by Sharon Sala
He has nothing and everything to lose...
When a seventeen-year-old boy goes missing while camping with his buddies in the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend, the case is right up PI Charlie Dodge’s alley. Charlie’s reputation for finding missing people—especially missing kids—is unparalleled. Unfortunately, trouble seems to be equally good at finding him.
Charlie’s still in the thick of it when bad news arrives regarding his wife, Annie, whose early onset Alzheimer’s is causing her to slip further and further away. The timing couldn’t be worse. Thankfully, Charlie’s ride-or-die assistant, Wyrick, has his back. But when Universal Theorem, the shadowy and elusive organization from Wyrick’s past, escalates its deadly threats against her, it pushes both partners past their breaking points. Finding people is one thing; now Charlie will have to fight to hold on to everyone he holds dear.
Praise for the novels of Sharon Sala
“Drama literally invades the life of an A-list Hollywood star, and the race is on to catch a killer.”
—RT Book Reviews on Life of Lies
“A wonderful romance, thriller, and delightful book. [I] recommend this book as highly as I can.... Exciting...and will keep you glued to the pages until you reach the end.”
—USATODAY.com’s Happy Ever After blog on Life of Lies
“In Sala’s latest page-turner, staying alive is the biggest challenge of all. There are appealing characters to root for, and one slimy villain who needs to be stopped.”
—RT Book Reviews on Race Against Time
“[An] emotional thriller, packed with action, love, regrets, and criminal activity that will make your blood boil.... A phenomenal story.”
—FreshFiction.com on Race Against Time
“[T]he Youngblood family is a force to be reckoned with.... [W]atching this family gather around and protect its own is an uplifting tribute to familial love.”
—RT Book Reviews on Family Sins
“[A] soul-wrenching story of love, heartache, and murder that is practically impossible to put down.... If you love emotional tales of love, family, and justice, then look no further… Sharon Sala has yet another winner on her hands.”
—FreshFiction.com on Family Sins
Also by Sharon Sala
The Jigsaw Files
SECOND SIGHT
THE MISSING PIECE
Secrets and Lies
DARK HEARTS
COLD HEARTS
WILD HEARTS
Forces of Nature
GOING GONE
GOING TWICE
GOING ONCE
The Rebel Ridge novels
’TIL DEATH
DON’T CRY FOR ME
NEXT OF KIN
The Searchers
BLOOD TRAILS
BLOOD STAINS
BLOOD TIES
The Storm Front trilogy
SWEPT ASIDE
TORN APART
BLOWN AWAY
THE WARRIOR
BAD PENNY
THE HEALER
CUT THROAT
NINE LIVES
THE CHOSEN
MISSING
WHIPPOORWILL
ON THE EDGE
“Capsized”
DARK WATER
OUT OF THE DARK
SNOWFALL
BUTTERFLY
REMEMBER ME
REUNION
SWEET BABY
DARK WATER RISING
IN SHADOWS
LIFE OF LIES
RACE AGAINST TIME
FAMILY SINS
Originally published as Dinah McCall
THE RETURN
Look for Sharon Sala’s next novel in The Jigsaw Files, available soon from MIRA.
Sharon Sala
Blind Faith
When there’s nothing to hold on to but your faith in someone else’s word. When the promise they made to you will either be the difference between your life, or your death. That’s when you are put to the test. That’s when you are asked to believe in something you cannot see.
I dedicate this book to the truth keepers. To the promise keepers.
And to the people in my life who never let me down.
There aren’t many of you, but you know who you are.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
One
The morning sun was hot on Tony Dawson’s head, but his anger was hotter. This camping trip in Big Bend National Park was nothing but a setup—a betrayal—and by two people he had considered friends.
The drunken argument the three high school boys had last night had carried over into morning hangovers. They packed up camp in silence, and were nearing the junction that would take them back down to the Chisos Mountain Lodge, where their overnight hike had begun.
Tony had nothing to say to either of them, which obviously wasn’t what they’d expected, and as they neared the junction, both Randall Wells and Justin Young lengthened their strides to catch up to him.
“What are you going to do when you get back?” Randall asked.
Tony just kept walking.
Randall pushed him. “Hey! I’m talking to you!”
“Keep your damn hands off me. Not interested. Don’t want to hear the sound of your lying voice. You said enough last night,” Tony said.
“Are you going to keep seeing Trish? After all you found out?” Randall asked.
Tony fired back. “I had girlfriends back in California. I would assume they moved on when I left, because I did. So what if you dated Trish before I even knew her?”
“What about what Justin said?” Randall asked.
Tony stopped, then turned to face the both of them.
