Hero for Hire

Veronica felt moisture beginning to form at the corners of her eyes and she blinked as she drew air into her lungs. The silly thought came to her that if she filled herself completely with air this way, it would prevent anything from spilling out that wasn’t supposed to.

Like the wail of agony that scratched and clawed at her throat, threatening to burst out.

She couldn’t break apart, she couldn’t, she ordered herself silently. She had to hold herself together. Every second counted. Every moment she gave way to despair and the abject terror that was tightening around her heart was a moment she couldn’t use, a moment that was taken away from rectifying this incredible, horrible wrong that had been done.

A moment that might mean the difference between Casey’s coming home and not.

Taking another breath, she began, “My baby…”

No, he wasn’t a baby. Casey hadn’t been a baby for quite some time. He liked to draw himself up importantly and crisply informed her of that fact whenever she slipped and called him that.

I’m not your baby, Mama.

But he was. He would always be her baby. And someone had stolen her baby.

And her world.

“My son, Casey,” she corrected herself with effort, “has been kidnapped.”

Chad Andreini nodded his head slowly, encouragingly, as if what she had just said was a revelation and not the obvious reason anyone would come to the agency in the first place.

ChildFinders, Inc., specialized in recovering kidnapped children and in locating runaways. It had originally been established when Cade Townsend’s own son, Darin, had been kidnapped. The agency had a record of success rivaled by none. Recovering kidnapped children was a cause very dear to Chad’s own heart, having been one himself once. There had been no terror involved in his kidnapping, other than the lie that had been tendered to him as the truth—that his mother, younger brother and sister had all been killed in a car accident. No terror and no suspicion because the man telling the lie had been his own father. His father, who had abducted him from his home so cleverly that no one had suspected a thing.

It would probably have continued to remain a secret for a long time, instead of just two years had Chad not, in a fit of youthful rebellion, left his father’s house and hitchhiked back to his old neighborhood. It had come in the wake of yet another argument with his father, and Chad had been determined to return to a time and place when life had been less traumatic for him.

The trauma had come, anyway. Seeing his mother, barely functioning in her grief over losing him, and his brother and sister alive had been a shock. But it paled in comparison to the fierce sting of betrayal he felt when he realized that the man he had placed at the center of his universe, had kidnapped him from life as he knew it and lied to him.

It was something he frequently buried in his mind, but never managed to quite get over, even after his father had been sent to prison.

Odd how things worked. That event in his faraway past had brought him to this place in time, sitting at this desk. Waiting to listen to this woman with the pain-filled green eyes.

Eyes that were fighting back tears.

In a fluid motion, Chad reached over to the small, state-of-the-art tape recorder beside his computer and pressed the record button. The second he did, he saw apprehension bloom in her face.

Her eyes darted to the small sleek machine. “What are you doing?”

“Recording this meeting.” Did she have something to hide? He studied her quietly, toying with half-formed notions.

Distaste entered her eyes as she continued looking at the recorder. Veronica Lancaster had grown up living a fish-bowl existence where microphones and cameras were periodically pointed at her for one reason or another through no fault of her own. Her great-great-grandfather had assured the family fortune through methods that had not always welcomed scrutiny in the light of day. It took three generations and sizable contributions to almost every major charity for that to be smoothed over.

Now all that was remembered was that there had been a couple named Lancaster on the Mayflower, newly married young travelers who had made that first crossing to a brave new world almost four hundred years ago.

It seemed to Veronica that people were always interested in what the Lancasters were doing, treating them as if they were a cross between their next-door neighbors and visiting gods. Veronica had grown up hungering for privacy the way a person on a never-ending diet hungered for a taste of chocolate.

Knuckles taut and white, she struggled to keep her voice from quavering as she nodded at the tape recorder. “Is that really necessary?”

Chad made no effort to turn the machine off. His yes was silent.

“It helps us piece things together. You might forget things later,” he told her, his voice low, quiet. “Sometimes things you’ve overlooked come back to you when you listen.” The machine remained on, softly whirling. There were few rules at the agency, other than Don’t Fail, but Cade insisted on having the first interview with a client recorded. Chad saw no reason to break that rule. But he saw that having the recorder on troubled his client. He understood the desire for privacy, too. “Pretend it’s not there.”

The half smile, tinged in irony, rose to her lips unconsciously. Easier said than done, she thought. “I’ve spent half my life pretending it wasn’t there.”

Light-brown brows drew together over the bridge of Chad’s nose. “Excuse me?”

She raised her eyes to his. Veronica knew she sounded as if she was babbling. Her mind felt so scattered, so out of focus. She couldn’t seem to catch hold of a single thought for more than a moment.

Was it possible he didn’t know who she was? Maybe. Right now, she wasn’t certain who she was herself. Other than a mother whose heart had just been ripped out. When she’d first realized what had happened, it had been a struggle just keeping herself together and breathing. Every fiber of her being had wanted to cry out for help.

But who was there to call? Just acquaintances. And family members who were on the fringe of her existence. Not even her own family, but Robert’s.

Robert was gone and he had been the only one she had ever permitted herself to lean on. So there had been no one to turn to, no one to call.

Just as well. The voice on the phone had warned her not to call anyone. Not to tell anyone that Casey had been kidnapped.

Or else…

Or else. The two most horrible words she had ever heard. Veronica couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence, not even in her mind. The consequences were too terrible for her to contemplate.

“Nothing,” she murmured, dismissing her rambling comment.

Talk, damn it, Ronnie. You’re wasting precious time.

“I went to pick up my son this afternoon and he wasn’t there.” This time the tears did break through, trickling from the corners of her eyes. Angry with herself, she quickly wiped them away with the side of her hand. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m not like this normally.”

Coming around the front of the desk, Chad handed her a tissue. “There’s nothing normal about this.” Gently he prodded her along. “Where were you picking your son up from?”

Veronica drew what composure she could manage back to her, covering herself in the remaining shreds. It was hard to think.

“A birthday party. Andy Sullivan’s fifth birthday party. The Sullivans don’t live far from us and…” Her voice broke. Why hadn’t she remained with him? Why had she left Casey and gone? Other parents had stayed. Defending herself from her own accusations, she raised her head and looked at Chad. “I didn’t want to be one of those overprotective mothers. I didn’t want him being afraid of his own shadow, the way—”

Abruptly she broke off, waving away the rest of her words. The investigator looking at her with intense blue eyes didn’t need to know about the fears that had been inflicted on her by a feelingless nanny to whom her grandfather had arbitrarily handed over the responsibility of raising his two orphaned grandchildren—her and her sister, Stephanie. That had no bearing on this.

Nothing had a bearing, except finding Casey.

Struggling, she continued. “I went to pick him up and he wasn’t there. Anne—”

“Anne?” Looking at her, he jotted the name down on the small pad before him.

She was getting ahead of herself again, tripping over her thoughts as they ran up at her from all directions at once. It wasn’t going to do Casey any good if she kept falling apart like this.

Veronica tried again. “Anne Sullivan, Andy’s mother. Anne said she hadn’t seen Casey since the cake was served. The children were playing different games…”

He nodded, encouraging her. “How many children would you say were at the party?” He saw the bewildered look in her eyes. She was focusing on her son; the others didn’t exist for her. “Take a guess. Five? Ten?”

She shrugged helplessly before she could stop the gesture. “Thirty, forty—Anne Sullivan knows a lot of people.”

With that many around, it was simple enough to lose track of one small boy for a few minutes. And he knew that a few minutes was all it took. “Was the birthday party being held at the house?”