The Boy

by Linsey Lanier

  Over a grand fireplace hung a painting of the senator with his family—a stately looking wife and two kids in their late teens. In a bookshelf next to the fireplace sat trophies and medals. Looked like the family was into sports.

  No eight-year-old boy in the photo. But it seemed to be several years old.

  Minutes passed. Feeling antsy Miranda hugged herself and leaned toward Parker.

  “Are we getting the runaround?”

  Before he could answer, a cheerful voice rang out from the hall and the man they’d come to see stepped into the room, hand extended. Suddenly the space was filled with his presence.

  “Wade Parker. What on earth brings you to my humble abode?”

  Dressed in a slate blue business suit, Senator Perry Ward Hughes was a handsome man of average height with an athletic build and an enthusiastic handshake. He had a thick shock of pale gray hair—premature, she assumed, since he was Parker’s age—and friendly watery blue eyes that looked like they could win your vote with just a glance.

  Miranda eyed him carefully.

  He was putting on a good front, but if you looked close you could see specks of red in the corners of those charismatic eyes, and a hint of shadow under them, that he might have covered with makeup.

  He extended a hand to her with a broad white smile. “So this is the famous Miranda Steele. I’m so happy to finally meet you.”

  He was laying it on thick. Must think Parker had come here to offer a campaign donation.

  “Likewise, senator,” she said.

  “Please call me Perry. I apologize for missing your wedding last year. I was out of the country.”

  Parker leaned over her shoulder. “Perry and Rebecca sent the silver chafing dish.”

  How the heck did Parker remember that? She wasn’t even sure what a chafing dish was.

  She forced a grin. “Oh, yes. Of course. Thank you.”

  Perry turned to Parker with an effervescent chuckle. “Your call really sent me down memory lane, Wade.” He turned to Miranda. “We played football together in the seventh grade. Best wide receiver in the state, here.” He gave Parker a buddy-like pat on the shoulder.

  Involuntarily Miranda’s brows shot up. She didn’t know Parker had played football when he was a kid.

  Parker smiled. “I recall your tackles during practice.”

  “You were a hard hitter yourself. And what a receiver. Remember that last-second touchdown that saved the day in the final game of the season? I was quarterback, of course.”

  “I do remember it.”

  “But you had brains as well as brawn. We were in the Debate Club together, too,” he said to Miranda as if sharing some dark secret. “He always bested me there.”

  “Until you found other interests,” Parker said. “I recall your colorful campaigns for class president. You enlisted the art club to make posters. And the cheerleaders came up with a special cheer for you. They performed it in the hall and nearly got in trouble. But you won. You always won.”

  “I admit, I started my political career early.”

  “Indeed.”

  Perry Ward Hughes sounded like a bit of a ladies’ man, but then Wade Russell Parker the Third must have had girls drooling all over him at that age, too. He still had them now in the form of grown women.

  The senator extended his arms toward the chairs. “Come in and have a seat. Would you like anything to drink? Have you eaten?”

  “We’re fine,” Parker said waiting for Miranda to sit before he did.

  As she did, she nodded casually toward the photo on the mantelpiece. “Are those are your children, Senator?”

  “Perry. Please. And yes. That’s Sarah and Thomas. They’re both on their own now. That photo was taken a while back.”

  Interesting.

  The senator took a seat across from them and flashed a campaign smile. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

  Parker’s face turned grim. “I’m afraid we’ve come tonight on a professional matter, Perry.”

  Suddenly the senator looked uncomfortable. “Oh?” He leaned back and waited.

  Parker set out his bait. “I spoke to my sister Evelyn this afternoon.”

  Nothing registered. The senator looked from Miranda to Parker. “Evelyn? How is she?” He smiled again. “I remember how she used to pretend she wasn’t related to the scamp in the seventh grade who was her brother.”

  “She did, didn’t she?” Parker put a thoughtful finger under his chin. “It seems she recently rented a house in the Old Fourth Ward.”

