A Gift of Time (Tassamara) (8 page)

“What next, wings?” Natalya murmured.

Both Grace and Kenzi glanced toward her, Kenzi’s eyes wide.

“And wings,” Grace said promptly, before adding with what sounded like regret, “although not ones that would let you fly, that’s a bit beyond me. But I’m sure I could find ones that sparkle.”

Kenzi lifted the pen and set its tip on the paper, but she didn’t write.

“Come on, sweetie.” Grace’s voice was gentle. “We need to know your name to help you get home.”

The little girl’s chin went up. Natalya’s eyes narrowed. And then the girl pulled the pad closer to her and with short, sharp, strokes, wrote a few quick letters.

“Ha,” said Grace, watching her write. “Very funny.”

The little girl’s mouth twitched as if she were trying not to smile. Or was it trying not to cry?

Grace’s expression was unreadable, before she looked back at the girl. “That’s what you want to say?”

The girl nodded.

“Nothing else?”

The girl shook her head.

“All right.” Grace looked down at the paper and her shoulders lifted, part shrug, part chuckle. “I’ll buy you the doll anyway.”

“What did she write?” Natalya asked. She’d already guessed it wasn’t a name, but was it something horrifying? Words an abusive parent might have called a stubborn child? Or something milder but resistant, like ‘none of your business’? Only in fewer letters, because she couldn’t have written a whole sentence.

Grace didn’t answer for a moment as she tapped on her phone. Finished, she reached out and placed a gentle hand on the girl’s blonde hair, before saying calmly, “Welcome to the family.”

“Wait, what?” Natalya stood. “That’s not—she’s not—she’s only here for the night, Grace. I have to bring her to the sheriff’s office this morning.”

Grace laughed. Picking up the pad, she turned and tossed it in Natalya’s direction. As it fluttered down to the kitchen table, Grace said, “You obviously can’t come shopping with me because of your little friend here, but I assume you’ll be needing some girl’s clothes? I’d guess a size six, maybe seven? I can take care of that for you.”

“Hang on, what are you—” Natalya reached for the pad as she started to protest. What was Grace talking about? And then she saw what the girl had written on the pad.

KENZI.

Colin dropped into his office chair, exhaling with relief. Ten minutes alone, that was all he needed. He pulled open his desk drawer and grabbed a candy bar. He should eat a real meal, not sugar, but he didn’t have time. Nat and the girl would be arriving for a handover to the DCF caseworker any minute and he needed a chance to organize his thoughts.

He’d rousted two deputies and a bloodhound out of bed before dawn to trace the girl’s path through the woods. The dog had quickly made it clear that Colin was an idiot. He knew exactly where the girl’s trail ended: at the road where she’d been found. What Colin needed wasn’t a search-and-rescue dog, but the kind of fabled Native American tracker who could follow a broken path through the woods, spotting every indentation or broken leaf. Unfortunately, he didn’t have one.

He and the deputies tramped around for several hours, looking for any evidence of the girl’s passage through the forest, following paths until they disappeared, and then circling around to try again. He’d thought at one point they’d managed to get lost in the pine scrub themselves and wouldn’t that have been embarrassing? The thought of having to call a ranger for help made him cringe. Fortunately, they’d found their way out. But it had been a gigantic waste of time.

Or it would have been if not for the pure pleasure of being out in the forest. The air felt crisper today, colors brighter, smells more intense. Colin had thought it was a weather change, maybe a cold front moving in. But even here, sitting in his barren office, the sensation remained.

As he bit into the chocolate, he found himself admiring the green of the truly ugly office chair on the other side of his desk. How had he never noticed before how closely it matched the olive shades of swamp water? And the coffee that had been sitting on the burner since he’d gotten back here at 4AM smelled nutty and rich and deep, if a little burned.

Life was good. No, life was amazing.

Finishing his candy in two quick bites, he tossed the wrapper into the wastepaper basket and clicked open his pen to start making notes.

Missing person reports? Check. They’d looked at local records, the FBI’s database, and the national NamUS Missing Persons system without finding any cases matching the child’s description. Still, maybe he should have someone start checking neighboring states, just in case. A recent report might not have made it into the national systems yet.

