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A Son's Tale
Tara Taylor Quinn
Twenty-five years ago…a mysterious crime was committed in Comfort Cove, Massachusetts. Frank Whittier was accused–but never charged. And it ruined his life.Now…Cal Whittier, Frank's son, is determined to protect him, to safeguard his father's identity. After years on the run, they finally have their lives on an even keel, with Cal teaching at a college in Tennessee. Two things could change all that.First, a cop in Comfort Cove starts looking into the case again. And second, Cal gets involved with single mother Morgan Lowen. He has plenty of reasons to avoid her–not the least of which is that she's an adult student in one of his classes. And in Cal's situation, any relationship is risky. Still…it could be the best risk he's ever taken!


When the past comes calling and the future won’t wait…
Twenty-five years ago…a mysterious crime was committed in Comfort Cove, Massachusetts. Frank Whittier was accused—but never charged. And it ruined his life.
Now...Cal Whittier, Frank’s son, is determined to protect him, to safeguard his father’s identity. After years on the run, they finally have their lives on an even keel, with Cal teaching at a college in Tennessee. Two things could change all that.
First, a cop in Comfort Cove starts looking into the case again. And second, Cal gets involved with single mother Morgan Lowen. He has plenty of reasons to avoid her—not the least of which is she’s an adult student in one of his classes. And in Cal’s situation, any relationship is risky. Still…it could be the best risk he’s ever taken!
There was a message waiting for him
Cal pushed the button on his office answering machine.
It wasn’t as if there’d be any news about Morgan Lowen’s son already. Just because her urgency was coursing through him like a river with a broken dam didn’t mean he was in any way privy to her personal information.
But he couldn’t just sit still. Morgan’s child was missing. Something had to be done.
He told himself he was overreacting. Kids went missing every day, and almost every single time they turned up. Morgan was probably with Sammie at this very moment. Maybe scolding him for having given her a scare. Or taking him out for fast-food hamburgers.
The message began. “This is for Dr. Caleb Whittier. Dr. Whittier, my name is Detective Ramsey Miller. I’m with the police department in Comfort Cove, Massachusetts. It’s important that you return my call—”
Cal cut off the message before the man recited his phone number. Cal hadn’t been anywhere near Comfort Cove in years, not since he was a kid. Not since the accusations that had forced him and his father out of town...
“Tara Taylor Quinn writes with wonderful assurance and an effective, unpretentious style perfectly suited to her chosen genre.”
—Jennifer Blake, New York Times bestselling author
Dear Reader,
I was lucky growing up. I had great parents. My mother was there—always. She cooked and cleaned for us, bandaged bruises and kissed away tears. She also taught us. She stood for right and good and kindness. She didn’t tolerate lying or meanness. She was strict with us…and she spoiled us. She woke us up in the morning; each of us kids had our own personal welcome to the day. She was at the door telling us goodbye when we left for school. And there waiting for us when we got home. She was our sounding board and our listening post. She is still a voice in my head that I take with me every place I go.
And my father—he was the one who told us (and showed us) that we could be anything we wanted to be. We could do anything we wanted to do. We just had to put our minds to it. Stay focused. He was not a lazy man and he did not tolerate laziness in others. He was goal oriented and demanded the same from each of us. My father gave me the stick-to-it-iveness to reach my goal of becoming a writer for Harlequin Books.
And that brings us to Comfort Cove, a small coastal fishing town in Massachusetts. Something happened in Comfort Cove that changed the lives of two sets of parents and children. In A Son’s Tale we meet Cal and his father, Frank. How far will a father go to give his son a good life? And how far will a son go to protect the father who sacrificed so much for him? Do we ever quit owing those who gave us life? Or serving those to whom we gave life?
I don’t have all the answers, but I am very happy to be bringing you this story of one father and one son. I care very much about these men—and about the woman who enters the son’s life. I hope you do, too.
Watch for A Daughter’s Story, coming in October 2012 from Harlequin Superromance. I think mothers and daughters are even more complicated than fathers and sons!
As always, I love hearing from you! You can reach me at staff@tarataylorquinn.com. Or at P.O. Box 13584, Mesa, AZ 85216.
Tara Taylor Quinn
A Son’s Tale
Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With over fifty-five original novels, published in more than twenty languages, Tara Taylor Quinn is a USA TODAY bestselling author. She is a winner of the 2008 National Readers’ Choice Award, four-time finalist for an RWA RITA® Award, a finalist for a Reviewers’ Choice Award, Booksellers’ Best Award and Holt Medallion and she appears regularly on Amazon bestseller lists. Tara Taylor Quinn is a past president of the Romance Writers of America and served for eight years on its board of directors. She is in demand as a public speaker and has appeared on television and radio shows across the country, including CBS Sunday Morning. Tara is a spokesperson for the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and she and her husband, Tim, sponsor an annual inline skating race in Phoenix to benefit the fight against domestic violence.
When she’s not at home in Arizona with Tim and their canine owners, Jerry Lee and Taylor Marie, or fulfilling speaking engagements, Tara spends her time traveling and inline skating.
Books by Tara Taylor Quinn
HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE
1446—THE BABY GAMBLE
1465—THE VALENTINE GIFT
“Valentine’s Daughters”
1500—TRUSTING RYAN
1527—THE HOLIDAY VISITOR
1550—SOPHIE’S SECRET*
1584—A DAUGHTER’S TRUST
1656—THE FIRST WIFE‡
1726—FULL CONTACT*
HARLEQUIN SINGLE TITLE
SHELTERED IN HIS ARMS*
MIRA BOOKS
WHERE THE ROAD ENDS
STREET SMART
HIDDEN
IN PLAIN SIGHT
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
AT CLOSE RANGE
THE SECOND LIE‡
THE THIRD SECRET‡
THE FOURTH VICTIM‡
*Shelter Valley Stories
‡Chapman Files
Other titles by this author are available in ebook format.
For my father, Walter Wright Gumser, and big brother, Walter Wright Gumser, Junior. Together as angels just as you were together on earth. I miss you both so much!
Contents
Chapter One (#u4ee441e0-d94c-5492-bffc-a7ee0e8484b5)
Chapter Two (#ub3cc60ed-ba01-589c-9778-836fef22d461)
Chapter Three (#u3811a5ba-e5e6-5d3c-9fc2-23744975d83d)
Chapter Four (#u9e4e5622-76db-519d-8e27-0cdabe216314)
Chapter Five (#u8e6efee6-527d-5721-97c4-25fd84131715)
Chapter Six (#u76872edd-70e5-535d-acdf-d03dc21f39d2)
Chapter Seven (#uf83ac2bb-5fd8-5b01-b1b6-a531233091bc)
Chapter Eight (#u40a0aff4-1924-513e-a1ae-9638dbfe7233)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
WHENHEFIRSTOPENED his eyes, Cal Whittier had no idea what time it was. Squinting against the light from his bedroom window, he focused on the ceiling above him.
Memory came back in bits and pieces. Piling on top of him, weighting him down to the bed.
He’d had dinner with Joy the night before. Their standing Thursday night date. He and the petite banker had been dating for four months—longer than usual for Cal. He liked Joy.
But then he’d liked all of the women he’d dated. One thing he’d never had a shortage of was women.
He and Joy had each had a glass of wine at the restaurant—a steak place, he thought. He could remember ordering his medium-rare. They’d had patio seating. Joy had commented about the misters—an outdoor staple during Tennessee summers—making her hair frizzy.
She’d ordered a salad. And they’d decided to try the house wine.
He’d overindulged.
Cal was careful about his drinking. He had a nightly ritual. A glass of whiskey before bed to help him sleep. And if that didn’t work—if he was still up writing—he allowed himself another. But he never got drunk. And he almost always drank alone.
Last night he’d broken both self-imposed rules. After dinner, he’d consumed most of a new bottle of wine back at Joy’s place—and done it in front of her.
Like a bad movie, the reasons for his rudeness replayed with what seemed like sarcastic clarity in his mind’s eye.
Thursday had not been a good day from the start.
A promising student had appeared in his office the morning before, just weeks before her end-of-the-summer graduation, to tell him she was dropping out of school to join her boyfriend’s band. He’d been Courtney’s undergraduate adviser all four years of her college career. He’d had her in several of his classes, as well. She was carrying a perfect grade average. Dr. Caleb Whittier, Wallace University’s youngest English professor and department chair, was all for love and togetherness—as long as it didn’t involve him—but to throw away a lifetime of work, a more secure future, because of a new relationship?
And then his father had called to tell him that he’d canceled his fishing trip that weekend. It had taken Cal months to get the old man to agree to go—a thousand nonrefundable bucks to hold his spot for the seniors’ adventure holiday and to reserve a private room at his father’s behest—and the old man didn’t go.
He’d rushed home to load the car with the things he’d helped his dad pack the day before, determined to get the old man from the home they shared to the center where Frank would be loaded into a van and whisked away for the time of his life—only to discover that he’d have had to restrain his dad and then haul his ass out of bed, dress him and physically carry him to the Durango to get him out of their neighborhood.
The man might need Cal to prepare his food to get him to eat, but he was not in any way weak or disabled. He could still take Cal if he had a mind to.
He’d had a mind to when it came to him going on that fishing trip.
Then, because of Frank’s bullheadedness, Cal had been late for the lunch meeting with some bankers—possible supporters of the young artists’ league—Joy had arranged for him. It was hard to beg when you’d just kept your targets waiting for half an hour. He’d left the meeting without any kind of commitment for the scholarship money he’d been hoping to win for some very talented kids.
His body might be slow to move this morning but his mind wasn’t giving him any breaks. The day before continued to play itself out—as if living through it once hadn’t been enough.
After lunch he’d come back to his fourth-floor office at Wallace University in Tyler, Tennessee, to find an unwanted message on his answering machine.
Some dude named Ramsey Miller. A detective from Comfort Cove. The man gave up no other details about himself or the reason for his call, but he’d said that it was imperative that Caleb Whittier contact him immediately. Cal would bet his life the call he didn’t return regarded a cold case. A twenty-five-year-old ice-cold case.
