She was out of reach, p.1
She Was Out of Reach, page 1
SHE WAS OUT OF REACH
ZACHARY GOLDMAN MYSTERIES
BOOK SEVENTEEN
P.D. WORKMAN
ABOUT SHE WAS OUT OF REACH
…easy to read, entertaining and has great characters.
T OLSEN, GOODREADS READER
This book had me holding my breath at times, waiting for the outcome. Such a great addition to a wonderful series.
KANDY, GOODREADS READER
A mystery thriller from USA Today Bestselling Author, P.D.Workman that will keep you turning the pages!
Join private investigator Zachary Goldman on a heart-pounding race against time in She Was Out of Reach, a gripping mystery that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page.
It wasn’t what they thought
When Zachary Goldman is hired to investigate the disappearance of a young girl, he never could have imagined the dark and twisted path it would lead him down. As he delves deeper into the case, he quickly realizes that things are not as they seem.
With his own past traumas haunting him, Zachary must navigate the dark underworld of crime to rescue her. The stakes are high, and time is running out. Will he be able to overcome his personal demons and save her in time, or will the shadows of his past consume him?
She Was Out of Reach is filled with suspense, twists, and turns that will keep readers on the edge of their seats. With a flawed yet determined protagonist at its core, this story is a thrilling rollercoaster ride that will leave readers guessing until the very end.
Praise for the series:
What a great story. Fabulous plot with interesting and complex characters. I was totally involved into the wee hours. Many twists and left waiting until the end. Highly recommended
Wow! I just finished it. In one day! I could not stop reading it! This book grabs hold of you from the start. It’s a very well written detective novel. It pulls you not the story and is very emotional. You feel for the characters. This is the first novel I have read by this author but it will not be my last. I highly recommend this book.
Don’t miss out on a pulse-pounding mystery that will keep you guessing until the very end. Join Zachary Goldman on his most challenging case yet and experience the thrill of justice served in the face of adversity. Get your copy of She Was Out of Reach now and dive into a world of danger, intrigue, and redemption.
Zachary Goldman, Private Investigator, is flawed with a capital F. Shattered by the tragedies of his own life, he will somehow still manage to pick himself up and dig just a little bit deeper than anyone else to piece together the vital clues and solve the mystery.
Maybe being broken makes it easier for others who have faced tragedy to trust him. Walk with Zachary as he solves cases that will stretch his abilities to the limit.
Even with his own life in shambles, Zachary Goldman is still the one you want on the case.
Looking for a suspenseful read that will keep you up all night and stay with you long after the last page?
Investigate this P.I. Mystery now!
Copyright © 2024 by P.D. Workman
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 9781774687093 (KDP Paperback)
ISBN: 9781774687116 (KDP Hardcover)
ISBN: 9781774687123 (Large Print)
ISBN: 9781774687130 (Lulu Paperback)
ISBN: 9781774687109 (ePub)
ISBN: 9781774687147 (Accessible Audio)
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To those who have been lost
and found families
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Epilogue
Preview of He Was Deceived
Preview Chapter 1
Preview Chapter 2
Also by P.D. Workman
About the Author
1
Zachary had been surprised that Rose Bircher wanted to meet him in her lab rather than at home. Most women in her circumstances would have been at home, unable to focus on work. They would take a leave of absence until things could get straightened out.
But maybe that was an unjust judgment. He hadn’t known many parents in her circumstances and supposed that a mother could want to bury herself in her work just as much as a father.
He only waited in the reception area for a couple of minutes. There was a lot of white. White walls, white tiled floors, a sign on the wall with the lab’s name in silver letters mounted on a shiny white surface. It made him think of a school or hospital. Not a restful place. Somewhere important work was being done and people were all focused on their projects.
The door into the inner workspace opened and Zachary got his first glimpse at the woman who wanted to hire him.
Rose Bircher was casually dressed. No white lab jacket. She was a thirty-something woman, on the thin side, with straight brown hair and a pleasant face. She wore dark-rimmed glasses and an aqua polo shirt with the company logo. She looked at Zachary, giving him a quick once-over, then held out her hand.
“Mr. Goldman?”
