Читать книгу A Hero in Her Eyes - Marie Ferrarella, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 8

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.

“Just give me a few minutes of your time to explain, please.”

The door didn’t open.

“If you don’t leave now,” he called to her, “I’ll call the police.”

If he thought that was a threat, he was going to be disappointed, she thought. She’d been subjected to far worse. “Ask for Lieutenant Trent Lanihan. He’ll vouch for me.”

For a moment there was nothing but silence, and she thought that perhaps he had walked away, after all. And then, to her surprise, the door opened, but not enough to allow her to come in.

“Look, trust me, I’ve heard it all,” Walker snapped coldly as he stood in the doorway. “So you can take your crystal ball, your tarot cards, your channeling persona, or whatever the hell you claim to use to bilk people out of their money and prey on their paltry hopes, and get the hell off my doorstep because I promise you, I am not in the mood for whatever bill of goods it is you’re trying to sell me.”

But before Walker could close the door on her again, Eliza wedged her body into the doorway, deterring his attempts to throw her out. He would have to do it bodily, or be forced to listen to her.

When he glared at her incredulously, she met his gaze not defiantly, but with such understanding that it took his breath away. Stunned, he stopped holding the door firmly in place and listened.

“I don’t use a crystal ball, tarot cards or a channeling persona,” she told him in a soft voice meant to inspire confidence and soothe an impassioned beast. Her mouth curved slightly; she knew exactly what he was thinking. “I’m not a quack, Mr. Banacek. I have no explanation for my abilities, I only know that there are times when I’m made aware of things that other people aren’t, and at times I can see things that other people don’t.”

He sincerely doubted that. She didn’t “see” things; what she accomplished she did with hypnosis. In his opinion, there was no other explanation for why he’d momentarily ceased pushing her out. No other explanation why he wasn’t pushing her out this second. It had to be hypnosis. One look into her eyes would convince anyone of that. They were a light shade of blue, so light that it made him think of the nylon used in making translucent nightgowns. Even now they seemed to be invading his very mind.

He blinked, rousing himself. Whatever tricks she was attempting to pull, they weren’t going to work on him. He’d been through too much already. “Go away,” he ordered sternly.

Eliza hated being put in the position of forcing herself on someone, but this was too important for her to turn away. A child’s life could be hanging in the balance.

“Not yet, Mr. Banacek, not until you hear me out. When I’m finished, if you still want me to leave, I will. No calls to the police will be necessary.”

Walker was torn. He didn’t like being played for a fool, but he had to admit that no matter how hard he tried to smother it, to bury it, there was still a small part of him that clung to irrational hope, hope that flew in the face of all the statistics to the contrary. Hope of finding Bonnie.

His eyes held hers. Then, after a beat, he opened the door a little wider. But his body remained in the way, blocking access to his house. He wasn’t about to let her mistake this for an invitation.

“What is this to you?”

He had a right to question. “A lost child, Mr. Banacek,” she replied softly. “What is it to you?”

How dare she? His eyes dissolved into angry slits as he glared at her. “A trick, a ploy. I don’t know whether you’re a reporter, a tragedy groupie or just a crackpot—”

And he had been besieged by all of them, Eliza thought. In large numbers. There was nothing she could do about that. But to have his help, she needed to change his mind. “There is a fourth choice.”

“Which is?” His tone was guarded. Hypnotically beautiful eyes not withstanding, he wasn’t about to be suckered into anything. Those days were gone.

Her eyes looked straight into him. “That I’m on the level.”

Looking away, Walker laughed shortly. Even if he might once have been inclined to believe the kind of nonsense she was spouting, he’d learned his lesson the hard way. His wife had paid clairvoyants to help. All they had done was help separate Rachel from her money. Bonnie was dead and he had to accept that. Had accepted it. He wasn’t about to retrace his steps or retract his decision, the decision it had taken him months of soul-wrenching searching to reach.

He placed his hand on the door, ready to push it closed again. “Sorry, I don’t believe in things that go bump in the night.”

Her hand touched his as she moved to stop him. A volley of lights blazed before her eyes. House lights. Bedroom lights. “Is that why you keep the lights on at night?”

Because he couldn’t summon a single word to answer her with, Walker stared at her in stunned silence.

“When you go to sleep at night,” she continued in a gentle voice, knowing that he desperately needed comfort, needed hope, not someone who raised her voice to match his in a dual of words, “is that why you don’t turn off the lights?”

“How did you know…?” For the briefest of moments, Walker actually entertained the thought that she was on the level. And then he came to his senses. There was a logical explanation, there always was. He just had to look for it. “You read that somewhere, didn’t you?”