“You want the truth? I don’t believe Justin. Why would I? You two lied about wanting to be my friends. You lied about this camping trip. It was a setup. You’re both losers. Why would I believe two sore losers over my own instincts?”
Tony saw the rage spreading over Randall’s face, but he wasn’t expecting Randall to come at him.
Randall leaped toward him, swinging. Tony stepped to the side to dodge the blow, and when he did, the ground gave way beneath his feet. All of a sudden he was falling backward off the mountain, arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross, knowing he was going to die.
Two days later: Dallas, Texas
A Dallas traffic cop clocked the silver Mercedes at ninety-five miles per hour, and was just about to take off after it when his radar gun went dark, and then the car shot through a nonexistent opening in the crazy morning traffic, before disappearing before his eyes.
“That did not just happen,” he muttered, but just in case, he radioed ahead for the next cop down the line to be on the lookout.
Wyrick wasn’t concerned with the cop’s confusion. She was already off the freeway and taking backstreets to get to the office. She knew the cop had clocked her, but she had her own little system for blocking traffic radar, and she was in a bigger
hurry than normal because she overslept—a rare occurrence that happened now and then when she dreamed.
Last night had been one nightmare after another...from her mother disappearing at the merry-go-round when Wyrick was five, then being kidnapped and taken to the people at Universal Theorem who had created her, to the years at UT and what she referred to as her life in mental bondage.
From there, the dreams morphed to the man UT had picked out for her to marry...the man she thought loved her...until she got cancer.
Dreaming of the treatments and the chemo, then waking up sick in the night and thinking the dream was real, then falling back to sleep into the same web of disease and deceit.
Reliving the shock and disgust on her fiancé’s face when he saw her rail-thin and bald, coldly breaking off the engagement by telling her he didn’t want to watch her die.
The look of frustration on Cyrus Parks’s face, and his matter-of-fact dismissal of her illness, explaining it away as a flaw in her system, and chalking her up as another failed experiment. She woke up bathed in sweat as Cyrus was walking out the door of her hospital room.
She threw back the covers in anger.
When she was at her weakest and sickest, they threw her away like food gone bad, and it was rage that kicked in her own will to live.
She stomped into the kitchen to get a cold Pepsi, wanting the bad taste of that memory gone, and drank it in the middle of the kitchen, remembering how she’d healed herself in a way she didn’t even fully understand. Accepting as she finally calmed down that once in a great while she was doomed to relive the death and downfall of Jade Wyrick, and the resurrection of the woman she was now.
And because she finally went back to bed after the Pepsi, she overslept. Now she just needed to get to the office before Charlie Dodge, or she’d never hear the end of it.
Finally, the office building came into view, and she sped through the last half mile without once tapping the brakes, skidded into her own parking place and breathed a sigh of relief that Charlie’s parking spot was still empty.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” she muttered, as she grabbed her things and got out on the run.
Within minutes of opening the office, she had coffee on, with the box of sweet rolls she’d picked up this morning plated beneath the glass dome in the coffee bar, and had both of their computers up and running.
She was going through the morning email when Charlie walked in, but she refused to look up. She knew what she looked like. She’d spent precious time this morning making sure she looked fierce, because she felt so damn wounded from the dreams.
“Bear claws under glass,” she muttered. “Teenager missing in the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend. Are you interested?”
Charlie was used to Wyrick’s outrageous fashion sense, and refused to be shocked by the black starbursts she’d painted around her eyes, the blood drop she’d painted at the corner of her mouth, the red leather catsuit or the black knee-high boots she was wearing. But he was interested in the sugar crunch of bear claws and kids who went missing.
“Yes, to both,” he said, as he sauntered past. “Send me the stats on the missing kid, and get the parents in here for details.”
“They’re due here at 10:30.”
He paused, then turned around, his eyes narrowing.
“Why do you even ask me what I want?”
“You’re the boss,” Wyrick said.
“I know that. I just didn’t know you did,” he mumbled, and stopped at the coffee bar.
He filled a cup with coffee, put a bear claw on a napkin and strode into his office. By the time he had his jacket hanging in the closet, his Stetson on the hat tree and a third bite of bear claw in his belly, he was ready to cope with the day, and pulled up the email about the missing teenager.
Tony Dawson—seventeen years old.
Disappeared in Chisos Mountains of Big Bend National Park while backpacking with Randall Wells and Justin Young, two friends from school.
Boys wake to find Tony gone. Think he walked back down alone due to an argument from the night before. But when they packed up and walked down, Tony Dawson’s truck was still in the parking lot at the Chisos Mountain Lodge and he was nowhere to be found.
Two-day air and foot search yielded no clues.
Charlie was still reading when he heard the door open in the outer office and then heard a man’s voice, followed by Wyrick’s responses.
