by Beverly Long
She’d smelled so good.
Meg had dressed her in her favorite pajamas, the ones with little pigs running across them. And she’d brushed the tangles out of her hair. And she’d said yes when the little girl had begged for a treat before bedtime.
She’d been big enough to crawl up into her highchair and she’d raised her little arms, impatient for Meg to attach the tray. Then she’d grinned when Meg had pulled a bag of marshmallows out of the cupboard. They were her favorite.
Meg had given her one and watched her eat it. Then another. And then the doorbell had rung.
It was almost eight-thirty and close to dark. But she hadn’t been scared. Maiter wasn’t Houston, where Meg’s family had always double-checked to make sure their windows and doors were locked. It was the kind of place where kids slept out in the backyard in tents and teenagers hung around the park at night after the summer baseball game had ended, talking and maybe sneaking the occasional cigarette.
Everybody knew everybody. And while some teenage girls might have been bored in the little town, Meg had been glad that her dad had lost his job in Houston and they’d moved to Maiter. Otherwise, she’d have never met the Percys who lived across the street in the big white house. She’d never have met Missy.
She’d gone to answer the door and it had been Mrs. Moore, the woman who lived next door. The Percys had been collecting her mail while she’d been out of town visiting her mother and she’d come to get it. Meg had retrieved it off the big dining room table, chatted for just a minute, and closed the heavy door after the woman.
And then she’d gone back into the kitchen. And sweet Missy had been lying on the kitchen table, her lips blue.
Not breathing.
The open bag of marshmallows was next to her, with more spilled out on the table.
Meg had grabbed her, stuck her fingers in her mouth, and swept out half-chewed marshmallows. But she remained unresponsive. Meg had looked up and T.J. was standing in the doorway, between the kitchen and living room, his eyes wide. “Stay here,” Meg had yelled and she’d run out of the house into the night, the little girl in her arms, screaming for help.
Hours later, when it had all been over, and she’d been sitting at her own kitchen table, listening to the police talk to her parents, she’d heard them say “lodged in her windpipe, just like a cork.”
The small town, the one that she’d started to really like, was no longer friendly and welcoming. Because everywhere she went, she was the girl who let sweet Missy Percy choke to death.
But she hadn’t.
For years she’d relived every moment of that night, breaking each action into discreet moments. She’d heard the click of the tray snapping onto the highchair, hadn’t she? She’d only talked to the neighbor for a minute, right?
It drove her crazy.
In the end, she’d realized it didn’t matter. Missy was dead. The Percys had lost a daughter. T.J. had lost a sister.
She had lost everyone’s trust. She’d disappointed the people who loved her most.
Now, she stared at Troy Blakely and felt as if she wanted to jump out of her own skin. She hated. For the first time in her life, she knew that she honestly hated.
Intellectually, on a better day, she knew that she might be able to reason that he was a sick man. Had obviously been a sick child. But she could not bring herself to feel sorry for him.
No. She felt sorry for his parents. At what point did they know that they had raised a monster? At what point did they stop thinking about their little girl? They never got to see her first day of kindergarten, her first high school dance, her college graduation. They never again got to feel her chubby arms wrap around their necks. They never got to kiss her good-night and stroke her soft hair.
Her own parents had suffered, too. She could still remember sitting on the top step in the dark, weeks after Missy’s death, listening to her parents talk in the downstairs living room. Her father had been loudest. How could she have been so careless? Her mother’s voice softer but no less filled with despair. I don’t know.
A month later, after her father had lost his job, she’d tried to tell them how sorry she was. She’d cried and they’d told her that they still loved her. Her mother had patted her hand. We will never talk about this again.
And she hadn’t.
But she had thought about it every day for the past twenty years. And she had grieved.
* * *
MYERS’S TEAM IDENTIFIED twenty-nine buildings that had four or more stories in the eight-block area known as Valdez. It was called that because it surrounded Valdez Park, where a small statue marked the contributions of some hero from the Spanish-American war. The park might have been nice at one time but now it was run-down, matching the apartment buildings that lined the streets. At least half of them had more than ten floors and six had more than twenty floors. It was a hell of a lot of space to cover.
Myers started by calling in the canine unit. Four dogs and their handlers arrived within the half hour. They got a shirt out of Meg’s dirty laundry pile and the dogs picked up her scent. The officers, twelve in total, split into four teams of three. Each team took a dog and they started working the list. Cruz was grateful for the manpower. He realized it was probably every available cop that they could spare. He and Myers paired up, making a fifth team. They didn’t have a dog but Cruz didn’t intend to let that stop him.
The plan was fairly simple. Knock on doors, ask a few questions, show both Blakely’s and Meg’s pictures, and let the dog do his thing. If the animal showed any interest, investigate further. If not, move on. Any leads or new information would immediately get triaged back to the temporary command center that had been set up unobtrusively in a trailer in an empty parking lot.
