Spirit (Blackwood Security, #10.5) - Elise Noble Page 0,21

was helping her…

“Unfortunately, I’m all too well aware of that fact. Apart from that, how’s the Christmas prep going? Has Bradley turned Riverley into a toy factory yet?”

“It was quiet when I left, but I haven’t been home for three hours so anything’s possible. Yeah, the rest’s mostly okay. But…”

“But what?”

“There is one other small problem.”

“Tell me. People say I’m a good listener.”

Yes, he was. He always had been. And something Gwendolyn said earlier had given me an idea.

“So there’s this guy…”

CHAPTER 11

AAAAAAAAND SEND…

I pressed the button, and my last pre-Christmas report whizzed into cyberspace. Unless everybody’s favourite arsonist decided to set something else on fire, I was officially off work until Boxing Day afternoon, four whole days away. In the past, Black and I had paused for long enough to eat a turkey dinner and that was it, but since his near-death experience, we’d been trying to take the occasional break. “Trying” being the operative word. So far, we hadn’t been entirely successful.

Hmm, what to do with all this spare time… I could sneak out to Mickey D’s. Or try to figure out how Netflix worked. Or catch up on sleep.

“Emmy!” Valerie appeared in the doorway. “I think I found something.”

Oh, fantastic. Would it be wrong of me to cry?

Valerie had spent the past week and a half sitting at the table in the small conference room, surrounded by piles of paper and her laptop. That seemed to be her happy place. I’d been keeping a close eye on her since the day she arrived, plus Bradley had been reporting back too, and Valerie was notably more relaxed now. There was still tension, but from fear for the future, not the all-consuming panic that Spencer was suddenly going to pop up and hurt her. Everyone could see the difference in Chay as well. He’d started talking more and eating more too, now that his stomach had stopped hurting.

At the beginning of last week, I’d talked with Valerie about her goals. All she wanted was a normal, boring life for herself and Chay. She dreamed of a divorce with full custody, but although I’d had Oliver draw up the papers, Valerie was too scared to have them served in case it pushed Spencer over the edge. Her worst nightmare was that he’d snatch Chay in retaliation and she’d never see her son again.

But we’d fix the problem. Yeah, yeah, I know I said I was gonna chill, but you didn’t think I’d stand down completely, did you? Pretty sure I was incapable of that. Brainstorming a solution to Valerie’s problem was at the top of my list of things to do tomorrow, or at least, it had been until she appeared in my study.

“That’s brilliant. What have you found?”

“A possible relative of Gwendolyn’s. Based on the data, I think maybe a niece.”

“So Gwendolyn was right? She does have a mystery sister?”

“It sure looks that way.”

Much as I wanted to chill out and eat junk food for the rest of the day, that actually was good news. Who knew? I might even be able to tick off all four of my Project Mistletoe tasks by Christmas.

“Who is she? How do we get in touch?”

“Her name’s Mina Miracle. I sent her a message via the genealogy site’s secure system last night, but she hasn’t gotten back to me yet.”

“Mina Miracle? Seriously? That’s her real name?”

“Yes, her married name. I looked her up on social media and messaged her there too, but it doesn’t look as though she uses it much. Her Facebook page is mostly recipes, but there are photos from her wedding a year ago.” Valerie smiled sadly. “She was such a beautiful bride.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Wait, I guess. Hopefully she’ll see one of my messages sooner or later.”

It was the “or later” part I was afraid of. We had less than three days until Christmas, and while I was sure Gwendolyn wouldn’t mind waiting for news until January, Bradley would moan like hell if his master list still had open items on Boxing Day. Everyone was sick of his daily demands for status updates already. Apparently, the team was on track with ninety-six percent of tasks completed, and I was joint bottom of the league table. Me and Black both had nil points. The fact that Black had spent December attempting to prevent death and destruction didn’t seem to matter to my darling assistant. Green check marks were green check marks. Which reminded me, I had to get