The stable clean and the water bowl refreshed, Ryder was stuffing a biscuit of hay into the hay net when Eb called her.
“Mummy, come and see what I’ve got.”
When she walked around the corner into the other part of the barn, Eb sat with two kittens on her lap while the mother cat sat beside her washing her paws. The grin on her daughter’s face melted her heart.
“Oh. Look at you with your new friends. Don’t move. I’ll get a photo for Grandma.” She hurried to her truck and grabbed her phone from her bag, opening the camera setting. Eb posed for a few photos before giving her attention back to her kittens. The mother cat jumped down and wound herself around Ryder’s legs before sashaying out of the barn, a quick glance behind her to make sure her kittens were fine with their new human friend.
“Let me have a look at them.” Ryder walked over cautiously so as not to scare them but they seemed to be quite tame. She picked them up one at a time and tickled under their chins and checked their sex. “Looks like you have a boy and a girl here, Eb. Makes things nice and even doesn’t it?”
“Kind of, but you and me are girls and the horse is a girl. I think we get a boy dog.” She smiled and put her head down to read again. The kittens curled up beside her and closed their eyes.
“If we get a dog.” Ryder felt control slipping away just that one step further.
Chapter 9
“Officer Quinn, line one for you.”
Ryder picked up a pen, pulled her notepad toward her, and lifted up the phone. “Hello, this is Officer Quinn.”
“Stop trying to dig up trouble or it’ll be you that gets it.” The metallic voice screeched in her ear before the disconnection whine took over. Ryder sat with the telephone in her hand, knowing what the caller referred to. This wasn’t the first comment she’d had this past week and she doubted it would be the last. Someone didn’t like her going over the cold cases, but it would take more than this to put her off. Both sets of parents had been interviewed with different reactions from each of them.
The parents of Paris Bonneville were riding a rollercoaster of hope and despair. They thought there was no chance of getting their little girl back alive and then the next day they changed their minds, urging Ryder to help bring her home.
It was a different scenario with the parents of Daniel Bird who didn’t appreciate her involvement in any way or form. Mrs. Bird had been hysterical when Ryder told them what she was doing. The distraught mother screamed her frustrations at the police, insisting her child had been taken by paedophiles and he’d be better off dead after what they would have put him through. Her husband had confided to Ryder that she’d only coped by already thinking her baby was dead. She couldn’t live with the uncertainty and doubt of what he might be going through.
They both wanted the case to go away so they could try and forget how badly they’d failed their little boy. And it seemed that someone else wanted her to drop the case as well. Things got more interesting by the day.
She put the phone back in its cradle and let her mind wander. This made her more determined to follow the case through to the end, whatever that might bring up. She owed it to the children, those that couldn’t speak for themselves. And she owed it to every parent out there who could be at risk from having their own child taken from them.
“What happened that left a nasty gleam in your eye?” Mick stood in front of her desk.
“Just another weirdo wanting me to drop the cold case investigation.” She grinned at him. “Well guess what? Things are going to ramp up now. We’re obviously pushing buttons which can only mean one thing, Mick: someone is running scared.”
“Who do you think it is?” He sat down on the chair in front of her, elbows resting on her desk as he gave her his whole attention.
“I’m thinking local. Hang on.” She stood up and walked over to the reception desk. “Lillian, did that call register as local or interstate?”
“Local I think, Ryder. I have to confess I didn’t really take much notice. Why, was it important?”
“Could be. Can you have a look please?” She leaned against the desk and waited for the receptionist to hit the recall button on her phone.
“Blocked call, sorry.”
“Didn’t stay on the line long enough for me to set up a trace anyway. Bet you a hundred bucks it’s from within the local range.” She hurried back to her desk. “Love it when I annoy people. Means I’m onto something.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
She glanced at Mick. Nothing thrilled her more than when a younger officer was eager to learn. “Let me tell you.”
They both had their heads together when Jake came out of his office. “Ryder, you might want to have a look at this.” He held up a report in his hand. “Came through from Sydney.”
She took the papers and looked at his face a moment before beginning to read. “This is conflicting with what we thought.”
“Exactly the conclusion I came to.” He ran a finger around the outside of his ear, tugging the lobe as though thinking. Ryder remained silent, knowing it was better to let him tell her in his own words rather than be cajoled along. “If we can get into that site, we might find out more, but so
