Captured By The Dragon
Episode 15

Third POV

The police station was quiet at this time in the morning. Coffee was brewing in every corner and someone was already on a run for pastries just to spike some sugar in the room. A new photo was pinned up on the missing girls wall and Malcolm came early to study it before her parents arrived.

Malcom was the head hunter of shifters and human traffickers. Tall, rough around the edges and handsome. He solved thousands of cases over the years and worked as hard as he could to prevent any more children from being taken—but some still slipped through the cracks and that was why he remained.

Malcom paced the small office. Papers were spread across the desk. He ran his fingers through his blond hair and sighed. It always set an uneasy feeling inside him when he thought about a child suffering out there.

“How old?”

“She was 16, sir.” An officer answered by the door. “Her name is Patara, she was taken on the way home from school. Her parents reported her when they got home and found she didn’t come home on Tuesday night.”

Malcom frowned at the picture of the young, innocent girl. She fell right into the category traffickers looked for. Beautiful, young, small. They didn’t care about much else and that disturbed Malcom most of all.

Two detectives entered the room with steaming cups in their hands. They nodded once at Malcom before they sat at the desk. He couldn’t bring himself to smile much these days, not with the horrors that surrounded him every day.

“We have surveillance by the school that shows her heading towards the tunnels to get home.” The female officer spread out blurry photos of the girl walking carelessly towards danger.

“The tunnels? No one in their right mind has used those in years.” Malcom muttered. “I wonder why she chose to go that way, she must not have known.”

“Her mother says she told her to use a taxi to get home, but she must not have listened and decided to walk.”

“Give me her most recent details. Everything.”

“Patara is 16 years old, born and raised in this city, never had any history of a boyfriend. She’s 5 feet and two inches tall with long brown hair and brown eyes. She goes to an elite all girl’s school with high markings in all of her classes. There’s no record of her ever being in any trouble. Her only main hobbies involve her piano.”

“She sounds like a wonderful young lady.” Malcom sighed and rubbed his face. He knew he had to save her. He had to go after her just like he did for all the other girls.

“The parents are hoping to speak with you today, they’re on their way over.”

“They want to talk to me?” Malcom glanced at the detectives.

“Yes. They’re well aware of your reputation and they want you to be the lead on this case. They even offered the department large amounts of donations just to make sure you’re on it.”

“I don’t want their money, I want to help them.” Malcom said. He took a long drink of coffee. The thought of a shifter having a hold on their daughter made Malcom sick to his stomach. They were disgusting, horrible creatures and it didn’t take much to convince him to hunt them down.

“They’re here.” An officer said from the door.

“Send them in.” Malcom gestured for the other detectives to leave. A crowded room wouldn’t make them feel comfortable.

The room emptied and soon two wide eyed parents walked through the door. Malcom instantly saw Patara in them. She had the mother’s eyes and soft facial features, and the fathers hair.

“Thank you for coming by Sherry and Cowan, please take a seat.” The mother’s eyes gazed over the picture of her daughter on the board and Malcom cursed himself for not taking it down sooner. It must have been terrifying to see their daughter up there.

Malcom seated himself across from them. “Can I offer you anything to drink?”

“No, we want to talk about our daughter.” Sherry snapped. Cowan put his hand over hers to calm her. She took a deep breath. “What do you think happened to our little girl?”

Malcom tried not to fumble when the parents looked at him like that. “I believe your daughter was taken by human traffickers that target young girls like Patara every day in the city.”

“What?” They both said at the same time. “What does that mean? How do we get her back?”

Malcom cleared his throat. He wasn’t sure how to explain it to the parents without causing true dread in return. “Shifters favor human girls, they pay crazy amounts of money for pure girls so they can own them and… use them for their own desires. Human traffickers comb the streets for any young girl to take and sell to them past the border.”

“Sold? You’re telling us she was sold to shifters for… for s*x?” Sherry slammed her hand against the table. “No! No! You need to go get our daughter before this is released to the public! I can’t have it known she was sold as a slave to disgusting shifters! Do you know what it would do to our reputation?”

Malcom parted his lips to respond, but her last sentence silenced him. Did she care more about her reputation than her daughters safety?

“Listen,” Cowan said gently. “How much is it going to take to bring our daughter back home? I can make sure you have all the money and man power you need to go in there and get her.”

Malcom held up his hands. “I understand you want your daughter back as soon as possible, and I am going to do everything I can to make that happen. A bribe is not going to help me move faster than I already will be.”

Sherry started shaking as tears formed in her eyes. Malcom couldn’t figure out what made her more upset.

“Please… please. Tell us what you’re going to do. I need my daughter to be okay, I need her to come back unharmed.”

Malcom took a long breath and leaned forward in his chair. “I’m going to go into the shifter territory myself and find where she went. It might take me a while to pinpoint her down since there are different species and we have no lead on which she was taken from. She could have been taken by the tigers, the dragons, or the wolves. I promise you I will do whatever I can to find her.”

Sherry wiped her eyes carefully, as if not to disturb her makeup too much. “Will she be okay?”

“I have to tell you that since a few days have already passed, it’s unlikely we will find her unharmed. She might have been physically or sexually abused by now but I will do my best to make sure she gets back to you alive.”

They looked at him so miserably, Malcom locked that image of them and their innocent daughter in his brain to remember what he was about to go fight for.