Page 37 of Saved by Him

Seventeen

I was missing something,and it was driving me nuts.

I’d hoped that taking the weekend off to spend time with Jalen would be the break I needed to see the investigation from a new angle this week, to see what I was missing. Except now, I stared at my whiteboard and tried to see whatever connection was slipping through my fingers.

Helen Kingston had managed to escape from Marshal custody twice. Granted, she hadn’t exactly been living in the same house with her assigned Marshal, but people in WITSEC had rules to follow, meetings to keep, especially ones like Helen who’d been put under protection not because she was a witness but because of her own criminal history and connections. I talked with Marshal Franklin about what happened, and at the time, I thought that I’d gotten everything. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

And I couldn’t figure out how she’d done it. She wasn’t stupid. The fact that she’d run a child pornography ring for more than a decade without getting caught was proof of that. But was she smart enough to have been able to leave Cheyenne without a trace, then return, claiming that she’d simply been going on a trip? And why had she done it? Had she simply been wanting to prove that she could? Had she miscarried like she claimed, or had she decided to have the child but hadn’t wanted anyone else to tell her what to do with it?

All of those were good questions, but I couldn’t help feeling like there was a question I should have thought of.

Harry had watched over Helen for more than thirteen years without incident, but then, eight years ago, Helen managed to slip away, have a child, then return, all without him knowing. He’d been a scapegoat, but he also felt guilty because he’d let her manipulate him into more lax monitoring and then he hadn’t reported her absence. He’d looked for her himself for two weeks.

Only now, I was wondering if Marshal Franklin had left something out. Or, rather, someone.

That was it. The thing I was missing wasn’t a thing but a person.

In thirteen years, Harry had to have taken time off. A sick day here or there wouldn’t have been a problem, but he’d surely taken at least one vacation of more than a couple days. Which meant he would’ve had another Marshal looking after her while he was gone.

What if that other Marshal had been the one in charge of Helen when she disappeared that first time? If Harry had suspected that she was going to run or that she’d harm her child, and he hadn’t told the other agent, he might have been willing to protect him or her out of guilt.

Or maybe the other agent had done more than miss something.

Shit.

I ran my eyes over the board again, seeing the facts line up with that new theory in mind.

An agent who looked the other way while Helen found a couple to buy her baby. Or maybe just a single person. An agent who might have been able to tell Helen where she could find someone to get her the paperwork to go along with that baby, or how to get away unseen. An agent who, maybe, had even helped.

I didn’t like the idea that someone in the Marshal service had helped someone like Helen, but it made sense. The pieces fit together better with an unknown agent in the mix, and that told me that I wasn’t completely crazy to be thinking along those lines. It also made Harry’s decision to not fight being the scapegoat more understandable.

How to find my mysterious agent, however, was going to be a little more…difficult.

Harry Franklin hadn’t been thrilled to see me before. Whoever he was protecting was important to him. I doubted he’d answer any questions I might give him this time, which meant I needed to go around him. At this moment, I could only see three possible options to do that.

One, ask Jenna to hack the US Marshals servers.

Two, petition the Marshals as a private citizen.

Three, ask another government agent to request the information.

I sighed and looked at the clock on the computer. If I left right now, I could make it to Clay’s office by lunch. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve, but I knew Clay would be working. He always volunteered to work the days around Christmas so that agents with kids could take vacation time. That’s what he claimed anyway. I’d always suspected that he also did it to give himself an excuse to avoid spending much of the holiday with his parents. He loved them, but I’d always gotten the impression that things were strained between them for some reason.

I didn’t want to drive from Fort Collins to Denver in the snow and on the day before Christmas Eve, but of the three options, this one was the best. I could’ve called, but a favor like this warranted an in-person visit.

“I’ll be out of the office for a while, maybe even the rest of the day,” I announced as I stepped out into the reception area. “I need to head to Denver for a lunch meeting, and depending on where things go from there, I might be back or not.”

Maggie nodded, blonde curls bobbing with the movement. “Do you want case calls forwarded to your cell or have me take a message?”

“Take a message for anything new, but if Jenna calls, have her call my cell,” I said after a moment’s thought.

“Do you want me to schedule appointments for any walk-ins or should I tell them I need to talk to you and I’ll call them?”

“I don’t want anything new scheduled this week,” I decided. “Any walk-ins and phone calls, go ahead and schedule appointments for next week. Nothing on New Year’s Day and nothing for the afternoon on New Year’s Eve.”

It was strange,realizing that I wanted to have the holidays off because I had someone to spend them with.

“Are we going to be closed then?” she asked.

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