A Hero in Her Eyes

Struggling with his thoughts, Walker raised his eyes to hers again. He could feel her empathy, feel her excitement. It was as if she were telegraphing it to him somehow.

His breath caught in his throat.

Was it the emotion-packed moment that had him hallucinating this way, or was there something about this woman that spoke to him? Something that delved into his innermost being and somehow connected with what he kept hidden there?

He made no movement to withdraw his hand, enjoying, instead, the warmth. “Thank you.”

His thanks embarrassed her. She hadn’t accomplished what she’d set out to do yet. “Save that for when we find her.”

A Hero in Her Eyes

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Jessi,

The heart is an incredible muscle. It bounces back,

and to remain healthy it needs to be exercised.

If at first…

Love,

Mom

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Prologue

She was running, running because someone was after her.

She ran blindly through grass that came up to her hips, threatening to trip her as she made her way to where the oak tree stood. Her heart was pounding so hard, it blotted out the sounds of the meadow.

Reaching the oak, she stopped, panting and pressing her cheek against the coarse bark as if it were an old friend. Her only friend.

She had no friends.

She wasn’t allowed to have any. He wouldn’t let her. She wasn’t allowed to talk with anyone, couldn’t play with anyone.

She was afraid of him.

The lady tried to be nice, but she was afraid of her, too. Afraid of the wild look in the lady’s eyes. Afraid of those big hands that stroked her too hard, hugged her too close. Afraid of the lady who called her a name that wasn’t hers.

He was coming. She could feel it. Deep down in her chest, she could feel it.

Daddy, where are you? Come find me. Please!

And then she heard him.

Heard him calling her. Calling that name he told her to answer to.

“Miranda, where the hell are you?”

Hiding by the tree, she squeezed her eyes tightly shut and wished she could disappear.

But she didn’t disappear.

And he found her.

She whimpered as hands reached out and roughly snatched her from the ground.

Dragging her away.

Back to the ugly house.

Eliza bolted upright, drenched in perspiration despite the chill in the air.

Slowly, the things around her came into focus. She was in bed, in her own room.

Safe.

Gasping for air to steady her erratic pulse, she leaned forward and dragged her hand through her hair. That was the fifth time she’d had that dream in as many nights. Wasn’t it ever going to stop?

She sighed and leaned her forehead against her knees, hugging her legs to her. She knew the answer to that question. It wasn’t going to stop.

Not until she figured out who the little girl was.

Chapter 1

“No offense, Eliza, but you look like hell.”

As the words penetrated her brain, Eliza glanced up from the computer screen. Her eyes felt dry from staring at Internet photographs for the last two-and-a-half hours. Ever since six this morning.

Unable to sleep, she’d come in early and planted herself in front of her computer, determined to put a name to the face in her dreams. She’d looked up the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Web site, the first resource everyone at the agency turned to.

Right now, the faces she was looking at were all beginning to run together in her mind.

Holding back the sigh that had taken possession of her, Eliza massaged her temples where a serious headache was starting to take hold.

Nevertheless, the smile she offered Cade Townsend, the founder of ChildFinders, Inc., was genuine. “No offense taken.”

“When did you last get a good night’s sleep?” Cade crossed his arms before him as he regarded her face more closely. “And if you don’t mind my asking, just what are you doing here so early? Don’t clairvoyants sleep?”

“On occasion.” Eliza deflected his question neatly. “And I could ask the same of you,” she added, flipping to the next file.

“You could,” he allowed affably. “And my answer would be that sometimes I like coming in while the office is still quiet, before the day and chaos catch up to it. It gives me the illusion that I’m actually on top of things.” And then he smiled. “And I’m here because my wife said I was driving her crazy.”

Amusement highlighted Eliza’s fine-boned face as she welcomed a respite from the darker things that occupied her thoughts. “Oh?”

