* * *
DETECTIVE RAMSEY MILLER from the Comfort Cove Police Department in Comfort Cove, Massachusetts, didn’t believe in anything as certain as fate. Spending his days and nights viewing gruesome details of crime scenes had taught him one thing for certain—life was a crap shoot. Sometimes the bad guys got it. Sometimes the good guys did.
And sometimes a guy just happened to be at the right place at the right time. Since his divorce he’d taken to drinking his morning coffee in bed, reading national and local news via the laptop computer that was always either on his nightstand or, if he’d fallen asleep while working, sharing the covers with him.
The thing about internet news sources was that they were so plentiful he was never without company, even if it meant that he was reading about an Issaquah couple caught having sex in their car. This time on the fifth floor of a Park and Ride. It was news to someone. And as long as there was internet and people to talk about, there would never be a time, no matter how late in the night or early in the morning, when he would have to settle for his own thoughts.
The second Saturday morning in July was when he was the lucky guy who ended up in the right place at the right time. He’d taken an extra hour in bed to surf other people’s troubles instead of working on the pile of unanswered questions waiting for him on his own desk. Sort of.
He’d been perusing a local news site from Tyler, Tennessee, but he hadn’t been there just randomly. He’d chosen the town because he was trying to reach a man there who wasn’t returning his calls. Caleb Whittier. The guy worked as a professor at the university there, he’d discovered from tax returns. He needed some answers from Whittier so he could lessen the pile on his desk and instead all he was getting were more questions.
That was until he got lucky.
A kid was missing from Tyler—which wasn’t lucky. He’d seen the Amber Alert go out because he was on the internet looking at Tyler news. He’d called Lucy Hayes immediately. He and the detective from Aurora, Indiana, were long-distance compatriots—they’d both, for different reasons, dedicated their lives to missing children.
And then a live video feed flashed on his screen. Pursuant to the missing child. It was a press conference that was taking place. Ramsey clicked.
The kid hadn’t been found. Damn.
And more bad news—the kid was the grandson of some local millionaire who was offering half a mil in reward money.
If Sammie Lowen had been kidnapped for ransom, chances were his family wouldn’t see him alive again. Of course, there were other reasons kids were snatched that weren’t any better. He’d hoped the kid had just run away. He was ten, after all.
And Ramsey had his right-place-right-time moment.
There on the screen. The guy standing behind the mother of the missing boy—his image was also on the file on top of the stack waiting for him at work. Granted, the photo on Ramsey’s desk had been gleaned from the department of motor vehicles, a driver’s license shot, but he was certain that he was looking at Dr. Caleb Whittier. A grown-up version of the seven-year-old boy whose photo was also in the file.
Sitting up straight, Ramsey held the portable computer with both hands and stared. He still had questions. Just different ones.
Like, why was a man who, as a boy, had been involved in a missing-child case, involved in another missing-child case as an adult?
Whittier had only been seven when the two-year-old daughter of his father’s fiancée had gone missing. The boy could hardly have been a mastermind child abductor at that point.
He watched the rest of the video. The kid’s mother never spoke. She just stood behind the grandfather and Captain Dennison, who was representing Tyler law enforcement, with an older woman Ramsey assumed was her mother. Caleb Whittier was farther back than they were, probably unaware that he was on camera. Others were with him. Neighbors, maybe.
And maybe that’s all he was. Maybe there was no connection to him and the missing boy at all. Maybe he’d never even met the kid.
But there was definitely a coincidence here.
And to Ramsey Miller a coincidence was like a toothache. It bugged him until he did something about it.
* * *
“YOU REALLY DON’T have to stay.” Morgan found herself alone in her living room with Cal Whittier after the press conference Saturday morning. “You haven’t slept at all.”
“Neither have you.”
“He’s my son. My mind isn’t going to relax enough to allow me to sleep.” Detectives Warner and Martin and Captain Dennison were in the kitchen conferring. Her father and mother had left to shower and change and would be back within the half hour. Detective Martin had suggested that Morgan call her doctor and request a sleep aid, but she wasn’t planning to heed that particular piece of advice. At least not for the next twenty-four hours.
“I’ll go if it will make it easier on you.”
They were sitting on opposite ends of her couch. “No!” The volume of her emission embarrassed her. “You’ve…helped. I just don’t want you to think you have to stay. I’ll be fine.”
She didn’t want him to leave. Ever.
And that wasn’t fair to him. Or right.
Cal Whittier owed her nothing. And had no idea she’d had a crush on him for years.
“You aren’t fine,” he said, his gaze so understanding Morgan almost broke down again. “But I’d like to stay. At least until you’ve seen the fallout from the press conference.”
