The walls were hung with daguerreotypes in ornate frames, interspersed with antique plowshares and saws as well as antique arms. Several modern skylights had been set into the roof to give the building natural lighting. The whole room had been stripped to the original handmade brick and turned into a time warp for country antiques.
At the far end, a broad table at least fifteen feet long was covered with hot and cold dishes. Another table set at right angles held desserts and drinks. Round tables of various sizes sat around the room.
People were already lining up for their first go-around of the buffet.
“Never know what they’re going to serve,” Seth said. He and Emma took possession of one of the two-seater tables. Emma left her handbag behind to hold the table without a moment’s concern. A waitress who might be Velma’s clone set mason jars of ice water at their places.
“What y’all want to drink, Seth?” she asked. Of course she knew him.
“Unsweet tea, lots of lemon,” he said. Without a glance at Emma, she left.
“This is a tiny town,” Emma whispered as they waited for the line to move forward so they could reach the food. “Where do their customers come from?”
“Folks drive forty, fifty miles sometimes,” a lady in front of them with big hair dyed a suspicious shade of red volunteered. “We’re from Memphis. It’s a marvelous day for a drive. And look what you get at the end of it.”
Emma gave up attempting to try even a small bite of all the dishes, from okra to chicken livers to pecan pie to oysters on the half shell to fried dill pickles to barbecued ribs. She couldn’t begin to take it all in. She whispered to Seth, “I’m going to fill a giant syringe with cholesterol, open a vein and shoot all the fat straight to my heart.”
“Plenty you can eat here that won’t give you a heart attack,” the woman with the suspicious hair said. From the size of her, she was working on having her heart attack sooner rather than later. “But once every few months won’t hurt you. Much.”
Emma, who watched her carbs and her fats as a general rule, decided to throw caution to the wind. She kept her portions selective and miniscule, but she enjoyed everything from the crab cakes to the hush puppies to the fudge pie.
“Do not ever do this to me again,” she said to Seth. “I mean it. Is it like this every day at lunch?”
He grinned at her. “Lord, no. It’s more like the café in Williamstown. They only put on this spread for Sunday brunch. It’s safe the rest of the time. Except for the biscuits and sausage gravy at breakfast. And the country ham. And the sorghum syrup.”
“You are a demon, Seth Logan,” Emma said. “I’m going to have to run a marathon to counteract this. How do you do it?”
“First of all, I don’t eat like this but once in a blue moon. Second, when you chase poachers you burn off calories. I just thought you needed to see another side of us is all.”
“So yesterday, nobody cared whether there were cloth tablecloths or not,” Emma said.
“Nope, but everybody appreciated the trouble you took.”
“They were too busy noticing my arson trick to see how the napkins were folded.”
He laid his hand over hers on the table. “People noticed that you took the time and effort to make them feel special for coming to help. They won’t forget it. Neither will I.”
Their eyes met. He continued to hold her hand, and she could feel the heat between them. Thank God I’m wearing a good bra, she thought. Otherwise I’d look like I have BBs under my sweater. Maybe this afternoon was the time to finish what they kept starting.
Seth’s phone rang. “Damn, great timing,” he said. “Give me a minute. It’s too noisy in here.”
He left her finishing her iced tea and walked out under the front portico away from the crowd.
She watched him through the glass doors. If his shoulders were any indication, he was not happy. It was Sunday afternoon, for heaven’s sake. All the poachers must be napping or watching basketball in front of their TV sets. She hoped Seth wouldn’t have to chase anybody after the meal they’d just eaten.
He flicked the phone shut and came back, was glowering. Obviously trouble.
He stopped at the cashier’s desk at the front of the restaurant, gave the woman a credit card and waited until he’d signed.
Emma collected her handbag. Whatever had happened, it signaled the end of their brunch.
As she started to get up, he held her chair for her and bent over to whisper, “Can you ride a horse?”
“Depends on the horse. Generally, yes, although I haven’t for a while.”