“McKayla says I was hovering around her and her swollen belly like a starving man watching the timer on a stove, waiting for the roast to be ready.” Cade paused, then asked, “You don’t, by any chance, have any clue as to when Mike might give—”

She’d wondered what had taken Cade so long to ask. There were those who regarded her and her gift to be in the same realm as carnival performers, as turbaned pretenders who could tell a fortune or suddenly “see” the future at the turn of a coin. She’d grown up with people like that coming in and out of her life.

But Cade Townsend, as well as the others here at ChildFinders, had given her nothing but the utmost respect, treating her not like an oddity, an anomaly of nature, but a woman with something very real, very tangible to offer the organization. Cade was the first to cite her hard work and dedicated professionalism. That she was one of the few true clairvoyants, he’d once said, was only a plus, but not her greatest asset.

She liked Cade. He made her feel as if she actually belonged.

Eliza laughed. “I’m not sure that McKayla would welcome my touching her belly, trying to divine an answer for you.”

She knew he’d seen her do it before, touch things that belonged to a kidnapped victim, trying to commune with an essence the rest of them could not fathom. Though McKayla liked Eliza, Eliza could just hear his wife’s very vocal reaction to that.

Cade waved away his unfinished request. “You’re absolutely right. I’ve never seen a woman get so testy before. Not that she was the most easygoing woman to begin with, but she was at least reasonable,” he confided in an uncustomary moment of intimacy.

She understood exactly what he was saying. Eliza stretched, leaning back in the chair. Her back ached. “They’re called hormones, Cade. We’re all blessed—or cursed—with them to some extent. Hers are just a little out of sync right now.”

He seemed to appreciate the charitable explanation, and laughed softly. “Now there’s an understatement.”

About to leave, Cade paused, curious. He looked over Eliza’s shoulder at the monitor. They were all acutely familiar at the agency with the Web site she was looking at. Ever changing, ever growing, the Web site was filled with a preponderance of photographs of smiling children of all ages. Children who had vanished out of lives that had been carefully or carelessly laid out, breaking the hearts of those who cared about them.

From the looks of it, Eliza had gone through at least two-thirds of the listings. He vaguely recognized the face she was looking at. The girl had been on the site ever since he’d founded ChildFinders, when his own son had been kidnapped. Darin had eventually been found. This girl had not.

He rested his hand on the monitor. “You didn’t tell me you’re working on a new case.” His only rules were that he be kept apprised of every new case that came in and that the first client interview be taped to prevent any misunderstandings down the line.

Eliza half turned in her chair to look at him. “That’s because I’m not. At least, not exactly.”

“Can you get a little more specific than that?”

Though Cade was an incredibly understanding man Eliza had a great deal of respect for, a lifetime of having to defend herself, of being thought of as “the different one” had her unconsciously bracing herself for unpleasantness.

“There’s this child in my dreams—” She stopped, wondering how to phrase what she needed to say.

Cade’s eyes were nothing if not kind. “Go on,” he coaxed quietly, interested.

Feeling suddenly self-conscious, she gave a seemingly careless shrug. “You don’t have time to listen.”

“Sure I do. It’s early, remember?” Cade leaned a hip against the side of her desk. “And my last case wrapped up five days ago.”

Okay, he asked for it, Eliza thought, taking a breath. “There’s this child. She’s running through a field. There’s tall, tall grass that makes it hard for her to run, but she pushes on anyway. She’s about four, maybe five, blond, green-eyed and very frightened. She keeps calling out to her father to come find her. Except he doesn’t.”

Listening intently, Cade nodded. “Anything else?”

She closed her eyes for a moment to focus. “I see a farmhouse in the background.” Eliza opened her eyes again and looked at Cade. “It has that old, run-down look, like one of those places you see in those old documentaries about the Depression.”

“Abandoned?”

She’d gotten that feeling, but she couldn’t be sure. It was the little girl who had held all of her attention. “Maybe.”

