Dark Tomorrow (Bo Blackman Book 6) by Helen Harper Page B

was taken long before I met him because his arm is hanging loosely round a young girl’s shoulders and they’re grinning at each other. I’ve never met the girl before but I know who she is. The entire country knows who she is. She’s also the reason Rogu3 and I met in the first place.
    ‘Alice,’ Maria whispers. ‘That is Alice.’ She stares at Rogu3, the teen infatuation fading from her eyes to be replaced by an unmistakable look of fear.
    ***
    Maria doesn’t say a word on the journey back. She curls up in the back seat and, when Rogu3 attempts to sit next to her, she shrinks away and points at the front. He throws me a quick, confused look, as if he’s looking for guidance. I shake my head in warning. We need to get back to the relative safety of the warehouse first.
    Alice Goldman was exactly seven years and five months old when she was abducted from the street in broad daylight. She was cycling home from a friend’s house after an afternoon of playing hide and seek, a journey that should have taken less than ten minutes. Alice was a sensible girl and it was supposed to be a safe neighbourhood. Tell that to her grieving parents – or to the many others who were affected by her disappearance. Her pink bike, with streamers tied on the handlebars, was left discarded and dented by the side of the road. You don’t need much of an imagination to shudder with horror at what must have happened to her.
    A missing child, especially one with cute, curly blonde hair and huge blue eyes, galvanises even the most apathetic into joining search parties. People searched in their thousands, tracking through nearby woodland, stopping cars, putting up posters. None of it did any good. Her parents were questioned time and time again. Police patrolled the streets, knocked on doors and glared at anyone who looked even remotely suspicious. There was appeal after appeal. Her innocent face was plastered across every newspaper in the country and repeatedly emblazoned on the rolling news channels. But we all know how these stories usually end and Alice had, to all intents and purposes, vanished into thin air. After two weeks of fruitless searching, her bloodstained clothes were found dumped in a bin. And there was a lot of blood. There may not have been a body but it was clear that little Alice would not be returning home.
    She’d been a neighbour of Rogu3’s. He’d even babysat for her sometimes. And, when I’d been working for a shady insurance company that was searching for ways to avoid paying out on the policy for her, I’d bumped into him. There was no doubt that her disappearance hit him hard but he helped me find a way to force the insurance company to pay up. They tried to suggest that she’d been recruited by one of the Families and, taciturn to the last, the vampires didn’t respond when questioned. Rogu3 hacked into their systems and proved they had nothing to do with her disappearance. Bruckheimer and Berryhill had to give the Goldmans what they were owed. I doubt it really changed anything for the family; only the safe return of their daughter could have achieved that.
    Rogu3 and I stayed in touch afterwards, initially because his hacking skills were particularly useful to me and then because we became friends. If Alice hadn’t gone missing, we’d never have met. I reflect on how much better that would have been for everyone.
    Part of me expects Maria to bolt as soon as we get back but I’m not about to let that happen. I keep a close eye on her but she doesn’t do anything other than hold herself away from us and shuffle inside.
    ‘I don’t understand,’ Rogu3 says, as she disappears into one of the small bedrooms and shuts the door. His expression is desperate. ‘What’s this all about?’
    ‘She knows Alice.’
    His brow furrows. ‘Everyone knows Alice. Unless you were hiding under a fucking rock when she went missing, you know who she was.’ He stops. ‘Oh. You don’t think…’ He takes a deep