Sheryl Nantus - Battle Scars

I smiled. “I try. Do you have a recent picture?”

“Figured you’d be asking for one.” Middleston withdrew a wallet-sized picture from an inside jacket pocket and put it on the desk. The young redhead grinned out at me with youthful optimism. Petite and posing by a fence, Lisa looked like a thousand other young girls on the verge of adulthood.

My hand hovered over it. I paused, wrestling with my conscience. “Forgive me for asking, but why aren’t you going through other...resources?”

I didn’t want to say it out loud but I knew there were Felis inside the police department along with almost every other area of life—we tended to get around. A single phone call from any Board member and everyone from beat cops up to detectives and beyond would be looking for Lisa Middleston both on and off-duty, backed up by the law since she was still a minor for three more days. I’d seen the system at work and it was frighteningly effective in finding lost or missing children.

I might be throwing away a job but I had to ask why he wasn’t using the network.

Middleston stared at the floor. “Don’t want people to be knowing our private business. People start talking, start taking things the wrong way.”

“Ah,” I replied, seeing the light. He wanted to keep his daughter’s disappearance as low-key as possible. The gossip mill would be running overtime if he called the Board and asked for an all-points bulletin to be put out on Lisa. By coming to me, Jake was keeping clear of officially calling a hunt—I was family and I was able to access more resources than he could alone but I was also outcast and the news wouldn’t get around about his daughter’s indiscretions. His family wouldn’t lose face and he wouldn’t be bringing in an outsider.

This flexibility was what had brought me back into the family in the first place a few months ago. A blessing and a curse to be part of two worlds and yet not really fully in either.

As if to remind me, my left arm itched, specifically the still-healing skin just below my shoulder courtesy of a stray bullet slamming into me just over a month ago. It’d been a nasty gouge and I’d laughed when the doctors had suggested a referral to a plastic surgeon.

They hadn’t seen the old scars on my back, courtesy of my family.

Middleston pulled his wallet from his pocket. The worn leather was bulging with cash, the stress of folding it over splitting the ancient hide at the center. I hoped he wasn’t planning to stay in Toronto too long—flashing a wad like that, he was begging to be mugged.

I wasn’t worried about Jake.

I was worried about the mugger.

He pulled out five one-hundred dollar bills. “I assume this’ll be enough to start.”

I tried to look nonplussed at the generous amount. “Let me draw up the contract and I’ll be with you in a minute.” I reached for the bottom desk drawer where I kept the standard forms.

One edge of his mouth twitched downward.

“Or,” I said, “We can just shake hands.”

He was old-school, where a handshake was as good if not better than legal documents.

Not to mention it kept the paper trail invisible. No paperwork, no rumors.

No chance for anyone to connect us.

“Let me know if you need more money.” Middleston got to his feet. “How much detail do you need to get started? You already got her picture.”

My pencil hovered over the blank yellow legal pad. “Let’s start with the basics. Weight, height, eye color.” I pointed the pink eraser at the photo. “That’s great, but just in case she decides to change her hair color or something.”

The older man worked through the list with ease as if he’d been practicing.

I wasn’t so sure he hadn’t been.

“Is there anyone she was seeing? Some boyfriend, past or present, she might be hanging out with?”

The answering scowl was all I needed.

“No one of note,” Jake snarled. “There was a fellow but I told him to shove off.”

“His name?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m not giving you that. You go talk to him you’ll start this whole thing up again and I told her she’s done and over with him.” His lips rolled around as if he wanted to spit and couldn’t. “No one of note, like I said.”

I winced inside. If this was a case of Lisa running off with her boyfriend then this whole thing could get nasty really fast.

“I just want to talk to her,” Jake repeated before I could ask anything else.

He slumped in the chair, the flash of anger gone. All that was left was an old man at the point of tears.

Jake looked at me with weary, bloodshot eyes. “If she’s going to go her own way I want to say goodbye in a right way, like a father should.”

I weighed his words, working both sides of the equation.

“I’ll find her and tell her you want to talk to her.” I jabbed my index finger in the air. “But I won’t let you hurt her.”

Jake leaned back as if I’d slapped him. “I wouldn’t hurt Lisa. She’s all I have now.”

My internal judge told me he was telling the truth. There was also the chance she’d run away with a punk and could be looking for a way out of a destructive relationship. I had no way of knowing the truth.

Other than finding Lisa and asking her.

The small voice reminded me that if I didn’t take the case Jake Middleston might end up stomping around Toronto looking for her alone and headed for a world of trouble. If he ended up in a street fight it could go badly, with his Felis-enhanced senses giving him the upper hand and someone suffering, either human or Felis.

I couldn’t let that happen.

I grumbled inside about a damned conscience that loved to weigh in on my business choices but never showed up when I was pigging out on chocolate donuts to the point of nausea.

“I’ll find her and make sure she’s safe. And tell her you want to talk to her.” It was a compromise but one I could live with.

“Thank you.” He got to his feet and stretched out his hand. “Thank you.”

His grip was hard and strong, a typical Felis test of strength.

I made it through without any broken fingers. “I’ll call when I have something.”

Jake gave me his cell phone number and headed for the front door, walking through my living room. Jazz trilled from where she lay on the couch, rolling onto her back and exposing her tummy for a rub. She looked at him with sad, dark eyes as if she didn’t have enough loving and a bowl full of kibble waiting for her in the kitchen.

He stopped for a second to rub the white cat’s belly, chuckling as she pawed the air. A few mumbled somethings and he moved on to go outside.

I stayed at my desk and listened to him step through the front yard and onto the sidewalk, his work boots pounding the pavement. A minute later a radio blared incoherent country music and an engine roared before dying down to a low hum. The sound lessened and disappeared as I envisioned the pickup truck pulling away and heading down the street.

I picked up my cell phone and tapped in Jess Hammersmythe’s number.

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Jake Middleston, but I’d developed a simple mantra over the years of being a private investigator and hearing very different stories from both sides of a divorce case or insurance claim.

Trust but verify.

If there was a missing girl from my old Pride she’d know about it. And as one of the Board members she’d know if there was more to this than just a teenager running off with her true love of the week who, presumably, was another Felis. There was nothing illegal about it but it’d be a note of concern for the Board, who kept a close eye on all of the family—you didn’t simply disappear into the crowd. A runaway wasn’t enough to call out the troops but there was no way Lisa Middleston was going to stay underground for long.