“What makes you think the little girl is real?” Cade asked. His tone was tactful, kind. “I mean, she might be a fabrication of your mind, a holdover from a movie you saw or television program you caught, or even a composite from your past cases.”

It was a question she’d already asked herself. “No, she’s real. I know it.” Eliza was as certain of that as she was of who and what she was. “Someone’s taken her, I’m sure of it. I’ve had this dream over and over again, Cade. In the last week, I’ve had it for five nights straight.” She looked back at the monitor. The little girl had to be in there somewhere. “She’s real, Cade, and she’s out there. Lost. Looking to come home.”

“Anything I can do?” Cade asked.

Until she found a match somehow, there was nothing any of them could do. Eliza sighed. “You can ask Carrie to buy more coffee when she gets a chance. We’re almost out.” She nodded at the mug on her desk. “I made a double batch this morning.”

Cade moved away from the desk, inadvertently brushing against Eliza’s arm. “Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll be sure to steer clear of it.” And then he grinned. “Although Megan will probably tell you it’s too weak. If you need any help, let me know.”

The slight contact had created a burst of light within her. Eliza looked at Cade confidently. “Sure thing, but you’ll be too busy.”

“No, I—” The significance of her words hit him. He realized that he’d accidentally brushed against her. From what she’d told him, he knew that Eliza’s insights came at will. Cade looked at her now, his eyes widening. “Really?”

She smiled broadly at him. You’d think this was his first time expecting, instead of a second go-round. “Really.”

He crossed back to her, more eager than she’d ever seen him. “When?”

“This afternoon,” she answered with no hesitation. In her mind, she’d seen the baby, seen one of the assisting nurses recording the time. “3:32.”

“3:32,” he echoed like a man in a trance. He wasn’t skeptical, he really wasn’t, but he would have been less than human if he didn’t ask, “But two minutes ago, you said you didn’t know.”

She knew he wasn’t challenging her. At times, this whole thing left her in awe herself.

“Two minutes ago, I didn’t. Like I’ve told you, I have no control over this. Things come to me. Or they don’t. All I can do is pass on the information when I get it.” Eliza had made her peace with this, though there were times when it still proved frustrating to her. “I’m not much more than a conduit.”

“You’re a lot more than that.” Cade squeezed her hand, grateful for her information and for the fact that worrying about McKayla would be behind him soon. As of yesterday, his wife was officially three weeks overdue. “Thanks. And if you need any help with that—” he nodded at the computer monitor “—I can ask Chad if he has any extra—”

“Thanks, but I don’t think anyone else is going to be able to help, Cade—not yet, at any rate. I’ve only got a vague picture of the little girl in my mind, and right now, I’m the only one who would even recognize her.”

“What we need is a good sketch artist as part of the firm,” Cade commented, leaving. “Well, don’t tire yourself out,” he warned. “I don’t like my operatives dead on their feet, and you’re not going to help that little girl’s case any by turning into a zombie.”

“Zombie, freak. You’re a freak, that’s what you are. Why the hell can’t you be normal, like other little girls?”

The voice echoed in her brain as loudly now as it had any one of the number of times her father had shouted those words at her. They’d come from his own frustration over not being able to understand what was going on with his only child.

He’d been a simple man who understood simple things. His own daughter had seemed like something out of a science-fiction movie to him. He was incapable of bridging the gap that existed between them. After her mother died, that gap had only grown wider.

It had been hard on her father, she told herself now—as she had countless times before in an attempt to smother the hurt his words generated—having a daughter who was different, a daughter with “the gift” as her great-aunt called it.

She’d spent a good portion of her early years wishing the “gift” had been returnable. At the time, she would have given anything to be just like everyone else, just like the “normal” girls her father was forever pointing out to her as a goal to strive for. Being a seer, someone in touch with other people’s pasts and futures, and having those timelines indiscriminately mix with her own present without warning, was more of a curse to her than a gift.