Comfort Cove, Massachusetts. The place where two-year-old Claire Sanderson had lived when she’d been abducted from her home.
It was about that time in his mental wanderings that Cal realized he was lying on top of his still-made bed. And wearing the shirt he’d pulled from his closet the morning before.
His pants were undone; they’d slipped a bit, but he hadn’t taken them off, either.
And then he remembered.
Joy’s expressive green eyes.
The cups of coffee.
And the short drive home.
Alone.
* * *
MORGANHADN’TSLEPT well. They were having their annual summer sock-hop and picnic on Saturday at the day care where she worked, and Morgan, as the nondegreed employee with the most seniority, and as executive assistant to the director, was in charge of most of the physical details, like organizing the game and food committees, the table setup and decorating.
She’d spent most of Thursday night cutting and pasting many mediums of primary colors because the woman who’d volunteered to do so several weeks before had forgotten. In spite of the many calls Morgan had made to ensure that the party’s decor was on track. She really should have asked to see some finished product when the woman had offered to provide samples.
But with her university courses, the day care and schoolwork she did in the evenings, she hadn’t had time to babysit a parent.
And rather than letting anyone else know that she’d done it again—she’d placed her faith in someone who hadn’t proven trustworthy—she’d taken care of the fallout on her own.
Someday she might learn not to always think the best of people, not to be so quick to believe they were going to do what they said they would—but she doubted it.
“Let’s consider Twain’s ‘The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,’” Dr. Whittier said, looking straight at Morgan at that Friday morning’s lecture. She was sure he was looking at her because she’d been working on day-care decor yesterday evening rather than rereading the short story as she’d intended. You’d think, with only one last class to complete before graduation, she’d be able to keep up with the homework. He’d assigned the reading material at the end of Wednesday morning’s class, and although she’d read everything by her favorite American writer, she hadn’t read “Hadleyburg” since before Sammie was born.
Her son was ten.
“Twain was sixty-three years old and in Vienna when he wrote this story,” Whittier was saying. Didn’t matter how blistering the Tennessee sunshine made their city, the man always wore a tie. He’d left his jacket and long sleeves at home, but still…
Of course, the man did things—sexy things—to that ordinary tie. Things she was convinced no man had ever done before.
“Someone provide us with a quick overview of the plot,” Whittier said. He glanced her way.
Morgan’s stomach gave an irritating leap. She remembered the basics, but…
His gaze moved on. Her stomach didn’t settle.
Yes, she was attracted to her English professor. She and every other female student at Wallace University.
“It’s about, um, the corruption of an honest town.” One such female creature quickly grabbed the opportunity to snare Whittier’s attention. Bella Something-or-Other was thin, blonde, about twenty, and didn’t have one responsibility on those perfect shoulders or one line on her equally perfect face. “Hadleyburg is known for its honesty. Then some guy sends money to someone in town for a good deed and everyone in town tries to claim the good deed to get the money.”
The Richardses, Morgan remembered. They were the old couple in Hadleyburg that the stranger sent the money to for safekeeping.
“Right,” Whittier said, and Bella preened. Sick. The girl was just sick.
Morgan tried to let her sleepless night catch up with her. To be bored in English class just for once. More to the point, she tried to be bored with the man who taught her favorite class.
“Hudson Long, a Twain biographer, claims that Twain uses this story to depict the pessimistic attitude that he had toward himself and the human race in general. Would you agree with that?”
He was asking the class.
“No.” Morgan blurted the word against her better judgment. She was as bad as the kids, preening for the man’s attention. Her better judgment had deserted her sometime between leaving her mother’s womb and landing in her cradle.
“Why not?” Whittier’s gaze was all hers.
In four years of being in the man’s classes, she should be over getting warm every time she had his attention.
But, recently, they’d been talking more.
“Because I think it’s unfair to label the man as pessimistic just because he had the ability to see deeply inside the human condition and then was giving and talented enough to bring out his vision in such a way that we can all take honest looks at ourselves.”
“So you think you know more about Mark Twain than an official Twain biographer?” His brown eyes were not unkind as he met her head-on. Instead, they had that peculiar light of enjoyment that kept her up nights.
“I’m not saying I know more than a Twain scholar,” Morgan replied, aware of the other, mostly younger students watching her. She felt ancient at twenty-nine. “But I agree with another Twain biographer, Jerry Allen, who says that Twain wrote ‘Hadleyburg’ because of all the maliciousness that he saw in mankind and the hopelessness that was our plight if we didn’t change. I think Twain was giving us a view of ourselves, exaggerated, as an analogy.”
Whittier’s responding smile did it to her again. “Good answer,” he said, walking back over to the other side of the room.
His legs were long and firm and he moved with the grace of an athlete.
“I happen to agree with Ms. Lowen…” he was saying when Morgan’s phone vibrated against her hip.
She never went to class without that phone. Being the single parent of a strong-minded boy wasn’t easy work. Sammie always came first.
Morgan tried not to be too obvious as she glanced down at the screen, although Whittier knew about Sammie. Knew why she kept her phone on during class, and encouraged her to do so.
The vibration signaled a text from Julie Warren, the office administrator at Rouse Elementary where Sammie was in summer school taking art and swimming. Julie was also Morgan’s friend.
The message was one word: Call.
They had a lunch date. Maybe Julie had to cancel. Wouldn’t be the first time.
She typed her response.

In class. Emergency?

She sent the text off with one hand, leaving the phone in its clip.
The reply was almost instantaneous. Like Julie hadn’t waited for her reply before sending it.

S missing!

The phone vibrated again, but Morgan didn’t take the time to look down. Closing the lid on her notebook computer without shutting the thing down, she threw it on top of its case in her backpack. She had the bag slung on her shoulder before she was completely standing and was already digging in the side pocket for her car keys.
“My son…” She wasn’t even sure what she ended up blurting out as she ran from the room.
CHAPTER TWO
SILENCEHUNGOVERthe classroom for thirty seconds or more after Morgan Lowen’s dash from the room. Her frantic words—“My son is missing from school!”—occupied the space, squeezing out all the excess air.
And then the rumbling started—low voices emanating from seats all across the room. His students’ wide-eyed glances darted between one another, the door, him. One kid—“Jackass,” Cal had privately dubbed him—sat there staring at his electronic tablet, looking bored. That’s when Cal noticed the wireless device mostly concealed by the kid’s long, unkempt hair. He had an earphone in. And was listening to God knew what on Cal’s time.
“Class dismissed,” Cal said, filing away a mental reminder to pursue wireless Jackass at some future date.
Yeah, this was college. Yeah, students were responsible for their own education at this point. But he had more to teach than knowledge of American literature. He had the minds of tomorrow in his sphere and he took his job seriously.
He answered a couple of questions about a two-thousand-word paper due at midterm and confirmed that they’d be covering The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn all of the following week as the syllabus stated.
“You think her kid’s going to be okay?” Bella was standing by the long table that served as his desk at the front of the window-lined classroom.
“I do,” Cal said, ignoring the thread of alarm trying to take up residence within him. “She said he was missing from school. He’s probably just playing hooky. Or hiding out with a friend in the bathroom. It’s summer school so things are a little less strict and kids have more of a tendency to roam.”
“Some jerks once locked my little brother in his locker,” Bella said, sliding her electronic notebook into her backpack. “He was there for an hour before anyone knew he was missing.”
“His teachers didn’t miss him?”
“They had a sub and it was during lunch break.”
And someone should have noticed he was gone. Like they’d obviously noticed Morgan Lowen’s son was missing.
“They should check the lockers for him,” Bella added, standing in front of him with her backpack slung over one shoulder.
“I’m sure they’ll find him.” Cal slid a couple of folders, notes, into his soft-sided leather briefcase.
“I didn’t even know she had a son.”
Cal had. He knew, too, that she’d given birth to and raised the boy completely on her own, but he wasn’t going to gossip about another student. What he wanted to do was get back to his office in case she contacted him. He and Morgan had never crossed the line between teacher and student; he’d kept his interest in her completely professional, but he’d be kidding himself if he said he wasn’t attracted to her.
And Cal did not kid himself. He couldn’t afford the luxury.
Morgan had been having some troubles with her son. He knew because she’d missed class in the spring due to some antics the boy had pulled at school.
He hoped she’d also let him know that Sammie was fine.
“She doesn’t wear a wedding ring.” Bella was still standing there.
Again, Cal said nothing and Bella, after staring at him for another several seconds, shrugged.
“Well, I just hope everything’s fine. Have a great weekend, Dr. Whittier. See you Monday.”
She walked out, allowing Cal to hurry to his office.
* * *
MORGANCOULDN’TREMEMBER the four-block drive from Wallace University to Rouse Elementary. She’d run out of class and ended up in the parking lot of her son’s school. She’d called her mom. But only to ask her if she’d heard from Sammie. Grace Lowen was going to be taking Sammie to Little League practice Saturday while Morgan officiated sack races at the day care. Morgan had told Sammie that morning to call his grandmother and remind her of the next day’s practice.
Grace hadn’t heard from him.
The call with her mother lasted about thirty seconds. Morgan didn’t let on that anything was amiss. She didn’t know for sure that it was.
And she couldn’t deal with her father at the moment.
Julie was pacing the sidewalk at the entrance of the parking lot when Morgan pulled up in her eight-year-old Ford Taurus, purchased used the year before. Julie jumped in and Morgan pulled into the closest parking spot.
“Oh, God, Morg, I have no idea how this happened,” Julie said, glancing toward the door of the school. “Mr. Peterson has already called the police.”
The school principal. A man Morgan had always thought was calm and rational, ready to call the police?
“He’s got to be hiding someplace,” Morgan said, swallowing panic. “Did they check the bathrooms? The girls’, too?”
Julie nodded.
“What about the shop? Did you check the shop? You know he wanted to finish that little wood car he’d started last session.”
Julie was already shaking her head. “He asked to use the restroom,” she said. “The hall security camera shows him going into the boys’ restroom at the end of the hall, and in twenty minutes of tape, he never came back out. But he’s definitely not in there.”
“What about the grounds camera?”
“It’s broken at the hinge, but we can’t tell if the break is new or not.”
