by M. S. Parker
“When was that?”
“Three years ago,” he answered promptly. “Betsy had cancer. He was two weeks short of his one-year anniversary and didn’t think he’d be able to take more than the three-day bereavement time. He’d already used up all of his other paid time taking care of her the last month before she died.”
“Was he?”
Jalen’s gaze jerked back to me. “Was he what?”
“Able to take the extra time?”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Of course. I’m a businessman, but I’m not more concerned with the bottom line than I am with doing the right thing.”
A man with a strong moral code. I liked that. “I didn’t mean to imply anything else. Just trying to get a feel for things.”
He eyed me for a moment before continuing. “Meka’s a freshman at Centennial High School. When she didn’t come home Friday afternoon, he tried calling her, but all he got was her voicemail. He called the school and found out that she’d left after third period, giving the office a note that he’d supposedly written about visiting her mother’s grave. He went to the cemetery, but she wasn’t there, and the groundskeeper hadn’t seen her.”
“Has he filed a police report?” I asked.
His entire expression darkened as he scowled, the muscles in his jaw popping with agitation. “He went to the police Friday night and was told that she hadn’t been gone long enough to file a missing person report. When he came back the next day, he was sent to talk to a random cop. He filed an official report, but the officer he spoke with said that Meka had most likely gone off with some friends for the weekend and she’d be back Sunday night, worried about getting in trouble.”
I understood that having a waiting period to file a report cut down on cops wasting time looking for people who’d gone off to do something and forgot to leave a note, but there were times I thought that a lot more missing people would’ve been found unharmed if the search had begun right away. Just because a rebellious teenager ran away didn’t mean she wasn’t in danger.
“Theo spent all Saturday morning and afternoon trying to find her. He called friends, went on her social media accounts, even called her phone company to see if they had any way of tracking her phone.”
Jalen’s frustration was palpable, and I wondered if he was close to Theo and Meka, or if Jalen was simply the sort of person who cared that deeply. Rylan had vouched for him, and the way Rylan had been with Jenna and the kids the other night told me that he had high standards.
“According to the phone company, Meka’s phone was off and showed no activity since Thursday night around nine o’clock. No one he spoke to could tell him anything.”
I made a note to keep that in mind when speaking with Meka’s classmates. Just because they hadn’t talked to her dad didn’t mean they were clueless. Friends would have wanted to keep her out of trouble, and enemies would’ve wanted to keep her missing longer, so she’d be in more trouble. Anyone who didn’t think a fifteen-year-old girl would have those sorts of enemies was either naïve or had enjoyed a completely different experience growing up than I had.
“So, the police are actually looking for her?” I asked.
Jalen made a disgusted sound. “If you can call it that. As soon as Theo finished filling out the paperwork Saturday night, the cop tossed it onto a huge stack of other papers on a desk and said that the detective would take a look at it first thing. Theo called yesterday and was told that he’d be contacted when they had something. He wasn’t given the detective’s name or anything. No one came by the house or came to ask him questions. It seems like as soon as they heard she’d had some problems, they wrote her off as a runaway.”
I frowned. I hadn’t exactly spent much time working with the police department here, but Adare had told me that they were generally friendly and helpful. Then again, as far as I knew, she hadn’t worked any missing kid cases.
“A couple questions,” I said finally. “You know Mr. Ludwick well?”
“I do.”
“Do you know of anyone who might want to hurt him? Get revenge on him?”
Jalen looked insulted that I’d even asked. “No! Of course not!”
I held up my hand. “I’m not trying to speak ill of him, but I need the truth. If he’s gotten into any altercations that you know of, borrowed money, come into a lot of money recently.”
Jalen shook his head. “Theo’s a straight-shooter.”
“You said that his wife died of cancer three years ago. Treatments can be extremely expensive.”
“I covered them,” Jalen said, the muscle in his jaw popping again. “My employees all have good health insurance, but I know that not everything gets covered. I have what I call ‘grants’ where if an employee or their immediate family have certain medical emergencies, they can apply to have some, or all of the costs covered.”
I was impressed but pushed it aside. He wasn’t the focus of the case.
“I’d like to take the case,” I said, “but I need to be clear about something first. I don’t care who’s hiring me, who’s paying for it. My goal is finding Meka and bringing her home safely. I’ll probably step on some toes, ask things that people don’t want me to ask, and they definitely don’t want to answer.”
“I’m okay with that,” he said.
“I’m not a cop. I’m not collecting evidence to be used in court. That means no search warrants, but also that a good defense attorney would most likely get anything I find thrown out if there are charges to be brought. I’ll ask questions, follow rumors. I don’t need corroboration to follow a lead, and I don’t need to read anyone their rights. I don’t make arrests. It’s all about finding Meka.”
Jalen nodded. “If there are any legal issues, we’ll take care of that later. Bringing Meka home is my top priority.”
“Then we’re on the same page.” I held out my hand for him to shake. “I’ll get one of our standard contracts, then take some contact information from you. I’ll also want to come to your place of business tomorrow and talk to your employees. They probably don’t have anything to do with this, but I want to be thorough.”
“I appreciate that.”
