~ Jared ~
Dakota and Jared headed to the target’s last known location, a local park in the city center. Arianna went home to her younger sister in an effort to keep as much of the younger girl’s regular routine in place as possible. His mother had apparently decided to take him under her wing and teach him the trade he’d longed to learn. Jared wasn’t sure what to make his mother quite yet. She’d dumped him an orphanage as a newborn and came looking for him years later, looking to make amends. That’s not some shit you just forgive in a few days or years, especially not after all the abuse he’d suffered. Abuse he didn’t yet feel comfortable discussing with her.
Teaching him basic hunting techniques seemed to be an olive branch of sorts. Who wouldn’t want to apprentice under one of the most famous hunters every to worn the leathers? Most would consider it honor. Jared thought giving him a good professional start was the least he was owed by the aloof women he barely knew. She had so many hidden secrets, he sometimes wondered if she was even aware of her biggest one.
Thinking back to that day almost a year ago when she’d showed up at the latest in a long string of orphanages he’d called home. She publically claimed him as her own, insisted that her parents had forced her to give him up, and asked him for reconciliation. Dumbfounded by the strange turn of events, he had not known exactly what to expect.
To her credit, she kept up the scheduled visitation twice a week and jumped at any additional time he offered her. She linked him with a part time job at the local precinct and did all within her power to help him transition out of the Advent Home For Children. What she didn’t know was, Jared would leave only when the administrators forced him. It was the one and only orphanage that had felt like home.
Her hardened voice pulled him from his own musings. “I’m pleased that you agreed to hunt with me today.”
Jared asked quietly, trying to keep the anxiety from his voice. “How do you go about finding a missing person? Mr. Shardon has been gone nine days. Does that mean we are unlikely to find him alive?”
“Please refer to whatever you are hunting as the ‘target’ instead of their name. It is a way of ensuring professional distance. Yes, nine days is a bit of time but a target’s chance of survival is more directly related to the reason for their disappearance than any other single factor, so we start there.”
Jared forced his face to remain clear of emotion, even though there was a virtual storm churning inside. Calling the man he’d come to love a target was all kinds of wrong. Since his mother wasn’t aware of his attachment to missing man, he kept his opinion of that to himself.
His mother continued. “My process is very uniform on each case. First, I go to the place of the disappearance and look for clues as soon after the event as possible. The closer we go to the time of the disappearance, the more likely we are to find meaningful clues. I know the police have already been there and it has been days, so I don’t expect to find much but one never knows. My philosophy is to be as thorough as possible and leave no stone unturned.”
Nodding his understanding, Jared agreed. “We’ll just have to look in every nook and cranny. Perhaps the police overlooked something that was sheltered from the elements…something that will give us a start on figuring out what happened.”
Dakota’s head turned sharply in his direction and he quickly added. “I got that from reading your blog. I keep up with several hunting data streams, including yours.”
She smiled and murmured. “I can tell you are going to be a quick study. I usually have to ask my students to read current journals and blogs.”
“I find reading all the details of a hunter’s case fascinating.”
Returning her attention to the road, she continued. “I then go to the target’s home, search for clues and get a feel for the kind of person they are. This will assist me in determining likely causes for their disappearance. Together, we’ll search every square inch of his home and the surrounding grounds. We are looking for missing items, things that don’t fit, or inconsistencies.”
Jaren quickly interjected, “According to your blog, not all of the inconsistencies we discover will be related to his disappearance.”
She nodded, shooting him an approving look. “That’s the piece that often complicates matters. The big challenge is to sift through all the irregularities of his life and pull out what is genuinely meaningful information from what is just random happenstance. We will need to talk to every single family member, friend, employee, and neighbor. Gathering up any electronic devices and hacking them might yield valuable clues the people in his life were not privy to. Then focus on his closest associates, foremost that accountant Arianna mentioned.”
Jared frowned. “It’s an extremely invasive process. We will know every detail of Mr. Shardon’s personal life as well as his business dealings.”
