Page 81 of Chasing Dreams
“Really? Is the FBI handling your case?”
“They are now.” He exchanged a look with Shaine. How would this girl take the truth? He decided to tell her straight out. “We’ve seen Amy:”
Her face paled, and he realized he’d said it all wrong. “Not seen her, like seen her, but seen her, like in a vision.”
It was a lame way to explain it, but the only way that someone who didn’t have the ability could understand. “The FBI had one of Amy’s shoes and Shaine and I held it.”
“I saw a lady do that on a show,” she said skeptically. “You mean you guys can really see things like that? Both of you?”
Shaine broke into the conversation with, “Sometimes we can. Austin has helped the agency find a lot of missing people. I’m a little newer at it.”
She sat forward on the edge of the chair. “Well, what did you see?”
“Austin saw the people who took her.”
“He did?” Her eyes widened. “Is this the new lead they told me about?”
“You should let the detective assigned to Amy’s case tell you the details,” Austin explained. “I do know they’re getting close to pressing charges.”
She nodded blankly.
“And Shaine here saw Amy as she is now or as she will be.”
Austin could tell the teen wanted to believe with all her heart, but he knew, too, that a lot of quacks approached police and family members when a case like this hit the press. “And where was she?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Shaine admitted. “But she’s all right.”
The girl’s eyes expressed her emotions wavering between hope and skepticism. “My mother would have a fit if she knew I was even talking to you guys,” she said. “She blames me for Amy being missing. She always said I wouldn’t be able to take care of her.”
Anger welled up in Shaine’s chest, and she reached for the girl’s hand. “What happened was not because you weren’t a good mother, Samantha. These people are monsters. They select the children before they take them. They murdered my sister to get to my nephew.”
Samantha’s hazel eyes rounded in sympathy. “Well, tell me everything,” she said after a few minutes. “Tell me what both of you saw.”
They took a few minutes to explain the difference in their perceptions and then the visions themselves.
“Walking?” she said to Shaine, with tears welling in her eyes. “She’s walking? Yes, of course she’s walking, She’s so much older now. I’ve missed so much. I miss her so bad.”
“We didn’t come here to upset you,” Austin interrupted.
The girl visibly composed herself.
“We were hoping maybe you had something else of Amy’s,” Shaine said, trying to keep the meeting focused and wanting to spare the girl as much unpleasantness as possible. “Something we could use to—get another look.”
“You mean something that belonged to her? Like a toy? Clothes?”
“Something that would hold impressions,” Shaine supplied. “I know she’s just a baby, but something that meant a lot to her.”
“Oh, I have everything,” Samantha said, standing. “Back here.” She led the way through the small house with its obviously secondhand furnishings to a bedroom that held a double bed and a crib. The crib was filled with bags and boxes.
She gave an apologetic little wave toward the beds. “We shared this room.”
“These are her things?” Shaine asked.
She nodded. “And the bear,” she said, gesturing to a stuffed animal lying on her bed. She gave a foolish shrug. “I sleep with it now.”
Cosmetics and cheap jewelry littered an old dresser, a teddy bear calendar hung on the wall. Samantha Cutter was just a kid herself. Shaine’s chest ached for her.
“You want to touch her things?” she asked, gesturing to the crib.