“Just Zachary.”
“Rose. Thanks for coming. Follow me.” She turned away from him, back toward the door. “You want coffee?”
“Sure.”
“Good.” She led him first to a breakroom with a coffee machine, stacks of mugs, and a couple of vending machines. The smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the air. “We go through the stuff like water around here. And it’s pretty good.”
She poured them each a mug and handed one to Zachary. He followed her farther down the hall, through a bullpen with lots of cubicles and young people pounding away at keyboards, their eyes intent on their screens. Few looked up to see who was walking by as Zachary followed Rose to the meeting room.
Rose poked her head into one of the meeting rooms to make sure it was vacant and then motioned Zachary in. There was nothing special about the room. He’d seen a hundred like it before: a table, chairs, and a small side cabinet with supplies. A whiteboard on the wall. There was a projector and screen controlled by a remote and currently recessed out of view.
Rose sat down and motioned for Zachary to do the same.
“I really appreciate you coming.”
Zachary nodded.
Studying her, he could see the signs of stress on Rose’s face. Puffy skin under her eyes testified that she hadn’t slept well, though a layer of concealer kept the dark shadows from being visible. Faint lines across her forehead. Her hand shook as she raised the coffee mug to her mouth.
“I was told that you have investigated missing children before.”
Zachary nodded. He’d had a little experience in that area. Usually teenagers, though he had also rescued his ex-wife Bridget’s twin babies.
“I have some experience in that area, though I don’t do a lot of missing persons,” he told her honestly. “It is your daughter who is missing?” He asked it tentatively. She was too young to be the mother of a teenager. But she was not frantic like he expected the parent of a missing baby to be. But Rose had already surprised him in several respects.
“Yes.” she swallowed and stared past Zachary at the wall. “My daughter Claire. She is five.”
“Did you report her missing to the police?”
He had learned not to take this for granted. Not because it was like on TV where kidnappers for ransom told the parents not to call the police or FBI or else. Many parents did not report their children missing to the police because they knew who had taken the child. Often a family member. And they just wanted the child found and returned with the least disruption possible. Without making family business public or making a parent or grandparent look bad in front of their friends. People preferred to keep personal business quiet, even when it involved a child being taken.
“Yes. I talked to the police. They think that it was Claire’s father.”
That explained why he hadn’t se en anything about it on the TV or internet news. Parental abductions were routine, of little interest to the public unless there were some unique, attention-grabbing details.
“Are you married? Or were you?”
“No. I met him in school. We lived together for a while. But we weren’t really compatible. It didn’t work out.”
“Does he have shared custody? Visitation?”
“No. He didn’t want anything to do with Claire, and I respected that. He has never been involved in her life.”
“And that hasn’t changed lately? He hasn’t come to you asking if he could see her? Talk to her? Maybe he offered to pay something for child support?”
“No. We have some mutual friends, so I’ve kept track of him from a distance for the last few years. Occasionally, we’ve ended up at a party together or something like that. He asked for a picture once.”
“Recently?”
“How long ago is recent?” She held her palms up questioningly. “It was… maybe a couple of months ago.”
Zachary pulled out his notepad. He made sure that the date was filled in at the top of the page and wrote down Claire’s name and the fact that her birth father had asked for her photo a couple of months before. That could be significant. He had shown some interest in her recently. Depending on what kind of a picture it was, he might have been able to repurpose it for a passport photograph or other identification. Or maybe just a phone picture flashed at someone to prove that yes, he was Claire’s dad, or he wouldn’t have her picture on his phone, would he?
Rose watched him and didn’t make any comment about his messy, nearly unreadable handwriting.
“Does that mean you’re taking the case?”
“Let’s get a few more details first. Why do the police think Claire’s father has her? Have they talked to him? Where did she disappear from?”
“Such a high percentage of kidnappings are non-custodial parents or family members; that’s just what they assume from the beginning unless you have eyewitnesses who saw her being taken. And no one did. We were at a kids’ play place at the mall. I was… on my phone. You can’t keep an eye on your kid the whole time; there are all kinds of tunnels, slides, climbers, and ball pits. Your kid just gets swallowed up by this place with all the other kids…”
Zachary nodded. He had seen places like that. A great adventure for kids. Playing tag or dare with their friends, running off excess energy, exploring.
