Fatal Burn (West Coast 2)

“Hey, slow down. I heard a rumor. That’s all,” Aaron said, backtracking. “Some people in town have seen someone they think could be him. No one knows for certain and it’s been so long, his looks could have changed significantly. After you asked me to look into the burned birth certificate, I did some digging. As far as I can tell no one has reentered the country using Brendan Giles’s passport, but I’m still checking.”

“You knew this and didn’t tell me?” she whispered, obviously incredulous. She cut a quick, hard glance at Shea. “And you knew, too? Don’t deny it.”

“Okay.”

“Hell!” she whispered.

Aaron sighed. “I just didn’t want to get you upset. Not until I knew for certain.”

“Damn it, Aaron, this is my life, my child, my…” her voice trailed off and she looked back at Travis again. She picked up her glass and her hand shook so badly that some of the clear liquid sloshed over the side as she lifted it to her lips.

“Dear God,” she muttered as she took a sip, then set down the glass. “So everyone’s keeping secrets, either to protect someone or because they don’t trust anyone or…Geez, this is just such a damned circus!”

“Shannon—” Shea started.

“Don’t. Okay?” Her nostrils flared in indignation. “Don’t placate me, don’t pity me, don’t big-brother me and for God’s sake, don’t lie to me.”

Before he could argue, she turned to Travis, her mouth set, her eyes determined. “I wasn’t certain I wanted to do this, that’s why I didn’t say anything earlier. But now…Now, I know I have to see her.” She let out a long, shuddering breath and closed her eyes for a second, as if to calm herself, to make herself clear. “I mean, I hope you have a picture with you. Of my daughter, I mean your daughter…of Dani.”

He nodded. “Just happen to.”

“May I see it?”

“Shannon, this isn’t a great idea,” Aaron said.

“He’s right,” Shea interjected. “It’s better for you to think of her in abstract terms.”

“Show it to me,” she urged Travis. “Please.”

Travis also wondered if this was a smart move, but he’d be damned if he’d say so now. Deep inside he felt it was inevitable anyway. Of course she’d want to see her child. Of course her curiosity and latent maternal instinct would get the better of her.

Shifting, he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and flipped it open. Encased in clear plastic was last year’s school photo. As he spied the picture, he felt a new pang of distress. This year Dani would probably miss picture day, he thought, along with a lot of other events. Something deep inside him ripped painfully. God, he had to get her back and soon. He knew the odds, realized that each hour a person was missing, it became more likely the clues would go cold, the person was less likely to be found.

Jesus, he couldn’t think like that. He had to stay positive. Focused. He’d find her. Somehow…he just would.

Tentatively, Shannon drew his wallet closer, sliding it over the smooth surface of the table.

“That one, the school shot, was taken last October. It’s about a year old,” he told her. When she flipped the picture over, to the snapshot of him and Dani sitting on a boulder, proudly holding up their “catch of the day,” two silvery twelve-inch trout, he had to swallow hard. He remembered that fall morning. They’d been up before dawn, with stars winking high over the tops of the fir trees and the mountain stream bubbling and gurgling past their campsite. They’d used salmon flies and had each caught his limit. His throat closed and he pushed the memory back into a far corner of his mind.

There were other pictures as well, other school photos, a picture of Dani in a softball uniform that was about three sizes too big, taken when she’d been in the sixth grade. Shannon stared at the posed picture, her lips folding over her teeth, then she traced the edge of Dani’s jaw with one slim finger.

As if suddenly realizing what she was doing, she quickly flipped to the next picture, a wallet size of a family

portrait that had been posed and snapped when his daughter had been somewhere between five and six. Dani, wearing an impossibly frilly dress that Ella loved and she hated, was sitting on her mother’s lap. Travis standing stiffly in a dark suit he barely remembered now, had been told by the photographer to place one hand over his wife’s shoulder, so there he stood in a ludicrous pose as Ella forced a smile and Dani lit up the shot. Even through the plastic and even though the photo had aged, Dani’s bright eyes, curly strawberry-blond hair, and smile missing a few teeth, showed her impish, tomboy personality in full form. Travis felt his heart clutch and was hit by a sudden thought that it was good that Ella wasn’t alive, that his wife didn’t have to suffer the heartache, despair and fear that had been his constant companions since the discovery of Blanche Johnson’s bloody corpse and the heart-stopping realization that Dani was missing.

Payback Time.

He inwardly cringed. Jesus, what could it mean? What did it have to do with Shannon Flannery and that damned birth certificate?

Fear was an icy snake crawling through his veins.

Shannon studied each picture, almost devoured them with her intent gaze, as if she’d been starved for some kind of information, some mental image of the child she’d offered up for adoption. She clenched her jaw and tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, causing her to blink. Reaching for a napkin on the table she swiped at her nose as she sniffled, and dabbed at her eyes to staunch the flow of tears. Swallowing, she finally slid the wallet across the table. “If…If you don’t mind,” she said and cleared her throat, “I would like a copy or two.”

She looked so damned miserable that he forgot all of his resentment, all of his fear, all of his out-and-out paranoia.

“You might want to rethink that,” Robert cut in, his own face showing signs of strain. “I, um, I’ve got kids and I don’t get to see them as much as I’d like and…It might just be better if you don’t know.”

“Too late,” she said, then looked up at Travis. “If you don’t mind.”