“I’ll let you know when and if I get some sleep. Right now, I’m so tired I feel like I’m walking around in someone else’s dream.” He stopped to pop his head into Eliza’s office. “You were right. Mike had the baby at 3:32. A beautiful baby girl.” Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out the instamatic photo he’d taken and passed it around for the women to see. “Her face’s a little flattened right now, but—”
“Her face,” Eliza said, taking the photograph from him to get a better look, “is absolutely perfect. And so is she.” She handed the photograph over to Savannah. “You must be very, very proud.”
Normally a man of few words, he wasn’t given to bragging. “Just relieved it’s over.”
“Hey, it’s not over, Papa,” Savannah, the mother of two children herself, told him affectionately. “You should know that. It’s not over for eighteen years. And even then, I hear it doesn’t stop.”
Megan handed the photograph back to the man she had originally met when she’d come as an FBI agent to question him about his missing son. “Boy, you people really know how to sell motherhood.”
“Nothing better in this world,” Savannah swore solemnly.
Megan chewed on her lower lip, seeming uncustomarily uncertain. “That’s good.” She took a deep breath as the others looked at her questioningly. “Because I think I’m on my way.”
“My God, really?” Savannah asked.
Megan had only been back to the office for a couple of days. She and her husband, Garrett, had finally managed to coordinate their schedules to take a long overdue honeymoon.
“Wow, you certainly know how to end off a honeymoon right,” Cade commented.
Eliza threw her arms around Megan, then stepped back. Megan looked at her with an unspoken question in her eyes. Eliza nodded with a smile. “Yes, you are.”
Megan squealed and hugged her hard.
Chapter 3
The sleek, gray Jaguar slipped into a spot that availed itself of the shade from one of the older benjamina trees that framed the perimeter of the parking lot closest to the office building.
His palm resting on the hand brake, Walker paused to gather his thoughts as he looked out at the building through the tinted window.
He wasn’t certain exactly what he’d been expecting. He supposed that in his mind, he’d thought any place that numbered a clairvoyant among its active employees would look like something out of a second-rate, melodramatic movie, maybe even one of those simpleminded screamers that dealt with the supernatural. The entrance to the building would come with a fog machine billowing out dry ice to create the proper surreal atmosphere.
That ChildFinders, Inc. had an address that put it squarely in the heart of one of Bedford’s most upscale business plazas was almost as encouraging as the verbal voucher Jason had given him over the phone regarding the agency’s sterling reputation.
A place that dedicated itself to finding missing children—and continually succeeding at it, if he was to believe the publicity—couldn’t be all bad, he told himself.
Braced for anything, Walker got out of his car and entered the building.
ChildFinders’s offices took up the entire top floor of the five-story building. The rent on that had to be a pretty penny, Walker mused, getting into the elevator whose outer wall was made of Plexiglas. It allowed him a view of the parking lot he’d just left as he got in.
If the rent was high, that meant that altruistic publicity notwithstanding, ChildFinders had to charge astronomical rates to stay ahead of the game, he decided, pressing for the fifth floor.
Not that money was a problem for him. It hadn’t been for almost ten years now. It was everything else that had become a problem, Walker thought darkly, watching the cars below become progressively smaller as he drew closer to the fifth floor.
When the elevator came to a smooth halt, Walker found himself stepping out into a tastefully decorated reception area. Looking around, he half expected the walls to be decorated with prominent citizens and celebrities the agency had helped, a visual testimonial to its incredible success rate.
Again, he was wrong.
Instead of photographs of grateful parents, there was a gallery of children’s photographs. Children, he assumed, that the different operatives had recovered and reunited with their families. Beyond that were several large, colorful pastels scattered about in understated frames. The two blended in to create an atmosphere that was at once soothing and brightly encouraging.
It was a place meant to put a person at their ease, not impress them.
Good business sense, he noted absently. Whoever had done this knew what they were doing.
He looked around for someone to talk to.
The young woman behind the reception desk at the entrance to the offices hardly looked old enough to be out of high school without a written excuse note from her mother. He vaguely wondered if she was one of the agency’s success stories.
Approaching the desk, Walker cleared his throat. He was nervous, he realized. Was he was making some sort of ridiculous mistake in coming here?
Maybe yes, but Jason was right. If he didn’t come here, if he didn’t follow up this absurd—for lack of a better word—lead, he would always wonder if he’d turned his back on the only and last chance he would ever have of finding Bonnie. As far-fetched as this seemed, he couldn’t ignore it.
Walker stopped short of the desk. Somewhere during the ride here from his corporate offices at the other end of Bedford, he realized, he had given himself permission to think of his daughter as being among the living again.
The thought startled him.
He feared that he would live to regret this. But his heart wanted so badly to believe that it was really true—that Bonnie was alive somewhere and that he would find her if only he tried hard enough.
As if he hadn’t tried hard before, doing everything in his power, hiring everyone he could…
And it had all come to nothing.
The girl at the reception desk flashed a thousand-watt smile. “May I help you?”
“Is Ms.—” His mind suddenly blank, Walker had to pause and look at the card he’d shoved into his jacket pocket just before he’d gotten out of the Jaguar. Funny, he was usually so good with names. Why did hers keep eluding him? Probably had to do with the fact that he was so skeptical. “Is Ms. Eldridge in?”
She answered his question with a question. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No, I don’t. I—”
Fear leaped in from nowhere. Fear of going on the same gut-wrenching roller-coaster ride he’d been on before to the same spirit-destroying destination. Fear of subjecting himself to all the same emotions, to the same heartache.
He just couldn’t do it to himself again.