“One of the fundamental tenets of hunting is confidentiality. Any and all information you discover about a target is confidential. A court of law cannot even compel you to give testimony …it’s very similar to the relationship a client has with their attorney or doctor.”
Jared nodded, pulled out his tablet, and began taking notes. “Go on, I’m ready.”
Clearing her throat, his mother sounded more like a professor than a world renowned hunter when she spoke. “The second tenet is something called fiduciary obligation. Unlike an attorney, once you accept a case, you have a fiduciary obligation to the target, not the person who hired you. All else must come secondary to what is in the best interest of finding that person as quickly as possible because that increases his or her chances of being recovered alive. Sometimes that requires you to finesse the person who hired you or you might not be paid. Naturally, being paid is a secondary consideration to finding the person. That is a hard concept for most beginners to understand because it was the primary reason they think hunters accept cases. Fiduciary obligation is Ethics 101 for hunters and keeps us from being thought of as thugs for hire. We are better than that and don’t you ever forget it.”
Jared was typing furiously, trying to get all the information down. “I never had the slightest inkling about the ethical obligation this job entails.” When he finally stopped typing, he glanced up at her with a wide smile on his face. Everything about hunting thrilled him.
“Under interrogation techniques: Be careful never to give information when you are asking for information. Don’t give any hint to indicate what response you are expecting because most witnesses will give you what they think you want to hear just to be cooperative and not even realize it.”
Jared smiled and interjected, “I have seen people do that, particularly those who seem prone to be followers. They seem to be people pleasers.”
Dakota nodded and uttered a word of caution. “Also, ask open ended questions that require elaboration. When interviewing a witness, don’t be afraid to push them out of their comfort zones because that is often when you get the truth. It may seem ruthless but you can get more information pushing a witness hard in five minutes than a leisurely interview could reveal in hours. Remember, time is of the essence.”
Jared replied blandly. “No one involved in a hunt could possibly forget that. I can feel the pressure hanging thick as fog around us.”
Dakota’s mouth quirked up at his colorful, but very accurate description of the pressure hunters felt to work long, exhausting hours. “The hard truth in these types of disappearances is there’s a short list of probable explanations: The first is kidnapping for ransom if the person is wealthy. The second most probable explanation is a result of a romantic entanglement of some sort or family conflict. The third most likely explanation is some sort of work related problem leading to his disappearance. The forth most likely is accidental death or serious injury that precludes him returning home. The fifth is self-harm. We just need to cycle through the information generated from the investigation and determine the most probable explanation and focus our investigation on that probability.”
Jared asked curiously. “Can we not just begin where the police left off? That is a lot of leg work and will take even more of that time we never have enough of during an investigation.”
Dakota shook her head emphatically. “Never trust the work done by law enforcement officers. The one thing you can be guaranteed of is that their work is extremely shoddy. That and nothing else explains the low rate at which they solve these cases. I cannot tell you the number of times I have found overlooked evidence and such.”
Jared sighed. “If we’re lucky, I might get an opportunity to see that first hand when we get to the park. Maybe we will find something they overlooked.”
They both knew that was probably a pie in the sky dream after nine days.
Jared was preoccupied and his mother seemed content to leave him to his musings. He had a lot of information to absorb. As the silence spun out between them, Jared spoke. “Do you mind if I ask where you learned to hunt?”
His mother’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. Jared wasn’t particularly concerned. She liked to hold onto it out of habit. They were more of a safety fail safe now that hover cars were programmed to self-navigate from one location to another.
Being forced to give you up broke my spirit. The day I came of age, I returned to your father and we searched the globe for you for years. Garen is among the best of us. You remind me a lot of your father. He too was quiet and had a propensity toward introspection. I’ve noticed your intelligence seems to be a strange mixture of my analytical thinking and your father’s talent for intuition. It’s why I wasn’t a bit surprised you were drawn to hunting. It’s in your blood.”
Jared gaped at her. He could not possibly have been more shocked to find out his father was a hunter as well. Stammering, words poured from his mouth without him willing it so. “I had supposed my father was Durk.”