The moment he clasped my hand, electricity shot up my arm. I barely suppressed a shiver. Damn. If he wasn’t a client, I’d be having a whole other conversation with him. As it was, I made a mental note to ask Adare the policy on hooking up with former clients.
A girl could dream, right?
Eleven
I was lost in the dark, and something was coming after me. That much was a fact. Why it was dark, I didn’t know. It wasn’t night. How I knew that particular bit of information, I didn’t know, but it was the truth.
My eyes opened, but I still couldn’t see. Had I been walking with my eyes closed? Was I still walking? I couldn’t feel my legs moving. I couldn’t feel them at all. I couldn’t feel anything. Arms. Legs. Stomach. Head.
The realization should have frightened me, but it didn’t. I existed, and that was enough for me.
Except I was being hunted.
I couldn’t see it or hear it, but it was there, creeping, sneaking. It wanted to kill me. Cut me. Eat me. Destroy me.
The smell of cigarette smoke hit me all at once, making me gag and choke. It invaded my nose, my mouth. I tasted it on my tongue. My eyes burned, and I realized that I could feel some of my body again. I wished I couldn’t. I hated the smoke more than I hated the dark.
A faint voice echoed in the distance. Someone was shouting, but I couldn’t make out words. I felt the urgency, the desperation, but didn’t know why. Were they being hunted too? Who were they? Could they see?
I wanted to tell them that I’d find them and help them, but I couldn’t figure out how to get to them. Where were they? I shouted a question, but it disappeared even as the words left my mouth.
I tried again, putting more effort behind the attempt, but the words died again before they could take shape.
Was the thing hunting me also keeping me
silent? Or was it keeping me from calling for help? Would I die here without being able to scream?
Was I in space? It made sense. No weight, no pressure, no light. But I could breathe. There wasn’t any air in space. No stars. I wasn’t in space.
Underwater? No, again, I could breathe.
Except…I didn’t know if I was breathing. I couldn’t feel my lungs expanding, couldn’t feel the air entering my body. I tried holding my breath, but there wasn’t anything to hold.
Was I dead? Had the thing in the dark caught me? Was this what dying and being dead was like? Hovering here in the darkness. Unable to do anything but think and fear and wonder what came next. I was still being hunted. Was death being hunted forever? If I was already dead, why did it matter if I was caught? Couldn’t I give up and just let what happened happen? Would anyone even know if I gave up? Would they care?
Should I care? It would be so easy to surrender. To give in to the desire to not care. To give in to the darkness and just drift away into nothingness–
I woke with a gasp, awareness of air and body and pain and pulse and life rushing through me all at once, nearly overwhelming me. I fell back against my pillows and reached over to turn on my bedside light. I knew I wasn’t in danger, that my apartment was safe, but it would take my body some time to catch up to logic. When it did, I’d get up and start getting ready for my day. Right now, I just kept repeating to myself that I was safe. No one was hunting me anymore.
I’d done my due diligence yesterday after Jalen left my office, pulling up as much information as I could find about Jalen, as well as Meka and Theo. The latter didn’t have much in the way of a social media presence, but the other two had given me plenty to work with. Still, I was impressed as I entered the lobby of Sylph Industries.
“Good morning,” Jalen said as he came toward me. “Thank you for coming in early. I appreciate how seriously you’re taking this.”
“I don’t know yet if Meka ran away on her own, or if something happened to her, but the reasons don’t matter to me as much as finding her does. Even if she made the decision to stay away, she’s a minor and needs to be brought home.”
I’d found enough on Theo to get the sense of him being a good man. I’d conduct my interview with him shortly, but my gut told me that he wasn’t hurting his daughter. There was always a chance I was wrong, but I was as certain as I got without irrefutable proof in front of me.
“Thank you,” Jalen repeated, taking my hand between both of his.
For a moment, I was caught by those incredible eyes, and everything else faded into the background. His hands were warm, and they sent a different sort of heat licking across my skin. My eyes dropped to his mouth for a brief moment, and I could almost feel his lips on mine. Would he taste as amazing as he smelled, I wondered.
Then he was stepping back, releasing my hands. He looked as shaky as I felt, but when he spoke, his voice was even and steady.
“Theo’s already here,” he said. “I put him in the chairs outside of my office three floors up. I figured you could use the space as you conduct interviews. We have a conference room on the second floor, but my office is a little more private. Unless, of course, you think it’d be better to be more visible.”
I shook my head. “Good instincts. Have you told your other employees?”
“I wanted to talk to you about it before I made a decision either way. If you want them to know what’s going on, I figured I’d tell them while you’re talking to Theo.”
If everyone was as accommodating as Jalen, I’d get through these interviews quick. “Tell them that they’ll be asked some questions and that they need to be honest, but don’t tell them what it’s about. Often times, surprising someone with an unexpected question prompts a more honest reply than if someone is prepared for the subject matter.”
Jalen nodded as we walked into the elevator. “I’ll call for a meeting as soon as I show you to the office. Once you’re done with Theo, how do you want everyone else called in?”
“You decide,” I said. “You know better than I do the order of importance of various projects, as well as who’s working on each team.”
“All right.”
