LITMIR.BIZ

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mind went numb. And then anger washed over him. White, hot anger. “Is this some kind of sick joke?”

      She tried not to take offense. “Nothing about kidnapping, or finding a kidnapped child, is a joke, Mr. Banacek.”

      His anger had no direction; she was the only target available. “Stop calling me Mr. Banacek—you make me feel like this is a corporate meeting.”

      “All right—Walker, then,” she allowed cautiously, watching his eyes.

      He struggled to be reasonable. “How did you know about the toe shoe?”

      In all the stories, the police had kept this one fact back, thinking somehow it might be a clue that would allow them to separate the truthful from the frauds who called in, looking for their fifteen minutes of fame.

      “I saw it.”

      He told himself not to believe. But no one knew about the shoes that had meant so much to Bonnie. “Saw it? Saw it where?”

      “It was in the pocket of her overalls. She was wearing a pair of worn overalls that were too large for her. She kept the toe shoe in her pocket to make her feel better, careful to hide it from whomever it was who’d taken her.”

      It took effort to keep the wave of emotion in check, to keep it from pounding down on him like a driving rain. Very quietly, he walked back to the chair he’d just vacated and sat down.

      Gripping the arms of the chair, he tried to make himself relax, and succeeded only marginally.

      “All right, Eliza, you have my attention.”

      Chapter 4

      There wasn’t much of the dream left to tell. She had given Walker the highlights.

      What remained was a haze of feelings—oppressed, frightened feelings emanating from the little girl. It was that, more than anything else, that had sent her searching through the myriad faces on the Internet site.

      But that was also something the man sitting on the other side of her desk didn’t need to hear right now. There was no reason to make him acutely aware that his daughter was afraid. It was a silent given; both knew it to be true, without having to exchange the actual words.

      Eliza told him what she could, repeating the description of both the farmhouse and the land surrounding it. She gave him as accurate a picture of Bonnie as she could.

      And when she was finished, Eliza could read the question in his eyes. He was afraid that Bonnie had forgotten him. It wasn’t uncommon for minds that young to mix reality with fantasy, fact with fiction, until the truth faded away into the misty past. Maybe Bonnie had begun to believe she’d dreamed about having another father, another mother, and had accepted the ones who had her now as her parents.

      “She still remembers you,” Eliza told him softly. “Still won’t accept her situation.”

      Like an arrow shot straight and true, her words hit his heart dead center. It was as if she’d read his mind. No matter what her claims to perception were, the reality of it startled him. Had she read his mind?

      “Her situation,” he echoed. It was a euphemism that could mean anything, encompass anything. He needed everything spelled out so that somehow, some way, he could find a little bit of peace, grasp on to a little bit of hope. “Can you tell what her ‘situation’ is?”

      She heard the quiet edge in his voice. The storm was coming.

      “I don’t think they’re treating her badly.” At this point, she couldn’t tell him that with any certainty, and she refused to lie.

      Walker’s temper erupted again. He was having less and less success keeping it in check. “How can they not be treating her badly? They kidnapped her.”

      She wished there were some way to calm him. All she could do was tell him what she knew. “There’re many reasons people kidnap children. It’s not just for ransom, or for child pornography,” she added, reading the unspoken fear that had surfaced in his eyes. “Some children are abducted to fill a void left by either a child who died, or one who was never there to begin with.”

      He shook his head. It was as if her words were bouncing off him, refusing to sink in. Emotionally frustrated, with no outlet, he felt himself becoming almost dull-witted. “Meaning?”

      “People, women predominately, want a baby so badly, they’ll do anything to get one.” She spoke slowly, measuring out her words. Trying to reach him before he became lost in the place where he’d retreated. “When they can’t get pregnant either because of infertility or lack of opportunity, they become obsessed with having a baby. Some women have been known to go through all the stages of pregnancy, right up through the contractions involved in labor, when they’re not pregnant to begin with.”

      He looked at her as if he thought she were making it up. He was a skeptic, through and through, Eliza thought, smiling. She’d encountered more than her share.

      “The mind is a very powerful, underused tool. Any scientist will tell you that,” she added as she saw him open his mouth to protest. “Whoever took Bonnie wanted a child so badly, when they saw yours, everything just clicked into place. They had to have her. Desire, means and opportunity all came together for one split second, and they grabbed that second and ran.”

      If he was to control his anger, he couldn’t think about that, about someone swooping down and snatching his little girl away.

      “Which would explain why the ransom note never came.” He shook his head, remembering. “I was so certain she was taken for the money. I didn’t sleep for three days, waiting for the kidnapper to call. The phone rang off the hook,” Walker added bitterly, “but it was never the kidnapper. Half the time it was some reporter wanting to interview us. As if Bonnie being kidnapped was some kind of diversionary entertainment for the public to watch on the evening news.”

      She understood where he was coming from. She’d had a few run-ins with insensitive reporters herself, though she’d found others to be tactful and caring, putting people above stories. “Being on the Fortune 500 list unfortunately makes you a target for all sorts of things. Invasion of your privacy included. It’s only natural that the first thing you think of is that your daughter was taken for the money. You might find this hard to believe, but in a way, it’s a good thing that she wasn’t.”

      “A good thing? How could it possibly be ‘a good thing’?” he demanded angrily. “How can having your daughter kidnapped ever be a good thing?”

      “Not the kidnapping itself,” she corrected gently. “I meant the fact she wasn’t taken for ransom.” She chose her words carefully, knowing that, his rugged appearance to the contrary, Walker Banacek was in a delicate state. “There are times, too many times, when the child is not returned in exchange for the ransom money. The money’s taken and the child is never seen again.”

      He looked at her, stealing himself off from her words, his expression stoic. “Because they’ve been done away with.”

      She accepted the euphemism, understanding Walker needed to use it in order to keep the horror at bay. “Because they’ve been done away with,” she echoed. “Whoever took Bonnie from that parking lot wanted to have a child to love. That will keep her safe.”

      Usually, she added silently.

      That was something else Walker didn’t need to be made aware of: the fact that there were no hard-and-fast rules to this, only generalities that formed patterns.

      Eliza couldn’t help wondering how the man in her office would react if he knew she was acting as his protector, keeping things from him she sensed might be too devastating for him to deal with. Probably not well at all, despite the good intentions behind it, she concluded. Walker Banacek didn’t strike her as a man who took kindly to being kept in the dark.

      “You said ‘they,”’ Walker began, then hesitated. He couldn’t believe he was asking

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