“You’ve been on the phone several times. I figured you had something going on and…”
“My dad asked me to keep him up to date.”
Hearing that a perfect stranger cared threatened her composure all over again. Strangers came to your aid when things were really bad.
And the world really did have good in it because strangers came to your aid.
Her thoughts rolled around one another, presenting themselves and then rolling off again. She couldn’t focus. She could only feel.
And other than an inexplicable sense of comfort from having her college professor sitting with her, Morgan felt nothing but out-of-control bad.
* * *
HALF AN HOUR LATER Morgan was thirty minutes closer to flying out of her skin. Her parents were back. Grace was frying bacon in the kitchen. The smell nauseated Morgan. George sat at the dining room table with a phone to his ear, whether on one conversation or many, she had no idea. Every man he had out looking for Sammie was to report to him directly. He had charts and maps and was keeping a detailed account of every move everyone made.
Her phone hadn’t rung since the press conference an hour and a half before.
Was this the fallout, then? Nothing? This man who had Sammie really didn’t want money? He only wanted to make them suffer as he had? To hurt as he had?
His wife was dead.
What did that mean for Sammie?
Her stomach swarmed, her joints felt too weak to support her, and Morgan had to fight not to give in to the thick cottony fog encasing her mind. She had to stay coherent. To believe in Sammie. For Sammie.
“You said your dad lives with you.”
Caleb Whittier stood at the living room window, watching the street. He was looking out for her and she knew she was never, ever going to forget this man.
The crush she’d had on him in class seemed so menial now. The man had become her angel, holding her suspended just slightly above a hell that would burn her to ashes in seconds were she to fall.
“Does he work?”
“Yes, but he’s on vacation this week.”
For years she’d wanted to know more about this private man who was so generous with his time and advice. And right now, she could hardly focus on his words.
“On vacation? So he’s not at home?” She’d thought his father was at home. That Cal had called to tell his father he wouldn’t be home. But maybe she was wrong. The night before was a bit of a haze to her right now.
“He’s at home. His fishing trip was…canceled.”
Something about the way he said the word was a little different. Morgan couldn’t bring forth the effort to be curious. She nodded. “Where does he work?”
“Green Pastures.”
“The nursing home?”
“Yes.”
“Is he a doctor?” No, wait, they visited nursing homes; they weren’t usually on staff there. Were they? Did Sammie need a doctor? Was there still time for a doctor to help him…?
“No, my father is a janitor.”
A janitor? She looked at him. Had she heard him right? Cal was so…genteel. So self-possessed. Like he’d been raised in wealth. She’d just assumed he was like her.
“Did you grow up here in Tyler?”
“No.”
His responses weren’t eliciting any invitation to continue the interrogation, but Morgan didn’t stop. He was special to her. She needed to know him better. Knowing him meant that Sammie was okay. No, getting to know him better helped take her mind off the possible torture her son was experiencing. The fright he had to be experiencing. If he was still…
“Where, then?” she blurted.
“We moved around a lot.”
“But you got a good education.” Obviously. He was a college professor at thirty-two.
“My father was a teacher. He made certain that I had all the schooling I could get.”
Oh. “So he’s retired?” That made more sense. The elder Whittier was supplementing teacher’s retirement.
Cal shrugged, and a car drove past out front but didn’t stop and sent a sharp stab of fear through her. Oh, God. Sammie…
“Have you ever been married?” She pushed the words out quickly and too loud, sounding half-crazed. Which was better than she felt.
“No.”
There was another car out there somewhere. One that had had Sammie in it. Could still have her son bound and gagged and…alive? Please, please. Alive.
“You and your dad have always lived together?” The question ended on a high note. A prelude to tears.
She felt Cal’s approach. She couldn’t look at him anymore. Couldn’t look at the window. “Yes, we’ve always lived together.” His words, filled with compassion, were just above the back of her neck and when he touched her, gently pulled her into his arms, Morgan fell apart.
CHAPTER EIGHT
GEORGE WAS ON the phone throughout breakfast. The man’s tone was a bit too curt for Cal, but there was no doubting that Morgan’s father cared deeply about finding her son. He was not taking no for an answer. From anyone. To the point of being in denial of any outcome but the one he ordained.
“Here, Cal, have more bacon.” Grace handed him an inexpensive but colorful serving plate filled with what looked to be a pound of meat left on it. The bowl of lightly fluffed scrambled eggs and plate of home-fried potatoes were equally laden. George was the only one of the five of them sitting there who’d eaten his share.
Cal took bacon he didn’t want.
“Detective Warner?”
The uniformed man who’d been ordered by his captain to go home and shave and get some rest took some more bacon as well, in spite of the untouched piece still on his plate.
