and agitated at the same time.
Eliza continued watching his expression, knowing that the answer she gave wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “I didn’t see anyone else.”
He could feel his frustration beginning to build again. “But then, how do you know it’s not just a man or a woman involved?”
“I sensed them, their presence,” she clarified before he could say anything. “They were close by, looking for her.”
“Looking for her?” He didn’t understand. Part of him still felt this woman was just toying with him, seeing how far she could lead him down the garden path before he yelled, “Enough!” “Why? Where was she? Did she run away from them?”
Eliza shook her head. She knew how all this had to sound to him and she wished she could give him more concrete answers, but she wasn’t about to make up anything. One fabrication, one stretch of the truth, and any trust she might be able to build up in him would be irrevocably shattered.
“I’m not sure. Maybe she was just playing in the field and had gotten separated from them.”
It made sense, he supposed. But with the logic came a numbing realization. It felt as if something had died within him.
“Then it was someone else she was calling ‘Daddy,”’ he concluded bitterly.
“No—”
The firm note in her voice surprised him.
“It was you she was calling to.”
He couldn’t tell if Eliza was just saying what she knew he wanted to hear. “How could you tell?”
“I just knew,” she told him simply. “I could feel what she was feeling.”
He couldn’t allow himself to get strung out on false hopes. Though it cost him, Walker tried to approach this as logically as he could. “Couldn’t you have just gotten confused—dreamt about the actual search that went on at the time of her kidnapping?”
The background had been hazy, but not the feelings she’d experienced. “No, these were the people who had kidnapped her. They were looking for her. A man and a woman.”
“A man and a woman,” he repeated. All right, if he was buying into this, he was going to go all the way and pretend she was telling him something that was real. “What did they look like? Can you describe them?”
If it were only that easy. But at times, her gift just frustrated her, teasing her with pieces of a puzzle that refused to take its true shape. “I wish I could, but as I told you, I didn’t actually see them.”
“You didn’t actually ‘see’ her, either,” he said pointedly. The disdain in his voice was aimed more at himself than at her.
It was going to be a struggle for him to come around. But she already knew that. “Not in the sense you mean, no.”
He didn’t want to be patronized. His eyes narrowed. “Not in any sense.”
This wasn’t getting them anywhere. “If you want to help me find your daughter, Mr. Banacek, you’re going to have to stop challenging me at every turn, and accept some things on faith.”
He laughed shortly. “Faith is something that I find in very short supply right now. And it’s Walker, not Mr. Banacek,” he reminded her.
He realized that he’d snapped the last part at her, and took a breath to calm himself. He was coming at her like an angry timber wolf emerging from a gutted forest, and that wasn’t helping matters.
Walker tried again, his voice lower this time. “What did you mean just now, when you said if I wanted to help you find my daughter?”
She folded her hands before her, her gaze locking with his. She couldn’t make it any plainer than she had. “Just what I said.”
“What you said made it sound as if you intended to look for her whether or not I hired you.” That couldn’t be right.
To his surprise, she nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”
No one did something for nothing. There was always an angle being played. He’d learned that the hard way, and until he’d learned it, he’d never gotten ahead. “Why? Why would you do that?”
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