Laughter spilled from her lips. “Durk? He’d be thrilled to discover you him capable of such.”
“You two are inseparable?”
Her face cleared and she glanced at him. “Durk was my best friend growing up. I was abducted at sixteen. My parents were old money, but refused to pay the ransom.”
“Are you kidding? Why would they do that?”
“They believed it would only make others think they were easy targets. Instead they hired your father to hunt for me.”
It’s clear that he found you.”
“He’s a vampire prime. Locating a missing teen didn’t even take him a full morning. By nightfall he’d secured my release from a drug lord on the southern continent. We held up at his safe house for a few days. The thing was, there was no forgiving my parents for risking my life when they could have just paid the money and got me back. I refused to return home for almost four months.”
“And when you did return home, you were pregnant with me.”
“Yes, but it’s not what you think. Your father is a good man.”
Totally closing off, he didn’t want to hear any more about the man who’d taken advantage of a vulnerable ward. “Roger that. Can we get back to the task at hand?”
Pulling up at the park where Mr. Shardon had disappeared, Jared shoved all the disturbing news about his dysfunctional family aside in favor of working the case. The surrounding area was neat and well-manicured.
His mother pulled out a DNA scanner and Jared assumed she’d programed Shardon’s DNA into the small handheld device. She scanned every park bench, hand railing, and water fountain. Water fountains were a high value target because although vampires drink blood for nutritional content, they must also drink copious amounts of water to stay hydrated.
They hit every hard surface and ended up at a small statue toward the lower end of the park. Dakota looked around and seemed to perk up. “This would be the perfect place to grab someone, because of the geography.” Pointing to a nearby patch of trees, she continued excitedly. “This area is hidden by dips in the terrain in three directions, there’s parking nearby, and it’s just isolated enough for an abduction to go unnoticed.”
Jared surveyed the area visually, astonished to find that she was correct. They proceeded to comb every square inch of the area. Jared was careful not to trample potential evidence as he searched around the fountain. Spying something suspicious, he raised his hand and called out to her. When she kneeled down, he pointed to a small round piece of metal that had rolled back into a crevice along the edge of the statue.
Dakota opened the leather zip pouch at her waist and pulled out a pair of tweezers. She picked up the tiny piece of metal and held it up. Jared looked at her questioningly and she responded. “I am not sure what it is but we can analyze it once we get back to my weapons room. Scan it for DNA.”
Jared scanned and excitedly turned the back of the gun so she could see the screen was blinking a green light indicating a match. She pulled a small plastic evidence bag from her pouch and bagged it.
“Let’s continue searching, but this is more than I expected to find after nine days.” They continued looking but didn’t turn up anything else. The park did not have security cameras, which was unfortunate. They managed to finish their search at the park prior to catching the midday sun.
Jaren quickly scanned the clear evidence bag with his com device and send the image to his tablet. Pulling up cross matching software designed by the retail establishment to help shoppers find places to purchase random objects they saw, he hoped to get a match.
“That’s very resourceful. I have similar software but it’s keyed for weapons. I was worried it wouldn’t recognize this particular object.”
He stood and she nodded her head in the direction of their hover car. They were halfway to Alek’s place when Jared’s tablet beeped. He frowned when he looked at the information and turned it around for Dakota to see, saying, “It is a tranquillizer dart designed to be used on large animals. I suppose that is one way to take down a dangerous vampire warrior without getting yourself killed.”
“It’s clear he was abducted from the park. I’m leaning toward thinking that it was professionals and there were probably more than one of them. Our target has a war record and anyone with the ability to do a basic data stream search would have known he is an accomplished warrior. You are right about bringing him down with a tranq being one of the few ways to abduct him without being mangled in the process. It looks like this was very premeditated; they researched him, took precautions, knew his routine, and were successful on their first attempt.”
