Wherever She Goes (Psychic Seasons by ReGina Welling (you can read anyone txt) 📕

“Call your guys, tell them he is in a small space near a furnace and he can smell coffee brewing. Wherever he is, he feels safe because he has been there before. It feels familiar to him.

When Zack just stood there, she walked over and gave him a shove. “What are you waiting for? Call them.” Instead, he started to pull her toward the door.

“Grab a jacket. Don’t you want to see for yourself? It’s a five minute drive with the lights on.” Thinking of a mother frantic to find her child, Kat quickly pulled a coat from the closet and followed him outside putting her feeling of excitement down to helping a lost boy and not the sizzle of his hand touching her arm.

Sun sparkling off the patches of remaining snow blasted light at eyes still unused to such brightness and Kat put a hand to her forehead for shade. Zack concentrated on his driving but still managed to keep her in his peripheral vision.

“There’s a pair in the glove box.”

“What?” His words confused her.

“Sunglasses,” he reached across, pressed the button to open the cubby and handed her his own aviators. They would be huge on her small face but at least her eyes would be protected.

Grateful for the way they cut the glare, she never gave a thought to how she looked. Too many years of not seeing herself in mirrors made it all too easy to forget about appearances. She would have been shocked to know Zack thought she looked adorable in his sunglasses.

It seemed they had barely pulled out of her driveway before they were turning into a small housing development. Kat remembered passing through here with her grandfather when she was younger. To see an area that had once been a large field now populated with a series of houses built from a similar pattern messed with her sense of place. It felt like she had traveled through time.

The third house on the left, the one with flashing lights and cruisers parked in front was the one Zack made a beeline for leaving Kat to follow more slowly. Before she reached the front steps, a whisper sounded in her ear.

“Over here.” It was faint, little more than a hiss. Kat lagged even farther behind and looked around to see where the noise was coming from. Down the narrow path between the two houses, the ground was already bare of snow but still felt frozen under her feet. Kat followed the voice until she heard, “look, there.”

Unless you were looking for it, you might not notice the basement window was ajar, or that there was a small smudge of mud on the sill.

Relief washed over Kat, some of it hers, some coming from the presence that had guided her to this place. The once she now realized had been feeding her information all along.

Leaning down, she nudged the window gently to see if a small boy could fit through the opening. When it swung wide on hinges mounted to the top, she knew this was the place. Little Noel could have easily pushed the window open and slid inside. Lifting Zack’s sunglasses off her nose, Kat peered in but could not see the boy anywhere. She straightened and hurried back to where Zack was standing on the porch with two women.

Both women were visibly distraught, one more than the other, her shoulders rounded, arms folded at her waist, there was a fragility about her as she tried to hold herself together—Noel’s mother, that tore at Kat’s heart strings. As Kat mounted the steps, Sonjia reached up to run a shaky hand through her already mussed hair, it was obviously not the first time she had performed the action that day. Tears dripped from her shadow-smudged eyes to make tracks down her pale face.

“We’ll find him,” Zack was saying. “We are following every possible lead.” He didn’t want to admit how he had gotten one of those leads or that he was banking on Kat’s being right.

He turned when he heard her feet crossing the porch and she beckoned him to follow her. There was no reason to get Sonjia’s hopes up, though Kat was positive Noel was curled up and sleeping in that basement. She led Zack to the window and showed him what she had found.

He wasted no time making his way back to where Sonjia stood. “Did you find something?” Hope made her voice rise.

“Who lives next door?” Zack asked.

It was the other woman who spoke, “I’m Melinda, that’s my house but I’d have heard Noel if he came in. I was making coffee when I heard Sonjia screaming outside. The front door is right next to my kitchen.”

Kat felt a surge of emotion. Coffee.

“Not if he went in through the basement window,” she pointed out.

“Those windows should all be latched….” Melinda’s eyes narrowed, “unless my husband has been sneaking smokes down there, he promised to quit.” Melinda was already headed down the steps, Sonjia hard on her heels.

“I’ll kill him if that little boy has hurt himself.”

“I’ll hug him if we find Noel safe and sound. Then I’ll help you kill him.”

Kat followed Zack who followed Sonjia into Melinda’s house. Four pairs of feet clattered down the wooden basement stairs as Sonjia called out, “Noel, are you down here?”

No answer.

Maybe Kat had been mistaken, but she didn’t think so. At that moment, the furnace kicked on and, looking toward the noise, she saw a small space under a set of shelves. From out of the shadowy space poked a small, snow-booted foot.

“Look, there,” she pointed. Zack beat Sonjia there by half a hair’s breadth and pulling a small flashlight from his belt, hunkered down to direct the beam into the space. Noel, tired from his adventure, was curled up on a pile of rags sound asleep. Clutched tightly in his arms, a bedraggled cat blinked in the sudden light then began to purr.

A huge grin on his face, Zack