Page 25 of Jack Raider

For the noise, the love, the messy, hilarious family dinners.

For something real.

I took a deep breath, walked down the hall, and paused in the doorway to the guest room. I hadn’t used it much, but it suddenly seemed like the perfect place to set up a second dog bed, or two. Wait how many animals does she have? Or maybe a reading chair for someone who likes to curl up and bingeHousewives of Atlanta.

Yeah.

It was time.

Time to let someone in.

Not just for a night.

I was halfwaythrough texting Eloise goodnight when my phone lit up with a different kind of message that hit like a punch to the gut.

From Fraiser:

Need you. Missing girl. Malibu. Leaving tonight. Details in the email.

Just like that, everything shifted.

I stared at the message, then back at my half-written text to Eloise:

I erased it.

Instead, I called her.

“Hey,” she answered on the second ring, her voice soft and sleepy.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I have to leave tonight. A mission came up.”

She was quiet for a second. “Is it bad?”

“Could be. Seventeen-year-old girl, her name is Pamela. Thought she could survive in Malibu with three hundred bucks and a dream. She’s been missing four days. Her friend finally cracked and told the family where she went.”

“Oh no,” Eloise whispered.

“Yeah. She’s scared, and probably broke by now, and on the street. We’re not waiting for the local PD to treat her like just another runaway. Her mom called Fraiser. She wants her daughter foundnow.”

“Be careful,” she said. “And call me. Even if it’s just to let me know you’re okay.”

I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. “I will. I promise.”

After we hung up, I packed fast—just a backpack, a burner phone, a change of clothes, and a piece of paper with an address scrawled on it: a last-known sighting of a blonde girl near a soup kitchen off the Pacific Coast Highway. She’d been seen crying behind a dumpster.

I stared at that line longer than I should’ve.

Because no kid should end up like that. Not ever.

Pamela had made a mistake. She wanted freedom, sunshine, a chance to be someone. But she wasn’t prepared for the sharks swimming beneath the surface. Not in a city like Malibu, where a smile can be a trap and a hundred-dollar bill can come with the wrong kind of strings.

This wasn’t just a rescue.

It was a race.

And I wasn’t planning on losing.

11

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