***
Lucas introduced Zane to the mother, but Zane promptly forgot her name. He didn’t want to remember. He just wanted to get through this and get out of here.
Lost kid cases could be amazing. Once, he’d located a toddler, who’d wandered away from home, in a drainage ditch almost two miles away. Another time, he’d found a kidnapped girl, alive and well and scared out of her wits, in the trunk of a car. Those were fun.
Mostly, though, lost kid cases sucked. Big-time. Sure, it was nice to show up and be a hero, but it didn’t usually work that way. Even custody cases, where the child was almost always alive and well, sometimes left him feeling queasy. He’d helped find and return a little girl to a dad with sole custody once and the desperation in the mom’s eyes kept him awake at night for months afterwards.
And this time, he already knew. The absolute flat nothing he felt when he touched the photo of the beautiful blond toddler meant the boy was dead. When he touched a photo of a living person, he almost always got something—oh, maybe not something very clear—but something. A sense of distance, if the person was far away; a sense of light and color and surroundings, if the person was nearer; an absolute knowledge of place if the person was close by. Touching something that belonged to the person improved his range, touching hair or blood or something with DNA improved it further. In this case, though, it would make no difference and the hope on the mother’s face was almost painful.
Really, insurance cases were just so much better. Why couldn’t he just find some missing jewels? A nice painting? Hardly anybody ever cried about stolen goods.
“Let’s sit down on the couch,” Zane suggested to the blonde. “Before we start, I need you to know that I don’t think I’m going to be able to help you.”
“Your brother’s said that already.” The woman nodded and tried to muster a smile. “But I’ll try anything.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she blinked them back. Zane tried to hide his wince. Damn it. If Lucas had just brought her to the airport, he could have been done with this and out of here already.
As they sat down, he continued, trying to be soothing without sounding hopeful. “What I’ll do is hold your hand for a while and see if I feel anything. With objects, I have a better range when I’m touching the person who owns the object, and that sometimes helps with missing family members, too.”
“If he can’t find Daniel,” Lucas interjected. “He’ll try to find Rob, the car, their clothes, anything we can think of that Rob might have with him.”
‘Oh, fuck you,’ Zane thought furiously at his brother, ‘I told you the boy is dead. I don’t do dead bodies!’
Lucas shrugged at him and Zane knew he’d heard. Lucas’s range wasn’t great, but at this distance, he could read anything Zane thought if Zane put a little force behind it. ‘We’re just going to disappoint her,’ Zane added.
“We know you need closure, Diane,” Lucas continued, and although ostensibly his words were directed to the mother, his eyes were on Zane’s.
“I know there’s not much hope.” Diane’s words were soft. “But not knowing? Never knowing? It’ll kill me. I would never have thought I’d turn to a psychic for help, but I’m desperate.”
Zane tried not to sigh, to smile reassuringly. “You know there are a lot of fake psychics in the world, right?”
“I’m desperate,” she repeated. “Anything you can do.”
Great. She was going to turn into one of those people who poured their life savings into charlatans if he didn’t find something, he just knew it.
He glared at Lucas again. ‘You owe me for this.’ Lucas nodded and he knew he’d gotten his message across, as he took Diane’s hand and tried to focus on finding.