“How long ago did he leave class?”
“He asked to go to the bathroom half an hour ago. As soon as his teacher reported that he hadn’t come back and wasn’t in the bathroom we went to the security camera. I texted you as soon as I saw the film.”
“Have they checked his locker?”
“Yeah. His suit and towel for swimming are in there.”
“What about his lunch?”
They were out of the car, hurrying toward the walk.
“Today is picnic-on-the-lawn day, remember? We provide brown-bag lunches.”
“Oh, yeah, right.” Picnic-on-the-lawn day had seemed so far away.
“They’ve locked down the school, Morg. Come on. We have to get in there. They’re waiting for you… .”
The fear in Julie’s eyes held Morgan frozen for a split second. And then she ran.
* * *
CALPUSHEDTHE BUTTON on his office answering machine before he’d taken his seat behind his desk.
As if there’d be some news about Morgan Lowen’s son there already. Just because her urgency was coursing through him like a river with a broken dam didn’t mean that he was in any kind of loop that would be privy to her private information on an immediate basis.
Still, he couldn’t just sit there. A child was missing. Something had to be done.
He was overreacting, of course. Kids went missing every day, and almost every single time they turned up. Morgan was probably with Sammie at this very moment. Maybe scolding him for having given her a scare. Or taking him for fast food hamburgers, which she’d told Cal she’d done last April after Sammie’s problems at school. She’d wanted her son to talk to her. Rather than punish him, she’d wanted to know why he’d acted out.
“This message is for Dr. Caleb Whittier. Dr. Whittier, I left a message yesterday. My name is Detective Ramsey Miller. I’m with the Comfort Cove Police Department in Comfort Cove, Massachusetts. It’s important that you return my call… .”
Cal cut off the message before the man recited his numbers, including one for a private cell, a second time. He hadn’t been anywhere near Comfort Cove, a coastal town not far from Boston, since he was seven years old. Not since the accusations had forced him and his father out of town.
He’d be damned if he was going to waltz back there of his own accord. Other than this office line at school, his numbers—landline and cell—were unlisted. His father’s cell was a pay-as-you-go with an untraceable number. They rented instead of owning so that there was no tax record of the residence. They used a P.O. box for mail. He paid taxes, but Frank didn’t. His father worked at the local nursing home, doing handyman and janitorial work, and the rent on the home they lived in was free in trade. Cal hadn’t lived thirty-two years without learning a thing or two about protecting his father from the stalkers who’d all but ruined his life.
Bile rose in his throat as he thought about the tall, proud man who’d once stood at the helm of one of Massachusetts’ most prestigious private high schools, getting up every morning to fix bathroom plumbing and mop piss off floors.
His father had not only been one of Massachusetts’ most respected educators, he’d also been a damn good basketball coach. And in the past twenty years the only ball he’d touched professionally was the float ball in a toilet.
There were two other messages. One confirming that while the adventure vacations group had sympathy with Cal’s plight, the thousand bucks he’d put up for his father’s fishing trip was not going to be refunded, regardless of the circumstances. The second one was from the assistant of one of yesterday’s bankers informing him that she’d sent a list of questions that he would need to answer, in writing, before her boss could consider Cal’s scholarship request for the young artists’ league.
Voice mail over, he sat down. Opened his email.
And saw the message in his in-box that Joy had sent the day before, confirming their date the night before. She’d said she had something to speak with him about. He’d thought she wanted to deepen their relationship with spoken commitment. To talk about some kind of future.
It hadn’t gone that way… .
“Hi, hon. How was your day?” he’d said as he’d met her outside the restaurant. He’d bent down for a kiss, which she’d returned as though everything was fine. It hadn’t been until later, back at her place, that she’d let him know how she was really feeling.
He’d pulled her into his arms. She’d pushed him away.
“I don’t want to do this, Cal,” she’d said. “It’s like I’m on your list of things to do, not like I’m the person you need in your life. When you kiss me…I don’t know…I don’t feel like I do it for you anymore.”
“It’s not that,” he’d hastily assured her. “I want you.”
“I’m not talking about sex, Cal. All your working parts are in perfect order, as I’m sure you’re fully aware. You’re the best lover I’ve ever had and then some.”
“So what’s the problem?” His tone was purposefully light. But he knew. In the end, the story was always the same.
“You don’t give enough of yourself, Cal. You bring gifts. You take me to concerts and the theater. You’ve introduced me to some great restaurants that I’d never been to even though I’ve lived in Tennessee my entire life. You entertain me. You bring me physical pleasure I didn’t even know I could feel. But you never talk to me. I know more about what’s playing and who’s cooking than I do about you.”
Different words, but same story. As he’d predicted.
“What’s there to tell?” he’d asked, as much out of habit as anything. And he’d waited for her answer with more curiosity than hope. Would her answer be any different than any he’d ever heard before?
“If I knew that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Did it ever occur to you that you know what there is to know?”
“It did. But I don’t believe that. You have too much insight, too much consideration and too much understanding to ever pass for a shallow man.”
Her words made him uncomfortable. “You get more of me than anyone else in my life gets.”
She’d wanted more.
He wasn’t going to give it to her.
Her next words replayed themselves loud and clear—their echo joining the chorus of others in his mind. “I think we need to start seeing other people, Cal.”
“You’re breaking up with me.”
“Were we ever really going together?”
“I was seeing you exclusively. You know that.” He only had exclusive sex.
She’d paused.
Two months prior they’d had “the talk.” The one that said she was important to him. As he was to her.
And what more was there? They’d established in the very beginning that neither was interested in marriage or family.
None of the women Cal dated were. That criteria was at the top of his list when considering whether or not he should ask a woman out. “I know you care about me, Cal. And I’ll always care about you,” Joy had finally said. Then she’d added, “And no, I’m not saying I don’t ever want to see you again. I just think we need to see other people, too. You know, to keep things from getting too…personal.”
They were done sleeping with each other. “I understand.”
“We’ve had some really good times.”
“Agreed.”
She’d offered him coffee to sober up so he could drive. He’d had several cups. The silence had gotten awkward.
Then he’d stood.
“Call me, okay?” she’d said, standing there in her banker’s conservative shirt and jacket, her arms wrapped around her middle.
He’d pulled the knot on his tie up. “I will. You do the same.”
“Of course.”
He’d left her house pretty certain that he and Joy would never speak again.
There was another message from her in Friday morning’s incoming email. She was sorry for how things had gone the night before. But she really thought their decision was for the best. She hoped he understood that she wouldn’t be referring any more of her clients or associates to him for his fundraising efforts. And she wanted the earrings back that she’d left in his car the previous week.
Cal would have been a lot more bothered about Joy if he’d known that Sammie Lowen was with his mother, safe and sound.
CHAPTER THREE
SHEWASLIVINGa nightmare. She’d wake up any second.
Longing for the quilt on her bed, to be able to pull it up over her head and warm her freezing body, Morgan sat in the chair at the police station and waited for her parents to arrive.
She’d already answered all of the officers’ questions.
“Let’s go over things one more time, Ms. Lowen.” The female detective sitting across from her in the little room with only a table and four chairs emanated sympathy. About ten years older than Morgan, Elaine Martin didn’t look any more like a cop than she did. She wasn’t even in uniform.
“The smallest things can make a difference,” Detective Martin said. “Tell me again everything you can remember about this morning.”
“I got Sammie up at seven, just like always.”
“Did he get right up? Or did you have to nag him?”
Was the woman calling her a nag? Did she think Morgan wasn’t a good mom? That she’d somehow failed her son? Failed to see that someone was watching him? Out to get him? Or…
“Ms. Lowen? You okay?”
Morgan focused. Detective Martin’s brow creased with concern.
No, I’m not okay. How can I possibly be okay? My son is…where? What are they doing to him? God, was Sammie even still alive? Or…had he run away? Was he that unhappy with her? Was he in with a bad crowd and she’d somehow missed evidence of that fact? “Yeah. I’m fine.”
The detective covered Morgan’s hand with her own. “We’re going to find him,” she said. “Stay with me, okay?”
Morgan nodded “He got right up. He always does. Sammie’s like me. A morning person.”
“Then what?”
“I got his breakfast. Rice Krispies with milk.”
“Did he eat it all?”
“Yes.”
“Does he always?”
“Yes.”
“What about toast? Or fruit?”
“No. He hates fruit.” And she didn’t make him eat it. Did that make her a bad mother? Did they think Sammie’s missing was her fault? That she had something to do with this? They were asking her so many questions over and over and…
“Just cereal,” she said, meeting Detective Martin’s gaze again. “He went upstairs to dress. I heard him brushing his teeth. He left the cap off the toothpaste just like always. And he spit six times…” Her eyes welled up. She’d limited Sammie to six spits and, bless his heart, he always complied.
She smiled, not seeing anything but her son’s skinny little face, his lips puckered up. “He loves to spit. Sometimes I think that’s why he loves baseball so much. Of course, he loves basketball even more and you can’t spit on a basketball court… .” She stopped. She was rambling. Did that make her look guilty?
She searched for signs of accusation in the detective’s expression and couldn’t determine if there were any there or not.
“What was he wearing when you left the house?”
“His oldest pair of cutoff shorts. The ones with the ripped pocket. They were going to get to play around with oil on canvas today and I didn’t want him to ruin any of his good clothes.”
She couldn’t afford to replace them. She and Sammie lived on a tight budget. They had his whole life. Was that why this was happening? Because she couldn’t provide well enough for her son?
“And a Phoenix Suns T-shirt,” she said. He had four of them. “The oldest one. It’s his favorite sports team. They play basketball…out in Phoenix. We’ve never been there.”
“What was he wearing on his feet?” Detective Martin’s voice was a gentle reminder that this was all real. She wasn’t having some horrible nightmare.
“Sneakers. The ones with the rip in the toe. They’re black. Converse.” The Converses had been a Christmas gift from her mother. He’d worn them out by March. She’d bought him a new pair of sneakers. A bargain brand. They looked the same to Morgan but Sammie loved Converses. He said all real basketball players wore them. And so he’d continued to wear them even though they were worn through.