“How did he get her out of there? Don’t they have ID to make sure you can only take the kid you arrived with?”
“Yes. I don’t know how anyone could get her out of there. Some of their security cameras were down. I always thought they had really good security: guards, monitors, sign-in logs, all that kind of thing. But someone got in there and got my daughter out without anyone noticing. I called her and looked for her. I got frantic. They thought I was just being a helicopter parent and freaking out because she was out of sight. But when they made announcements and had their staff members walk around looking for her, no one could find her.”
Rose swallowed hard and sipped her coffee. Zachary wasn’t sure why she felt it necessary to mask her emotions, to make it look like this hadn’t affected her. Most mothers cried. They weren’t afraid to show him just how upset they were.
“How long has she been missing?”
Rose looked at her watch. “Three days.” She put her palms over her eyes, warming them. After three days with minimal sleep, she was undoubtedly feeling the strain. Scratchy, sticky, swollen eyes. A fatigue headache. Brain fog.
“Have the police talked to her father?”
“No. They tried to track him down to talk to him. But he’s out of the country. They haven’t been able to talk to him or to get other authorities to talk to him.” Her tone was flat.
“Out of the country? Where?”
She stared down at the surface of her coffee. Her eyes glittered with unshed tears, but she didn’t let them fall. She just stared as if mesmerized by the reflection of the light on the surface of her drink.
“Saudi Arabia.”
2
Zachary’s heart sank. He wasn’t going to be able to do anything for Rose Bircher. Saudi Arabia? If Claire’s father had taken her there, there wasn’t much that Zachary—or anyone else—could do about it. That was one of the countries where non-custodial fathers liked to take kidnapped children—a country where he had all the rights, and Rose had virtually none. The authorities there would not cooperate with US authorities. They would not deal with the child’s mother.
“I’m not sure there is anything I can do to help you,” he told Rose gently.
She didn’t look surprised, her expression unchanging.
“I was told that you were unconventional. And stubborn. That you could get results where the police couldn’t.”
“Well… sometimes that has been true. But I can’t always find something helpful. The police are your best bet. I just… sometimes I can find something else that they missed or follow up on a hunch. But… Saudi Arabia is a long way away.”
“I know it is. But the police will only follow their specific protocol. And if they think that the child is out of the country and in a place where they can’t reach her… they just issue whatever paper they do to tell the government that they believe she is over there and object to them not helping with the kidnapping case… and that’s it. Then they just put a flag on his passport so that if he ever comes back into the country, they can pull him aside and talk to him.”
He wasn’t going to bring her back. If he had taken his daughter to Saudi Arabia, he intended to keep her there. He wasn’t going to bring her back to the US.
“What is his name? Claire’s father?”
Rose looked at him for a moment before answering, considering his response. Zachary examined it himself. If he couldn’t do anything for Rose and didn’t intend to take the case, then why ask for his name?
“Amir Osman.”
“Is he from there?”
“No. He was born in America. But I guess… with his family name he could get a visa or whatever you need to immigrate there.” She rubbed her temples. “I don’t know all the details of that kind of thing.”
“So he had been planning this for a while. He asked for her picture. He had to apply for whatever paperwork he needed to take her there.”
“I suppose.”
“Do the police have confirmation as to whether she was traveling with him?”
“He had a child with him. But a different name. Not Claire Bircher. He was also traveling with a woman. The child is supposed to be hers, not his.”
Zachary nodded. Just enough obfuscating to make it effective. If an Amber alert had been issued under the name Claire Bircher, no one would have connected her with a child of another name. Until it was too late.
And because Amir hadn’t had anything to do with his biological daughter before that and had never said he even wanted a visit with her, there was no reason for her mother to mention him when Claire went missing from the mall. It wasn’t a case of a non-custodial parent not returning her on time after a visit. There had been no reason to suspect that her biological father had any interest in her until it was too late. And getting a child back from a country like Saudi Arabia… Zachary had heard stories.
