed the dirt away with the flat of his hand and looked out. There was a structure several yards from the house. Squinting, he realized it was a barn. There was no door. Given the state of disrepair, it wasn’t unusual.