Fortunately, the neighborhood was one that the police knew well in that there was frequent violence requiring a police response. They were on a first-name basis with lots of people in the community. Even so, some doors went unanswered. A few of the inhabitants might have been working but many more were likely inside but just not keen on interacting with the police.
They didn’t break down any doors. If they couldn’t get inside to do a visual, they relayed that information back to one additional officer who was charged with tracking down landlords, to get access through them.
Nobody recognized Blakely or Meg.
As report after report funneled into Myers, Cruz got more worried. Meg. Sweet Meg. Who could only see the good in people. How would she handle a crazy man?
Stay alive, Meg. Just stay alive until I can find you. Keep our baby safe.
Their baby. It was staggering news. Wonderful news. Terrifying news in these circumstances.
Meg had tried to tell him. Why the hell hadn’t he returned her call? Why the hell had he let his pride get in the way?
Eight hours later, it was just past midnight and the streetlights in the area that hadn’t been broken out had been burning for over four hours.
Cruz and Myers had been moving at a relentless pace. Ten minutes ago, Myers had insisted they return to the command center and he’d pushed a turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee into Cruz’s hands. “Eat,” he said. “Before you fall down.”
Cruz gulped down the food. He was wadding up his sandwich wrapper when he glanced down the street. Two blocks away, he saw a man and a woman emerge from a building. They were moving fast, the man had his arm around the woman. The angle of the streetlight was just right and holy hell, he couldn’t be sure it was Meg but he’d caught a glimpse of rich, dark hair.
Cruz grabbed Myers’s arm, pointed and ran for his car. He had the car started and was pulling away when Myers wrenched open the passenger-side door and slid in. The man started talking into his radio, giving other officers their location. It took four blocks before Cruz’s vehicle and two other unmarked cars converged around the blue Focus.
There was enough light to see that it was Blakely and Meg and the bastard had a gun pointed at her head. She was alert and watchful an
d he willed her to stay calm, to not give the man any reason to shoot.
Stand down. Myers got the message to his team.
“How long to get a sniper to take him out?” Cruz asked, his voice low.
“Five minutes.”
Cruz pulled his gun. Myers looked at it, frowned, but didn’t say a word.
While five minutes wasn’t a long time, it was too long because Blakely decided to move. He opened his car door. “Don’t come any closer or I’ll kill her,” he yelled.
“Nobody needs to get hurt, Mr. Blakely,” Myers yelled back. “Let Meg go and we can talk about this.”
“We have to go to the bank,” Blakely yelled.
Myers looked at Cruz. What the hell?
Cruz shook his head. It was the middle of the night.
“Okay. Let Meg go and we’ll take you to the bank,” Myers said.
“She has to go, too.” Blakely sounded frantic. Cruz could see that the hand that held the gun was shaking. “First to the hotel, then to the bank. You get someone to open the bank now.”
“Okay, okay,” Myers said. “We’ll get in touch with the manager right now and see if he can come down and unlock the doors.” He turned to Cruz. “I want both of them out of that car. It’s a better shot for our sniper.”
Cruz didn’t answer. He judged the distance, angled his body and raised his gun. He didn’t intend to wait.
“Continue to stand down,” Myers instructed the other officers. “You, too,” he said to Cruz.
Cruz ignored him. He focused on Blakely and tried to keep his eyes off Meg. He couldn’t look at her pinched, tight face or focus on the fear in her eyes.
She’d always been his weakness and now more so than ever. His child’s life also hung in the balance. Without them, he was nothing.
“Damn you, Montoya,” Myers said. “Don’t make me take that gun away from you.”
Cruz continued to ignore him. Blakely was moving, pulling Meg out of the car. He grabbed her around the waist and hauled her in front of him, using her as a human shield. He was only a few inches taller, not leaving a whole lot of room for error on the sniper’s part.
It had the potential to end very badly.
Cruz took a breath.
“Hurl,” he yelled.
A fraction of a second delay, then Meg bent at the waist. Cruz fired. His shot hit Blakely in the shoulder, knocking him back.
The two closest officers sprang forward and tackled him. Meg ran.
Cruz caught her before she’d gone ten feet. He swung her up in his arms, buried his face in her hair and breathed in the scent of life. For a long moment, he could not speak. “I thought I’d lost you,” he finally managed.
“I’m so sorry,” Meg said, pulling her head back. “I wasn’t as careful as I should have been.”
“It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. It’s over.”
She was shaking and he held her close. Finally, she lifted her eyes. “I have something to tell you.”
“Okay,” he said.
“I’m pregnant.”
He brushed her hair back from her face. “I know. Charlotte told me. It’s a long story that I’ll tell you sometime.”
“Are you mad?” she asked.
“Honey, I’m thrilled. I want you. I want our child. I want it all.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I wanted you to have it all,” she said. “That’s why I left.”
