Alex Barclay - Blood Loss

Damn you, Paul Louderback.

Paul hugged her lightly, and kissed her cheek. ‘Hello, there.’

To what do I owe the discomfort? ‘How are you?’ said Ren.

‘I’m good. It’s great to see you.’ He paused. ‘Really great.’ He pulled away. And stared a little too long.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

‘You too,’ said Ren. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘She said accusingly …’ He laughed.

‘More miserably than accusingly …’ said Ren.

‘I am here, Agent, because I’m the CARD guy,’ said Paul.

‘What?’ said Ren. ‘Since when?’

‘You don’t call, you don’t write …’

‘I’m … sorry,’ said Ren. Cold turkey was my only meal option.

‘Seeing that my emails clearly didn’t interest you enough to warrant a reply, there was no point in writing to tell you that I’ve been out in the field as an SSA with the Violent Crime Squad … and, well, now I’m with CARD. At your service.’

‘Wow, that’s great,’ said Ren.

‘We were visiting with different agencies in Denver this week, so we were able to respond quickly. So, anything you need …’ He smiled.

‘Sure,’ said Ren. Two girls are missing and I’m thinking why didn’t Paul Louderback tell me he was coming to Denver …

‘You do still have my number, don’t you?’ said Paul.

‘Ha, ha,’ said Ren.

He smiled. ‘We should go for a drink.’

‘We should,’ said Ren. In some other lifetime.

‘Maybe we could have dinner first?’ said Paul.

Don’t do it. Don’t do it. ‘If you insist. OK, I gotta go — there’s a briefing at the Sheriff’s Office.’

‘Hey,’ said Paul, ‘fill me in before you go.’

Ren told him what she knew, and ran from him … as fast as her rattled heart could handle.

Dinner and drinks: way to get over Paul Louderback.

Ren stood up at the front of the conference room and addressed the team, giving them all the details she knew to date. She’d stood here before — when the walls were a little dirtier and the desk was a cheap version of the one she was now laying her notes on. She looked out at a sea of mostly men from the Summit County Sheriff’s Office, Summit County PD, and the FBI. She counted just six women.

She could see a raised hand in the crowd.

‘Ma’am? Detective Owens from the Sheriff’s Office, ma’am.’ He was no older than twenty-three and stood like a soldier. He was fair-haired and sweet-looking, the kind of guy who would never forget his mama. He was holding a small spiral notebook at waist height, and had his pen hovering over the page. There was a look of intense expectancy on his face. ‘Could this have been a pre-meditated abduction?’

‘Well, we’ll keep an open mind on that,’ said Ren.

‘Could Mark Whaley himself have planned it?’ said Owens.

‘The abduction of his own daughter?’ said Ren. ‘I think that’s unlikely — this is his first overnight visit with his daughter after what was, by all accounts, an acrimonious custody battle.’

‘Maybe his daughter could have been like collateral damage in something, like he was planning something, and she walked in on it? Like, he was going to abduct the sitter?’

‘We have yet to establish a prior connection between Mark Whaley and Shelby Royce,’ said Ren. ‘If Mark Whaley did know her before last night, and was genuinely planning to abduct her, it’s unlikely he would have done so while on a weekend away with his wife and family.’

‘But what if it was an opportunistic thing,’ said the detective, ‘he saw the sitter, he liked her …’

‘By all accounts, Shelby Royce was an unexpected part of the Whaley family’s weekend away,’ said Ren. ‘They could not have known that she would be their babysitter — she was not on any agency’s books, despite what the desk clerk first told us.’

Owens sat down, but kept writing.

He stood back up again. ‘Could the babysitter have taken the little girl?’

‘That’s a possibility,’ said Ren.

‘Maybe Laurie Whaley didn’t want to stay overnight with her father,’ said Owens. ‘There could be an abuse issue. And things could have gotten violent …’

‘That’s a possibility,’ said Ren.

‘What if the little girl was injured and ran?’ said Owens. ‘The sitter would have followed her — she was in charge of her. If the little guy was asleep, she would have thought he was safe in the hotel.’

Ren nodded. ‘In that case, with none of their warm clothes on, they wouldn’t have made it too far from the hotel.’

‘But wouldn’t Shelby Royce have gotten in contact with someone if the little girl ran away?’ said one of the female officers. ‘Wouldn’t she call her own parents? I know my daughter calls me if she’s babysitting and something happens, or she’s not sure what to do …’

‘My boss has spoken with the Royces, so we’ll see what they say,’ said Ren. ‘OK, moving on: with regard to vehicles in and out of Breck, there are almost ten thousand extra visitors here this weekend. Because of this, and because of a charity fundraiser on Saturday night, there were no road closures when the authorities were alerted, and without confirmation of a kidnapping, and without any license plates to go on, we don’t know what we’re looking for on the highway cameras, so until that changes, there’s not a lot of point in pulling the tapes.

‘On the Whaleys’ finances, there’s no indication that the family’s going through any financial difficulties — they have $55,000 cash, $3 million in liquid assets, $2 million in a 401k, plus their paid-off $1.1 million-dollar home, and, at today’s rate, $2.3 million in stock options with MeesterBrandt.’

Ren handed the briefing over to Paul Louderback.

‘Thank you, SA Bryce. Good morning, everyone. I’m SSA Paul Louderback and I’m with CARD — the FBI’s Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team. For those of you who don’t know, CARD works alongside agents from the BAU — Behavioral Analysis Unit — the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, and the Crimes Against Children Unit. We’re here as a resource to you all, so if there is anything you need, please, let us know.’

Ren had drifted from his explanation — she knew who Paul Louderback was, she knew why he was there. She knew more about him than anyone else in the room. So, she just watched. She had an opportunity she had not had since she was at the Academy — to stand in a room, and study Paul Louderback.

He was dictionary-definition handsome, the type who comes from a long line of handsome men, men who wear chinos and button-down shirts, and smart shoes. He was too classically good-looking for other men to get Ren’s attraction to him. They would think ‘nah — he’s too straight for her’.

Corruptible …

The thoughts that used to run through Ren’s head were trying to run their course again.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

Part of Ren resented Paul Louderback. He should have known better. She was hardly the first student to have a crush on him.

But it wasn’t a crush. It was more than that. It was just … complicated.

When they first met, she was with someone else, someone her own age, her hometown boyfriend, someone she really cared about. And what hundreds-of-miles-away twenty-four-year-old Catskill boyfriend could compete with a thirty-four-year-old FBI PT instructor? Especially when he didn’t even know a starting pistol had been fired. The guilt had consumed Ren. She left her boyfriend, not because he had done anything wrong, but because she didn’t know what to do with her feelings for Paul Louderback.