Page 21 of Claimed by Him

“Jalen,” he said, his long fingers wrapping around the card, “please.”

He didn’t seem like he was trying to flirt with me or use his first name to establish some sort of bond between us that would come back and bite me in the ass later, so I nodded.

When had I become such a cynic?

“One of my employees didn’t show up for work this morning. He’s been with me for four years, and he’s never just not showed up. He’s never even come in late. By the time he was a half-hour late, his supervisor came to me, concerned. We tried to get ahold of him, but I finally ended up going to his house. When he answered his door, I knew something was wrong.”

I held up a finger, and Jalen paused. “His name?”

“Theo,” he said. “Theo Ludwick.”

I wrote the name down. “Go on.”

“His daughter’s missing.” Jalen ran his hand over his face, rubbing his cheeks and chin like he wasn’t used to having some stubble there. “Meka. She’s fifteen and has been giving him trouble ever since her mom died.”

“When was that?”

“Three years ago,” he answered promptly. “Betsy had cancer. He was two weeks short of his one-year anniversary and didn’t think he’d be able to take more than the three-day bereavement time. He’d already used up all of his other paid time taking care of her the last month before she died.”

“Was he?”

Jalen’s gaze jerked back to me. “Was he what?”

“Able to take the extra time?”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Of course. I’m a businessman, but I’m not more concerned with the bottom line than I am with doing the right thing.”

A man with a strong moral code. I liked that. “I didn’t mean to imply anything else. Just trying to get a feel for things.”

He eyed me for a moment before continuing. “Meka’s a freshman at Centennial High School. When she didn’t come home Friday afternoon, he tried calling her, but all he got was her voicemail. He called the school and found out that she’d left after third period, giving the office a note that he’d supposedly written about visiting her mother’s grave. He went to the cemetery, but she wasn’t there, and the groundskeeper hadn’t seen her.”

“Has he filed a police report?” I asked.

His entire expression darkened as he scowled, the muscles in his jaw popping with agitation. “He went to the police Friday night and was told that she hadn’t been gone long enough to file a missing person report. When he came back the next day, he was sent to talk to a random cop. He filed an official report, but the officer he spoke with said that Meka had most likely gone off with some friends for the weekend and she’d be back Sunday night, worried about getting in trouble.”

I understood that having a waiting period to file a report cut down on cops wasting time looking for people who’d gone off to do something and forgot to leave a note, but there were times I thought that a lot more missing people would’ve been found unharmed if the search had begun right away. Just because a rebellious teenager ran away didn’t mean she wasn’t in danger.

“Theo spent all Saturday morning and afternoon trying to find her. He called friends, went on her social media accounts, even called her phone company to see if they had any way of tracking her phone.”

Jalen’s frustration was palpable, and I wondered if he was close to Theo and Meka, or if Jalen was simply the sort of person who cared that deeply. Rylan had vouched for him, and the way Rylan had been with Jenna and the kids the other night told me that he had high standards.

“According to the phone company, Meka’s phone was off and showed no activity since Thursday night around nine o’clock. No one he spoke to could tell him anything.”

I made a note to keep that in mind when speaking with Meka’s classmates. Just because they hadn’t talked to her dad didn’t mean they were clueless. Friends would have wanted to keep her out of trouble, and enemies would’ve wanted to keep her missing longer, so she’d be in more trouble. Anyone who didn’t think a fifteen-year-old girl would have those sorts of enemies was either naïve or had enjoyed a completely different experience growing up than I had.

“So, the police are actually looking for her?” I asked.

Jalen made a disgusted sound. “If you can call it that. As soon as Theo finished filling out the paperwork Saturday night, the cop tossed it onto a huge stack of other papers on a desk and said that the detective would take a look at it first thing. Theo called yesterday and was told that he’d be contacted when they had something. He wasn’t given the detective’s name or anything. No one came by the house or came to ask him questions. It seems like as soon as they heard she’d had some problems, they wrote her off as a runaway.”

I frowned. I hadn’t exactly spent much time working with the police department here, but Adare had told me that they were generally friendly and helpful. Then again, as far as I knew, she hadn’t worked any missing kid cases.

“A couple questions,” I said finally. “You know Mr. Ludwick well?”

“I do.”

“Do you know of anyone who might want to hurt him? Get revenge on him?”

Jalen looked insulted that I’d even asked. “No! Of course not!”

---