The air in Vancouver was crisp, the leaves bright with fall color. The wind carried the tang of forests. If a person had to run, Vancouver wouldn’t be such a bad place to run to.
First thing after checking into my hotel, I visited the family who adopted Rory’s sister. It had taken some doing to get their names, but Bruin Security Services was creative and discreet.
The Miller family lived in a tidy home in a tidy suburb. A plaque over the front door announced “God Bless This House.” A woman with wispy gray hair answered the door.
“Ma’am,” I said, holding out my ID and letting her get a good look at it through the screen door, “I’m investigating the disappearance of Sarah. Are you Mary Miller?”
“It’s been so many years,” she said dubiously. “No one was able to find her then. Why are you searching now?”
“Her birth family has just learned of her existence, Mrs. Miller.”
“Oh.” She opened the screen door. “Come on in. Nathan is at work.”
The house smelled of cauliflower with a faint underscent of aged milk. The walls were covered with family photos: the woman in front of me with a soft-looking man and multiple children, the children alone, the children in groups by age and sex, young adults and their children.
“Quite a family you’ve got.” I indicated the largest family photo, which showed three generations.
“Yes indeed. We’ve been blessed with lovely children and grandchildren.”
“Is Sarah in any of these photos?”
The woman bit her lip. “She was. But when we couldn’t find her, it upset the children too much.” She added defensively, “We still remember her in our prayers. Not a day has gone by that we haven’t prayed for her soul.”
I forced pleasant understanding on my face.
“Have a seat.” She waved at a stuffed chair.
After I sat, she perched on the couch opposite me. “Her parents—are they godly people?”
“No.” I sighed.
She nodded. “It always comes out. Sarah—well, she had trouble following the rules of the house. None of our other children…” Her voice trailed off.
“Did you adopt other children, Mrs. Miller?”
“Oh yes.” She went on to tell me about them, clearly proud. She hadn’t been proud of Sarah.
I asked, “Did Sarah have any unusual traits? Anything that might help to suggest where she would have gone?”
“Not at all,” she said quickly. “She liked going on hikes, but as we told her, it wasn’t safe for her to go by herself. It caused a lot of friction, because my husband set very definite rules. It wasn’t good that she refused to abide by them.”
“No,” I said noncommittally.
She didn’t have anything else to share that wasn’t in the police reports, but she did find a photo of the seventeen-year-old Sarah that I could keep. I thanked her and left.
Sitting in my rental car, I shook off the tension that had gripped me while I was in the Miller house. That woman had been too much like the neighbors who’d killed my parents. I could imagine the struggles Sarah faced as a shifter child in a human household. That cold-blooded Richard Marsden, separating twin cubs and leaving one to die.
My visit with Mrs. Miller cemented my decision to keep the fuck away from Yvette. Humans and shifters weren’t meant to mix.
Next I went to the park where Sarah had last been seen. There wouldn’t be any sign of her after all this time, but it helped to get an idea of where she might have run, assuming her disappearance was tied into her ability to shift. Bear had already contacted the local chief, with no luck. If she had shifted, she’d avoided notice from any shifters here.
I logged into the private Bruin Security Services website to add the day’s activities to the database. As security head I had access to all the reports that had been uploaded. I glanced over them, checking the status of current investigations.
Of course I looked at the reports about the rogue wolves. Bill had gone to Utah to check on sightings there. Utah wasn’t wolf-friendly and neither was Nevada, so it made sense that if the rogues headed west they kept going until they reached California.
And it was perfectly normal that I would check to see if the rogues had bothered Becky or Yvette again. A quick status check showed they hadn’t, but I was compelled to read the daily report about Yvette’s activity anyway. It could be her shadow had missed something.
Her shadow hadn’t. He included every detail, including the estimated height and weight and clothing worn of the boy who walked Yvette to her car.
I calmed my breathing and forced my claws to shift back. It was nothing to me if she took up with a human boy. Nothing. I wanted to rip his steaming guts from his belly, but that was just unreleased sexual tension. She was the last person I’d been with, so my thoughts were fixated on her. That was all.
My bear snarled at me. I snarled back, switched off my laptop, and went to spend an hour in the hotel gym.
When I came back to my room, I was surprised to find a message waiting for me from Bear.
— I want to see you in my office tomorrow morning.