“Are you going to be in trouble for staying?” Grace asked the man.
“Captain’s a good guy. He’ll get over it,” he said, adding, “and I’ll go home and shower. I just wanted to wait a bit longer with the press conference and all.”
Grace put a piece of bacon on Morgan’s plate. She didn’t seem to notice. Her gaze traveled from speaker to speaker, as though she was following the conversation, but Cal didn’t believe she could have repeated a word that had been spoken since her mother had called them in from the living room to eat.
She’d dried her eyes before her father saw her tears. She’d stiffened her spine—and her features—and she’d taken her place at the table like a dutiful daughter. Cal admired her strength. Her determination. And he worried about her, too. She was on the verge of collapse and neither of her parents seemed to recognize that fact.
“This is good, Mrs. Lowen, thanks,” Cal said, thinking about a happier Morgan choosing the dishes with primary-colored flowers all over them. Trying to picture her in the store, making her choices. Had Sammie been with her?
When he started to picture himself there, watching her deliberate, he caught himself. He was more tired than he’d thought.
George’s voice droned on. Cal leaned over to the fragile woman sitting up so regally beside him. “You need to eat some of that, not just play table hockey with it,” he said softly. “Without sleep that food is your only source of energy… .”
He couldn’t promise her that Sammie would be walking in the door needing things from her that she had to be able to give. He didn’t want to tell her she had to be strong—he had an idea she’d been hearing that one all of her life. He just told her like it was.
She glanced at him for a long moment. Cal studied those weary brown eyes and would have given much to be able to give her every bit of energy he’d ever had.
She ate a forkful of egg. And then another. And…
“We’ve got him.” The words were staccato—more so than usual. George’s intense look was focused, not on his daughter, or his wife, but on the detective seated opposite Cal and Morgan at the table for six in her small dining room.
Warner stood. Without asking he grabbed the phone from George Lowen. George didn’t hesitate to turn it over.
“This is Detective Rick Warner from the Tyler Police Department,” he said. “I’m here with the Lowens. What have you got?”
As the man listened, an intent look on his face, Cal reached for Morgan’s hand under the table. She grabbed hold, clutching him so tightly her fingernails dug into his palm. He barely felt the pain. He was that glad to be there for her.
He prayed that the news would be good. Over and over he prayed. Forgetting that praying was something he hadn’t done since he was seven years old.
He’d stopped because praying didn’t work.
* * *
MORGAN COULD HARDLY stand the waiting. “I should have gone with them,” she said for the tenth or so time. Cal came up behind her as she stood at the living room window, staring out into the early-afternoon sunshine. He rubbed her shoulders, his hands warm and alive and keeping her blood flowing.
“They weren’t going to take you, Morgan, even if you’d insisted on going.”
He’d patiently repeated his response every single one of the times she’d voiced the thought that continued to race through her mind.
Detective Warner had explained it all to her. They didn’t know for sure if the guy her father’s men had found was the one making the phone
calls. They were reasonably sure, by some means that probably wasn’t legal, but they weren’t positive. Even if it was the guy, they had no proof that he really had Sammie. He’d never let her talk to the boy or given an indication that he had Sammie with him. He’d never asked for anything in exchange for the boy.
And if he had Sammie, and Sammie saw her and reacted, she could be putting his life in danger.
“Still, I should be there. He’s going to need me.”
“He needs to be brought safely out of the situation and then he’ll be brought straight to you.”
She nodded. He was right. They’d been over this two hours earlier when her father’s phone call had ended the most excruciating breakfast of her life. Her mom and dad had gone home to rest while the detectives went in for the man George’s team suspected had Sammie. Detective Martin was going to contact her father the minute they got the guy.
Cal had opted to stay with Morgan. Maybe it was weird, having her college professor be such a good friend all of a sudden. But with his past, his understanding, it felt right. Besides, right now she couldn’t take being around anyone else who was emotionally attached to Sammie. She needed an outsider—someone who could hold it together and be strong for all of them. Just in case…
No. No just in case.
“He’s going to want macaroni and cheese for dinner,” she said. “I’m not sure I have any.”
“You do.” Cal continued to rub. “You checked an hour ago.”
He was right. She had.
Detective Martin was in the dining room, having set up shop on the table her father had vacated. Giving Morgan some space while she waited. And manning the phone.
The suspect didn’t know they were on to him. He’d called twice more since breakfast. Both times exactly the same as before. Short. Cruel. And then gone.
“You really need to get some rest,” she said now. She’d changed yesterday’s jeans for a fresh pair. Changed her top for another short-sleeved pullover. And washed her face.
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