“Good. We’ll need all the riders we can get.”
She followed him out and had to trot to keep up with him.
“Riders? For what?”
“Search and rescue. We have a regular team of volunteer searchers, but it’s not that easy to get them together on a Sunday afternoon.”
“Can you drop me at my house on your way? You may have noticed I don’t have a horse.”
“Sonny brings a couple of extras.”
“What about you?”
“I board my two quarter horses over at Earl’s. He’ll bring one of mine along with his. He also trains search-and-rescue dogs. I’m sorry, but your house is twenty miles in the other direction from where we have to start the search. If you can’t ride with us, I’ll try to find you a ride home once we get to the meeting point.”
“Of course I’ll help. Who is it? I’ve heard of dementia patients wandering off, but don’t they usually stay close to home?”
She watched the way his jaw worked. “This is a three-year-old child who’s been missing for hours.” He sounded grim. “It’s already afternoon. We can’t wait any longer to get into the woods.”
He floored the truck. She kept silent and allowed him to concentrate on his driving. She wouldn’t want to be chased by him—he drove like a cop. She held on and prayed the child would be found before they got to the rendezvous spot.
Half an hour later, Seth drove down a dirt road to a group of a dozen horse trailers and trucks parked on the overgrown shoulder. The entire operation looked chaotic, but they seemed to know what they were doing. Both men and women were tacking up horses, mounting and clustering around Earl and a big redbone hound sitting patiently beside one of the trailers.
“Come on, Emma,” Seth said. “Sonny,” he called to the mayor, “you got a horse for Emma?”
“Sure. I brought extra in case we picked up some more riders. I’ve got a bombproof walking horse mare. Already tacked up and ready to go. Come on, sweet thing.” He patted Emma’s arm, “Let’s get you mounted. We about ready to start off. Just waiting for Seth.” He pulled off his broad-brimmed straw hat that looked as though it had been through the last couple of world wars, stuck it on her head and walked toward the largest horse trailer on the road. Emma followed and hoped the horse Sonny rode could carry his bulk. When she saw his broad quarter horse, an equine tank, she decided the horse could probably carry two Sonnys if it had to.
The horse he offered her was a big bay mare with a kind eye. Sonny tightened the girth, shortened the stirrups and gave Emma a boost into the flat walking horse saddle. Then he pulled a small spray can out of his camouflage jacket pocket and sprayed her from her neck to her toes.
“Mosquitoes out here can chew up kittens,” Sonny said. “You ought to have on some boots and some chaps, but the spray will help some in the brush. Try to stay away from the cockleburs. Seth can get the ticks off you when we come back.”
“What am I actually supposed to do?”
Sonny swung himself into his saddle with the agility of a teenager—impressive for a man of his age and bulk. “Stick close to Seth. Main thing is to have as many eyes as we can get scouring the ground and hope that toddler is somewhere close to here and screaming his head off. So far, nobody’s heard anything that sounds lik
e a child.”
There were only eight riders in the group. No wonder Seth had enlisted her. “This is all we could find to ride on Sunday afternoon,” Sonny said. He led her and her mare over to Seth, then swung back to join another group.
Seth hadn’t been fooling when he said he needed her along. In all these woods and underbrush, a small child could disappear under a lettuce leaf. She thought of the snakes and bugs and poisonous plants and shuddered.
“Don’t you get lost,” Seth told her as she came up to his horse’s flank. “Last thing we need is two lost people to hunt.”
“Why on earth would that child be way out in the woods?” Emma asked. “Where’s his house?”
“Double-wide trailer a mile or so from here. The problem is he’s been gone since before his mother got out of bed this morning—maybe before dawn. She looked for him, but she didn’t call it in until noon. Apparently, he opened the door by himself and went out into the yard naked and barefoot. She found his pj’s by the door.”
Emma visualized the mother—stunned, hysterical, angry, terrified. Wanting to go out looking, but knowing she had to remain at home in case her son showed up on his own. “How old did you say he was?”
