LITMIR.BIZ

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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. Coming here was a mistake.

      “Never mind, I’ll come back when I have an appointment.” Turning abruptly on his heel, Walker started for the elevator.

      “You could make one now.”

      Her words reached him just as he was about to press for the elevator.

      It was the same low, melodious voice he’d heard coming from the other side of his front door two days ago. The clairvoyant. He hadn’t seen her come out.

      Somewhat embarrassed, like a child caught with his hand wedged into the forbidden cookie jar, Walker turned around to discover that Eliza was standing directly behind him.

      He hadn’t realized she was so delicate looking. She seemed smaller somehow, more petite. Here, on her home territory, she appeared almost elfin. Or maybe it was just his imagination.

      Weren’t elves the ones who were supposed to grant you wishes when you found them in their own lair? Or was he getting that confused with leprechauns? He wasn’t sure. Most of all, he wasn’t sure anymore just what he was doing here.

      She’d felt his presence. Sitting in her office, poring over information that ultimately might or might not have to do with Bonnie’s disappearance, she’d suddenly become aware that something had changed. Walker was entering the building.

      It would probably spook him if she told him that, she thought with a smile. It had taken her a long time to learn exactly what she could share with someone and what she needed to keep to herself, if she didn’t want them to think of her in the same belittling way her father had.

      She’d ventured out of her office, curious to see if she was right, if she actually had sensed his presence, or if concentrating so hard on recovering Bonnie had made her think Walker had come. She’d certainly been hoping that he would. It would make things a great deal less difficult for her to do her job if she had access to Bonnie’s things.

      Her job. That was what she’d decided it would be, even as she’d walked away from Walker’s closed front door. Her job. Her mission. To find Bonnie, no matter how long it took. She had to.

      Eliza took his hand as if she were drawing out a reluctant child, encouraging him to join the others.

      It surprised Walker how delicate her fingers felt against his skin.

      It was her job to do that, he reminded himself, to distract him so she could take him where she wanted him to go. Because he’d been a hustler in the practical sense of the word all his life, hustling first for supporters, then for clients, for people to recognize his designs, and then finally for financial backing—he’d come to think of the rest of the world in those same terms. People hustling to convince others that they both needed and wanted the goods or services the other had to offer.

      In this case, there was no question that he did. If the services were really legitimate.

      That was the doubting Thomas in him, he thought. The practical side that had come by way of his engineer father. The man who had taught him to test twice before he trusted once.

      He had yet to really “test” this Eliza Eldridge and her firm.

      “You’re in luck—I’m in between cases,” Eliza informed him quietly, still holding his hand in hers.

      She’d probably say that whether or not it was the truth. “Right, luck.”

      He was still skeptical. Not that she blamed him. He really hadn’t witnessed anything that would make him change his mind. “Don’t underestimate luck, Mr. Banacek. It plays a large role in almost everything.”

      His resistance to the whole ludicrous idea of someone being clairvoyant was beginning to strengthen. It was all he could do to keep the sarcasm bubbling within him to a simmer. He wasn’t usually rude, but this had brought out his vulnerability, and he was going to do everything he needed to in order to protect himself.

      “So you do what, hand out rabbits’ feet to your clients or tell them to gather up a bouquet of four-leaf clovers, just to be on the safe side?”

      She’d been subjected to a great deal worse and had long since learned that fear and ignorance colored the way people spoke. And Walker was afraid. Afraid to believe. Afraid to be disappointed. And afraid of finally, unequivocally, giving up.

      If he had given up the way he thought he had, he wouldn’t have come.

      “It’s not going to make you feel any better to be antagonistic, Mr. Banacek. I just meant that every decision we make has some effect on the way our individual timelines are formed.” She smiled into his eyes, trying to give him some of her faith. “A lot of good things have happened to people because they were in the right place at the right time.”

      “And a lot of bad things have happened to people because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he countered.

      There was nothing quite so daunting as when reason joined forces with pessimism, she thought. But she was up to the challenge.

      “Still luck,” she replied. “Just this time, bad. Would you like to step into my office?”

      He glanced toward the elevator. It would still be here later, he reasoned. He could always leave.

      “Sure.” The shrug was careless. “I’m here, why not?”

      Eliza smiled. “Why not, indeed?”

      He sounded as if he hadn’t made the effort to get behind the wheel of his car and seek out ChildFinders. As if he’d just decided, on a lark, to drop by the offices. But she refrained from pointing that out as she led him down the hall to her office.

      The office that she occupied had a view of the ocean, and in the evening, the sunset. Together, they made for a breathtaking scene—whenever she was in the office to witness

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