Rescuing Sara (Tennessee Task Force #4)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

Knoxville, Tennessee

Early-December. Monday afternoon

“They want us to stop looking for Sara Turner, Danni. Us being the police.”

Danni Blake stared across the booth at her late father’s partner and best friend, police Lieutenant Leonard “Leo” Anderson. “Who wants you to stop looking for her?” she demanded. “Sara has only been missing for a week. Since the Monday after Thanksgiving no less!” A long , terrifying week since my goddaughter and the light of my life vanished.

“Her grandfather for one,” Leo said. “Ed Turner called the precinct this morning and told Captain Haggerty he’d hired a private investigator to look for his granddaughter and didn’t need the police, so we should leave it alone. And after we spent all last weekend putting up more ‘Have you seen me?’ flyers with Sara’s photo.”

A chilling anger raked over Danni’s skin. “That’s not going to happen, is it? Tell me the police aren’t going to stop looking.” That Ed Turner would do such a thing only added to this nightmare.

A burst of sharp, frigid December air surged inside as the door to Mimi’s Coffee House swung open, bringing pink-cheeked, hungry arrivals with it, the wind making Danni colder than ever. Last Friday, the temperature had dropped to lows unfamiliar to East Tennessee at this time of year and stayed there. On days like this, people sought the sanctuary of Mimi’s, well known for its homemade baked goods and very, very good coffee.

“You’re a cop’s daughter, so what do you think?” Leo asked. “Captain Haggerty told him the police didn’t need his permission to continue searching for a missing ten-year-old child who just happened to be his granddaughter.” Angry frustration pulled his grey-streaked eyebrows together. “Sara Turner is ten, for God’s sake. If Sara were my granddaughter, I’d be pounding the streets trying to find her instead of going into the office every day like Turner claims to be doing.”

“If Sara were here, she would tell you she’s eleven, even if her birthday isn’t for another two weeks,” Danni declared. “And why would Ed think that the police would even listen to such a stupid idea?”

“Other than he’s an A list asshole?” Leo snorted. “I have no idea.”

Danni massaged her pounding temples. Usually, Mimi’s dark French roast took care of any headache but not today. But then having your beloved goddaughter vanish was not an everyday occurrence. “You said ‘they’ wanted us to stop looking for Sara,” she said. “Who other than Ed wants that?”

“His employer, La Belle Monde ,” Leo said, refilling their cups from the carafe on the table. “I got a call from some prick in their HR department this morning, who said, and I quote, ‘our continuing questioning of Ed Turner was upsetting him and keeping him from doing his work, and we–meaning the police– should respect his wishes to let a private investigator look for Sara.’”

Despite her anguish, Danni laughed. “And what did you tell him he could do with that suggestion?” La Belle Monde –or LBM as it was known locally–was an international import-export company with offices around the world, including one here in Knoxville. Ed Turner was their Chief Financial Officer and had reluctantly accepted custody of Sara when her mother died suddenly two years ago. Her father and Ed’s only son, Levi, had died in a bicycling accident when Sara was four.

Leo’s answering grin deepened the wrinkles around his eyes. “Something on the order of telling him where he could shove it and he could call my captain because that’s who I take orders from and not some sniveling little bureaucrat. Haggerty loved it.”

“I’ll bet.” Danni knew Captain Joselyn Haggerty and she was not the kind of cop to let her crew, from top detectives to the newest rookie be shoved around by someone in the community. “But you could have told me this over the phone. Was there a reason you wanted to meet face to face?”

“Haggerty will probably kick my ass for telling you,” Leo said slowly. “Your dad may have died seven years ago but you’re still part of the KPD family, so I think you need to know.”

“You’re not sick, are you?” A sudden fear seized Danni. Leo worked long hours, his diet wasn’t the best and he struggled with hypertension. Sam Blake, her cop father, had worked too hard as well and his death from a ruptured aneurism seven years ago had left a vacant spot in Danni’s heart. Leo had helped fill it, not only then, but after Danni’s mother left when Danni was six years old.

“Nah,” Leo waved away her question. “But since last week someone started sending me e-mails, warning me to leave Sara’s case alone ‘or else.’’

Dread spiraled up Danni’s spine. “‘Or else’ what?”

“Oh, they’re creative,” Leo laughed. “The one on Friday said if I didn’t stop, I was going to need to start sleeping in my bullet proof vest or at the very least invest in a pair of crutches. And yes, Haggerty knows about it. She has our IT department working on tracing it but wants me to step back from the case. I talked her out of it, so I’m still on it for now.”

His light-hearted attempt at humor did nothing to relieve Danni’s worry. “But how could someone outside the department know your work e-mail?”

“You got me there,” Leo admitted. “IT will find it.”

He pushed back the battered homburg Danni had given him for Christmas five years ago. “Street talk is those two child trafficking articles you’ve been writing for Excelsior are causing quite a stir. People, especially parents are worried.”

“They should be,” Danni retorted. In addition to being on staff at UT’s School of Journalism, she wrote part-time for Excelsior, a local newspaper, covering court cases and high-profile crimes. But after recent cases of two groups of missing and kidnapped East Tennessee teens being found and rescued by KPD, she’d started writing Where Are the Children? a series on child trafficking nationally and here in Tennessee.

“You wouldn’t believe what I’ve learned in researching for those articles,” Danni told him. “Or since you’re with Major Crimes, maybe you would.”

“There isn’t a whole lot I haven’t seen,” Leo agreed. “It’s the stuff of nightmares, some straight out of hell itself.”