It had certainly been a cross to bear that had made her fearful—until her mother’s aunt, who had endured the same fears, the same trials, had taken her aside to explain the good that could be done with the power she had.

“To ignore it is a sin, Eliza. You have to find a way to use it, to help people. That’s why the good Lord picked you. He knew you could do good with it. Don’t disappoint Him, Eliza. And most of all, don’t disappoint yourself.”

So here she was, with little to no sleep, staring bleary-eyed at an endless series of photographs of children’s faces. Looking for one in particular. Trying to make sense out of her gift and find a reason why she was dreaming of a child she did not know.

It wasn’t the first time, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating, any less challenging.

Behind her, the door to her office closed softly. Eliza blinked, trying to refocus her eyes. Trying to see the girl she’d been missing. The one she was certain was in the computer database somewhere. With a sigh, she reached for the coffee that had grown cold.

About to push away from the computer to take a breather, thinking she might need some distance before she continued the search, something compelled her to look at the next photograph on file.

Eliza’s mouth fell open.

Afraid to blink, to look away, she pressed a key to zoom in. “There you are.”

She had no idea why she was surprised—not when the feeling came, the one that led her to places she would never have thought of going. The feeling that went hand in hand with being clairvoyant. That forced her into people’s faces with bravado when she would much rather have retreated.

Her body at attention, Eliza moved her chair closer to the monitor. “So, hello,” she whispered to the little girl in the photograph. The little girl in her dream. “I’ve been looking for you.”

The moment she’d clicked on the file, seen the small, animated face, a sliver of the dream flashed through her mind’s eye, confirming the identification.

If she concentrated very intently, Eliza could almost swear she heard someone calling for the child. Bonnie.

An eagerness swept over Eliza, erasing her tiredness, erasing everything but the desire to find this child in real life, just the way she had on the Web site.

Quickly she printed out the page with the information. She needed to contact the family.

“Hang on, Bonnie,” she murmured. “We’ll find you.”

He’d discovered that grief, like the possessions scattered within a child’s room, could be boxed up and put out of sight. But unlike the boxes that held his daughter’s clothes and toys, the box that his grief was stored in would periodically appear right before him, without warning, tripping him. Bringing a pain with it that was almost insurmountable.

But he dealt with it.

He had no choice.

He’d made his peace and moved on, not once but twice. Moved on and kept moving. Moving so the box wouldn’t trip him. Moving so that he could pretend he was among the living instead of the walking wounded. Or worse, the walking dead.

And in moving, he went through the motions of living. Those who knew him were taken in by the facade, the performance, and believed Walker Banacek to be a man who had healed from profound wounds that would have felled a lesser person. He had survived his tragedies and found the strength to continue. There was nothing more admirable than that.

It wasn’t even remotely true, but he pretended, for his own sanity, that it was. It was how he got through each day and forced himself to get up each morning. All pretense.

In place of a family life, he dedicated himself to his work. The irony of it never failed to strike him. He dealt with security. Computer security. He’d developed software that kept computers and sensitive information safe—while the security of his family had been breached.

He was the first one in the corporate offices in the morning, the last one to leave at night. Weekends would find him there, as well, working so he wouldn’t have to think, wouldn’t have to feel. He anesthetized himself, and for the most part it worked.

Until he tripped over the box again. Always without warning.

Today had been just that kind of day. He’d tripped over the box, releasing a plethora of memories, of emotions, none of which he was capable of dealing with. Tripped, because today his daughter would have been six years old.

Someone in the office down the hall had been celebrating a birthday. An off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday” was all that was necessary; the thoughts had hooked up to one another instantly, bringing him back to the emotional abyss he’d struggled, time and again, to flee.

Worn from the inside out, Walker made it home, entering the house where lights went on automatically at sundown so that he didn’t have to contend with shadows. So that his mind wouldn’t play tricks on him and make him believe he was seeing an elfin, dancing figure out of the corner of his eye.

