Page 48 of SEAL Mates

Alec

Alec

I felt like a bear with a sorehead at work, which wasn’t like me at all. I hated the way that both Derek and Blake, the two guys that weren’t on board with Paula moving on, just changing things around and my thinking pattern, schedule and everything else was completely out of sync.

“No word chief. Fuck, if we don’t find this girl soon. Then we don’t know what we’re going to do.”

My right-hand-man, Bob was right. Since the little girl went missing from her parent’s house yesterday the sooner we didn’t find her, the more the town was having little faith in me. I didn’t want to call for outside help. I thought the guys in the group and our skills in the Navy would be enough. I was worried that I was wrong.

There was a knock on the door, so I looked up. The search party were out there every day and there were no fucking clues.

Not one.

“Hey, I thought I would pop in and maybe give some help or something.”

Paula sighed as she came in.

I could tell that she wasn’t sleeping well, I’d heard her during the night pacing in her room. I wanted to knock on the door and ask her what was up, but I hadn’t done it, because I could only deal with one issue at a time. Sure, I could handle multiple crimes. It was like solving loads of puzzles. But problems/conflicts that seemed to take it out of me, which is why I hired Ron as my deputy, he was good at that. And everyone ran to him, knowing he was the best person to deal with this type of situation.

“I just keep thinking if I was putting Kylie to bed, and the whole thing that poor woman is going through. I don’t think I could deal with it, the way she is.”

I nodded in agreement. “The press conference helped. We had people come forward, but nothing really helped. Nothing really told us why or how it could have been done.”

“Do you mind if I come in with my theory and we run through them? I’m sure that you’ve been through them. But I just want to give my two cents.”

She was a writer. I was sure that she’d spent many nights researching and trying to figure out things.

“Is this from your research experience?”

She nodded and I motioned for her to come in and shut the door. “Sure, two heads are better than one, right?”

She shrugged, “Yeah. But I don’t want to pretend that I’m an expert or anything that I know more than you. Because, I really don’t. I just want to offer a suggestion based on what I heard.”

I nodded, thinking an outside eye may just be what I need right now.

“Ok. So we know that Stacey Rose was taken within an hour or maybe shorter. So it had to be someone she knew right. It couldn’t just be a stranger, or we would have heard her screaming and kicking in the house.”

“Yeah, but you know that her mom is remarried so the guy isn’t Stacey Rose’s dad and her real dad has her every second week and he has an alibi.”

“Sure. I’m not even thinking in that light. I’m thinking who ever took her, was strong. And knew how to maneuver without being seen. I mean, how does someone enter a house and leave without no one knowing. So, I’m thinking who took her rather than where is she?”

She was onto something, and I must admit that it was my first instinct.

“You know another thing that crossed my mind, but I thought it was stupid.”

I couldn’t help but ask where she was going on with this.

“What if no one took her when you thought they did, what if she was hiding until later?”

I jumped up off the table, the one I was leaning on. She was on to something. What if no-one had taken her at the time? It would make more sense.

I decided to drive to the Roses’ and take Paula along with me. I had a feeling that we were looking in the wrong places.

“Do you want to come along for the ride?”

She nodded, “I would love to do that.”

“To help the family or is the writer in you, wanting to solve the case too?”

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