Page 1 of Rescuing Sara

CHAPTER 1

Knoxville,Tennessee

Early-December. Monday afternoon

“They want us to stop looking for Sara Turner, Danni. Us being the police.”

Danni Blake stared across the booth at her late father’s partner and best friend, police Lieutenant Leonard “Leo” Anderson. “Who wants you to stop looking for her?” she demanded. “Sara has only been missing for a week. Since the Monday after Thanksgiving no less!”A long,terrifying week since my goddaughter and the light of my life vanished.

“Her grandfather for one,” Leo said. “Ed Turner called the precinct this morning and told Captain Haggerty he’d hired a private investigator to look for his granddaughter and didn’t need the police, so we should leave it alone. And after we spent all last weekend putting up more ‘Have you seen me?’ flyers with Sara’s photo.”

A chilling anger raked over Danni’s skin. “That’s not going to happen, is it? Tell me the police aren’t going to stop looking.” That Ed Turner would do such a thing only added to this nightmare.

A burst of sharp, frigid December air surged inside as the door toMimi’s Coffee Houseswung open, bringing pink-cheeked, hungry arrivals with it, the wind making Danni colder than ever. Last Friday, the temperature had dropped to lows unfamiliar to East Tennessee at this time of year and stayed there. On days like this, people sought the sanctuary ofMimi’s,well known for its homemade baked goods and very, very good coffee.

“You’re a cop’s daughter, so what do you think?” Leo asked. “Captain Haggerty told him the police didn’t need his permission to continue searching for a missing ten-year-old child who just happened to be his granddaughter.” Angry frustration pulled his grey-streaked eyebrows together. “Sara Turner isten,for God’s sake. If Sara were my granddaughter, I’d be pounding the streets trying to find her instead of going into the office every day like Turner claims to be doing.”

“If Sara were here, she would tell you she’s eleven, even if her birthday isn’t for another two weeks,” Danni declared. “And why would Ed think that the police would even listen to such a stupid idea?”

“Other than he’s an A list asshole?” Leo snorted. “I have no idea.”

Danni massaged her pounding temples. Usually,Mimi’sdark French roast took care of any headache but not today. But then having your beloved goddaughter vanish was not an everyday occurrence. “You said ‘they’ wanted us to stop looking for Sara,” she said. “Who other than Ed wants that?”

“His employer,La Belle Monde,” Leo said, refilling their cups from the carafe on the table. “I got a call from some prick in their HR department this morning, who said, and I quote, ‘our continuing questioning of Ed Turner was upsetting him and keeping him from doing his work, and we–meaning the police–should respect his wishes to let a private investigator look for Sara.’”

Despite her anguish, Danni laughed. “And what did you tell him he could do with that suggestion?”La Belle Monde–or LBM as it was known locally–was an international import-export company with offices around the world, including one here in Knoxville. Ed Turner was their Chief Financial Officer and had reluctantly accepted custody of Sara when her mother died suddenly two years ago. Her father and Ed’s only son, Levi, had died in a bicycling accident when Sara was four.

Leo’s answering grin deepened the wrinkles around his eyes. “Something on the order of telling him where he could shove it and he could call my captain because that’s who I take orders from and not some sniveling little bureaucrat. Haggerty loved it.”

“I’ll bet.” Danni knew Captain Joselyn Haggerty and she was not the kind of cop to let her crew, from top detectives to the newest rookie be shoved around by someone in the community. “But you could have told me this over the phone. Was there a reason you wanted to meet face to face?”

“Haggerty will probably kick my ass for telling you,” Leo said slowly. “Your dad may have died seven years ago but you’re still part of the KPD family, so I think you need to know.”

“You’re not sick, are you?” A sudden fear seized Danni. Leo worked long hours, his diet wasn’t the best and he struggled with hypertension. Sam Blake, her cop father, had worked too hard as well and his death from a ruptured aneurism seven years ago had left a vacant spot in Danni’s heart. Leo had helped fill it, not only then, but after Danni’s mother left when Danni was six years old.

“Nah,” Leo waved away her question. “But since last week someone started sending me e-mails, warning me to leave Sara’s case alone ‘or else.’’

Dread spiraled up Danni’s spine. “‘Or else’ what?”

“Oh, they’re creative,” Leo laughed. “The one on Friday said if I didn’t stop, I was going to need to start sleeping in my bullet proof vest or at the very least invest in a pair of crutches. And yes, Haggerty knows about it. She has our IT department working on tracing it but wants me to step back from the case. I talked her out of it, so I’m still on it for now.”

His light-hearted attempt at humor did nothing to relieve Danni’s worry. “But how could someone outside the department know your work e-mail?”

“You got me there,” Leo admitted. “IT will find it.”

He pushed back the battered homburg Danni had given him for Christmas five years ago. “Street talk is those two child trafficking articles you’ve been writing forExcelsiorare causing quite a stir. People, especially parents are worried.”

“They should be,” Danni retorted. In addition to being on staff at UT’s School of Journalism, she wrote part-time forExcelsior,a local newspaper,covering court cases and high-profile crimes. But after recent cases of two groups of missing and kidnapped East Tennessee teens being found and rescued by KPD, she’d started writingWhere Are the Children?a series on child trafficking nationally and here in Tennessee.

“You wouldn’t believe what I’ve learned in researching for those articles,” Danni told him. “Or since you’re with Major Crimes, maybe you would.”

“There isn’t a whole lot I haven’t seen,” Leo agreed. “It’s the stuff of nightmares, some straight out of hell itself.”

“Child trafficking is happening all around us,” Danni continued. “In big and small communities, urban and rural settings and everywhere in-between and not just in Tennessee.”

“God alone knows what’s happened during the Pandemic,” Leo sighed. “Or how many more kids went missing.”

“Even with all the technological advances the TBI has made and all the other support groups that have formed to find and stop trafficking, it’s still happening.” Thinking of Sara, Danni shut her eyes. “Kids like Sara are being grabbed every day.”

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