“Three, almost four.”
“That small?” Boy, did that sound familiar. And terrifying. Little older than a baby. “I remember my half brother, Patrick, at that age. He’d take off into the neighborhood stark naked if he could get away with it. But we lived on a cul-de-sac with sidewalks and no traffic. My parents finally installed dead bolts on all the doors, as well as chains too high for him to reach. My sister never ran off like that, but Patrick could eel out and be gone in an instant.”
“You ever lose him? Like when you were babysitting? I assume you did from time to time.”
Emma chuckled. “I caught him halfway down the driveway once. We lived on a quiet street, but still. I’ve never hit a child, but I swear, I wanted to blister his behind after I hugged him half to death. The phase didn’t last more than six months or so, but he’s never lost the wanderlust. Now that he’s seventeen and driving, my father has a tracker on his phone and on his car. Patrick knows about them and agreed to them. If he doesn’t report in and make it home for his curfew, he loses his texting privileges. And if he ever gets caught talking or texting while he’s driving, his entire world falls in on him from a great height. So far, that seems to work.” She knew she was running off at the mouth, but anything seemed better than silence and imagination.
The riders came to a wide place on the dirt road, where four smaller roads spoked off in different directions. Seth held up a hand. Instant quiet. The big hound Earl had brought sat down beside his horse and waited, too. So far he hadn’t alerted on the boy’s smell, but they might have to quarter the area and go deep into the woods before the dog picked up a scent.
“Split up,” Seth said. “Two to a spoke. Everybody got a gun?”
Nods and assents.
“Uh, Seth, I don’t have a gun,” Emma whispered. “Why do I need one?”
“Find any sign of the boy, one shot. Find the boy alive—two shots.” He didn’t say anything about how many shots to fire if the child was not alive. No one was admitting that possibility. “Stay close behind me, Emma. Keep your eyes peeled for anything that looks unnatural. Usually we find fabric caught on branches. We won’t this time, since he’s naked. If you see anything, yell your head off. The rest of you, divide up, but stick close to one another. Sonny, you head one team. Earl, can you take the other? Pay attention. Don’t want to walk over the kid without seeing him. He could be two feet away. He may well be hiding.”
“Why would he be hiding?” one of the female riders asked.
“Shoot,” Sonny said, “I can tell you that. He knows he’s in trouble. He wants to go home, but he’s scared his momma is going to blister his behind.”
“And we might spank him, too,” Earl added. “Besides, we’re adults and we’re strangers.”
Oh, great, Emma thought. She was obviously as incompetent at this as she was at picnics. Ten yards up the little dirt road, Seth turned his horse into the brush that edged the road. Emma had no idea where he was going, but when she came to the spot where he’d turned, she realized there was some kind of animal trail—probably deer. A child would likely take the easy path, rather than climbing over bushes and fallen timber. If he was even in the vicinity...
“I’ll check the right side, you take the left,” he said. “Look at everything—broken branches, flattened grass—anything that looks the least bit unnatural. And don’t worry that what you find isn’t important. Just sing out. One of us will check what you find.”
If she overlooked that child, she’d never forgive herself. She wished she had a stick to sweep the underbrush, but she’d probably spook her horse. She brushed a cloud of mosquitoes away from her face and spat out a fly that had attempted to climb into her mouth. By the time she got home, she’d be covered in chigger bites. That poor little child! No bug spray, no clothes. “Can we call out?” she asked Seth.
He nodded. “You call. Better for him to hear a woman’s voice than mine. His father’s been out of the picture for a while. I would guess his mother’s brought home substitutes from time to time. Not surprising, but his mother says he’s scared of men.”
She heard the anger in his voice. Another unreliable father like his own. Another child at risk because of it. How many strange men did the mother bring into her house? How had they interacted with the boy? Was that why he’d run away? She prayed silently that the child would be found safe. “What’s his name?”
“Bobby Joe.”
