Chapter 2
I awake the next morning to the sound of my phone ringing.
"Goode," I say sleepily.
"It's Chris, we've got a lead," he says and hangs up.
I walk over to the bathroom to check my hair. Last night I fell asleep on the couch in my office. Again. My hair is a mess and my clothes are all wrinkled. I have spare clothes in the closet for when this happens. I change, brush my hair and go downstairs.
"What do we got?" I ask as I lean over the new guy's shoulder.
"A boy matching Zach's description was seen on a bus heading north a week ago," he says.
"A week ago?" I reply.
"Yes."
"It was a rhetorical question," I tell him, frustrated once again. "How the hell did you miss that?" I yell in his ear and pull his chair out from under him. It's a quick move I have mastered over the years; he lands on the floor with a thud and the chair clatters over to the middle of the room. A couple of the other newbies give us sideways glances and return to their work.
"What's your name?" I ask him.
"Excuse me?" he replies.
"I asked you a question, now I expect an answer."
"Andrew," he says still sitting on the floor.
"Okay Andrew, first I want you to get up off the floor and then I want you to get your butt into gear and give me some useful information." I say and exited the room with Chris hot on my heels.
As soon as we're out of ear shot he asks me "What was that all about?"
"Nothing" I say bluntly.
"Catherine we've been working together for fifteen years now and I think I know you well enough to know that that was not nothing."
"Fifteen years means almost nothing in our line of work."
"What?" he asks.
"Zach's heading north," I say.
"So what does that mean?"
"He's going to see my sister," I tell him and kept walking.
A minute later at the other end of the hall I hear him say, "She's got a sister?"