The Doll Read Online Free Page B

son of a bitch knows it’s there,” Bradford said. “And he’s smirking.”
    Walker came to stand beside him, then drew closer and also focused on the image. Jahan said, “Perhaps we’re giving them too much credit for sophistication. Maybe they’re bumbling idiots, figuring it out as they go along.”
    Bradford and Walker stared at him.
    “Or maybe not,” he said. “But while I have your attention, and without intending to sound callous or change the subject, with Michael out of the picture and our available resources put toward finding her, what do you want me to do with the Tisdale assignment?”
    Bradford paused and blinked, a long, slow open-and-shut, then turned to look at his office, where, although he couldn’t see it, the Tisdale folder still sat on his desk and the signature page Munroe had signed this morning waited to be faxed. Tisdale. The reason she’d come into the office today.
    Tisdale wasn’t a security gig or one of the peace offerings Bradford handed Munroe to entice her to hang around longer. This was different, a request for her services, though it hadn’t named her specifically, and it hadn’t arrived through normal Capstone channels.
    The plea had come to Bradford personally from two frantic, desperate parents in California, in the hope that he might know where and how to locate Munroe. They might not have known her by name, but anyone who was anyone within the upper social strata knew the story of Emily Burbank, missing for four years in Africa and presumed dead, and how Munroe had found her. Bradfordwas still connected to the board of trustees that had bankrolled the search. Henry and Judith Tisdale, one a Silicon Valley giant, the other a United States senator, with their combined power and influence, hadn’t needed much time at all to track him down.
    Neeva Eckridge.
    Missing person.
    Could Munroe find her?
    Bradford had made no promises, given no indication that he even knew
how
to locate Munroe, told them he’d see what he could do. And now Munroe was missing, too. If the Eckridge kidnapping had been a ruse to pull her in, it was a goddamn masterpiece of ruses, because the whole world was looking for Eckridge and nobody could find her.
    Two weeks ago, the girl had been an up-and-coming B-list Hollywood starlet and now hers was the most recognizable face in the country. Amid a busy schedule and a flurry of appointments, she’d vanished in the only one-hour window that she would have been unaccounted for. No signs of foul play, no eyewitnesses, no details: It was as if she’d simply vanished.
    What started out as sensational gossip soon turned into a media feeding frenzy, because until Neeva Eckridge had gone missing, nobody, not her agent, not her boyfriend, not her Hollywood friends, had had any idea that the Tisdales were her parents. Speculation buzzed as much over Neeva’s true and fabricated pasts as it did in regards to what could have happened to her, and regardless of the angle—sensational, fearmongering, alien abduction, or otherwise—Neeva’s picture, and her parents’, were everywhere.
    Bradford continued to stare at his office, toward the documents. Munroe had wanted the assignment, had been eager for it, but if she was the Tisdales’ best hope for finding their daughter, then at the rate things were going today, it was a lost cause.
    Walker drew near and stood beside him, the top of her head reaching his shoulder. When he’d shifted straighter, taller, and had obviously returned to the present, she spoke.
    “Do you think they’re connected?”
    “I can’t see how,” he replied. “But the timing is freakishly coincidental.”
    “We have Michael taken down,” she said, “Logan being held as a hostage, and all of this possibly connected to Neeva Eckridge,who also disappeared with no witnesses. What thread draws them together?”
    “I wish I knew,” he said. “Because if I had that piece of information, I’d find the bastard who’s behind this that