The doors opened, and Jalen led me through a maze of cubicles and desks. A few of them had people already there, and they looked up as we passed. I saw curiosity on some of the faces, but all of them waved and smiled at Jalen. Instead of ignoring them to talk to me, he greeted each one by name. I wondered if he knew them because they were often here early, or if he knew all of his employees by name. The research I’d done indicated that the company wasn’t vast, but it did employ a few dozen people, and wealthy CEOs were rarely hands-on.
A few comfortable-looking chairs sat in front of a door at the far side of the room, and a man sat in one. He had dark hair with a few bits of gray here and there, and an average build. His head was bent, keeping me from seeing his facial features and expression, but his posture spoke volumes. Anxiety rolled off him in waves, and he twisted his folded hands this way and that. When we were only a few feet away, he raised his head.
I would never claim to be a mind reader, but I liked to think I’d developed a good instinct for people, and if I was off, it was because I tended to be too cynical. I rarely believed the best in a person, especially if it was someone I hadn’t known long enough to have established a pattern of behavior.
Despite Jalen’s praise of Theo’s character, I knew I had to be suspicious of him. Most violence in the world was committed by a person or persons who had a personal connection to the victim. The first suspect in a murder investigation was a spouse or significant other. The kidnapping of a child was usually the result of a custody dispute or was done by someone already in the child’s life. I didn’t like to think of it, but it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility for a parent to harm a child, then claim that they were missing.
Theo got to his feet, rubbing his palms against his thighs. He started to hold out a hand, but Jalen had already stepped between us, reaching for the doorknob.
“Theo, this is Rona Quick, the private investigator I hired.” Jalen picked up a laptop from his desk. “Rona, you can use my chair. I’ll be out in an empty cubicle if either of you need me.”
I thanked him and moved around to the massive chair behind the desk. As he passed Theo, he put his hand on the other man’s shoulder and squeezed.
“Answer everything she asks honestly and know that she’s just doing her job.”
Theo nodded, rubbing his hands on his pants again before folding them in his lap. As Jalen closed the door behind him, Theo flinched at the sound, shifting in his chair. His eyes darted all around the room, never resting in one place too long.
He could be nervous, feeling guilty about something, or the fidgeting could’ve been from lack of sleep and concern for his daughter. The only way to get a feel for which was true was to start talking to him and see what came out.
The starting point was simple. The follow-up questions were where things got tough. I had to know what to ask, what threads to pursue. “Tell me, in your own words, how things unfolded.”
With jerky, halting speech, he told me the same thing Jalen told me yesterday. A few of the details were different or new, but that made his story more credible. Anything that was too precise, too perfect, sounded memorized or coached. As a witness on the stand, a high level of unease might be due to the sheer terror of facing the defendant, or just the anxiety that came with testifying. Talking to me shouldn’t have the same effect, especially for an adult with nothing to hide.
“And that’s when Jalen, I mean, Mr. Larsen, came over to find out what was wrong.” He finished his story, then fished something out of his pocket. A folded square of paper. “I wrote down the names of all of her friends and anyone else I could think of who might know where she is.”
“Thank you.” I took the paper and set it aside. “That will be very useful.”
And not just to give me a place to start with
Meka’s social circles. A parent’s knowledge about their child’s friends was rarely one hundred percent accurate. The people he didn’t know about would be even more important than the ones he did know.
“Just a reminder, Mr. Ludwick, that I am not a cop. I’m being paid to find your daughter and to bring her back safely. I don’t make arrests, and the chances of me having to testify in court are slim. Anything I find would most likely not be usable in a legal situation. I don’t have to get search warrants or read rights, but that also means that I am subject to the law myself. If I go into someone’s house, I can be arrested for trespassing. Any risks I take are my choice, and I have no legal obligation to do anything I could get in trouble for. Also, people can lie to me without any criminal charges.”
He nodded. “I just want her home safe.” His face shone with sincerity, and my suspicions of him dropped from fifty percent to twenty-five percent. Once I got a feel for how others viewed him, I’d re-evaluate.
“I need you to be honest about the answers you give me, even if you think it makes you or Meka look bad.” When he nodded again, I went to my first question. “Has Meka been in any trouble recently? School or otherwise.”
He didn’t answer right away, appearing to think for a minute, which didn’t necessarily mean he was lying or telling the truth. “I noticed she didn’t seem to be bringing home much work, but when I asked her, she said that she was getting it done in school. When I called the school on Friday, they told me that they’d been trying to get ahold of me for two weeks to set up a meeting to talk about her not turning in homework and poor grades.”
I made a note. “What about other kinds of trouble? Problems with the law? Outbursts at home?”
“No,” he said hoarsely. He cleared his throat and continued, “I’m sure that cop I talked to would’ve told me if she’d gotten arrested or something.”
As the interview progressed, I watched his body language as much as I listened to everything he said, from word choice to tone. He answered every question, clarifying when I asked for more, and never shirking from negatives. He painted a picture of a close father-daughter relationship bonded through mutual grief, then drifting apart as Meka became more withdrawn from him. He tried to balance understanding of sullen and rebellious behavior against being too permissive. Sometimes he succeeded, sometimes not.