“You said he doesn’t know his father?”
Morgan shook her head.
“Are you certain about that?”
“Yes, of course. Sammie’s never met Todd. He knows we were divorced and he thinks his father is dead, that he died before Sammie was born, which is why Sammie has my last name.” She’d told him Todd was dead. She hated lying to her son but felt that in this case, she had no other choice. Because the alternative, the truth, was unthinkable. No one told a little boy that his father just didn’t want him. That he wasn’t worth the money it would have cost Todd to have Sammie in his life.
“I’d know if Todd wanted to see our son.” She could bet on that. If Todd wanted something, Todd got it.
“But what if he thought you wouldn’t let him see Sammie? Do you think he’d take him?”
Her blood ran cold. “As in kidnap him? You said there was no sign of struggle at the school—nor any forced entry or exit. You said that a good majority of missing-child cases are runaways and that was what Sammie’s case was looking like… .”
She heard how crazy she sounded, to be accusing a cop of misleading her. But she felt crazed. “No.” She forced herself back to the question. “Todd wouldn’t do that,” she added, trying to calm down. “I wasn’t eager for Todd to have a part in Sammie’s life, but I never told him he couldn’t see his son. Todd was the one who wanted nothing to do with him from the very beginning. Sammie’s father is a thief and a liar who wants nothing more than to wallow in money. And he’s doing that now. He’s married to an heiress who actually has money to share with him. On the condition that he doesn’t bring a kid into her life. She hates them.”
Morgan was heiress to a large fortune, too—unless her father had changed his will and left all of his money to the investment firm he owned and loved more than life—but she’d been cut off from access to the money when she’d married Todd.
Her father had forbidden the marriage. He’d said that Todd was a gold digger. She’d believed Todd loved her, so she’d gone against her father’s dictates. Her father then made certain that she didn’t have any money for Todd to use.
And as it turned out, her father had been right.
“We ran a check on him,” Elaine Martin said, and Morgan stared at her. They’d run a check on her father? Already?
“On Todd Williams,” the detective clarified. “Turns out he’s got a record, both juvenile and adult. He did time for burglary and theft.”
“That’s right.” Though she hadn’t known about the juvenile stuff until after he’d broken into her parents’ mansion and tried to steal what was “rightfully” his. His prison time had come after their divorce.
“We’ve got a call in to his parole officer. They’re going to be bringing Williams in for questioning.”
Again, Morgan nodded. They could question the devil for all she cared. She just wanted her son found.
“What kind of relationship does Williams have with your parents?”
“After he stole from them and they prosecuted him, you mean?”
“They were one of the counts in his conviction?”
She nodded.
“Before or after your divorce?”
“He stole from them before. The conviction came after.”
“What kind of relationship do your parents have with Sammie?”
“My mother sees him regularly. My father never comes to our home or takes Sammie anywhere.”
“Your parents are divorced?” The woman looked down at her paperwork. “I’m sorry, I thought…”
“They aren’t divorced,” Morgan clarified. “My father sees Sammie when my mother brings him to their place, but he and I have been in a standoff since before Sammie was born. After my marriage to Todd broke up, he offered to take me back into his fold, but only if I live at home with him and my mother and do exactly as I’m told. If I don’t live by his dictates, he has nothing to do with me. He won’t go to any of Sammie’s functions if I’m there. Though, to be fair, I believe that if I was incapable of providing for Sammie, my father wouldn’t let us starve. As it is, he’s content to let me penny-pinch, drive a used car and live in a smallish duplex. And I’m perfectly happy to do so if it means I can be my own person and live my life and raise my son in the way I feel is best.”
“Mmm.” The detective’s compassionate glance, her knowing tone, left Morgan feeling far too exposed. And ready to spill all at the same time.
She wanted her son found. No matter what embarrassing and humiliating shortcomings she had to confess.
“So your parents don’t help you out financially at all? Not even with Sammie?”
“No. My mother buys gifts for Sammie occasionally and my father doesn’t object, as long as I don’t benefit financially. It’s his way of teaching me a lesson. My father isn’t evil. He’s just cold. And certain that he’s always right.”
But he would not do anything, ever, to hurt his grandson. Or Morgan, either, in a physical sense.
“You have no siblings, right?”
“Right.”
Morgan jumped as a knock sounded on the door to the small room.
“Excuse me.” With papers in hand, Detective Martin left Morgan alone.
She was back in a couple of seconds.
“Todd Williams is here. We’re going to question him.”
“You really think he could have taken Sammie?”
Elaine Martin shrugged. “If his money pool is running low. I know you said his wife is rich but he could be into gambling. Or he could have taken your son if he wants to get back at your folks for rejecting him to begin with and then pressing the charges that sent him to prison. Either motive is solid. It’s our job to find out who has motive and to investigate every possibility as quickly as possible.”
Morgan felt like she might throw up. This couldn’t be happening. “But if he took him, he’d have to do something with him.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “He couldn’t take him home… .”
Sammie? Oh, God. Her breath caught. Where are you, Sammie?
Does your father have enough of a parental instinct to at least keep you alive?
Thinking of the man she’d once thought she loved with all of her heart and soul, Morgan couldn’t be sure what he’d do. He’d been quite willing to turn his back on her, in spite of the adoration he’d professed to have for her, so how well could a child he’d never met fare with him?
“What about an Amber Alert? Did you issue one of those?”
“Not yet.” The detective looked down at the pages in front of her. “We have to be reasonably certain that there’s been an abduction before we can do that, which is why we’re questioning your ex-husband. As I told you already, there’s been no sign of foul play.”
Her ten-year-old son was missing! That was foul. Morgan resisted the temptation to jump up and run. To make up for what others weren’t doing. Not that she knew what that was.
Had Sammie really run away? Was he that unhappy with her?
As bad as that seemed, it was still better than thinking that her son had been taken against his will. That he was scared or…worse…
“But you’re still pursuing the possibility that he’s been kidnapped, aren’t you?”
“Of course. We have to consider the worst if we’re going to be assured of getting him back.”
“What about his backpack, his things? His baseball mitt? He took that to school with him this morning and he wouldn’t leave it behind.”
She’d just remembered. She’d told him he had to leave it at home, but when he’d said he wanted to show Jimmy how to catch during the picnic lunch and he’d promised to keep it in his locker the rest of the day, she’d given in. She’d told Detective Martin she’d forgotten about the mitt when she and Julie had discussed Sammie’s locker.
“There was no mitt in his locker,” the other woman said, frowning. “Or backpack, either. Who’s Jimmy Burns?”
“He’s a boy in his regular class at school and he’s in Sammie’s summer school art class. He just moved here last spring. He’s got Down syndrome, but he loves baseball and Sammie was going to teach him how to catch at lunch.”
“Does Sammie spend much time with Jimmy?”
“Yeah, a fair amount. His mom sometimes watches Sammie for me when I’m in class. Daddy only lets Mom see us a couple of times a week.”
Blind fear made her continue, to tell the detective everything. Her son’s life was in danger. She wasn’t going to spare herself. “According to my father, I’m a bad influence on my mother.”
“And on Sammie, too?”
“Only because I’m teaching him how to disrespect a parent and go against a parent’s wishes. If I’d conform to his way of thinking and move home and be pampered and protected, he’d think I’m a great mother.”
She didn’t want to stop talking now. If she kept talking she didn’t have to think. Could Sammie really be with his father? He’d never even met the man.
Already divorced by the time Sammie was born, she’d put “father unknown” on her son’s birth certificate to protect the boy from finding out who and what his father really was. And lost any chance for child support in the doing.
If Todd had her son, Sammie would be scared to death. And Todd? What would he do with him? How could he possibly keep the boy’s existence a secret? If Sammie didn’t turn up soon, his picture was going to be all over the evening news.
Todd had friends in low places, though, in spite of the moneyed crowd he now ran with.
She glanced up at Detective Martin, her entire body frozen with fear. “If Todd is behind this, he might turn my son over to associates from his old life for safekeeping until he gets the ransom.”
“We’re already checking on that. We’re also finding out who he knew in prison and if anyone is out or has contacts in the area.
“We also aren’t ruling out a nonrelation kidnapping.”
Morgan wasn’t sure which was worse—Todd or a stranger. “Even if ransom is paid, kidnappers don’t return victims who can identify them. And they don’t just take kids for ransom money.” She was killing herself and couldn’t stop. “I watch TV.”
Oh, God. Please don’t allow Sammie to pay for my sins… .
Elaine Martin squeezed her hand, quieting the screeching in Morgan’s mind enough for her to hear the detective when she said, “We get them back safely, too. And we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. At this point it doesn’t even look like Sammie’s been kidnapped. We just don’t want to leave any rocks unturned.”
The detective was right. Sammie was probably hiding out someplace, just to see if he could.
“I’m going to go see what, if anything, they’ve learned from Williams.” Detective Martin stood again.
“I should never have married that jerk,” Morgan said. “My father was right.”
He was also right outside the door. She could see him through the window that looked out into the reception room through which she’d been led. He was staring straight at her.
And she recognized that frown.
Her father was angry. Really angry.
And blaming her. Again.
Please, God, this time don’t let him be right.
CHAPTER FOUR
ONANORDINARYDAY, Cal would have emailed Joy back. He’d have tried to make things right for her. He was sad to see this one go. Joy was fun. Intelligent. Witty. Conversationally she’d kept him on his toes. In bed, they’d been plenty good enough.
He’d kind of been hoping that she’d become a semipermanent fixture in his life. He’d even thought about introducing her to his father some day.
On an ordinary day, he might even have called Joy.
Instead, Cal finished up a requisition request that was due that day for books for the fall semester, filed his class notes, found notes for Monday’s class and watched the time—and the phone.
Two hours had passed since Morgan Lowen had run from his class. She hadn’t called to apologize for interrupting class. To explain. To tell him that all was well.
She hadn’t called to relieve him—or anyone else in his class who might ask him—of any concern regarding her abrupt departure from the lecture that morning.
She’d been his student for four years, one of his favorite students, but beyond the teaching they’d talked a few times over the past several months, about her plans for the future since she was soon to graduate, about her son. About being a single parent, a student and working full-time. He’d meant it when he’d told her he’d help in any way he could.