Although, in all honesty, he didn’t remember ever telling anyone that, not even his sister. It was just something between him and the memory of the child he still carried in his heart. The child who was no more.

“No.” The single word was devoid of guile. “Until this morning, I didn’t even know who you were.” She’d missed the news media’s coverage of the tragedy, missed the stories on page one and then page three until they had worked their way to the back of the newspaper. “I wasn’t in the city the month your daughter was kidnapped. I was in Georgia.” Holding the hand of a man who had never accepted her. Holding his hand as he lay dying.

Eliza pushed the memory away. She was here to offer her help because Bonnie Banacek was missing, not to remember things that caused her pain. Pain only interfered with her ability to see things clearly.

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…”

Jason felt for Walker, he really did. He’d been there for him, as much as Walker would allow anyone to be there for him, and had seen what the kidnapping had done to him. And to Walker’s wife, Rachel. One tragedy had begat another. “Yeah, I know.”

“No, you don’t,” Walker said with finality. “You don’t know. You couldn’t possibly know until it’s happened to you what it feels like to lose your little girl. To finally have to admit to yourself that there’s no hope, that she’s never going to come back, never going to throw those little arms around you and hug you as if you’re the most important person in the world. Never feel those tiny little lips on your cheek when you’ve won her heart because you bought her a stupid pair of pink toe shoes—”

Abruptly, Walker stopped, knowing he’d said too much, had gotten too angry at a friend whose only sin was in wanting to help.

When he spoke again, his voice quavered. “I just don’t know if I can go through it all again, Jase. I don’t know if I could live with myself.”

“Could you live with yourself if you turned your back on this, knowing there might be some chance, however slim, that you could find Bonnie? And that you passed it up?”

Walker made no answer.

He didn’t have to.

There were no two ways about it. Savannah Walters was an absolute gem. Eliza wondered what the firm had done without her before Sam had found her daughter, married her and subsequently talked her into leaving her job and coming to work for ChildFinders. The woman was an absolute whiz at the computer. More to the point, she knew her way around what was, to Eliza, the mysterious world of the Internet. Savannah could uncover information in seconds where it would have taken her weeks, Eliza marveled as she went over the stacks of files, clippings and random bits of information Savannah had assembled for her.

Specifically, she’d asked Savannah to see if she could dig up any information regarding the Banacek kidnapping. Savannah had unearthed old news articles dealing with the kidnapping and any bodies that had subsequently turned up fitting Bonnie’s general physical description over a nine-state area. She’d also asked for the names and known whereabouts of any registered child molesters.

It was a humbling mound of information, but Eliza intended to do it all justice. Maybe reading the files would trigger something for her, she thought. She felt she owed it to Bonnie, no matter what the girl’s father thought of her.

“Hey, there’s the brand-new Daddy now.” Eliza heard Megan Andreini Wichita crow almost right outside her door. It sounded as if Megan was hugging Cade. “How does it feel?”

Cade had taken the day before off to be with his wife, after having spent the previous evening coaching her through labor and delivery.

“I’ll let you know when and if I get some sleep. Right now, I’m so tired I feel like I’m walking around in someone else’s dream.” He stopped to pop his head into Eliza’s office. “You were right. Mike had the baby at 3:32. A beautiful baby girl.” Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out the instamatic photo he’d taken and passed it around for the women to see. “Her face’s a little flattened right now, but—”

“Her face,” Eliza said, taking the photograph from him to get a better look, “is absolutely perfect. And so is she.” She handed the photograph over to Savannah. “You must be very, very proud.”

Normally a man of few words, he wasn’t given to bragging. “Just relieved it’s over.”

“Hey, it’s not over, Papa,” Savannah, the mother of two children herself, told him affectionately. “You should know that. It’s not over for eighteen years. And even then, I hear it doesn’t stop.”

Megan handed the photograph back to the man she had originally met when she’d come as an FBI agent to question him about his missing son. “Boy, you people really know how to sell motherhood.”

“Nothing better in this world,” Savannah swore solemnly.

Megan chewed on her lower lip, seeming uncustomarily uncertain. “That’s good.” She took a deep breath as the others looked at her questioningly. “Because I think I’m on my way.”

“My God, really?” Savannah asked.

Megan had only been back to the office for a couple of days. She and her husband, Garrett, had finally managed to coordinate their schedules to take a long overdue honeymoon.

“Wow, you certainly know how to end off a honeymoon right,” Cade commented.

Eliza threw her arms around Megan, then stepped back. Megan looked at her with an unspoken question in her eyes. Eliza nodded with a smile. “Yes, you are.”

Megan squealed and hugged her hard.