Welcome to the Games

More Answers leads to More Questions

Fuller let me hire an assistant, so of course I picked Sully- short for Jason Sullivan. We had been partnered up numerous times before, in previous cases, and he’d become one of my favourite colleagues.

At the moment, Sully was interviewing the guardians of the celebrities. Jeff and Fuller were trying to tame the media- who were crowding everywhere. Last night I’d decided to spend the night here rather than get pummeled by guys with cameras and mikes all pressed to my face. In fact, I wasn’t the only one to do that; so did the celebrities’ legal guardians and Fuller.

It wasn’t so bad, though. I got to work on time, which was a first.

Right now, I was looking at the biographies of the young stars, just trying to get the idea of just how big they were, and why this Nurse would want to kidnap them.

I’d read over the Cyrus girl, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato and Taylor Swift- and I was currently on the author’s profile. The truth was, I’d actually started wither her, but couldn’t find much information so decided to come back to it. She, Zoe, just had a huge gap in her profile- it said nothing about her childhood.

I wonder if Sully had finished interviewing Ms. Dupree- the girl’s agent.

Someone knocked on the side of my door and I looked up to see Wilson, a fairly new agent, there. “Sorry Walker,” he said, “Fuller wanted me to tell you that he’s got the papers printed out and ready for you to take.”

I nodded. “Thanks, would you mind getting them for me? I’ve got to go see Sully.”

“Sure,” said Wilson with a nod of the head and slid out of the door.

I got up and made my way to Sully- who had gotten permission to use the interview room. I saw Ms. Dupree in the waiting room, but decided to go in and ask my partner if I could take her away for a few questions of my own anyway. Sully said sure and I escorted the disgruntled agent to my office.

“Thank you, Ms. Dupree,” I said and gestured to the chair opposite, “please take a seat.”

She did, but her face was full of disgust, as if the leather would stain her expensive clothing. “What did you want to know?”

From her question, I immediately deduced that she was an educated woman and that she was from a fairly wealthy family- or at least used to that kind of lifestyle. She was not stupid, and knew that I was going to ask her questions. I raised my eyebrows, as I noted that she seemed much less willing to give information.

“You are agent to author Zoe Smith, correct?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“A couple of years.”

I nodded. “Yes, but how long have you actually known her?”

She narrowed her eyes. “About five, six, seven years.”

“That long? How come?”

“She was at my sister’s orphanage,” Ms. Dupree said as if it were as plain as anything.

“Orphanage? Can you tell me about her childhood?”

“How is this relevant?” she shot back.

“Everything is relevant,” I said, trying to hid my annoyance- and putting extra emphasis on
the ‘everything’.

“Fine.” She leaned back into her chair, acting as if this was going to take a long time. “Zoe was born to a couple in Texas, but they moved to New York when she was about two years old. Unfortunately, they died when she was nine due to the World Trade Center incident- which I’m sure you know all about.”

She stared at me with her almost yellow eyes. I gulped and nodded- she nodded herself and twiddled with some of the rings on her fingers before continuing.

“Yes, well, she didn’t have any god-parents, so she got sent to the orphanage. My sister owns that, and I go to visit every year or so. I knew that that orphan liked to write, and when she showed me her work I was impressed, I’ll admit. But I couldn’t become someone’s agent if they were twelve and only wrote short stories! The company wouldn’t like that.

“But I did help her, of course. Brought her books, taught her methods, enhanced her writing skills. I was almost like a teacher. By the time she was fourteen she’d gotten a solid, good idea for a novel. So I asked her to expand upon it. A year later it was done, and I became her agent. Got her a book deal and the works.”

“And you never adopted her?”

“Excuse me?” she asked, confused.

“After all the time you spent with her,” I pressed, “you didn’t adopt her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She looked slightly uncomfortable. “Well, she came to live with me.”

“But you didn’t adopt her?”

“No. My sister said I didn’t have to, and that she was allowing me to take her.”

I nodded, the gears inside my head working like crazy. Something wasn’t right. “Alright, thank you Ms. Dupree. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like the name, address and phone number of your sister.”

She nodded a stiff nod and took the pen and paper I handed her. As she walked through the door I looked at the paper with her neat handwriting making up one of the few leads on this case.

Abigail Dupree- Linley.

I’d have to scope this story out.

♠ ♠ ♠

Back to Agent Walker for a chapter. You like? Comment!

And I'm sorry, but next week I'm going to Swance! (Switzerland and France) on a shool trip- so I won't be able to update again. Sorry.

But if I get enough comments I may just update tomorrow... you never know! : )

Bye guys, tell me what you think of the story in the comments!