He hoped she’d call.
Cal kept busy. He knew how to take his mind off from that over which he had no control. He’d perfected the art by the time he was ten.
Still, a child was missing. And Detective Ramsey Miller of the Comfort Cove Police Department had called him twice in less than twenty-four hours. It had been years since they’d heard anything from or about Comfort Cove.
And a child was missing.
Morgan Lowen—and Sammie—had nothing to do with Rose Sanderson, the mother from Comfort Cove, Massachusetts, who’d once been engaged to Cal’s father, and then accused him of kidnapping her daughter. Morgan and Sammie had no connection to Claire Sanderson, the little girl who’d been abducted, or to Claire’s sister, Emma.
The timing was coincidence. Bizarre coincidence. He knew that. Was completely, calmly certain of that.
But a child was missing…
His hands were typing before Cal had made a firm decision to access confidential student files. He typed his username. His password. Clicked a couple of times and then entered Morgan’s full name as he had it on his class register.
The wait was seconds but seemed interminable. The screen flashed. Renewed. He couldn’t see everything. Her social security number, for instance. But her classes were all there. Her grades. Her petition for graduation—she was due to collect a B.A. degree in early childhood development with a minor in business and another in English in less than six weeks, right after completing his class. He knew from their conversations that she wanted to open her own day care someday.
And there was her address.
He’d been mentoring her, educationally, for years. And more recently, since her trouble with Sammie in the spring, he’d thought they’d become more than just teacher and student. Closer to friends…with the professional distance mandated by their positions, of course.
She was a woman carrying a huge load, alone. She worked hard. Did all she could. She never asked for favors or special consideration. She never made excuses.
He tried to focus on the rest of his day. On lunch, and the afternoon and evening ahead. Papers he could grade. Calls he should make.
There was a mother whose child was missing.
Something Cal knew far too much about. He could still remember the sense of panic. The horror and disbelief. The pain that never healed…
No.
This was Morgan Lowen. Not Rose Sanderson. This was Tyler, Tennessee. Not Comfort Cove, Massachusetts. This was 2012. Not the 1980s.
He decided he was going to do a quick drive-by to make certain that she was okay. Then he’d head straight home. Due to his slow start that morning, he hadn’t left lunch prepared in the refrigerator for his father and chances were that the older man wouldn’t bother to fix something for himself.
Frank was a good cook. Better than good. If his father cared enough to get up and get out to the kitchen, they’d be eating much better meals than the ones Cal provided for them.
If Frank cared what he ate, or if he ate…
A child was missing. Frank would care about that… .
All thoughts of his father fled when Cal turned the corner of Apple Road and saw the cars parked outside the small duplex in the center of the block. Could be a woman having a Friday luncheon. Or a kids’ play group. Could be, but his gut told him it wasn’t.
People were walking the neighborhood. Calling out. Some had fliers already. He pulled up slowly, stopping his blue Ford Flex right behind a Cadillac Escalade—the vehicle he would have bought if he’d had the money.
A woman who looked to be about forty stood just off the sidewalk a couple of units down from the front door bearing the number he’d pulled from his computer. She had her arm around a young girl, holding her close, as she surveyed the street.
Moms would all be holding their kids close in that neighborhood tonight. There’d be no more summer nights playing tag on the streets. No more summer days playing tag, either. The fliers would be hung, and when they faded, they’d be rehung. People would watch carefully as they came and went. New locks would adorn doors that would remain tightly shut to the summer breeze.
Fear would become a family member.
No, this was Tennessee, not Comfort Cove, Massachusetts.
Flashes of knowing accompanied Cal as he approached the screen door of Morgan Lowen’s small home and knocked.
A woman appeared almost immediately. She was about his age, early thirties, with long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her face was pinched, her green eyes void of any makeup at all. She opened the door with an expectant look.
“Is Morgan here?” he asked.
“She’s in the living room.” The woman kept herself placed between him and the inside of the home.
“I’m Caleb Whittier, her English professor. She was in my class this morning when she got the call about her son.”
“Dr. Whittier?” She said the name like she knew it. Like it would be followed by “The Dr. Whittier?” He couldn’t tell if recognition was a good thing or not, but he nodded.
“I’m Julie Warren,” the woman said. “I’m the secretary at Sammie’s school. And Morgan’s friend. I’m the one who called her out of class.”
“Have they found him?”
After seeing the cars on the street, the shake of her head was no surprise. He shoved his hands into his pockets.
Julie Warren stood back. “Come on in.”
“No. I don’t want to bother her. I just…”
Just what? He could have called to find out if she was all right. If Sammie was. Or waited until class on Monday.
He could have watched the news tonight and known, if nothing was there, that the boy had probably been found.
“Morgan’s told me about you. About your talks,” Julie said, still holding the door open. “That’s unusual for her, the way she talks to you. Morgan doesn’t open up to people much.” The woman was talking fast, as though running away from something, or trying not to think about someone who couldn’t be found. “You may not realize it, but your support has helped her a lot,” Julie said now. “I really think she’d like to see you.” The woman’s brow was creased with worry.
She held the door open farther and Caleb moved forward.
* * *
SHE’DHEARDTHE KNOCK on the door a few minutes ago. Could see the people traversing the street through her living room window. She knew her mother was sitting next to her on the sand-colored faux-leather couch she’d picked up at a moving sale several years before. Her father was just around the corner in the kitchen, talking on the phone. His tone brooked no argument or refusal.
His first time in her home and he’d already taken command of the place.
Sammie was still gone. Todd had been questioned and released.
Detective Martin was around someplace. Outside, maybe, directing the canvas of the neighborhood. They’d tapped her cell phone. And her father’s. Morgan didn’t have a home line. But they wanted her there, anyway. In case Sammie came home. Or someone brought him home. Or tried to contact her there.
Morgan listened to the flapping sound of Julie’s flip-flops out in the foyer where she’d gone to answer the door. Her friend had been sitting on Morgan’s other side on the couch for most of the afternoon. She was wearing the sleeveless, long, tie-dyed cotton dress that she’d bought the year before at a clearance sale. Her husband hated the dress. Morgan loved it.
The couch was nice. Soft. And clean. Morgan had gone over it twice with leather cleanser and antibacterial cleanser, too, when she’d purchased it. She wanted to make certain that it was safe for Sammie. Should she tell Detective Martin she’d done that? It proved how much she loved her son, didn’t it? Proved that she was a good mother.
Jumping up, Morgan stood at the window. Staring out. No matter how tightly she wrapped her arms around herself, she couldn’t seem to get warm.
Julie flapped in, flip-flop, flip-flop.
“Morgan?”
She heard her friend. She just didn’t turn around. Watching the flurry of activity on the street was as close as she could get to doing something. The inactivity was driving her crazy.
For a second she imagined herself and Sammie on the beach. In Florida. They couldn’t afford the Hilton Head vacations she’d taken as a child with her parents. Florida’s beaches were more fun. Less stuffy. She and Sammie were holding hands, screaming as they took a big wave together… .
Outside, a man she didn’t recognize moved into her line of vision.
She should be doing. It was her job to see to her son’s needs. To look after him. She was always the one who was doing for Sammie. The only one…
“Morgan, Dr. Whittier’s here.”
She turned. Still outside looking for her son. Still on that beach in Florida.
The man standing in her living room was as unreal as the rest of her current world. Dr. Whittier? In her home?
“Hi, Morgan,” he said. “I looked up your address. I hope you don’t mind my stopping by, but after the way you left class, I just wanted to make certain you were okay.”
She shook her head. “My son’s missing.”
“I know.”
Of course he did. The whole class knew. Maybe the whole town did. She hoped to God the whole town knew.
“Dr. Whittier? Are you Sammie’s doctor?” Morgan heard her mother’s voice as if from a distance greater than the couch across the room.
Morgan looked back outside.
Surely someone would have seen a ten-year-old boy wearing cutoff shorts, a Phoenix Suns T-shirt and black sneakers with a hole in the toe. Sammie was small, like her, but he wasn’t invisible. That blond hair, and those big brown eyes of his…
“…her English professor…” Cal Whittier’s voice infiltrated briefly.
Sammie had wanted her to practice catch with him the night before. She’d been too busy cutting decorations for Saturday’s picnic. She’d started at the day care when she’d been pregnant with Sammie. The job had offered free child care, which saved her enough money that she’d been able to get them the duplex in the nicer neighborhood rather than settling for an apartment in a less safe part of town.
She’d worried, at first, that she wouldn’t qualify for the job, but Tennessee law allowed you to teach in a day care with only a high school diploma. She’d started out as an assistant teacher and then was offered the job of executive assistant to the director. She liked teaching, though, and she substituted for the full-time teachers whenever she could. She’d lucked out. She got to spend the first five years of Sammie’s life with him and earn money, too. And once Sammie had started school, Morgan’s boss had allowed Sammie to come to the day care after class to play and help with the little kids until Morgan was off work.
As a bonus, she’d loved working with the preschoolers—she’d been a natural—and had found a career.
“Morgan was in my class when she got the call about her son… .” She assumed Dr. Whittier was still addressing her mother and she turned back around.
The three of them—Morgan, Whittier and Julie—were standing in the middle of her tiny living room, while her mother perched on the edge of the couch, her thumbs rubbing back and forth across opposite palms.
“I’d just seen Sammie half an hour before he went missing,” Julie was telling Whittier. “I’d gone into his classroom to take a message to his teacher and he’d called out to me, flashing that big grin of his.”
He’d just run away. Sammie was doing this to prove he could. To prove that he was old enough to be on his own. To prove…
“They’re going over her computer now…” Julie continued, filling in the newcomer, just as they’d all done every time someone new arrived on the scene.
Morgan had caught Sammie on the internet again the night before.
She’d yelled at him. He knew that he wasn’t allowed to be on the internet without her. It wasn’t safe for kids.
“I have parental controls in place but he knows how to hack through them.” Her voice sounded far away—a disconnect from the cottony haze of unreality that had her in its grip.
“You think he might have met someone there?” Whittier’s piercing gaze confirmed that she was in the conversation.
