Free Sweet Justice by Christy Reece Page B

need to be adjusted. He would confer with their healer before he made that decision. Also, since he’d yet to select her mate, he didn’t want to alter her appearance too much. A few of the men might enjoy a meatier woman.
    With his gentle, practiced smile, one he’d created especially for new additions, he gazed down at her. “How are you, my sweet?”
    She opened her eyes. Ah yes, now he remembered why he’d chosen her. Such an enchanting color of light blue, almost the exact shade of the sky in the early autumn.
    Those eyes clouded with tears as she whispered, “Please, let me go home.”
    “This is your home, my sweet.” Lowering his head till his mouth touched the delicate shell of her ear, he whispered softly, “One you’ll never leave again.”
    Feeling considerably better, Seth entered McCall’s office at exactly eight o’clock. A five-mile run and an ice-cold shower had been a necessity after his brief talk with Honor. He never should have touched her.
    At a small noise behind him, he looked over his shoulder to see Honor, Livingston, and Thorne come in behind him.
    McCall stepped around to the front of his desk and sat in the seat Honor had occupied earlier. He gestured at the floor. “All yours, Stone.”
    Her demeanor solemn and all business, Honor stood next to the screen that revealed the five faces of the young women who were missing.
    “Drenda Greene, Karen Hatcher, Anna Bradford, Missy Meads, and Kelli Cavanaugh. Drenda has been missing the longest—about eighteen months. Karen was reported missing three months after Drenda. The other three, Anna, Missy, and Kelli, disappeared this year. The police and FBI have been involved in each case. Since the disappearances are spread across the country, separated by months with the only similarities being that the women were in college, the cases are not considered related.”
    She pointed at a girl with brown hair and dark brown eyes. “This is Anna Bradford, from Halo, Arizona. She’s twenty-four and disappeared from Durrant University in Harristown, Oregon.”
    Pointing to another photograph, she said, “Missy Meads, from Bloomington, Indiana. She has no family and, from what her file indicates, no friends. No one reported her missing until her landlady went to collect the rent and realized she was gone. It’s possible that she was missing at least two weeks before her disappearance was noticed.”
    As she went through the skeletal biography Seth had been able to dig up of each young woman, he was once again reminded of Honor’s competence. No matter his personal feelings; he was damn glad she was on the case. The compassion was there, but tempered with a fierce determination. A determination shared by him.
    “The last one to go missing was Kelli Cavanaugh, Seth’s niece.” Intelligent, golden-green eyes settled on Seth. “I’ll go over the background we have on her. After that, if you have anything to add, please do.”
    Seth nodded. “Thanks.”
    All eyes were on the screen as the photograph of a blond-haired, blue-eyed Kelli appeared. “Kelli is a twenty-year-old sophomore. Her home is in Houston. She attended Rice University last year, but transferred to a private college in Iowa this past semester. According to her parents, she’s shy and has only a few close friends. She’s studying computer science. The day she disappeared, she went to all of her classes but the last one. She never returned to her dorm.”
    Seth hadn’t seen Kelli in over a year. Joel had given him the most recent picture he had of her, but he didn’t think she’d changed a lot from the last time he’d seen her. Still that sweet, shy smile, the inevitable Cavanaugh dimple in her right cheek, and the slightly up-tilted nose that all of his sisters had lamented over when they were growing up.
    A poignant memory tugged at him. When Kelli was little, maybe about six, Seth had been teaching her how to ride a bike. She’d panicked going down a small hill, lost