A Hero in Her Eyes

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 this. Moreover, he couldn’t believe that he was actually ready to believe whatever her answer might be. But Eliza had somehow known about the toe shoes, and no one but the FBI had been given that piece of information. That did make her claim more credible.

“Did you see how many of them there were? In your dream?” he added, feeling foolish and agitated at the same time.

Eliza continued watching his expression, knowing that the answer she gave wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “I didn’t see anyone else.”

He could feel his frustration beginning to build again. “But then, how do you know it’s not just a man or a woman involved?”

“I sensed them, their presence,” she clarified before he could say anything. “They were close by, looking for her.”

“Looking for her?” He didn’t understand. Part of him still felt this woman was just toying with him, seeing how far she could lead him down the garden path before he yelled, “Enough!” “Why? Where was she? Did she run away from them?”

Eliza shook her head. She knew how all this had to sound to him and she wished she could give him more concrete answers, but she wasn’t about to make up anything. One fabrication, one stretch of the truth, and any trust she might be able to build up in him would be irrevocably shattered.

“I’m not sure. Maybe she was just playing in the field and had gotten separated from them.”

It made sense, he supposed. But with the logic came a numbing realization. It felt as if something had died within him.

“Then it was someone else she was calling ‘Daddy,”’ he concluded bitterly.

“No—”

The firm note in her voice surprised him.

“It was you she was calling to.”

He couldn’t tell if Eliza was just saying what she knew he wanted to hear. “How could you tell?”

“I just knew,” she told him simply. “I could feel what she was feeling.”

He couldn’t allow himself to get strung out on false hopes. Though it cost him, Walker tried to approach this as logically as he could. “Couldn’t you have just gotten confused—dreamt about the actual search that went on at the time of her kidnapping?”

The background had been hazy, but not the feelings she’d experienced. “No, these were the people who had kidnapped her. They were looking for her. A man and a woman.”

“A man and a woman,” he repeated. All right, if he was buying into this, he was going to go all the way and pretend she was telling him something that was real. “What did they look like? Can you describe them?”

If it were only that easy. But at times, her gift just frustrated her, teasing her with pieces of a puzzle that refused to take its true shape. “I wish I could, but as I told you, I didn’t actually see them.”

“You didn’t actually ‘see’ her, either,” he said pointedly. The disdain in his voice was aimed more at himself than at her.

It was going to be a struggle for him to come around. But she already knew that. “Not in the sense you mean, no.”

He didn’t want to be patronized. His eyes narrowed. “Not in any sense.”

This wasn’t getting them anywhere. “If you want to help me find your daughter, Mr. Banacek, you’re going to have to stop challenging me at every turn, and accept some things on faith.”

He laughed shortly. “Faith is something that I find in very short supply right now. And it’s Walker, not Mr. Banacek,” he reminded her.

He realized that he’d snapped the last part at her, and took a breath to calm himself. He was coming at her like an angry timber wolf emerging from a gutted forest, and that wasn’t helping matters.

Walker tried again, his voice lower this time. “What did you mean just now, when you said if I wanted to help you find my daughter?”