Ghosts (Vance Davis Dossier #1) by Heather Huffman

Author:Heather Huffman [Huffman, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Booktrope
Published: 2014-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

***

The conversation with Allie was one of many things bumping around Vance’s brain as he sat in his truck at the old city park, waiting for the evening’s nefarious dealings to commence. Every town had their version of the city park, that place where those looking for trouble could find their pleasure. One of the last cases he’d worked with Harmony had involved a town struggling with drug deals becoming commonplace in school bathrooms. Kids in junior high were dealing prescription drugs they’d pilfered from their parents’ bathroom cabinets. By high school, they’d graduated to the big time and were selling cocaine and the latest designer drugs.

Sometimes Vance felt like he was fighting a losing battle, that there were more evils waiting to gobble kids up than he had the capacity to fight. But then he reminded himself that it wasn’t up to him to win the whole war, just to fight for one kid at a time. He hoped he wasn’t too late for the current kid.

A shoddy maroon four-door sputtered into a parking lot on the far side of the park. Moments later, a shadowy figure emerged from the car, leaning casually against the hood as if waiting for someone. From his vantage point across the park, Vance snapped pictures and watched, observing details and taking mental notes. He didn’t have to wait long for another car to pull up alongside the first.

There was a time when he would have strode into the meeting and busted heads together until he got answers. He’d since learned it was more effective, if less cathartic, to figure out who the players were, then stalk them patiently online until one of them let something slip. By “patiently,” he meant a day or two. If somebody hadn’t said something by then, Vance would get his chance to bust heads together. And as much as he enjoyed that pastime, it was better for everyone if they talked sooner. Every day mattered exponentially in the world of missing children, and information gathered from online chatter was more reliable and more admissible in court than information gathered from hanging a trafficker off a building or beating his face in.

He sat there for hours, snapping pictures and studying the seedy underbelly of his hometown before a police car rolled in, busting up what they suspected to be a party—or maybe they knew very well what they were breaking up and preferred to simply send those involved on their way. Either way, Vance figured he wouldn’t get much else that night, so he headed back to his hotel room to process the information he’d gathered.

He downloaded the pictures and did what he could to enhance the images before putting his computer to work running the images through a face recognition database. While he waited for that to do its thing, he changed into a pair of sweatpants and threw his clothes into a pile in the corner, making a mental note to hit the laundromat soon. He’d declined

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