Free Ghosts by Heather Huffman Page B

he was impressed by the way a deer could pop right over a barbed wire fence from a stand-still. He lingered a moment longer before heading back to the house to see if there was anything he could do to help lighten Jessie’s workload.
     
    ***
     
    Two hours later, sweat clung to Vance. He’d long since discarded his shirt; the sun beat down on skin that was already beginning to darken in response. Jessie had gladly put him to work digging fence posts. He alternated between welcoming the burn in his muscles and cursing the rock-filled soil of the Missouri Ozarks. With each hole he dug, memories swirled around his mind. Vance didn’t try to sort or separate them; he just let them dance about, one running into the other.
    He understood why Jessie worried; Vance knew he’d dropped out of life since Harmony’s death, and he knew it wasn’t a healthy place to be. But everything reminded him of her. Something as simple as a yellow light could trigger a memory that would squeeze at his heart and not let go. He’d thought it was merely an expression to say your heart hurt. Now he realized it was possible to miss someone enough for your chest to literally ache. And in those moments, he missed her so much it was hard to breathe.
    “Penny for your thoughts?” Jessie interrupted his reverie, extending a glass of sweet tea as she approached.
    Vance accepted the offering, draining the glass before responding. “I can’t imagine they’re worth that much.”
    Jessie regarded him quietly for a moment. “I wish you could, just once, see yourself as others see you.”
    He didn’t know what to say to that, so he crooked his arm around her neck and pulled her against him, planting a kiss soundly on the top of her head, despite her squeal of protest.
    “Ack! You smell awful. Let me go.”
    “Hey, I got that stink digging holes for your fence,” he defended himself.
    “I don’t care how it got there—I don’t want you to get it on me.”
    “You’re a cold, hard woman, Jessie Adams.” He chuckled and let her go. Despite her protests, he could see that this glimpse of their old camaraderie had set her mind at ease.
    She moved a safe distance away, eying him as if she was deciding something. He raised his eyebrows in silent question, and she sighed.
    “Jeff called looking for you. He said you haven’t been answering your phone and wanted to know if I had a way to find you.”
    “What did you tell him?”
    “I said I’d see what I could do.”
    “Maybe he should get the hint. I told him I retired.”
    “And you know how I feel about that. But, Vance, I think you should talk to him. It’s Henry and Martha Barnett.”
    The farmer and his wife. Vance stiffened, bracing himself for news that couldn’t be good. “Were they in an accident or something?”
    Jessie hesitated before plunging ahead. “One of their foster kids has turned up missing. When the local police said their hands were tied, they refused to let it drop. Somehow this thing made it to the FBI. Jeff must have flagged anything related to you, because their file ended up on his desk.”
    Vance leaned on the post-hole diggers he’d been using, processing the information. He knew as well as anybody that, under normal circumstances, a missing foster child might as well have been dropped in a black hole. Once gone, they were forgotten. There were too many other children with known whereabouts to spend resources on kids who were more than likely runaways—at least that was the system’s view. Vance knew from experience that the kids were just as likely—if not more so—to be victims of human trafficking.
    Henry and Martha weren’t the kind of people to let a child in their care drift quietly into the night, not on their watch. Inwardly, Vance smiled at the thought of Martha’s eyes snapping fiercely as she marched into the FBI, demanding someone do something. Not even Jeff Talbot’s suave demeanor would have placated that mama bear. To say he loved her as a