She nodded, cupped one hand around her mouth and shouted his name.
Seth looked back over his shoulder with his eyebrows raised. “I suspect they heard you in Memphis.”
“Sorry.”
“I didn’t mean that. It’s good, but you keep that up, you’ll lose your voice pretty quick.”
“Small price to pay. Bobby Joe!” she shouted again.
They settled into a routine. Seth’s quarter horse bulled his way through the underbrush with his broad shoulders. Emma followed the same path on her walking horse, shouting as she went. Her mare was apparently as bombproof as Sonny had promised. Many horses would’ve been irritated and grumpy with a stranger in the saddle yelling blue murder. Maybe the horse was deaf.
After no more than ten minutes yelling, she realized she was so thirsty she was what her father called “spitting cotton.” Ahead, Seth pulled up under a giant oak. Without a word, he dug into his cantle bag and held a bottle of water out to her.
“Oh, thank you.” She dropped her reins on the horse’s neck, twisted off the cap and drank about half the water in one long pull. Then she handed it back.
“Finish it. I brought a bag of them.”
She did, then asked, “What do I do with the empty? I can’t just drop it.”
“Give it here.” He sidled his horse against hers, took the bottle, put it in his saddle bag, then leaned across and brushed the hair off her forehead. “How you holding up? You didn’t sign on for this, but I’m glad you’re here.” A moment later he added, “To do the yelling and all.” He wheeled away and walked his horse farther into the woods.
“I hope you know where we are,” she called after him. “I’ve been lost since we started. Surely no three-year-old could have come this far.”
“You’d be surprised. We’ll give it another twenty minutes, then head back. They’re sending down a heat-seeking chopper from Memphis after dark if we don’t find him before then. It’s going to be in the low sixties tonight. We leave that child out here, tomorrow we could be looking at recovery instead of rescue.”
She held back a sob. A naked child on the damp ground would be dead of hypothermia before morning at sixty degrees. She began to yell again. There had been no gunshots, so no one else was having any better
luck than they were.
Following Seth’s horse, her mare tried to fit in between two saplings. The mare knew how wide she was, but she hadn’t allowed for Emma’s extra width. The tree raked Emma’s thigh. She raised her leg quickly, but not fast enough to avoid what would no doubt be a bad scrape. She started to say “ow!” then bit the inside of her cheek instead.
She would show Seth she was no weakling. Not just some prissy city girl who didn’t even know how to throw a picnic.
He stopped, held up a hand and whispered, “Shut up.”
Well, all righty. He should make up his mind.
Suddenly she heard it, too. Or thought she did. It sounded like a mockingbird. They could imitate anything. Then it came again. Too soft to be a mockingbird. The sound hadn’t changed position either. She searched the trees for the bird just in case.
“Here,” Seth said, handed her his reins and slid to the ground. “Don’t move.”
She’d heard all the stories about trackers who moved soundlessly through the woods. She’d always figured it was nonsense.
Not anymore. Seth didn’t so much as snap a twig as he crept toward the sound. After what seemed to Emma like a millennium, he parted the branches of a small sapling, then disappeared from view as he dropped to his haunches. “Hey, Bobby Joe,” he said so quietly and gently that even a lost child wouldn’t be frightened.
But this one was. He howled. A moment later Emma heard crashing through the brush. She was off her horse instantly. “Seth? Let me.” She took the time to wrap both sets of reins around the nearest limb, then called softly, “Bobby Joe? Honey? It’s okay. You’re not in trouble.” She found Seth, crouching, and touched his shoulder. “Where is he?” she whispered.
He indicated a spot several feet in front of them. “Where?” She couldn’t see anything that resembled a child. Then the failing light reflected off a pair of pale eyes.
She pulled a bottle of water out of Seth’s backpack, undid the cap, lifted it to her mouth and took a swallow. “Mmm! That tastes so good.” She held the bottle out to where the child was still hidden. “I’ll bet you’re thirsty, aren’t you, baby?” She took a step.
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