Chapter 1
The man behind the counter at The Bureau of Missing Persons shrugged, trying to keep his hungry eyes off the brunette's luscious tits.
"Look, Miss Donovan, the statistics are eighty-four percent. That means eighty-four percent of all missing persons turn up within six months. So the chances are almost nine out of ten your kid sister will turn up, sooner or later."
"Sooner or later?" she echoed. "But what about the meantime? She's not even sixteen yet! All sorts of terrible things...."
The man forced a sympathetic expression, but meanwhile he was trying to visualize her naked, a game he played with the sexier women to liven up his monotonous job. Jesus, what a fantastic body! She wore a simple summer dress, but it hugged her curves like a bikini. Face just faintly pretty, but those magnificent tits and long silken legs could drive a man to the edge. Twenty-four or five, he guessed, with long, shimmering chestnut hair and shining green eyes, moist now with anxiety.
"Nothing terrible will happen to her," he said with assurance. "Lots of kids run away and do nothing worse than smoke a little grass and screw-excuse me, ma'am-fool around with some boys. They straighten out."
The truth was, he thought cynically, a lot of them fooled around with considerably more than marijuana and boys. At the tender age of fifteen, and in any big city, she would have to run the gauntlet of hard drugs, prostitution, fart-talking con men looking for a meal ticket, pimps, cops and even lesbians on the make. And judging from the girl's picture, which he glanced at in his hand now, she'd have a long, rugged gauntlet with that sweet face and juicy little body.
Sheila Donovan had already filled out the small mountain of necessary forms and like most people who came to the Bureau, she was hanging around for sympathy and reassurance. He continued to give it to her, wondering in the back of his mind whether her boyfriend or boss or whoever was getting it had enough imagination to explore that beautifully rounded ass with more than his fingers. On second thought, her face wasn't even barely pretty, just clean, with a generous set of lips. What more could a frustrated clerk with a fat irritable wife want?
"You want some unofficial advice?" he said in a confidential tone, leaning closer on the counter. She nodded urgently and he said:
"Go to a private investigator. We're hampered by tons of red tape here and we're mobbed every day, so our procedure is very slow and routine. A private dick will devote all his time and the better ones know the ropes on tracing inside out. In fact," he added in a low voice, "I could recommend one for you, a really good one. Strictly confidential, of course."
"Who?" she whispered.
Her lips formed a perfect O for a moment and he could feel his cock begin to tingle fiercely. His own wife had a mouth like a barracuda and she called him dirty whenever he so much as hinted at the idea of sucking his cock. He sighed and told her:
"His name is Eddie Johnson and he's in the Farmer's Insurance building in North Hollywood. Tell him Al sent you."
"I will," she promised. Then she bit her lower lip, her white teeth chewing for a few seconds, her green eyes anxious. "Do you know how much he charges? I mean," she added hastily, "I don't have much money. I lost my job almost a month ago and ... it went." Her face flushed with embarrassment.
"You'll have to discuss that with Eddie," he told her, "but he's a reasonable guy. He'll take a promissory note if your credit is good."
Or if there was something extra and stacked in it for him, he thought wryly. Eddie kicked back twenty to him for every referral he accepted. But the clerk wondered too if Eddie could score with this one; she obviously wasn't a swinger and she had a definite touch of class. Part of it depended on how anxious she was to find her sister and by now he'd gauged her to be desperate.
"Thank you," she said fervently, "thanks a lot, really."
She gave him a nervous smile and whirled on her heel, her beautifully curved ass-cheeks swinging to a perfect rhythm, her stunning legs brushing each other as she moved rapidly away and out the glass doors.
He looked again at the snapshot in his hand. The younger sister had the face of an angel; large, luminous eyes, shy smile, very cute tits, just recently blossomed.
He attached the picture to the forms she'd filled out with a paper clip, thinking, Poor kid, it's a brutal world out there. If the pimps didn't get her the dykes might, and if she missed a multitude of traps there was a jungle of weird people out there in normal guise, frustrated, eager to act out their fantasies on a lovely unsuspecting girl.
People like himself, he thought wryly, putting the forms on top of a thick pile on his desk.
He wondered, as he did only rarely after ten years of seeing the forms come and go in an endless stream, what would happen to the girl, what destiny stretched out before her. Whore, housewife, junkie, victim, showgirl, mistress, hippie, nurse, career girl, swinger?
At her impressionable age, he knew her first violent experience on the road would probably be the most shattering, the branding iron that would leave her with the deepest impression. It could be the turning point of her life, and if the compass swung the wrong way, that would be too bad. Now it was up to sheer chance.
Fate had her by her sweet young tits now.