  “Oh?” The senator seemed a little confused.

  “To a schoolteacher.”

  “A schoolteacher?”

  “A teacher at your son’s school. Your younger son.”

  Now something registered. The senator adjusted his tie. “Dylan’s school? How nice.”

  Parker’s voice turned dark. “When was the last time you saw your son, Perry?”

  The senator’s shoulders slumped. His jaw went slack. “I should have known when you called this was no social visit. What do you know about my son, Wade?”

  “Answer my question, Perry. When was the last time you saw your son?”

  Senator Hughes closed his eyes as if he were in tremendous pain. “Almost a week ago. Last Sunday night.”

  The night before June May got the call to take the boy to Evelyn’s safe house.

  “I left early for work on Monday. I had planned to come home a little early. We were supposed to go to the park to collect spiders and caterpillars for his science project. So I didn’t bother to check in on him that morning.” His smooth politician’s voice cracked a little. “If only I had stopped into his room to say, ‘Good morning.’ To give him a kiss and tell him—I don’t know. Not to talk to strangers? I miss him so much.” He let out a gasp and put a hand over his mouth.

  Miranda drew in a slow breath and decided to cut to the chase. “Your son is missing, Senator. Why haven’t you called the police?”

  He stared at her with his watery blue eyes as if she’d spoken in Martian. “I was told not to.”

  Miranda’s shoulders grew tight. “By the kidnappers?”

  His blue eyes began to fill with tears. “By the FBI.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Miranda twisted around in her chair to stare at Parker. His gaze met hers with the same look of shock. What the hell was going on here?

  “What did the FBI tell you, senator?” she demanded.

  “They told me not to talk about my son to anyone.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Two men. They came to see me a few days before—I shouldn’t be talking about this.”

  “You can tell us.” Parker’s voice was soothing now and as persuasive as any politician.

  Senator Ward Hughes stared down at his shoes a long time, then decided to answer. “They told me they were conducting a special operation involving potential kidnapping victims. They suspected our son might be a target. If they thought the kidnappers were closing in, they were going to take him somewhere to protect him. A safe house.”

  And he believed them? “You didn’t have these men checked out?”

  The senator scowled at Miranda. “Of course I did. They checked out. They both had credentials.” He pressed his fingers to his temples. “All right. I should have asked for more details, but I was too stunned, too worried.” He turned to Parker. “He’s all right, isn’t he, Wade?”

  Dear Lord. The senator didn’t know the kidnappers had gotten to his son. He thought Dylan was still at the safe house.

  Parker rose and crossed the floor to lay a comforting hand on his old schoolmate’s shoulder. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Perry. Something went wrong with that operation.”

  Perry glared up at him. “Went wrong? What do you mean? Dylan’s all right, isn’t he? Tell me he’s all right.”

  “I’m afraid he’s not at the house where he was taken.”

  The look in the senator’s eyes turned to terror. �
��How do you know?”

  “My sister’s involved. She rented the house to Dylan’s teacher. They’ve been staying there.”

  “Staying there?” Vacantly Perry stared across the room. “Where is he now?”

  “We don’t know. That’s what we’re here to find out.”

  The senator rose and paced to the fireplace. “I should have asked for more details,” he said again. “I should have demanded them. This sort of thing happens to people in the public eye. I took it in stride. I thought, the FBI’s handling it. Nothing bad will happen. Even when Dylan didn’t come home from school, I thought, it will be over in a few days. But it’s been too long. It’s been—”

  From the hall a sharp female voice cut in. “What did you say?”

  There was a short silence. Then the clip, clip of classy high heels, and a woman in a shimmering golden blouse and a gold paisley skirt strode into the room. She was tall and empress-like in her bearing as she scanned the scene. Her immaculately styled golden blond hair was cut so it turned under at her shoulders. A simple but expensive gold chain hung around her long neck. She was a genuine southern aristocrat.

