Category:

I wanted to tell her that I didn't actually do that kind of thing, but that wasn't the most important issue here. I had to address her desire to hire me before moving on to what I saw as the real problem: a young girl who had run away from home. But maybe I could find a compromise. "Would you be willing to call your aunt and tell her where you are?"

"I need to tell you about my father. Something has happened to him."

"I believe you. So I tell you what—if you'll call your aunt and tell her where you are, and let me talk to her, then I promise that I'll give you my full attention while you tell me about your father's disappearance. It's not like your aunt is going to come pick you up right away."

She considered it for several seconds, her face scrunched up as every emotion she felt flickered across it. "Deal."

"Good. Have you had anything to eat?"

"Not recently. I'm saving money for other expenses."

"Okay. Have a seat. Dinner is on me." Mac got out of his seat so that she could get in on his side, while I signaled Moop to bring Eliza a menu. Once we had that set, I gave her my device to call her aunt. After five minutes of getting the understandably agitated woman to calm down, I assured her that Eliza was safe and would remain that way, and when she didn't believe me, I got Martha, Moop's wife, to talk to her and also assure her of that. Eliza seemed indifferent to the conversation and was halfway through a burger and fries by the time we got around to discussing her real reason for being there.

"So. Tell me about your father."

"My dad's name is Jorge Ramiro. He works for Jacob Whiteman. Have you heard of him?"

"I haven't," I admitted.

"He's a famous archaeologist," she said, as if it was common knowledge. Maybe it was, and I was just behind on my Archaeology Digest subscription. "They were doing an exploratory dig on Taug."

"That's a moon, right? Orbiting Ridia Four?"

"Ridia Five," she corrected.

I never could keep all the moons around the two gas giants in our solar system straight. There were like forty of them, all told. "And that's where you think he disappeared?"

"That's where I know he disappeared."

"When was the last time you heard from him?"

"Eleven days ago."

Mac looked like he wanted to say something, so I nodded to him to go for it. I had no real ideas. "I don't mean to be a jerk here, but is there a chance he got busy and didn't message?"

Eliza turned to him and gave him a death glare. "Not my dad. He sends me a message every day."

"He's never missed?" I couldn't help but flash back to all the times I hadn't messaged my kids when I'd been in the military. All the times I didn't message them now.

"Three times, all when he was on a ship between locations. But he always told me that the day before it happened."

"Do you have any idea what might have happened to him?" I asked. It seemed like the logical question, because 'I' certainly didn't have any clue.

"That's what I want to hire you for." She said it like it made perfect sense, and in the eyes of a child, maybe it did. But contrary to my reputation, I didn't actually find people. Sure, there had been a couple of very high-profile events where I was supposed to. But both of those were military things—or at least military adjacent—and both of those people were dead. I'd killed one of them myself—I guess that counted as me finding them, though probably not the way that the people who sent me wanted. It's a long story. Regardless, I didn't exactly have a great track record, and I didn't even know where to start with a civilian case.

I also didn't know how to break it to her. She was sitting there, so earnest, so confident, sure that I could do this thing. But I couldn't not tell her. "I'm sorry, Eliza, but I really don't do that."