reminded herself. It was his daughter. Eliza couldn’t lose sight of that.
Things would probably be a great deal easier for her if the girl’s father gave her his help, but one way or another, she intended to try to find the lost girl. She knew she wouldn’t get any sleep unless she did at least that much.
He hardly slept.
As he got out of bed the next day, Walker blamed his endless night on the woman who had come to his door, offering to do magic for him. Offering to find a child whom he had forced himself to accept was forever out of his life. Several times in the wee hours of his night, he damned the petite woman for disrupting the life he struggled to keep orderly.
If he were honest with himself, he thought as he got dressed, his life was in a continuous state of disruption and had been for the past two years.
Nothing was ever going to be the same again. The ache that had suddenly surged through him threatened to undo him completely. He banked it down.
She had brought it to a head, he thought angrily, this Eliza Eldridge and her claims of clairvoyance. It didn’t take a clairvoyant to see that she was just out to make some money for herself and this so-called organization she belonged to.
Well, she wouldn’t be making it off him, or his grief. He wouldn’t allow it.
Too agitated to eat, Walker deliberately walked past his refrigerator without stopping. Crossing to the front door, he decided to pick up a coffee on the way to the office.
Maybe coffee would wake him up.
A small, pearl-colored rectangle floated to the step by his foot as he opened the door. He stooped to pick it up, then cursed softly.
She’d left her card.
What part of “no” didn’t she understand?
About to throw the card away, Walker stopped and looked again. Changing his mind, he pocketed it. He’d call his lawyer this morning when he got a chance and tell Jason to look into getting a restraining order against this Eliza Eldridge and ChildFinders, Inc. Undoubtedly, she didn’t give up easily.
There was something in her eyes…
He didn’t have time to think about a nicely packaged huckster. Didn’t have time to think about anything that had to do with Bonnie and the life he’d had before everything had turned pitch black for him.
Forcing himself to think of nothing but the work piled up on his desk in the office, Walker hurried to his car.
“She’s on the level, Walker.”
Walker frowned, wondering if the connection had somehow gotten scrambled. Hand on the phone receiver, he sat up in the rigid office chair. “What? Aren’t you too old to believe in witches and women who cast spells?”
There was a deep chuckle on the other end of the line. “God, I hope I’m never too old to believe in women who cast spells.” Jason’s comment was directed at Walker as his lifelong friend rather than as the client who kept him and his law office on year-round retainer. “But I looked into her just as you asked me to yesterday, and Eliza Eldridge isn’t any of the things you accused her of being. As far as the police are concerned, she’s the real McCoy. She’s helped solve several prominent kidnapping cases here, in Texas and in Georgia.”
Walker found that impossible to believe. “By doing what, looking into her crystal ball?”
Of the two of them, Walker had been the more practical one, even as far back as grammar school. His only dreams had revolved around the creation of the company he now headed.
“Hey, even Shakespeare said there were more things in heaven and earth than we could ever possibly understand.”
“Yeah, like people who prey on other people’s grief.”
“Hey, you’ll get no argument from me, Walker. I’ve come across plenty of those in my time. All I’m saying is that it looks as if Eliza Eldridge and the agency she works for are one of the good guys. From everything I’ve read, ChildFinders, Inc. has a one-hundred-percent track record for recovering the children they’re hired to find,” Jason said.
“And you don’t find that somehow suspect?”
“There’s a place for everything in this world, Walker. Even miracles. If she came looking for you with some kind of message, I say go for it. What have you got to lose?”
“What have I got to lose? How about the bits and pieces of me that I’ve managed to pull together over the past two years? Damn it, Jason…”
Jason felt for Walker, he really did. He’d been there for him, as much as Walker would allow anyone to be there for him, and had seen what the kidnapping had done to him. And to Walker’s wife, Rachel. One tragedy had begat another. “Yeah, I know.”
“No, you don’t,” Walker said with finality. “You don’t know. You couldn’t possibly know until it’s happened to you what it feels like to lose your little girl. To finally have to admit to yourself that there’s no hope, that she’s never going to come back, never going to throw those little arms around you and hug you as if you’re the most important person in the world. Never feel those tiny little lips on your cheek when you’ve won her heart because you bought her a stupid pair of pink toe shoes—”
Abruptly, Walker stopped, knowing he’d said too much, had gotten too angry at a friend whose only sin was in wanting to help.
When he spoke again, his voice quavered. “I just don’t know if I can go through it all again, Jase. I don’t know if I could live with myself.”
“Could you live with yourself if you turned your back on this, knowing there might be some chance, however slim, that you could find Bonnie? And that you passed it up?”
Walker made no answer.
He didn’t have to.
There were no two ways about it. Savannah Walters was an absolute gem. Eliza wondered what the firm had done without her before Sam had found her daughter, married her and subsequently talked her into leaving her job and coming to work for ChildFinders. The woman was an absolute whiz at the computer. More to the point, she knew her way around what was, to Eliza, the mysterious world of the Internet. Savannah could uncover information in seconds where it would have taken her weeks, Eliza marveled as she went over the stacks of files, clippings and random bits of information Savannah had assembled for her.
Specifically, she’d asked Savannah to see if she could dig up any information regarding the Banacek kidnapping. Savannah had unearthed old news articles dealing with the kidnapping and any bodies that had subsequently turned up fitting Bonnie’s general physical description over a nine-state area. She’d also asked for the names and known whereabouts of any registered child molesters.
It was a humbling mound of information, but Eliza intended to do it all justice. Maybe reading the files would trigger something for her, she thought. She felt she owed it to Bonnie, no matter what the girl’s father thought of her.
“Hey, there’s the brand-new Daddy now.” Eliza heard Megan Andreini Wichita crow almost right outside her door. It sounded as if Megan was hugging Cade. “How does it feel?”
Cade
