Page 7 of Tactical Revival

His cheeks turn red. “Mrs. Anderson. Sorry.”

“No worries, hun. It’s a hard habit to break, trust me.” I smile. “If you could have your dad call me, that would be great. You guys will just be working on the project then? Not going anywhere?” I hate that he won’t be home tonight—that I’ll be alone, but Matty behaving like a typical thirteen-year-old is a balm to that wound.

“Yes, Mom.” Matty rolls his eyes. “I’ll call you right after dinner and before I go to bed, too.”

“And you better not be late for school tomorrow. If you are?—”

“I know, I know, trouble city.” He laughs.

“You got it.” I open my arms, and he steps in closer, wrapping his around my waist and hugging me. I breathe him in, enjoying every second of this moment before he pulls away. “You guys have fun. I love you, Matty.”

My boy grins at me. A sideways smile that reminds me of his father at that age. Before he became the womanizer he is now. God, please let my boy stay kind. “Love you, too, Mom.”

CHAPTER 3

Jaxson

“You said your daughter is home visiting?” I ask, jotting down a few impressions on my notepad. The way the parents are behaving, the feel of the home we’re standing in. This one is nice and tidy, though well-lived-in.

These people love their daughter, and it’s clear from the photographs adorning the mantle that she loves them too. Which means she most likely didn’t just leave in the middle of the night or walk out without saying goodbye.

Dread coils in my stomach, but I shove it down to focus on the facts.

“Yes,” the mother—Mrs. Finch—replies. “She got back home Thursday night since she has no classes on Friday.” She sniffles, her gray eyes red and glassy. “She’s getting her master’s degree in physical education.” Her voice breaks. “I never should have let her go out for that run this morning.” She cries. “It was still dark. I should have made her stay.”

Her husband pulls her in closer, and Sheriff Vick, who is dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt today, reaches out to take her hand. “Millie, we’ll find her. I’m sure she just got turned around. Besides, she’s an adult. You couldn’t have made her stay.”

“I could have tried. She’s never been gone this long. Normally, she’s back an hour after leaving. She’s been gone eight hours now. Eight hours, Ray!” Mrs. Finch covers her face with shaking hands.

I leave Lance to ask the rest of our questions and turn my attention to the photographs. The cute blonde staring back at me has something familiar about her, though I can’t quite place what it is. She has the same gray eyes as her mother, her features soft yet refined.

She’s slender, a runner, and every photograph has her genuinely smiling. Occasionally in cases I’ve been called in on, you can tell that the home life is little more than a façade put on for social media’s benefit. But this family truly loves each other.

That familiar sense of dread is back, so I beat it back down again. I spent too many years on the force. Too much time identifying the dead and breaking the news to family members all while promising to hunt down the killer who stole their loved one.

God, please don’t let this be another one of those cases.

Please, God, help me find her. Alive.

“Was anything amiss when she left this morning?” Michael questions.

“No,” her mother replies. “She got up, drank her smoothie, grabbed her bottle of water, and left.”

“Without a cell phone?”

“Kleo doesn’t carry her phone often,” Millie replies, her voice shaky. “And never on runs. She doesn’t like to be tied to anything when she’s out. Our girl is all about living in the moment.” With that, she starts crying.

“I get that,” I reply, offering them a kind smile. Unfortunately, even though I do understand it, it makes it even more difficult to find her. “Did she carry any form of protection? Pepper spray? A knife? A firearm?”

“She carries a knife,” her father replies. “After her twenty-first birthday, I tried to get her to start carrying a firearm, but she said it weighs her down. She carries most of the time, but on her runs, she sticks with the knife.”

I nod, then close my notepad and stick it back into my pocket. “I’m going to go walk the area. See if I can’t trace her steps.”

“We did that this morning,” her father insists.

“Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes helps,” I say, then offer Michael and Lance a nod before slipping outside. They both know I do better with facts than people. Not that I can’t handle an interview—God knows I’ve done enough of them to be decent at it. But once I have the base facts, I do much better from a distance. Where I can be in the quiet of my own mind, retracing the final moments of a victim in order to discern what happened to them.

It’s a bright day, the temperature perfect for a T-shirt given our spring weather. I move down the front steps, then head out onto the sidewalk in the direction Kleo’s father said she runs in. I don’t move much faster than a walk, though, because I want to make sure I don’t miss anything.

---