“I need to talk to Charlie Dodge!”
“Your name?”
“Darrell Boyington.”
“Have a seat, Mr. Boyington.”
Boyington smoothed a hand over his hair, absently patting it in place, and then sat.
Wyrick picked up the phone and buzzed Charlie’s office.
“I heard him,” Charlie said. “Does he have an appointment?”
“No, sir.”
“The Dawsons are due here anytime, and I’m not going to keep them waiting for a walk-in. Schedule an appointment for him if he wants.”
“Yes, sir,” Wyrick said, then hung up. “I’m sorry, Mr. Boyington. Mr. Dodge has clients arriving at any moment. Would you like to schedule an appointment?”
Boyington stood.
“No. I need to talk to him now! It’s urgent!”
“I’m sorry, sir, but—”
“Look, lady...”
Charlie had heard enough. He strode out of his office.
“Hey! Arguing with my office manager doesn’t get you any closer to me,” Charlie said. “I have a prior appointment. The end.”
Boyington started walking toward him.
“Look, Charlie. My name is Darrell Boyington. I own—”
“You don’t own me or my time, Mr. Boyington. Make an appointment or find another investigator, and don’t make me say it again.”
Wyrick walked to the door and opened it.
Darrell’s eyes widened. “What do you think you’re—?”
“Hastening your exit?” Wyrick said, and pointed to the hallway.
“Freak. Get out of my way,” Boyington muttered, slamming the door shut behind him.
Charlie frowned. “I’m sorry he said that.”
Wyrick shrugged. “I suppose I asked for it today.”
“Why?”
“Women hide behind makeup,” she muttered, then went back to her desk.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Running a search on Darrell Boyington. It pays to know your enemies.”
“Fill me in when you find out,” Charlie said, and went back into his office to finish reading up on the missing teen.
A few minutes later, Wyrick stepped into his office.
“Boyington owns a chain of sports bars. I have no idea why he was here.”
Charlie shrugged. “Probably wanted somebody tailed. That stuff is not on my radar.”
Wyrick already knew that.
A few minutes later, the door to the outer office opened again, but this time it was the Dawson family, and it was a testament to their panic that they had absolutely no reaction to Wyrick’s appearance when she ushered them into his office.
“Mr. and Mrs. Dawson, this is Charlie Dodge.”
Charlie stood. “Good morning,” he said, and seated Mrs. Dawson, while her husband took the chair beside her.
“Would either of you care for coffee?” Wyrick asked.
They shook their heads.
Charlie glanced at Wyrick.
“Would you please join us?”
She went back to get her iPad to take notes, and as soon as she was seated, Charlie began.
“Mr. and Mrs. Dawson, I’ve read the highlights from the email you sent. Is there anything else you want to add?”
“We’re Baxter and Macie, please,” Baxter Dawson said, but it was Macie who kept talking.
“We moved here from California this past summer. Tony is our only child. I didn’t want him to go on that trip because it was so far away and in such rough terrain,” she said, and then started crying. “But they had this long break from school because of teacher evaluations or something, and then the weekend to boot, and I gave in. They left Dallas last Thursday before daybreak. They hiked and camped Thursday night. Tony went missing Friday morning. Today is Monday, and I don’t know where my son is. I don’t know if he’s even alive. I can’t bear it. It’s the not knowing that’s the worst.”
Baxter reached for her hand and picked up the story. “When the park rangers first began searching, we were confident that he’d be found. After the boys mentioned the argument the night before, and Tony being gone when they woke up, it seemed plausible.”
“When the argument occurred, were they drinking?” Charlie asked.
Baxter sighed. “The boys said they’d had a couple of beers apiece, but there’s no way to know because when they were first questioned, they’d told the park ranger that they had discarded their trash back at the lodge when they hiked back down. Then they said they had expected Tony’s truck to be gone. But when it was still in the parking lot and he was nowhere on-site, they realized he could still be up in the mountains. Maybe lost. That’s when they went straight to the authorities. Then the authorities notified us about the search. We were at the lodge the whole time, waiting for word.”
“Why did they stop the search at only two days?” Charlie asked.
“I don’t know, but when we were asked if there was trouble at home, like they thought he would just decide to disappear like this on his own, we knew the heart had gone out of the search.”
“I’m the one who wanted to hire a private investigator,” Macie said. “I asked around about people to hire, and it appears your reputation for finding missing children is well-known here. And if there is any chance of finding Tony, they said you could do it.”
Charlie took a breath. This was going to be hard for them to hear, but it had to be said.
“Are you accepting of the fact that I might not find him alive?”
Baxter paled, but it was Macie whose chin went up.