“Child trafficking is happening all around us,” Danni continued. “In big and small communities, urban and rural settings and everywhere in-between and not just in Tennessee.”

“God alone knows what’s happened during the Pandemic,” Leo sighed. “Or how many more kids went missing.”

“Even with all the technological advances the TBI has made and all the other support groups that have formed to find and stop trafficking, it’s still happening.” Thinking of Sara, Danni shut her eyes. “Kids like Sara are being grabbed every day.”

“We don’t know for certain traffickers have Sara,” Leo warned, but Danni recognized the familiar doubt in his voice.

“Who else then?” she argued. “No matter that the note Mrs. M., Ed’s housekeeper, found in the mailbox was in Sara’s handwriting. No way she’d write, ‘I’m so out of here!’ willingly.”

“Since you’re her godmother, she would come to you if she had a problem,” Leo affirmed.

“Exactly,” Danni said. “What I can’t understand is why Ed doesn’t want the police involved in finding her? They have far more resources than a private investigator. He didn’t even want to go with us to hang up those flyers!”

“Real Grandfather of the Year material,” Leo snorted. “A peach of a guy.”

“I know.” Danni stirred her coffee needlessly and asked, “When Ed called you, did he say if he’s heard or seen anything at all?”

Leo shook his head. “If he has heard anything, he’s not telling us. But I’ll call him again if you like.”

“That would be great, because he’s sure not talking to me.” Danni drank the last of her coffee and put her cup aside. “So, what are we going to do next?”

“We?” Leo wiggled his eyebrows. “We?”

“I’m in this all the way,” Danni declared. “Even with getting my own threating e-mails–”

“You’ve been getting threats too?” Leo’s dark eyes nailed her to the booth’s Naugahyde seat. “What the hell, Danni. Why haven’t you told me before now? When did that start?”

Crap. Surrendering to the inevitable third degree she was about to receive, Danni braced herself. “Right after the second article was published in Excelsior two weeks ago. A few days before Sara went missing.”

“Are these messages going to your work e-mails or at home?” Leo’s voice lowered to a menacing bass growl.

“Not at home,” Danni assured hastily as the man she’d called “uncle” all her life continued to glare at her. “To the paper and my office at the university. But anyone could easily find those.”

“And what did the messages say?” Leo bit off the words, one by one.

“‘Stop scaring the community, bitch,’” Danni recited. “And ‘Better stop poking your nose where it doesn’t belong, or just ‘you’ll be more than sorry if you don’t stop writing.’ After the other kidnappings and now with Sara gone, people are scared for their kids. Someone’s just letting off steam–”

“Like hell.” Leo slid out of the booth. “We’re going to go talk to Haggerty, and then with Stanley Harris about your continuing to write this series. Let’s go.”

He headed to the door and grabbed her purse, Danni rushed after him. Outside, a cold sleet whipped down from a graying sky, blocking the sun and pre-holiday shoppers crowding the sidewalk fastened their coat collars and adjusted their hats. Two doors down in front of Bella’s Boutique , a man with a standing string trio was playing Jingle Bells on a recorder. “Leo–”

“I don’t want to hear it, Danni.” He stopped just past the ensemble and put his hands on her shoulders. “We’re going to keep you safe even if you have to stop writing for the time being.”

“But–”

“I mean it, Danni.” The old sorrow rose in Leo’s eyes. “You’re the daughter I never had and there will be crabgrass growing around Heather’s roses before I let anything happen to you.” Leo had married young and after his wife Heather and their infant daughter died from complications in childbirth, he’d never looked at another woman. His care for Heather’s roses bordered on obsession.

As was his lifelong concern for Danni’s safety. Her dad’s scrutiny of her high school boyfriends was nothing compared to Leo’s.

Danni raised her chin. “I’m not going to stop writing the articles, Leo,” she told him. “Not if it helps find Sara.” She knew her editor, Stanley Harris, would back her decision. The thought of Sara held captive, alone and terrified, was like living in her own special hell.

“You’re as stubborn as your dad,” Leo accused.

“Damn right,” Danni agreed. “But I agree we need to tell Captain Haggerty about my e-mails.”

Leo’s stare searched her face and she saw a hesitation enter his eyes. “Did your dad ever tell you about the Larsen case?” he asked.

“The what?”

“Never mind.” He took her arm, and they walked down the sidewalk. The ensemble followed, the recorder player leading, and the music flowed around them. Leo and Danni let them pass and Leo laughed. “ Jingle Bells on a recorder? Who’d have thought–”

He turned to stare at her again, his eyes suddenly wide with something between amazement and disbelief. Then he collapsed at her feet.

“Leo!” Danni knelt, unzipped his jacket and began to apply CPR, grateful for the First Aid classes her father had insisted she take. Behind her, a woman was shouting, “Man Down!” into her phone while a man tried to keep the gawkers back.

“Don’t you dare die on me, Uncle Leo,” Danni whispered, her hands continuing their work, her breathing coming in short, hard bursts. “Not right before Christmas.”

But Lieutenant Leo Anderson lay motionless, his eyes wide and vacant.

Later, after the ER MD declared Leo had died from a heart attack, Danni took a taxi back to Excelsior’s parking lot where she found her car’s windshield broken and a rock on the passenger seat with a note bearing the message, Next time I won’t miss.

So, after retrieving her laptop from the trunk, she called KPD’s Sergeant Grant Miller to report a murder. Then she went inside to talk to Stanley Harris and her friend and fellow reporter Anne Hamilton about Brotherhood Protectors.