Death's Daughter Read Free

it. Dull pain throbbed between her eyes and she pinched the bridge of her nose. “I also know that as soon as it gets screwed up, and it will, because it always does, we’ll be the ones he blames. And nobody will give a shit when we say he wouldn’t allow us to interfere. The Altered are, and always have been, the perfect scapegoats for anything the humans don’t want to take responsibility for.”
    “Bad day?”
    She scowled at him but didn’t answer. Their perp targeted these kids because they were Altered. She knew it, but she couldn’t prove it. And until she could, she was going to have to keep bowing to the commissioner’s wishes. The bastard insisted it was coincidence. And since all the crimes had occurred in New Hope’s jurisdiction, there was nothing she could do about it.
    Jeremiah ran a hand over his bald head. “You should have let me come first. It’s what they pay me for.”
    They both knew the only thing that would change if she’d followed procedure is it would have taken her longer to get there. Included in Jeremiah’s extensive list of duties was the endless task of reminding her of Agency protocol and the numerous ways in which she failed to follow it. Not that it ever made the slightest bit of difference in how she chose to behave. Good thing neither of them actually gave a shit.
    Once he realized she wasn’t going to say anything, he sighed. “Have you at least learned anything new about the unsub?”
    “No.” She shook her head. “He’s still drawing on the wild magic, not using his own. I’m beginning to wonder if he knows how. The strength of the magic completely obliterates his signature. We have a powerful being who’s using wild magic either because he’s just that good, or because he’s too uneducated to know any better. Beyond that, I can’t tell you much—other than the fact he’s a sadistic bastard. But you already knew that.”
    “And the child?”
    She grimaced as the image of the girl flashed through her brain. “Cassie Richards. Seven years old. Blond hair, blue eyes and pigtails. Missing her front teeth.” She handed over the picture they had given her when she’d arrived on the scene. She pointed at two people huddled together on the stairs in the center of the chaos. Officers milled around them occasionally stopping to talk, but didn’t stay long. “The parents.” They’d tried several times to get them to move inside, but the mother wanted to stay outside where her daughter had last been seen. It was almost as if she thought the girl might reappear.
    “She doesn’t look like them.”
    Juliana glanced at him in surprise. He looked between the picture and the Richardses again. Both parents had dark hair and angular faces where the girl’s was round. It didn’t mean anything necessarily, but Juliana found it telling that they had the same thought upon viewing the picture.
    Now that she had backup, it was time to question the Richardses. “Let’s get this over with.” She strode toward them, knowing Jeremiah followed without having to check. The couple glanced up when her shadow fell across them. She extended a hand. “Juliana Norris. Realm Walker with the Agency.”
    The mother nodded once, briefly, before turning her watery, gray eyes back to the ground. Her knees pressed against her chest, and she kept her arms locked around her legs. Hope flooded her husband’s features as he shook Juliana’s hand. Her heart skipped in panic, and she hoped he couldn’t feel the moisture on her suddenly damp palm. She hated when they looked at her like that, as if she were there to save them. As if she could fix everything. She’d do her best to help, she always did, but there were never any guarantees in her line of work. Particularly in a case like this.
    Every moment that she wasted standing there feeding his hope lowered the odds of her finding his little girl alive. Thus far, none of the children had been found, but that would change and soon, of that she