A Hero in Her Eyes

Walker crossed his arms before his chest, a physically and emotionally immovable force. “Uh-huh. And just what is it that brings you to my door now?”

He didn’t believe her, she thought. She’d caught him off guard with her question about the lights, shaken him up, but he still clung to his disbelief. In his place, maybe she’d do the same.

All she could so was tell him the truth. “I’ve been having dreams about Bonnie. I think she’s using me to get a message to you.”

A sneer crept into his eyes, over his lips. He’d caught her in a lie. “I thought you said you didn’t ‘channel.”’

“It’s not channeling,” she corrected gently. As far as she knew, that had never happened to her. “Channeling a spirit supposedly involves someone who’s passed on. Your daughter is very much alive, Mr. Banacek.”

Walker wanted to shout at her, to shake her until she recanted. He didn’t know how, but he managed to hold on to his temper. “Oh, and I have your guarantee on this, Miss—” He broke off in frustration.

“Eldridge,” she repeated quietly. “Eliza Eldridge.” Opening her purse, she took out a business card and handed it to him.

Now they were getting to it, he thought cynically. The pitch. He glanced down at the card.

“ChildFinders, Inc.?” Angry, he shoved the card back into her hand. “What is this, some alternative form of ambulance chasing?”

She had no choice but to take the card back. “No, that’s just a number where you can reach me during the day.” And she hoped he would. “This has nothing to do with the agency.”

He was going to close the door, she saw it in his eyes. Eliza placed her hand on his arm in a silent entreaty. “The dream keeps recurring,” she told him. “I went to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Web site and looked for someone who resembled the girl in my dream.”

A very convincing cover story, but that was all it was: a story. A one-story-fits-all with no truth to it. He made no effort to hide his contempt. “Is that how you drum up business?”

She could almost feel the wall of hostility he’d erected around himself. “No, we have no need to drum up business. Sadly, there’s more than enough to go around. We get calls to search for missing children from all over the country.”

“Then why are you bothering me?” he demanded, suddenly drained. Too drained to even pretend to be polite. “Go answer them and leave me alone.”

She tried to stop him, but even as she did, she felt it was futile. He’d already made up his mind. “Please, Mr. Banacek, I know I can help. I just need you to let me see her room, touch some of her things.”

He wasn’t about to parade Bonnie’s things in front of a stranger, no matter how altruistic she pretended to be. “No. Now go back and pull your innocent act on someone else. I’ve been through it all and I’m not buying.”

One swift movement was all it took. The door was closed.

Eliza looked down at the card still in her hand. She knew that even if she rang the bell again, Walker Banacek wouldn’t answer. Wouldn’t listen to what she had to tell him. Wouldn’t be swayed. He’d isolated himself so far away from hope that right now, there was no way to reach him. She needed something tangible to show him, to make him change his mind.

After debating for a moment, she took her business card and inserted it between the double doors just above the doorknob. Walking away, she glanced back at the card. She had no way of knowing whether he’d take it when he opened the door tomorrow morning.

Not for the first time, she wished her insight would allow her some way to access it at will.

But she was as much in the dark about what caused the visions, the sudden rifts in her own present, as most people. All she knew was that it worked when it worked.

Glancing again over her shoulder as she walked back to her car, she thought of the man holed up inside the big house.

Despite his pain, Walker Banacek wasn’t the important one here, she reminded herself. It was his daughter. Eliza couldn’t lose sight of that.

Things would probably be a great deal easier for her if the girl’s father gave her his help, but one way or another, she intended to try to find the lost girl. She knew she wouldn’t get any sleep unless she did at least that much.

He hardly slept.

As he got out of bed the next day, Walker blamed his endless night on the woman who had come to his door, offering to do magic for him. Offering to find a child whom he had forced himself to accept was forever out of his life. Several times in the wee hours of his night, he damned the petite woman for disrupting the life he struggled to keep orderly.

If he were honest with himself, he thought as he got dressed, his life was in a continuous state of disruption and had been for the past two years.

Nothing was ever going to be the same again. The ache that had suddenly surged through him threatened to undo him completely. He banked it down.

She had brought it to a head, he thought angrily, this Eliza Eldridge and her claims of clairvoyance. It didn’t take a clairvoyant to see that she was just out to make some money for herself and this so-called organization she belonged to.

Well, she wouldn’t be making it off him, or his grief. He wouldn’t allow it.

Too agitated to eat, Walker deliberately walked past his refrigerator without stopping. Crossing to the front door, he decided to pick up a coffee on the way to the office.

Maybe coffee would wake him up.

A small, pearl-colored rectangle floated to the step by his foot as he opened the door. He stooped to pick it up, then cursed softly.

She’d left her card.

What part of “no” didn’t she understand?

About to throw the card away, Walker stopped and looked again. Changing his mind, he pocketed it. He’d call his lawyer this morning when he got a chance and tell Jason to look into getting a restraining order against this Eliza Eldridge and ChildFinders, Inc. Undoubtedly, she didn’t give up easily.

There was something in her eyes…

He didn’t have time to think about a nicely packaged huckster. Didn’t have time to think about anything that had to do with Bonnie and the life he’d had before everything had turned pitch black for him.

Forcing himself to think of nothing but the work piled up on his desk in the office, Walker hurried to his car.

“She’s on the level, Walker.”

Walker frowned, wondering if the connection had somehow gotten scrambled. Hand on the phone receiver, he sat up in the rigid office chair. “What? Aren’t you too old to believe in witches and women who cast spells?”

There was a deep chuckle on the other end of the line. “God, I hope I’m never too old to believe in women who cast spells.” Jason’s comment was directed at Walker as his lifelong friend rather than as the client who kept him and his law office on year-round retainer. “But I looked into her just as you asked me to yesterday, and Eliza Eldridge isn’t any of the things you accused her of being. As far as the police are concerned, she’s the real McCoy. She’s helped solve several prominent kidnapping cases here, in Texas and in Georgia.”

Walker found that impossible to believe. “By doing what, looking into her crystal ball?”

Of the two of them, Walker had been the more practical one, even as far back as grammar school. His only dreams had revolved around the creation of the company he now headed.

“Hey, even Shakespeare said there were more things in heaven and earth than we could ever possibly understand.”

“Yeah, like people who prey on other people’s grief.”

“Hey, you’ll get no argument from me, Walker. I’ve come across plenty of those in my time. All I’m saying is that it looks as if Eliza Eldridge and the agency she works for are one of the good guys. From everything I’ve read, ChildFinders, Inc. has a one-hundred-percent track record for recovering the children they’re hired to find,” Jason said.

“And you don’t find that somehow suspect?”

“There’s a place for everything in this world, Walker. Even miracles. If she came looking for you with some kind of message, I say go for it. What have you got to lose?”

“What have I got to lose? How about the bits and pieces of me that I’ve managed to pull together over the past two years? Damn it, Jason…”