He nodded. “That’s what I figured. I’m sorry that little girl died. But it was just an accident. You can’t blame yourself.”
“It wasn’t an accident. It was T.J.”
He had all kinds of questions but now wasn’t the time. “Can you put it behind you?” he asked.
“I will never forget that she died. I will never forget her. But yes, knowing the truth helps.”
With the pad of his thumb, he brushed a tear off her cheek. “Here’s another truth, Meg. I love you.”
She looked him in the eye. “I love you, too. Always have. Always will.”
He smiled. “Will you marry me? Again?”
Epilogue
The Montoyas were remarried two weeks later in a ceremony in the backyard of Sam and Claire Vernelli’s house. The bride wore a simple cream-colored dress and the groom, who had threatened to wear cargo shorts, wore black dress pants, a blue shirt and a big smile. The police chaplain did the honors, keeping it short as requested by the groom. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place when the happy couple, standing before a trellis of fresh flowers, pledged their love to one another.
There was cake and punch after the ceremony, which the bride promptly threw up. Afterward, her sort-of-new husband patted her hand and wiped her face with a cool cloth.
Claire Vernelli looked on with sympathy in her eyes and Sam handed Cruz a box of saltine crackers. Then Sam wrapped an arm protectively around Claire’s slightly rounded stomach and pulled her close. He looked across the yard at his brother Jake, who had driven down for the weekend to help get the yard and house ready. He had one arm around Joanna, who was already starting to show with their second child and the other around his young daughter, who had slept through the ceremony.
“No more cake for you, Aunt Meg,” said Jana, who’d done a bang-up job as flower girl. She danced around, twirling the ribbons on her dress, her white, patent-leather dress shoes sliding on the freshly mowed grass.
“At least not for another three months or so,” said Cruz’s mother, her brown eyes filled with happiness. “Welcome back,” she said to her daughter-in-law and held her tight.
Cruz led his wife to a chair under a big shade tree. “Are you sure you feel up to the trip?”
“Yes. Definitely yes. I have a week off before I start my new job in Chicago.”
“I still feel bad about your having to leave your job in San Antonio.”
“Don’t even think about it. I wanted to come back to Chicago. There are other hotels. There’s only one you.”
He kissed her. “I love you.”
She smiled. “I know. Now, let’s get going. We deserve that third honeymoon at Mackinaw Island. Are you packed?”
He nodded and tucked a piece of her short hair behind her ear. “Yep. Packed light. Didn’t even bother pretending that I’d use the bike shorts.”
* * * * *
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Chapter One
“This special news report just in—an amber alert has been issued for six-year-old Hank Forte. Hank was last seen at the county fair in Amarillo.”
Brody Bloodworth’s heart clenched as a photo of the boy appeared on screen. The little boy had blond hair, was wearing a black T-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. He could be one of the kids on the BBL, the Bucking Bronc Lodge he had started for needy children.
But he reminded him more of his own little brother, Will, and launched him back seven years ago to the day Will had gone missing.
Not from a county fair but from the rodeo where he was supposed to be watching him.
Self-loathing and guilt suffused him, once again robbing his lungs of air. He understood what the family of that little boy was going through now. The panic. The fear.
The guilt.
If only they’d kept a better eye on him. If
only they hadn’t turned their head for a minute.
What was happening to him? Had he just wandered off? Would they find him hiding out or playing somewhere at the fair? Maybe he had fallen asleep in a stall housing one of the animals...
Or had someone taken him? Maybe a desperate woman who’d lost a child and was out of her mind? A child predator who’d do God knows what?
A killer?
The reporter turned the microphone to Hank’s parents, a couple who were huddled together, teary-eyed and frightened. A second later, they began to plead for their son’s return, and the mother broke down into sobs.
Brody hit the remote, silencing the heart-wrenching scene, but it played over and over in his head. But it wasn’t the Forte family’s cries he heard; it was his own family’s.
His father who’d blamed him from the get-go.
Because it was his fault.
He glanced through the window at the sprawling acres and acres of land he’d bought, to the horse stables and pens and the boys that he’d taken in. All kids who had troubles, boys who needed homes and love and guidance.
But no matter how much he did for them, it wouldn’t make up for losing his little brother.
The clock in the hall struck 6:00 p.m., and he stood, pulled on his duster jacket and headed outside. One of his best men, Mason Blackpaw, and his fiancée, Cara Winchester, were getting married on the ranch in a few minutes. He’d promised he’d be there, and he was happy for his friend, but weddings always made him uncomfortable.
And he’d attended a hell of a lot of them lately. In fact, all of his original investors had tied the knot. First Johnny Long, then Brandon Woodstock, Carter Flagstone, then Miles McGregor, and now Mason.
Yanking at his tie to loosen the choking knot, he glanced at the field to the right where Mason had built a gazebo. Cara had rented tables and chairs and had decorated them with white linens, bows and fresh day lilies.