  A rattled one.

  As if on mannerly autopilot, Perry gestured to her. “This is my wife, Rebecca. Becca, you remember Wade Park—”

  “I know who they are,” she snapped. “You know I’ve been to many social affairs with the renowned Wade Parker. And who hasn’t heard of Miranda Steele? I want to know why they’re here and what they know about my son.”

  She focused on Miranda, her eyes pleading. They were a tawny brown, but they were more bloodshot than her husband’s. She had a mother’s instinct. She knew her son could be in danger. But the tears were from more than worry and fear. These two had been fighting.

  “We were at the house your son was taken from this afternoon,” Miranda told her with as little emotion as she could. “We found Parker’s sister Evelyn there. She was renting the house to the teacher who was protecting your son.”

  “And?”

  She took another breath and said it as gently as she could. No way to put it delicately. “That teacher is dead. And the boy is—missing.”

  The senator’s wife reached for the back of a chair to steady herself. “Missing? Our son is missing?” She glared at her husband. “You told me he’d be all right.”

  “That’s what the men from the FBI said.”

  Keep them talking, Miranda thought. “Your son has a peanut allergy, ma’am?”

  The woman blinked at her in surprise. “Yes. It started last year. He ate a candy bar with peanuts and broke out in hives. Then suddenly he couldn’t breathe. We had to rush him to the hospital. It was frightening.”

  “I can imagine.”

  She put a trembling hand to her forehead. “His EpiPen. Does he have his EpiPen?”

  “I don’t know,” Miranda lied. She couldn’t tell the poor woman she’d found it in the kitchen drawer of that empty house.

  Forcing herself to remain dignified, Mrs. Ward Hughes put her hands to her face and stared out the window. Then she gave her husband a ferocious glare. “You’re a fool, Perry. You can pretend not to know what’s going on, but I refuse.”

  “Please, Becca.”

  “Don’t please me. That woman has our son and you’re letting her get away with it.”

  Woman? Miranda frowned at Parker.

  “What woman?” Parker asked before Miranda could.

  Rebecca Ward Hughes threw daggers at her husband with her tawny brown eyes. “Why don’t you tell them? I’m tired of keeping your indiscretion a secret.”

  The senator turned his back and ran his hands through his hair in sheer agony. “Oh, God, Rebecca. How many times do I have to say I’m sorry? It was a mistake.”

  Indiscretion? Mistake? This was getting worse by the second.

  “But the boy wasn’t a mistake,” Rebecca whispered as if to herself. Still glowering at her husband, she spoke to Parker. “Nine years ago, my husband had an affair. With his secretary, of all things. Such a worn out cliché.”

  Perry held up a defensive hand. “She was an intern from Emory. She was working on her master’s degree in Finance. She acted as an assistant to several of the managers at the bank.”

  “Whatever. The result of that ‘mistake’ was Dylan, and he changed our lives forever. At first the woman wanted money. Then she was going to get an abortion. Then she wanted to keep the boy. She did for three months. But caring for him became too much for her.” Rebecca let out a bitter laugh. “She brought him to us in a basket and left him on our doorstep. Another cliché. I almost tripped over him one morning on my way out to a charity brunch.”

  “It was a car seat with a handle.”

  She was silent a long moment, Miranda could almost see the memories playing over in the woman’s mind. “I thought, ‘I don’t want this child. He’s not mine. He doesn’t belong to me.’ I wanted to give the boy up for adoption. But as soon as I picked him up and held him. As soon as I looked into those sweet blue eyes. From that moment he was mine.”

  Now it was Miranda’s turn to steady herself.

  This missing boy was the result of an affair? Perry Ward Hughes had cheated on his wife and she had raised the boy, cared for him, loved him as her own son despite that? And now she thought this “other woman” wanted the boy back?

