Read Cindy Spencer Pape - [Guardian Investigations 01] for Free Online

some of her relatives were still ranchers. Ericka was their
only child, a straight-A student at a local public school, and was driven to
and from everyday by her mother, though recently a bodyguard/driver had been
added to the trips. Apparently, there had been a half-hearted attempt to coax Ericka
away a few weeks earlier, right after her father had rejected the offer to join
Sons of the Wolf.
    We stopped at an unmanned gate. Evan spoke
into the intercom, and we were allowed to pass.
    “Good fences, personal bodyguard. Can’t
have been too easy to get the girl. Where was she snatched?”
    “From her bedroom in the middle of the
night,” Evan grunted. “Security system never detected a peep. Guardian’s
computer guru is on his way down to find out why.”
    Minutes later, we pulled onto a circle
drive in front of the biggest log cabin I’ve ever seen. It was a sprawling,
three-story structure, but it was designed to blend into the natural
environment rather than to stand out from it. We left the car right in front of
the house and walked side by side up the stone steps. Evan raised his hand, but
the wide, double doors were whisked open before he could knock.
    “Evan. Thank God you’re here.” A petite,
frazzled looking woman in her late thirties grabbed Evan by the hand and
practically dragged him over the threshold. Her shirt was buttoned crooked, her
wavy, chestnut-brown hair was pulled into a haphazard ponytail and there were
stress lines alongside her amber-brown eyes.
    “Evan.” The man who spoke was almost as
tall as Evan but more compact. His hair was dark brown with thick silver
streaks at the temples. “Thank you.” He reached around his wife and shook
Evan’s hand then offered his to me.
    “Glad I was nearby,” Evan said as he shook
the man’s hand. “Rhys is on his way in the helicopter to check the electronics.
And this is Hannah Lightfoot—you’ve met her brother Will. She’s on loan from
the San Diego Police Department.” As Evan introduced me, I mentally steeled
myself to shake hands with the couple. I didn’t often get psychometric flashes
off of people, but it had been known to happen, especially when it came to
crimes of passion. If he’d been involved in whatever happened to his daughter,
the emotions would probably be close enough to the surface for me to pick up.
    Derek Carter’s grip was strong and firm.
All I detected was fear and love and white-hot fury. I let out the breath I’d
barely realised I was holding and shook hands with his wife. Same deal. Except
her rage was, if possible, of a more lethal nature than her husband’s. If Leah
Carter got her hands—or rather paws—on whomever had taken her daughter, the man
was as good as dead. Since I had no particular problem with that, it was time
to get to work.
    “Can you show us Ericka’s room?”
    Both Carter’s looked startled at my request
and turned questioning eyes to Evan. He shrugged. “Hannah is psychometric. She
can sometimes form a mental link with someone by touching things they’ve
touched. You said Ericka disappeared from her room sometime during the night.
That seems like a logical place to start.”
    Wow. Apparently my brother had told his
partners all about me. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but now wasn’t
the time to worry about it.
    Derek Carter raised one eyebrow but
shrugged. His wife smiled broadly and clasped my hand again. “Oh that’s
wonderful. Come on, it’s on the second floor.” She dragged me towards a wide
curving staircase.
    “Second floor?” Evan asked as the two men
followed. “So probably not in or out the window, unless you found ladder-prints
in the soil outside.”
    “No prints,” Derek rumbled in a voice that
was nearly a growl. “But there was no scent—er—trace in the hallway. The only
place we think there was an intruder was in Ericka’s room.”
    “Hannah knows you’re shifters,” Evan
assured them. “Remember her brother is part of Guardian, so she comes from a
rather—gifted—family herself. You can speak