“If there had been a prior attempt, he would have no doubt mentioned it to his good friend, Detective Charles Weaver. If he was taken by professionals that usually means they want something particular and gives him a little bit of a longer life expectancy as a missing person. They won’t kill him until they get what they want and if Mr. Sharon is smart, he won’t give it to them. It just comes down to how long he can stand up to their…techniques of persuasion.”
Jared paled at the thought of Mr. Shardon being tortured.
She continued, “We should visit the home and his work. We’ve both reviewed the rough outline of his day provided by the when he was abducted. It would be interesting to know if he was abducted on his way to or from the spa. If it was from there then we already know he was being followed so maybe someone knows something that can help us.”
Jared spoke up. “That was my thought as well. I spoke to Nares and he said he never saw him on the day in question.”
“Good work, but we need to be a little more thorough. We’ll visit and scan for DNA.”
Jared’s com jingled again. Grabbing it, he gasped. “Gods of chaos, I just got a message from someone saying they have information on his whereabouts. The message says, Mr. Shardon told him to contact me specifically.”
“Why would they contact you?”
Cursing softly under his breath, he came clean with his mother. “I’m his younger daughter’s preferred feeding partner.”
“The fourteen-year-old?”
“Selene’s fifteen now”
“You’re age mates. Why would you be so secretive about something like that?”
“I don’t like people knowing my business.”
“Did Mr. Shardon know?”
“He did.”
“And he approved?”
“Vampire primes always prefer someone with a vampire heritage for their children. Even a weak one like me is a better option than a full blood human.” Catching himself being an ass to his human mother, he added. “No insult intended, mother.”
“None taken. I’m proud of you. Feeding is a very altruistic behavior.”
Changing the subject back to the task at hand, Jared looked down at his hand held. “I believe the sender is a fellow vampire. He referred to Mr. Shardon as his brethren. He wants to meet me right away at a noodle shop in the eastern end of town.”
“Message him back that you will be there in thirty minutes.”
Jared’s thumbs flew across the touchscreen. “Do you think this is for real?”
“How many know you are connected to the Shardon family?”
“No one. I’ve done my best to make sure Selene seen with me.”
“Any particular reason for the secrecy, son?”
Squirming in his seat, Jared marveled at how many skeletons this case was shaking from their combined closets. “I do not wish to discuss my past with you, mother. Let’s just say, I thought it best for her safety that no one associate her with me.”
His mother jolted in her seat. “Are you saying that you’re in some kind of danger?”
“Not at the moment, but one never knows when old troubles might become current problems. I prefer to error on the side of safety.”
“Jared…”
“Don’t make me regret getting you involved in this search. Mr. Shardon is likely to be the man destined to become my father-in-law. We need to case aside our differences and concentrate on bringing him home alive.”
Swallowing thickly, his mother cleared the navigation details and Jared read her off the new address. She keyed it in quickly and the vehicle adjusted course.
Mr. Shardon’s disappearance was turning Jared’s meticulously ordered life upside down. A beautiful melody alerted him that Selene was trying to get ahold of him. The thought of trying to talk to her with his mother so near, irritated him. Instead Jared responded via text.
Where are you, Jared? I feel so alone.
He pecked out a reply, one meant to give her hope. I’m with Dakota. She took your father’s case. We’re working it together.
Really! That’s great!
We found evidence law enforcement missed at the park.
Anything useful?
We believe they shot him with an animal tranquilizer. It means they wanted him alive and unharmed.
Always quick to put the pieces together, she responded quickly. That means there is a higher chance he’s still alive, right?
Yes, my sweet. It appears that you father got a message out to me thought a fellow vampire. We’re on our way to meet with him now.
For the first time, I’m beginning to believe this might all work out.
You’re right. Things are looking up.
Jared, please be safe. I can’t lose you both.
As of now, you haven’t lost either of us. Stay inside, like we talked about. I’ll stop by as soon as I can.
Alright. I’ll wait up for you.
Clicking the hand held off, Jared sighed. Hoping he could somehow make the assurances he gave her a reality, he began reading the message from their contact again.