Morgan held on to that look. To him. And touched ground for a second. “No.” She shook her head again. “I caught him before he could clear history and cache. He was looking at basketball shoes.” She repeated what she’d told Detective Martin an hour before. And her mother and father when they’d arrived at the police station.
“Does he clear history and cache regularly?”
“He used to, before I caught on to the fact that he was sneaking on to the computer behind my back. Then he figured out that if I saw everything cleared, I’d know he’d been on.”
“Do you have any idea what he was looking at?” His tone held the same deep concern he’d expressed the previous spring when she’d first told him about the son she was raising alone and struggling to let go of enough to give him some independence, but hold on to enough to keep him safe.
“Basketball,” Morgan said, breathing normally for a moment. “Stats, schedules, shoes, basketball video games, autographed balls…”
Whittier frowned. “If that’s all he was into, why delete the history?”
“So I wouldn’t know he’d been on the computer without supervision.”
“Because he thinks you baby him too much.”
She’d appreciated Whittier’s conversation regarding her son these past months. Appreciated his male perspective.
“I know you agreed with him when it came to showering. I have to trust him to get himself clean enough and to give him his space to grow into a young man. But there are just too many dangers on the internet. I still won’t let him go on unless I’m sitting there with him.”
“And he probably sees that as more proof that you don’t trust him.”
“Right. I can’t budge on this one. But I make sure that I put aside time to let him surf to his heart’s content. I want him to learn the internet, to know how to get around and to be privy to the wealth of good information out there. Seems like we’ve been to every basketball site ever uploaded. We look at all the baseball sites, too, but basketball is his first love. Did you know that in the history of the NBA only eight players were born on May 3? And that the most recent was in 1977? That was Tyronn Lue. He was drafted by the Denver Nuggets and played for ten years. Sammie’s birthday is May 3… .”
“Morgan, Detective Martin needs to speak with you.” The booming—and openly reproving—voice rent through her like a shard of lightning. She should have been more focused on the moment, should have known the second the detective had reentered her residence, seeking her attention.
She’d been rambling. Her father thought she talked too much. That she took a hundred words to say what could be said with ten.
The detective was waiting for her in the foyer. “No one in the neighborhood has seen your son since the two of you left this morning.” Elaine Martin’s tone was all business now. “But we found one eyewitness, a seventy-year-old woman who says she saw Sammie on the corner of Bohemian and First.”
Heart pumping, Morgan took a step back until she was almost leaning against the man who’d sired her. Bohemian was four blocks from school.
“He was speaking with a man.”
“What man?” She couldn’t stop the shaking that had control of her body.
“We don’t know. We’re hoping you can help us.” Detective Martin pulled an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch copy of a hand sketch from the portfolio under her arm. “Do you recognize this man?”
Morgan stared at the chiseled features. The longish hair. And the tattoo on the muscled shoulder. Some kind of spiked something.
“I’ve never seen him before in my life.”
“Look closely, Morgan. Take your time,” Elaine Martin said. “Our witness says the man was in his mid-thirties and was well over six feet tall.”
She wanted to know the man, wanted to find her son, and choked back tears as she shook her head.
“Look again, Morgan.” Her father’s voice jarred her further. “You must have seen him someplace.”
She stared at the photo, studying the tight cheeks, the shoulders. The tattoo. Eyes that were…human. Trying to place them all. Running the image through her mental memory bank. A coach? A relative at the day care? Someone at the grocery store? The mall? Or the pizza place?
“I don’t know him… .” Her voice was only a thread—a thin thread—a testimony to the fragile hold she had on her composure. And as she turned and looked directly at her father, tears filled her eyes.
“I swear, Daddy, I don’t know him. I wish to God I did.”
Morgan glanced back at the freehand drawing. If that man…that fiend…had her son…
If he touched him…
Sammie could already have been—
No, he’d run away. He was fine. Just hiding from her. And they’d find him. Sammie wasn’t as grown up as he thought.
“What about an Amber Alert? Can you issue one of those now?” Did they have reasonable belief that Sammie had been abducted? If they issued an Amber Alert anyone who saw him would know that he was missing.
“We issued it half an hour ago.”
Which meant they no longer thought Sammie had just run away.
The words struck a new chord of fear that Morgan couldn’t ignore.
CHAPTER FIVE
CALEBKNEWLONGnights. He’d lived with them for most of his life. Which stood him in good stead over the next several hours as he stayed with the Lowens and Julie Warren and waited for news of Sammie’s whereabouts.
He’d offered to stay. Morgan had accepted his offer immediately, with none of her usual assurances that she would be fine. He made coffee and small conversation when fatigue and panic threatened to get the best of the women. He sat quietly, a steady breath in the storm when detectives reported in or the phone rang.
And he studied Mr. Lowen with the outside eye of a scholar. Or so he told himself.
“I didn’t realize George Lowen was your father,” he said softly, sometime after ten that evening as Morgan accepted his invitation to step outside for some fresh air.
He’d thought the man heartless when, two years before, Lowen had bought up a block of real estate that included the city’s oldest library and the complex that held the young artists’ league studios and small gallery and tore it all down to replace it with a gated community of luxury condominiums. His perusal of George Lowen over the past few hours hadn’t softened his opinion of the business mogul much.
With her hands hugging her upper arms, Morgan shrugged. “We don’t associate much.”
He hadn’t realized she had parents in the area until a few hours before.
“He’s here tonight.”
“Yeah.”
Her expression blank, she gazed out into the darkness.
“You have to keep hoping, Morgan. Hope gives you the strength you need to take the next breath.”
They were walking on the sidewalk in front of her place. While the curb was lined with cars—his, Julie’s, her parents’, and the detective’s who’d replaced Elaine Martin and was going to sit with them through the night to monitor any possible contacts from kidnappers—the street was quiet. Searchers would resume looking for signs of the young boy at daylight.
And every hour that passed made it less likely that they’d be able to return Sammie safe and sound.
“It’s so dark out.”
“Is Sammie afraid of the dark?”
“No. It’s just…I know that the first hours are critical… .”
The first three hours were the most critical if Sammie had been kidnapped. Most child murders happened within three hours after abduction. Not that he was going to tell her that.
“You hear about children being taken, you know to keep your kids safe, and you do everything you can. But still, it’s one of those things—you just don’t ever think it’ll happen to you.”
He’d never seen it that way. Or if he had, he’d been too young to remember a time when it felt like the world was a safe place for kids.
“Eight hundred thousand kids go missing each year in the United States. That’s two thousand a day or one every forty seconds. But most are safely returned.”
She stopped pacing in front of her house and faced him, studying him in the blackness. Light from the streetlamp shone on one side of her face, giving it a white hue that was almost sickly, and throwing the other side of her into shadow. But he could see the panic in her eyes.
“I… Are you sure you want to be here?”
“I can go if you’d like.”
“No!” Her hand reached toward him and then hugged her arm again without ever making contact with him. “I… You can stay if you want. I just…I’m not sure why you’d want to. It’s late. You have to be tired.”
“I wouldn’t sleep if I went home. I’d be thinking about you and your son. Wondering if you’d had any news.”
“You don’t even know Sammie. And I’m just a student… .”
“It wouldn’t matter to me if you were a stranger, Morgan, I’d still want to help if I could. But you are far from a stranger. I’ve been reading your essays for four years. I got to know you through them. And…I’ve enjoyed our recent conversations. I’d like to help if I can.”
“Don’t you have someone at home waiting for you?” she asked, looking down the street in one direction and then the other before glancing back at him.
“A Mrs. Whittier, you mean?” Had she been hoping she’d see Sammie walking up the street toward them? He’d been looking for that very thing all night long.
“No, everyone knows you’re single. But that doesn’t mean you live alone.”
“I live with my father. He knows where I am and why.”
“Oh.”
He’d never felt such an urge to talk. To share. And just as compelling was the reticence that had become a natural part of him.
“I…we…knew someone once. A woman in the town where we lived. Her child was taken. It’s not something you ever forget.”
“Did you know her well?”
Thinking of Rose Sanderson, of things the woman had done and said, he told the complete truth. “No.”
“How old was her child?”
“Two.” He wanted Morgan to know that she wasn’t alone. That other people knew exactly what she was feeling.
“A boy or a girl?”
“A girl.”
Her eyes filled with a painful mixture of compassion and fear and too late he knew what the next question was going to be.
“Did they find her?” Was the child returned safely to her mother’s waiting arms?
“No.” With a finger under Morgan’s chin, he held her face gently aloft, looking her straight in the eye, and said, “Of those eight hundred thousand kids that go missing each year, only one hundred and fifteen of them are stranger abductions and less than a hundred of them are victims of homicide.”
“Says who?”
“Washington, D.C.—the U.S. Department of Justice.”
She looked at him—and kept looking—as though the connection of their gazes was holding her upright.
She wasn’t Rose Sanderson. And this time he might be able to help.
* * *
TWELVEHOURSBEFORE, her greatest dream would definitely have included Caleb Whittier as a key player—in her home, with her.
Tonight he was included in her darkest nightmare. And her only dream was holding Sammie, safe and healthy, in her arms again. Her education didn’t matter. The day care and Saturday’s festivities were trivial. Nothing mattered if Sammie was gone.
Someone ordered pizza. The smell made Morgan sick to her stomach. Julie left, going home to be with her husband and twin daughters. Everything else stayed the same. Alarmingly the same.
Nothing was happening.
Until the phone rang just after midnight. Morgan’s body suffused with weakness even while her heart pounded so hard she could feel its beat.
“Wait,” the detective on duty, Rick Warner, said, looking at her. The hand Morgan held suspended over the receiver, ready to pick up, was shaking. The call display flashed Unknown Caller.
“Remember what they told you, Morgan.” George Lowen stood over her, having come in from the business papers he had strewn all over the kitchen table as soon as the phone pealed. “Keep them talking. Stay calm. Be agreeable…”
She tuned out the voice. She couldn’t deal with her father and kidnappers at the same time.
“You’ll do fine.” Cal Whittier dropped quietly onto the couch next to her. Not touching her. Just there.