Rangers? Check. He’d had an early morning phone call from Shelby, the deputy district ranger stationed at the nearby springs. She hadn’t found any sign of an accident after a slow drive down the closest back roads, but she would be checking with the campgrounds to see if any campers hadn’t returned to their sites. He hadn’t heard back from her yet, but he was sure she’d call as soon as she knew anything.

Media? No check. But it was an obvious next step. Tassamara was much too small to have any local news outlets, but maybe they could get the word out in nearby towns. If one of the television stations in Orlando or Gainesville put her picture out, surely someone, somewhere, would recognize her. Maybe it would even get picked up nationally.

DNA? Maybe. Would there be any point in testing the girl’s DNA? The lab they used for testing would be backed up over the holiday, because of vacations. If he wanted to get a sample in, he should do so as soon as possible. Did he need to, though?

State police? He hadn’t contacted the highway patrol yet. Should he?

With a sigh, he set down his pen, carefully lining it up on top of his notepad. He was taking the wrong approach, he realized. He needed to look at the facts and see what they added up to, what the possibilities were, before he determined on his own course of action.

Fact number one: a seven-year-old child was found alone, at night, on a road near a national park. The obvious answer was that she’d wandered away from her parents and gotten lost. Simple enough.

But fact number two was that no one had reported her gone. That detail made the situation darker. He hadn't wanted to think about it last night. But as he watched her limping toward Nat's car and saw her clearly in the headlights—the tangled hair, the dirt, the bruises, the bloody feet, the disheveled clothes—he'd known she'd been in the forest for longer than an hour or two. She’d been lost for a while. And if anyone in the vicinity had reported a child missing, he would have heard about it. Hell, he would have been out searching.

Yes, her condition was fact number three. The surface damage was bad enough but not the whole of it. Maybe she was naturally thin, but maybe the pinched look around her face meant she’d gone hungry for more than a missed meal or two. Maybe her quiet was exhaustion and fear, but maybe it told a deeper story.

He sighed, rubbing a hand across his chin. So… a missing child not reported missing. What did that give him?

Picking up his pen, he wrote:

Parents failed to report

Parents unable to report

Parents don’t know? (Not with her parents?)

As he stared at the paper, wondering what he wasn’t seeing, the phone rang. Leaning forward, he picked it up. “Sheriff’s office.”

“We got nothing.” The skipped greeting revealed Shelby’s concern, though her tone was as laconic as always.

“Nothing?” He could hear his own dismay. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been counting on the rangers to find the girl’s family. His favorite scenario had been a dad on a trail with a sprained ankle, a frantic mom at a campsite with a dead cell phone.

“Nada. Zip. Zilch.”

“How far have you looked?”

“As far as we could, but you know the problem. We’ve got over 200 miles of off-road trails, hundreds of lakes and ponds and springs, fourteen major campgrounds, numerous recreation sites. Even assuming the girl couldn’t have walked any long distance from where you found her, it’s a lot of ground to cover.”

Colin snorted in agreement. He felt as if he’d covered quite a bit of it this morning, but they’d only explored a small area.

“But everyone’s accounted for at the nearest campground,” Shelby continued. “No missing kids have been reported. And no accidents have been found on the closest roads and trails.”

Colin rubbed his chin again. He needed to shave. And he needed to sleep. But neither of those things would happen any time soon. “What about the water?” he asked. “Anyone rent a kayak and not return it?”

“I’ll check,” Shelby answered. “Good idea. Except, of course…” She let the sentence trail off.

“Yeah.” Colin didn’t need her to explain. If the girl had somehow survived a boating accident, but the adult who’d been with her had disappeared, chances were they were looking for a drowning victim. “Her clothes were dry, though.” He’d take another look at the dress she’d been wearing, see if he could detect any sign it had been in the water. He scribbled a quick note on his pad.

“It was a warm day yesterday.” Shelby didn’t sound optimistic. “Only takes an hour or two to dry off.”

“Yeah, but let’s not go there yet. Let’s find a kayak first.” Colin wasn’t ready to give up on the picture of joyful reunions his imagination had painted.

“I’ll start making calls right away,” Shelby promised.

