Blood Loss by Alex Barclay Page A

said Ren. ‘Since when?’
    ‘You don’t call, you don’t write …’
    ‘I’m … sorry,’ said Ren.
Cold turkey was my only meal option.
    ‘Seeing that my emails clearly didn’t interest you enough to warrant a reply, there was no point in writing to tell you that I’ve been out in the field as an SSA with the Violent Crime Squad … and, well, now I’m with CARD. At your service.’
    ‘Wow, that’s great,’ said Ren.
    ‘We were visiting with different agencies in Denver this week, so we were able to respond quickly. So, anything you need …’ He smiled.
    ‘Sure,’ said Ren.
Two girls are missing and I’m thinking why didn’t Paul Louderback tell me he was coming to Denver …
    ‘You do still
have
my number, don’t you?’ said Paul.
    ‘Ha, ha,’ said Ren.
    He smiled. ‘We should go for a drink.’
    ‘We should,’ said Ren.
In some other lifetime.
    ‘Maybe we could have dinner first?’ said Paul.
    Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
‘If you insist. OK, I gotta go – there’s a briefing at the Sheriff’s Office.’
    ‘Hey,’ said Paul, ‘fill me in before you go.’
    Ren told him what she knew, and ran from him … as fast as her rattled heart could handle.
    Dinner and drinks: way to get over Paul Louderback.

16
    Ren stood up at the front of the conference room and addressed the team, giving them all the details she knew to date. She’d stood here before – when the walls were a little dirtier and the desk was a cheap version of the one she was now laying her notes on. She looked out at a sea of mostly men from the Summit County Sheriff’s Office, Summit County PD, and the FBI. She counted just six women.
    She could see a raised hand in the crowd.
    ‘Ma’am? Detective Owens from the Sheriff’s Office, ma’am.’ He was no older than twenty-three and stood like a soldier. He was fair-haired and sweet-looking, the kind of guy who would never forget his mama. He was holding a small spiral notebook at waist height, and had his pen hovering over the page. There was a look of intense expectancy on his face. ‘Could this have been a pre-meditated abduction?’
    ‘Well, we’ll keep an open mind on that,’ said Ren.
    ‘Could Mark Whaley himself have planned it?’ said Owens.
    ‘The abduction of his own daughter?’ said Ren. ‘I think that’s unlikely – this is his first overnight visit with his daughter after what was, by all accounts, an acrimonious custody battle.’
    ‘Maybe his daughter could have been like collateral damage in something, like he was planning something, and she walked in on it? Like, he was going to abduct the sitter?’
    ‘We have yet to establish a prior connection between Mark Whaley and Shelby Royce,’ said Ren. ‘If Mark Whaley did know her before last night, and was genuinely planning to abduct her, it’s unlikely he would have done so while on a weekend away with his wife and family.’
    ‘But what if it was an opportunistic thing,’ said the detective, ‘he saw the sitter, he liked her …’
    ‘By all accounts, Shelby Royce was an unexpected part of the Whaley family’s weekend away,’ said Ren. ‘They could not have known that she would be their babysitter – she was not on any agency’s books, despite what the desk clerk first told us.’
    Owens sat down, but kept writing.
    He stood back up again. ‘Could the babysitter have taken the little girl?’
    ‘That’s a possibility,’ said Ren.
    ‘Maybe Laurie Whaley didn’t want to stay overnight with her father,’ said Owens. ‘There could be an abuse issue. And things could have gotten violent …’
    ‘That’s a possibility,’ said Ren.
    ‘What if the little girl was injured and ran?’ said Owens. ‘The sitter would have followed her – she was in charge of her. If the little guy was asleep, she would have thought he was safe in the hotel.’
    Ren nodded. ‘In that case, with none of their warm clothes on, they wouldn’t have made it too far from the hotel.’
    ‘But