LITMIR.BIZ

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never be reunited with their distraught loved ones.

      She didn’t know what she would do if she ever found herself in that set of circumstances. Which was why, her Uncle Brian had told her when he’d assigned her to this department, she was the right person for the job.

      * * *

      Connie broke down and cried twice during what should have been a relatively short process of filling out the form.

      The second time, Kenzie kindly suggested, “Do you want to go outside and clear your head?”

      But Connie bit her lower lip and shook her head, refusing the offer. “No, I want to finish filling out the form. And then I want to help you find my father.”

      She could relate to that, Kenzie thought. But even so, she had to turn Connie down. She smiled patiently at the woman. “I’m afraid that it doesn’t quite work that way.”

      Connie looked at her, confused. “How does it work? I don’t mean to sound belligerent,” Connie apologized. “I thought I could help, because I know all his habits. But I just want to know how you find someone.”

      “A lot of ways,” Kenzie answered matter-of-factly. “We talk to people at your dad’s place of work, to his neighbors, find out if he had a club he liked to frequent more than others—”

      Connie cut her off quickly, shaking her head. “He didn’t.”

      “All right,” Kenzie said, continuing. “A favorite restaurant, then—”

      Again Connie shook her head. “My father didn’t like fancy food and he didn’t believe in throwing his money away by having someone else cook for him when he could do a better job of it himself.”

      “How about his friends?” Kenzie asked. “Did he have anyone he was close to?” she asked, already doing a mental sketch of a man who had become a loner in his later years.

      Connie shook her head just as Kenzie had expected her to. “My father stopped seeing his friends once Mom had died and after a while, his friends stopped trying to get him to come out.” She sighed again. “I guess they all just gave up on him—like I did.”

      “It’s not your fault,” Kenzie underscored. “And I’d still like to have a list of his friends,” she told Connie. “One or two of those friends might not have given up trying to get him to come out of his shell,” she said to the other woman.

      Connie looked almost wounded. “You mean the way I gave up?”

      Part of her job, the way Kenzie saw it, was to comfort the grieving. Guilt was a heavy burden to bear. Kenzie did her best to help Connie cope.

      “You had your own life to live, your own grief to deal with over the death of your mother,” Kenzie insisted. “And you didn’t give up on your dad. You just gave him a time-out so he could try to deal with the situation on his own.”

      Connie sighed. “When you say it that way, it doesn’t sound so bad,” she told Kenzie, a trace of gratitude in her voice.

      “And it’s not,” Kenzie told her firmly. “Sometimes you can’t drag a horse to water, you have to let him see the water and then clear a path for him so that he can go to it at his own leisurely pace.”

      Connie’s mouth curved. “I never thought of my father as a horse,” she commented.

      “Maybe more like a mule?” Kenzie suggested with a smile.

      Connie sighed. “He could be so stubborn, there was just no talking to him.”

      Kenzie nodded. “I know what you mean. I have a few relatives like that of my own,” she told the woman. She saw a little of the color returning to Connie’s thin cheeks. “Feel better?” she asked.

      “A little,” Connie admitted. “I’ll feel a whole lot better once you find him,” she said.

      “So will I,” Kenzie assured the other woman. When people came in to file a missing person report, she took great care in making those people feel as if this was a joint undertaking and that she was in this together with them. It seemed to help them hang on. “Now, if you could give me as many names and addresses of your dad’s friends, that would be a great help.”

      “I’ve got my mother’s old address book at home. I kept it as a souvenir,” Connie explained. “Will that help?” she asked.

      “That will be perfect,” Kenzie assured her.

      “And you’ll find my father?” Connie asked again, desperately needing to hear Kenzie make a promise to that effect.

      “We’ll do our very best to find your father,” Kenzie told her.

      Connie nodded, rising to her feet. “Okay. I’ll get that address book to you today,” she promised.

      “That’ll be great,” Kenzie told her.

      In her opinion, Connie looked a tiny bit better as she left the office.

      Now all she had to do, Kenzie thought, was to deliver on her promise and everything would be fine.

       Chapter 2

      “Here, you look like you could use this.”

      Detective Jason Valdez placed a slightly misshapen container of coffee on the desk directly in front of his sometimes partner, Detective Hunter Brannigan.

      Hunter raised his half-closed green eyes slowly from the container and fixed what passed for a penetrating look at the man who worked with him in the police department’s Cold Case Division.

      “You got this from the vending machine?” Hunter went through the motions of asking even though the answer was a foregone conclusion on his part.

      “No, I had a carriage drawn by four matched unicorns deliver it. Yes, it’s from the vending machine,” Jason answered. “What do you think, I’m going to drive over to the closest coffee house to get you some overpriced coffee just because there’s a fancy name embossed on the side of the container?”

      Removing the lid, Hunter sniffed the inky-black coffee in the container and made a face. “This is swill,” he pronounced.

      Jason took no offense. Everyone knew that the coffee from the vending machine was strictly a last resort, to be consumed when nothing else was available.

      “But it’s swill that’ll open up those bright green eyes of yours,” Jason told him, sitting down at the desk that butted up against Hunter’s, “and I’m betting after the night you’ve had, you could use any help that you can get.”

      Hunter moved the container aside. “How do you know what kind of a night I had?”

      “Because I’m a detective,” Jason answered. “And because you always have that kind of a night, especially when it’s on a weekend. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, women seem to gravitate to you, willingly buying whatever you’re selling.”

      Hunter laughed. “You’re just jealous because you’re married and Melinda would skin you alive if she even saw you looking at another woman.”

      “Yeah, there’s that, too,” Jason agreed. He shook his dark head that recently sprouted a few gray hairs. He blamed that on his wife, as well. “I swear, ever since my wife got pregnant, she’s turned into this fire-breathing, suspicious monster.”

      Hunter shook his head, suppressing a laugh. “There’s no accounting for some people’s taste, I guess.” And then he grew more serious. “Just don’t give her any reason to be suspicious.”

      “Any reason?” Jason questioned. “She’s got me too busy running all these errands for her and going around in circles. Any free time I used to have now gets totally eaten up. I couldn’t hook

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