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when he’d chosen the cat
over their children? “It’s a possibility, I guess.”
    “ But why? He was the one
who took care of us. He did everything: doctor’s visits, bath time,
parent-teacher conferences. And then one day she said he was dead,
and we left. Just like that. Now I know why she didn’t take us to
the funeral. There was no funeral.” Kelly fought tears as she to
break a collection of toothpicks into small pieces; her green eyes
were wet, even though her face showed nothing but anger.
    “ I don’t know, Kel. But the
only way to find the answers lies with the man back there.” Ally
knew the girl appreciated honesty. “I think the only way to answer
those questions is to ask him.”
    “ I don’t think I can.”
Kelly shook her head.
    “ Well, if you’re going to
stay here in St. Louis, I think you’re going to have
to.”
     

Chapter
13

    Dan closed his eyes
briefly, certain his vision had played tricks on him. It wasn’t
Kelly. Couldn’t have been. Kelly was gone; her mother had taken her
and the younger girls away from him a long time ago.
    It wasn’t probable that
she’d just appear in the midst of the field office he’d worked at
for the last twelve years.
    “ Reynolds?” Edward Dennis
moved to his side. “You ok?”
    Dan looked at him, seeing a
portion of the shock he felt echoed on his contemporary’s face.
“What just happened here?”
    Edward Dennis knew the
story, Dan knew that. Hell, almost everyone in his division
probably knew. Dan had made no secret of what he did nearly every
free weekend.
    How many hours had he
poured over everything? Every little snippet of where Beth might
have been, who she might have been with. Where the girls might have
been.
    His former buddies on the
Kansas City police force had opened a case the week Beth had left.
They’d searched for her, even opened a warrant on her for custodial
interference. They’d not been divorced, but she’d taken his kids
where he couldn’t see them.
    “ Are you ok, Dan?” Dennis
asked. His daughter, Georgia, pressed close to Dan’s other side.
They were close, Georgia knew the full story. Dan had told her less
than a month after she’d transferred to the Complex
Crimes.
    “ I’m not sure.” Dan said,
“I think I need a minute.”
    He left them staring at his
back as he headed in the opposite direction of his daughter. The
roof was a waiting haven.
    He watched the little doc
nearly running down the street, watched her catch up to the
purple-haired girl that was his daughter. His daughter!
    Dan’s hands tightened on
the rail. He watched as the two women wandered into Coby’s coffee
shop.
    He heard footsteps behind
him, and turned to see the elder Dennis shutting the roof access
door.
    “ Dennis.”
    “ Reynolds.” The slightly
older man nodded, took a spot identical to Dan’s. They watched the
coffee shop below.
    A few minutes passed before
either man spoke. Dennis leaned down a bit, the edge of his tie
brushing the rail. “When Georgia was twelve, her mother took
her.”
    Dan looked at him. It was
hard not to know of Congresswoman Gloria Dennis. She was very
effective in her post. From what he knew, she spent most of her
time in DC, while her ex-husband stayed in St. Louis, near his only
daughter and her son.
    Dennis sighed. “We never
had a good marriage, but that is not what I was saying. You already
know that.”
    “ She took
George.”
    “ I was out on a case, this
was when we lived in Boston, and she was just a state
representative. I normally did it all, you know? Homework checks,
dance recitals. I could do a pirouette at the age of thirty that
could rival anyone in the Russian ballet. Georgia was my daughter.
She had made that very clear.”
    “ So why did she take her
when she was twelve?”
    “ Politics. Her advisors had
thought that it looked bad that a child was left behind while her
mother worked the capitol. So one day while I was gone, she came
home, packed a bag for Georgia. And picked