“Damn it,” Colin muttered. He’d hoped this would be easy. He tilted back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. “She didn’t get dropped off by aliens.”

“You thinking flying saucer aliens? ET and friends?” Shelby’s tone held a smile.

“Not seriously, no.”

“Hmm. It could be the other kind of aliens, you know,” Shelby said, the humor gone.

“Illegals?” Colin tipped forward again. Parents afraid to report a missing child. Now that was a scenario he hadn’t thought of.

“You know we get squatters out here. It’s a big park. Policing almost four hundred thousand acres—well, there are corners we don’t get to so often.”

“I don’t know,” he said, doubt replacing his first enthusiasm. “She understood English. Recognized automatic door locks.”

“Did she look Hispanic?” Shelby asked.

Colin picked up his pen and tapped it on the desk. “Not so much, no. Light brown hair, blue eyes.”

“Central America’s got plenty of blue-eyed blondes. Guatemala, Argentina. Even Mexico’s got some.”

His response was a noncommittal hmm. It didn’t feel right to him, but he’d keep an open mind. “Will you keep looking?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Shelby assured him. “And I’m spreading the word. It’ll take hours, maybe more, to make sure every family is accounted for at the campgrounds. I’ll check on the kayaks, and we’ll be watching for abandoned cars, too. Maybe they were out for a day hike and something happened.”

Colin grimaced. Ocala was a wilderness and people sometimes underestimated its risks. Snakes, bears, and of course, other human beings. He hoped to God the girl’s family hadn’t fallen prey to a human predator. A bear would be bad enough.

“We’ll put the word out to the volunteers and guests, too,” Shelby added.

“Great. The more eyes looking, the better.” Colin thanked her and said good-bye before disconnecting.

He pulled the pad closer to him, looking down at his notes. Where to start? A soft knock on the door interrupted. He looked up absently, still focused on his list, before starting to his feet, almost knocking his chair over.

He’d been expecting them and yet somehow seeing Nat, here, in his office, was still a shock. If the sky looked bluer today and the trees greener, Nat looked more beautiful. The lightweight red sweater she wore over blue jeans wasn’t tight, but caressed her curves just enough to make him want to touch, while her dark hair was twisted down her back in one of those complicated braids she liked. For a fleeting second, he entertained a fantasy of pulling off the hair tie and running his hands through the silken strands as he spread them over her shoulders—and then he swiftly brought his recalcitrant brain back under his control and said hello.

Nat returned the greeting, but the girl by her side just stared at him, her expressive face solemn. Clean, her hair brushed, dressed in pink leggings and a faded t-shirt, she should have looked less lost, more relaxed, but she held herself in a way that looked poised to run, as if wiry energy coiled its way down her legs.

“This looks like you,” Nat said, glancing around his office.

Colin raised an eyebrow. “Sterile and industrial? Sorta rundown?”

His office was scrupulously neat, with all files tucked away into the racks of steel-grey cabinets lining one wall, but the building had been built in the 1970s and both the room and the furniture looked their age. Okay, so maybe the swamp green of the chairs wasn’t as ugly as he’d always thought, but that was about all he could say for it.

“I think I’ve been insulted,” he added in a stage whisper to the child. She didn’t smile, so he winked at her to let her know he was kidding.

“I was thinking orderly and practical,” said Nat. “No personal touches? No family pictures?”

Colin rolled his eyes. “You know how my family is. The walls would be covered if I let them get started.”

Nat’s lips quirked up. “How many nieces and nephews do you have now?”

“Uh…” Colin squinted and started counting. His six siblings were all married, all with kids. He could probably add them up, except that because his sisters had started having babies when he was a kid himself, some of them felt more like cousins. And some of those cousin-types were now grown, having babies of their own who called him “Uncle Colin.” Did they count? He supposed technically they did. Wouldn’t he be like a great-uncle or something to them? And his sister Jenna was on her second marriage, this one to a man with three kids of his own. Should he include his step-nieces and nephew? They felt more like relatives than his brother Brian’s kids did, because Brian lived in California and Colin hadn’t even met his youngest yet, so yeah, he should probably include Jenna’s step-kids.