Bonnie used to love to dance around the room, pretending to be a ballerina. He’d bought her toe shoes for her fourth birthday, over his wife’s protests. Bonnie had worn them everywhere in place of her shoes. She’d had them on the day she disappeared.

The thought of dinner came and went in a single heartbeat. He wasn’t hungry. He never was anymore. Eating was just something he did to keep going. He vaguely remembered having lunch, and decided that would be sufficient to sustain him until breakfast tomorrow. If he remembered to eat then. A housekeeper came daily, to wipe away the cobwebs and prepare simple meals that were hardly touched. Life went on, in a way.

Walker debated turning on the television set, not because there was anything he wanted to watch, but because the sound of it might interfere with this overwhelming loneliness tripping over the box had triggered.

He didn’t like being alone, but in all this time, he couldn’t make himself allow anyone in to witness the pain he was grappling with.

Riffling through the mail on the counter that the housekeeper had brought in earlier in the day, he heard the doorbell. Ignoring it, he sorted the mail into two piles. Everything that wasn’t a bill went into the pile to be thrown away.

The doorbell rang again. And then again, defying his determination to ignore it. He stopped sorting. Whoever was on the other side of his door obviously refused to accept the obvious—that he wasn’t about to answer.

The ringing continued at one-minute intervals. They weren’t going to go away. There was a time when he would have flown to the door at the first indication of a knock, picked up the phone before the first ring was completed, praying each time that it was someone with news that Bonnie had been found.

But each time, it wasn’t.

Instead, there’d been a bevy of reporters, a squadron of ghouls calling with “sightings” of his daughter, all feeding off the situation. He’d gone on countless emotional roller-coaster rides, only to be disappointed over and over again. Until he’d shut himself off completely, knowing that the call, the knock he was waiting for, would never come.

Expecting no one, angry at being invaded, Walker crossed to the front door. He yanked it open and fairly growled out the single word.

“Yes?”

Startled, Eliza almost took a step back from the man in the doorway. It wasn’t his expression that had her temporarily thinking of retreat, or even the way he’d snapped out the word in something far less than an actual greeting. Rather, it was the aura of pain she felt hovering around him that had unsettled her. Pain so vividly present, she felt she could literally reach out and touch it with her hand.

He was a man who had suffered a great deal, and her heart went out to him. He had Bonnie’s eyes, she thought, looking at him.

“Mr. Banacek?”

“Yes?” This time, the word came out a little more civilized sounding, though it was by no means intended to be friendly.

He wanted to be left alone. Alone to repackage the box and find some way to store it away again. It was hard enough to find a place for himself tonight without having to deal with some wispy dark-blond stranger who looked as if the wind had literally blown her to his doorstep.

“My name is Eliza Eldridge. I’d like to speak to you about Bonnie.”

His jaw tightened so rigidly, had it been made out of glass, Eliza was certain it would have shattered.

“What about her?”

“I believe she’s still alive.” In her entire experience, she’d never found an easy way to say this. “I’ve had this dream about her—”

His eyes darkened to the color of a storm. The next moment, he’d slammed the door shut in her face.

Chapter 2

The ringing began again, more insistent than the last time.

Walker felt himself beginning a not-so-slow burn. Didn’t these people have lives? Didn’t they have anything better to do than torment people touched by tragedy?

He strode back to the door, growing angrier with the woman leaning on his bell with every step he took.

“Go away, Ms. Eldridge,” he shouted through the door. He made no attempt to sound civil. At this point, he just wanted her to get out of his life. “I’m not about to talk to you.”

Eliza placed her outstretched hand on the door, wishing there was some way to touch the man behind it. Wishing she could make Walker Banacek understand and accept what it was that she wanted to do for him. But this part had never come about easily. It wasn’t quite like tilting at windmills, but it came close. People regarded clairvoyants as something between certified lunatics and fairy folk.