The detective nodded and Morgan picked up, the call broadcast to the room on a special speaker they’d hooked up. “Hello?”
“Your father killed my wife. I got your kid. Fair trade.” Click.
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.
No one spoke at first, as the caller hung up far too soon for anyone to put a full trace on the call.
“What the hell?” George Lowen turned his back just as Grace came into the room. Morgan’s mother had been lying down on Morgan’s bed. Her usually immaculate, tastefully dyed brown hair was mussed. Her eyes were swollen, her lightweight navy slacks and white blouse wrinkled.
“Who was on the phone?”
Detective Warner spoke into a cell phone. And hung up. Caleb Whittier took the receiver out of Morgan’s grasp.
“The call came from a prepaid cell phone. No way to trace it,” the detective said. “But they got the tower the signal came from. First and Main.”
“Fifteen miles from here,” George bit out.
“He’s still in the area?” Hope shot through Morgan even while she was falling apart at the seams.
“We know the area the call came from,” Detective Warner said softly, his brown eyes warm but tired looking. He didn’t try to hide the graveness of the situation from her.
Morgan couldn’t move. “He said he has Sammie.”
“I know.”
“So what do we do now?”
Those dark eyes were so hard to take. “We wait.”
“We wait.” How could her voice sound so calm when she was screaming inside? Seething with panic and dread and anger and fear and… “For what?”
“For him to call again.” Detective Warner’s voice was as calm as hers. Did the man also have feelings underneath? Things she couldn’t see? Or was this all just another job to him? Did he know what his words were doing to her?
Did it matter?
“What about that tower?” George demanded, standing halfway across the room. “I want every inch of that area canvassed. I’ll provide the resources. If you people can’t man the search I’ll hire someone who can.”
Her father’s autocratic tone cut through her—and gave her hope at the same time.
“It’s a multiple base station site. The call likely came within a mile or two of the tower, but the range could extend as much as thirty miles or more, depending on the strength of the phone used. It’s late at night so there are fewer transmissions going out, which means that range is wider.”
Oh, God. Is there no hope?
“Calls connect through to the closest tower.”
So they could narrow the search dramatically?
“Not always. And that depends on the phone’s operator, as well. Cars and alerts are already out, Mr. Lowen. Believe me, we’ve got every resource possible on this one.”
“I want more.”
“We’re doing all we can.”
“Then I’ll do it myself.” Her father’s dismissive tone followed him out of the small living room.
Grace and Morgan exchanged looks but Morgan was no longer sure what they were saying to each other.
“You said we wait,” Grace addressed Detective Warner, who was working at a card table set up along the front wall of the duplex. Morgan’s mother was sitting in the armchair where earlier she’d gone through address files, making notes regarding run-ins her husband had had over the years.
George Lowen, when questioned by Detective Martin, had put his wife on that job.
And apparently Detective Martin had been right on cue, looking for people who had it in for Morgan’s father. Now they could narrow the search more. To a male who’d lost a wife—and blamed her father.
“Right now this guy is in control,” Detective Warner was saying. “Until we know more, we have to wait for the next call.”
Caleb Whittier sat beside Morgan throughout the exchange. It was as though he was her hard drive, taking in everything and storing it in meticulous order for her to call upon later.
“What makes you think he’s going to call back?” she asked Warner.
“Because it fits the profile. This man is out for revenge. One phone call isn’t going to satisfy him.”
Okay. There’d be another call. Another chance. She had to make it count.
“The next time he calls, you need to ask to speak to your son the second you pick up. This guy’s playing with you. He’s letting you know he’s in charge. And now he’s going to bait you. He’s going to wait until he knows you’re on the line, give you another one-liner and hang up.”
“And then what?”
“Profiling suggests that he’ll get around to asking for a ransom. Eventually. When he’s satisfied that you’ve suffered enough. Or when the satisfaction of torturing you runs out. For now, the only chance for communication you’re probably going to get is when you first pick up the call.”
“So instead of saying hello, I ask to speak with Sammie.”
“Right.”
Foggy-headed from exhaustion and stress, Morgan studied the detective. “You think he’ll let me talk to my son?”
“I doubt it. Not at this stage, in any case. He’s not out to give you any comfort. Just the opposite, in fact. So we play on his need to make you and your family suffer by letting him hear how desperate you are to speak to your son.”
“Why would she give this guy what he wants?” Grace asked.
“So he’ll give us what we want, proof of Sammie’s existence. He has to get pleasure out of giving us the information or we aren’t going to get it.”
Morgan’s stomach threatened to give back what little she’d eaten. “What kind of proof?”
“He’ll call back with a tape recording, maybe. Or a description of Sammie’s clothing. The idea is to keep him calling back. Every time we get him on the line we have that much more chance of pinpointing where he’s calling from. And every bit of communication gives us more clues to go on in helping us figure out who this guy is.”
“You said he’d be calling back, anyway.”
“That’s right and we want to take control of his plan.”
She nodded. And would do exactly as she was told.
She wanted to ask what the chances were that Sammie was still alive. Wanted to ask Detective Warner his professional opinion regarding her chances of ever seeing her son again.
Not trusting her ability to handle the answer, she withheld the question.
They’d had the dreaded call. Sammie wasn’t just a runaway. He’d been kidnapped.
CHAPTER SIX
“DOYOUMIND IF I sit outside on the front step for a few minutes?” Morgan directed her question to the detective sitting at his makeshift desk. Cal watched her, taking in the whiteness around her too-tight lips, the glossiness in eyes that normally glinted with eagerness, the strands of hair surrounding skin that had been devoid of makeup since she’d first cried it off more than twelve hours before.
He recognized the signs of a woman at the end of her rope. He’d watched the same thing happen to Rose Sanderson when she’d transformed from his future mother to the stranger who’d thrown him and his father out of their home.
“If my phone rings, I’ll come back in.…”
“Stay close.” Detective Warner’s tone held warning more than acquiescence.
Morgan nodded and stood. Unlike the last couple of times she’d left the room for some fresh air, she didn’t glance at Cal. Didn’t invite him along.
On a hunch, he went anyway.
And was glad he had as soon as he stepped out the door and saw his star student bent over, one side of her propped against the corner of the building as she sobbed.
It was the first time he’d seen her lose control all day. There’d been tears, plenty of them, but they’d been slow, silent drips down her cheeks, not this full-out explosion of anguish.
Cal went to her, pulled her away from the building and against him, half carrying her over to the steps and settling her against his body as they sat. He didn’t say anything. There were no words that could help. Nothing anyone could do to ease the pain that was eating her alive, short of returning her son to her.
But he could share the pain with her. It helped not to suffer alone. That much he understood.
He didn’t take it personally when she turned her face into his chest. Or when her hands worked their way around his neck and clung to him. He held her. Stroked her hair.
And cried inside—a little boy manifested into a man who’d outgrown the ability to shed tears.
“They’re hurting him, aren’t they?” Her words, muffled against his chest, were completely clear to him.
Cal had no sense of how much time had passed. His arms didn’t loosen their grip on the body he held. “We don’t know that.”
“But…” A dry sob interrupted her. “If his goal is to torture us…”
Wanting to tell her not to let him win, not to torture herself with what-ifs, Cal said instead, “We don’t know his ultimate goal.” He’d read everything he’d ever found written about child abductions. He knew the profiling as well as any detective.
“And we don’t know who we’re dealing with. Some people just aren’t killers, no matter what life has done to them. They just don’t have it in them to hurt someone else physically. So they retaliate with mental and emotional abuse.” He wasn’t educating her. He was just talking in case hearing another voice made her situation better. He wasn’t even sure she could comprehend what he was saying at that point. Or that it mattered.
“If his ultimate goal is ransom, as is probable, chances are good that he won’t do anything to hurt Sammie. At least not until he’s made his deal.”
He had to be honest with her here.
“And chances are also good that the authorities will catch the guy before he gets to close his deal.
“Less than one hundred out of eight hundred thousand abducted children die each year,” he reminded her. “Sammie’s chances are very, very good. More than 99 percent.”
“But the girl you knew about—she had those same chances.”
“Which is why I’ve always believed that she’s still alive.”
Morgan’s breathing slowed. She pulled back slowly, dropping her arms, sitting up on her own. Hands wrapped around her stomach, she stared downward.
“Do you know how many kids are taken that aren’t found dead, but are never seen by their parents again?”
“The less than one hundred that are killed includes those that are assumed dead.”
Which, technically, included Claire Sanderson. She was one of the less than 1 percent who weren’t safely returned. But… “In the case I knew about, they never had contact from the kidnapper,” he told her. “There were no calls. Nothing for them to go on.”
Except a young boy’s testimony that he’d seen the little girl in his father’s car earlier that morning. And the child’s teddy bear, which had been with her the last time anyone had seen her, had turned up in Frank’s car later that day.
“They focused the investigation on one man. They weren’t ever able to find enough evidence against him to press charges. And in the meantime, whatever other clues might have been there had grown cold and whoever took the little girl got away with the crime.”
“Did the family have money?”
“Enough to be comfortable. Nothing comparable to your father.”
But he and Emma and Claire had had everything a kid could want. And then some. They’d had a close, loving, happy family. At least for a while.
“As I recall, there wasn’t ever much talk about ransom calls,” he added, for her sake—and because for the first time in his life he was talking about the incident that had sealed his fate in a world filled with inner darkness. “The girl was only two. She wasn’t like Sammie, able to fend for herself, or to understand that she’d been abducted. And sick people don’t take two-year-old girls from middle-class neighborhoods in hopes of ransom money.”
He couldn’t go any further than that. Couldn’t let his mind travel down the road that Claire Sanderson had probably had to travel. He couldn’t save her from a twenty-five-year-old fate.
Perusing child pornography photos was one job he’d left solely up to the authorities. But the fact that there was no evidence that Claire was taken for that sordid lifestyle didn’t ease his emotional burden any. There’d been no internet twenty-five years before. No global access to illegal practices. No way to find most of the scumbags who practiced or made money from underage sex.
“Dr. Whittier—”
“Cal,” he interrupted. “I’m not here as your college professor, and as we established last spring, there’s only three years’ difference between us… .” His voice faded off. What in the hell did names or ages matter?
