Hunter's Need by Shiloh Walker Read Free Book Online Page A

Unable to ignore it, she left the bathroom and headed to the computer.
    “Just a dream.” She rubbed her fingertips over her eyes, wishing she could just erase those memories from her mind that easily.
    She plugged Marie Onalik’s name into Google. One or two MySpace pages popped up at the top of the search results. Off the side, there were paid advertisements for people searches, criminal background checks and the ubiquitous ad, Did you go to school with . . .
    Scrolling past those, she read the brief bits of text available under each individual result. The second to last entry to the page made her heart skip a beat and her hands go cold.
    Palmer teen goes missing.
    Ana clicked on it and then heaved out a relieved sigh as a girl’s face flashed on the screen. Color photograph. Judging just by the hairstyle, it was way too recent to be a girl who had disappeared back in the seventies. Her focus sharpened. Not Marie—but she couldn’t click away from the page. Couldn’t. Something made her read the article in its entirety, pity welling inside her as she read the family’s impassioned pleas, begging for information about their daughter.
    “Were you ever found?” Ana asked sadly. She glanced back at the top of the page. Ten years. The article was from ten years ago.
    She grabbed a pen and jotted the name down on a pad of paper. She read on, uncertain exactly why—morbid curiosity wasn’t her thing. Ana was like an ostrich. She’d much rather bury her head in the sand, even when it was something important. Or rather, especially when it was something important.
    Yet she couldn’t tear her attention from the computer screen and on the second page, in the final section of the article, she saw why.
    There was Marie’s name. Highlighted and linked.
    Along with four other names.
    Clara Pascal’s disappearance is a grim, but needed, reminder of other missing Alaskans, mostly teens or children. Many of these crimes are still unsolved. If you have any information on Clara’s whereabouts, or information that may help solve her case or similar cases, please contact the Palmer Police Department or your local authorities.
    Dread filled her, dragged her down as she moved the mouse to hover over Marie’s name. Then, squeezing her eyes closed, she clicked. She didn’t want to see.
    If the article had any pictures of the long-missing Marie, Ana didn’t want to see them. She didn’t want to know if the woman she’d dreamed about was Marie. Because if the woman’s face looked anything like what she’d seen in her hazed, unclear dreams, Ana didn’t know what she’d do.
    You don’t have to do anything .
    She swallowed. Tried to believe that. She didn’t have to. Not really. She wasn’t a Hunter. Marie, no matter what had happened, was dead and nothing Ana did would change that fact.
    She didn’t have to do anything, did she? After all, the girl had most likely been dead for thirty years.
    Setting her shoulders, she took a deep breath and made herself open her eyes.
    But a weight dropped down on her, crushing the air from her lungs, as she stared into the face of Marie Onalik.
    In the back of her mind, she heard a voice. Crying, pleading, begging.
    Help me, please . . . oh, God . . . somebody please help .
     
     
    “A NA Morell, amateur sleuth, on the case,” she muttered, hiking her bag up on her shoulder as she plodded along the side of the road, checking the addresses. Her skin buzzed and she glanced out of the corner of her eye to the houses across the street. Nice houses. Her rented apartment in Hillside was nice, way nice, but these houses made Hillside look like the slums.
    Gleaming oak doors, heavy windowpanes of etched glasses. Manicured lawns, riotous bursts of flowers. Two-or three-car garages and the cars parked in some of the driveways were of the Hummer, Mercedes or BMW variety. Nice with a capital N .
    She was about as out of place here as she had been back at Excelsior, completely out of her depth, but