  Miranda felt as if spiders were crawling around in her stomach. She felt for the senator’s wife. Deeply. She knew firsthand what it was like to have a child snatched away from you. The agony, the dread, the not knowing. But she also knew what it was like to be the real mother on the outside looking in.

  The woman moved to Parker and touched his arm. “You have to get him back for me, Wade. You and Miranda. You have to get him back.”

  Parker laid a reassuring hand on the woman. “We’ll do our best, Rebecca. We have a team working on it as we speak.”

  Suddenly Rebecca looked hopeful.

  Miranda gestured toward the chairs. “Our first priority is finding Dylan. Let’s sit down and put our heads together.”

  She waited for everyone to get settled, noticing Rebecca chose a seat farthest from her husband. “Tell us about this woman.”

  Perry swallowed his medicine and gave them a straight answer. “Her name is Erica King. She was twenty-three when she worked in my division.”

  And he would have been, what? Thirty-seven at the time? Early mid-life crisis?

  “Do you have a picture of her?” Parker said as casually as if he were asking for a glass of iced tea.

  Perry turned to his wife.

  Rebecca straightened and pulled a cell phone out of her skirt pocket. She began to swipe. “I still have the photos the detective I hired sent me.” She glanced up at Parker. “No offense, Wade. I wanted someone I didn’t know.”

  “None taken.”

  Parker’s voice was so flat Miranda could only imagine the mix of sympathy and disgust he was battling to suppress.

  “Here.” She handed the phone to Miranda.

  Miranda looked at the photo. A shapely young woman in red shorts and a dark, close-fitting top was unloading groceries from the trunk of a sporty blue car. Long blond curls, pretty, a curvy body a lot of men would lust for. She was a cliché.

  Miranda handed the phone to Parker. “Do you have a current address for this woman?”

  Perry and Rebecca gave each other a tense glance. “I only have the address from when she worked for the bank. I let her go after…” his voice trailed off.

  Rebecca watched tightly while the senator pulled out his own phone.

  “Here it is.” He handed the phone to Parker. “I think she might be working in Marietta now. She has family there. I offered her money but all she wanted was a good reference. One of the places was a bank on Cherokee Street.”

  Once again Rebecca’s eyes became flame throwers.

  “She was a good worker. I didn’t want Dylan to go without.”

  Rebecca closed her eyes. “Oh, I don’t care what
you did. I just want my son back. I’m so worried about him. Please find him, Wade.”

  “We’ll do our best.”

  “Can you send this photo to my phone?” Miranda asked the poor woman.

  “Certainly. I have photos of Dylan there, too.”

  “That will be helpful.”

  As they made the transaction and she and Parker stood up to leave Miranda remembered the photo from June May’s apartment.

  She scrolled to it, and handed her phone to Perry, expecting another dead end. “Senator, have you seen this man?”

  He took the phone and squinted at the picture. She waited for him to say no and hand it to his wife for another head shake.

  Instead slowly he nodded. “That’s one of the men who came to see me. The men from the FBI.”

  Miranda thought she hadn’t heard him right. “FBI? Are you sure? Not the GBI?”

  The senator frowned. “Of course, I’m sure.”

  “Did he give you his name?” she asked.

  “Of course he did. His name is Simon Sloan.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The only sound in the Mazda was the gravel crunching under the tires as they drove away from the house where they’d left the grieving senator and his distraught wife. Miranda’s heart was breaking for both of them.

  And she felt like a hurricane was raging inside her head.

  Simon Sloan was with the FBI? Was he involved with the people Evelyn worked for? Or was he impersonating an FBI agent, too? And what about Erica King?

  “Do you really think this other woman has Dylan?”

  Parker rolled slowly out of the long driveway and turned left. “She may be involved.”

  “In what? Some sort of kidnapping ring? And who is Simon Sloan? Does he work for the GBI or the FBI?”

  “Perhaps neither.”

  The same words had been on the tip of her tongue.

  Parker was silent a long moment. “As I recall, Rebecca’s family was never as well off as Perry’s.”