“Cal, then,” Morgan said. “I just wanted to thank you.” She drew a deep breath. “For being here. It helps.”
He nodded, in spite of the darkness that probably prevented her from knowing that. “Julie offered to stay.” Her friend had left hours earlier to go home and put her twin five-year-olds to bed.
Morgan rubbed a hand down her face just as he’d seen her do countless times over the past hours. “I know,” she said. “But she’s like the rest of us here, shocked and hurting and…besides, I think she needed to be with her kids. To hang on to them.”
“I’m sure she did.” Like Rose had clung to Emma, frantic to keep the four-year-old in sight at all times. Cal hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye to the girl he’d loved as his little sister.
He glanced around the dark and too-quiet neighborhood. “I’m pretty certain all the parents around here are keeping a close hold on their children tonight. Thanking the Lord that they’re home. And they’re probably also scared to death that whoever took Sammie could come for their kids next.”
Up, down, up, down, up, down. He could feel the rhythm of her knee’s movement.
“They’ll be relieved to know that Sammie was scouted out specifically. That this is someone after my father, not some sicko after kids.” Shoulders hunched, she shuddered.
“Maybe. I figure the heads-up that children really are at risk of abduction will stick with most of them for a long time to come. You can’t witness something like this, even peripherally, and go back. You don’t ever become unaware again.”
“You really understand… .”
“Some things you don’t ever forget.”
“How long ago was that little girl taken?”
“Twenty-five years.”
“What?” She sat up, turned to him. “She’s been missing for twenty-five years? With no trace of her at all?”
“That’s right.”
“You had to have been just a kid then!”
“I was seven.”
“And yet you remember…”
“Like it was yesterday. I…knew the little girl. Her mother worked with my father.” He spoke slowly, choosing his way carefully. Like each word landed on a minefield and risked imminent explosion.
Rose and Frank had met at an educators’ conference. She’d been an elementary schoolteacher, while Frank was a high school principal and basketball coach. A match made in heaven.
Or could have been.
“Where did this happen? Here in Tyler?”
“No.” She seemed to be waiting for more. “It was in Massachusetts.” He was saying too much.
“What happened to the parents? Are they still there?”
“I have no idea where they are.” Claire’s father was dead. A shady man from the docks who’d run off when he’d found out that Rose was pregnant with Claire. Sanderson, Sr., had died in a bar brawl less than a year later, killed by the husband of the woman he’d just bedded.
And Rose? He didn’t want to know. “We moved away shortly after that and all we knew was what was on the news, which wasn’t much.”
“But you know she wasn’t found.”
“I was an impressionable kid. The incident stuck with me. I still periodically check the missing-persons database.”
“You don’t ever go back to a state of unawareness.”
She understood. And in a strange way, on a night when his only purpose was to give a measure of support, he’d found a moment of peace.
“When I get Sammie back…he won’t… I… Neither of us will ever be able to go back. We’ll be different.”
“Yes, but different might be better, too.” He knew with all of his being that she had to think that. Had to believe. To hope.
“Julie said something this morning shortly after I got to school. She apologized for not watching over Sammie more closely. She felt so guilty. And so do I. It’s my job to protect my son. And I didn’t. How can he ever forgive me?”
“Hey.” He nudged her arm, wanting to take her hand, but not doing so. “You have absolutely nothing to feel guilty about.” Guilt ate a body alive with insidious tenacity. “Your son was at school right where he belonged. You aren’t allowed to be there babysitting him even if you wanted to.”
“My son left class.” Her voice had dropped an octave. “He misbehaved and put himself in harm’s way and that is my fault. I’m the only one in charge of teaching him. Training him. I try so hard but he butts heads with me on a constant basis. Probably because he doesn’t have a father around and that’s my fault, too.”
Cal debated his response in terms of being kind to her. And then spoke. “He left class, with permission, to use the restroom. That’s all you know. The kidnapper has it in for your father. He obviously planned this whole thing. He didn’t just happen to be in the right place at the exact time that Sammie misbehaved. And while Sammie doesn’t have a father, you’ve been discussing things with me, getting male perspective and allowing Sammie some freedoms based on our conversations.”
Her silence gave him pause. He sure as hell hoped he hadn’t made things more difficult for her.
“You think this…this monster was watching Sammie? That he’d have taken him, anyway, the first chance he saw?” Her leg bounced up and down. Continuously. Getting faster.
“Probably.”
“I keep a close eye on him. As you know, that’s part of what he complains about.”
“You obviously do a great job if this guy thought his best chance of getting to your son was while Sammie was in a secure school situation being watched over by trained professionals.”
The bouncing stopped. She rocked forward. And back. And then forward again.
“Sammie says I don’t let him grow up and be a man, but this is why…” Her voice broke with the threat of more tears. “I’m so sorry,” she said on a sigh. “I’m losing it here.”
“You have absolutely nothing to be sorry about and you are not losing it. As a matter of fact you’ve held up astonishingly well, considering. This is the first time I’ve seen you really cry.”
“It’s not something I do in front of my father.” She sounded stronger again.
“In front of your father? You’re kidding.” He said the words, and yet, thinking of the man inside the door behind them, what she’d told him made sense.
“From the time I was little I learned to hold back my tears around him,” she said softly. “Crying pisses him off. He says it’s a tactic females use to try to control men. It’s a sign of weakness. Of victimization rather than accountability.”
The guy was a first-class bastard.
But he was there. Insisting that mountains would move and his grandson would be brought home to them. From what Cal had seen, George Lowen was willing to get out there and move the mountains himself if need be.
“I must respectfully disagree. Crying is normal. Healthy. And part of being human.”
“When’s the last time you cried?”
He didn’t answer, knowing that his silence was an answer in itself.
“You just said it’s part of being human.”
He wasn’t surprised that she’d called him on the inconsistency.
“Which is why I’ve always envied people who could cry,” Cal said, the night, the circumstance, putting him in strange territory, making him a stranger to himself.
This night, these circumstances—it wasn’t real life.
It was a snippet of time outside of ordinary living. An anomaly that would seem surreal once Morgan’s son was home safe and sound.
“So why don’t you cry?”
“I’m not sure. It’s not like I sit around and try,” he said, giving her a sideways glance, glad he seemed to be distracting her. She was listening so he continued. “Might have something to do with the fact that I never knew my mother. She died when I was six months old.”
“That’s horrible! What happened?”
“She taught a program for accelerated students and was on an oceanography field trip. She went into the water at night with a couple of other teachers, on an ocean life study, and she and another teacher got tangled in the reef and drowned.”
“I’m so sorry! That’s awful.”
For his father it had been. Cal didn’t have any memories of her at all. But he missed knowing a mother—her absence had made him particularly eager to accept and return Rose Sanderson’s motherly care.
“Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“Nope. It’s just me and Dad.”
“He never remarried?”
“No.”
“So you went into teaching because of her? Because of your mother?”
It wasn’t that simple. “I teach because I enjoy it.” And because his father—who’d lost his prestigious career in education because of something Cal had told the police that had incriminated an innocent man—lived vicariously through him.
“You’re sure good at it.”
Before he could say more and risk crossing the boundaries between teacher and student and professionalism, the receiver in her hand pealed, splintering the quiet of the night.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“PLEASE…LETME SPEAK to my son… .” Morgan’s voice broke as she started to cry, something she couldn’t help in spite of her father standing over her as she answered the phone.
Cal was there, too, somewhere behind her in the living room. Her knees were weak and wobbly as she stood at the card table, watching Detective Warner’s face.
He nodded, mouthed that she was doing fine, and then the voice that she recognized from earlier that night—a voice she somehow knew was going to live within her forever—spoke again.
“Good, you’re begging for the life of your loved one. Just like I did.”
Click.
Morgan’s stomach felt like lead as Detective Warner listened to the earbud that connected him to his people and then shook his head.
“They got the tower,” he announced. “A different one. It’s forty miles away.”
“He’s moving,” George Lowen said.
“Or his cell phone provider has good range and other towers had conflicting signals,” Grace said from the doorway leading into the bedrooms. “You heard what he said earlier, George, depending on cell providers—”
“It’s the middle of the night,” George interrupted, his impatience evident in spite of the soft tone he used to address his wife. “There can’t be that much business out there. He’s moving south.” George left the room, cell phone to his ear, barking orders to someone to get cars on every road going south out of Tyler.
Cal Whittier was behind her, a steady presence, and still Morgan struggled to maintain composure as panic surged through her. She looked at Detective Warner.
“We’ve got officers combing south, as well, Ms. Lowen. And we’ve notified law enforcement within a six-state radius. The Amber Alert has gone out nationally. We’ll find him.”
She nodded. “You have to bring him home to me. You have to.”
“We will, ma’am.”
She wanted to believe him.
* * *
ANOTHERCALLCAME in an hour later.
“Your son is crying for you.” Click.
Looking helplessly at Detective Warner, Morgan was crying, too.
* * *
BY 6:00 A.M. Morgan had fielded a total of five calls originating from towers on a southward route. Sometime in the small hours of the morning another detective, a woman, had shown up, offering to relieve Detective Warner. He’d declined.
George had spent the night in the kitchen, except for the occasional trek into the living room to confer with Rick Warner or to witness a phone call.
“I’ve got half a million sitting in wait,” he told Warner just after six. “I can put my hands on another two and a half by noon.”
The look of relief on Morgan’s face was palpable—as if that money sitting out there would ensure her son’s safe return, when, in fact, there hadn’t been a single request for ransom.
Only a slow and cruel torture of a beautiful young woman whose biggest sin, as far as Cal could see, was allowing herself to believe that she was in any way to blame for her son’s abduction.
“I’ve arranged for a press release at seven,” George continued, the more pronounced lines on his face the only visible sign of having spent a sleepless night. He’d shed his jacket at some point. Cal had seen it draped over the back of a kitchen chair when he’d made a trip to the bathroom. And the knot of Lowen’s tie was a little loose, but neatly so. His black wingtips still glistened as though they’d been freshly polished and the obviously expensive slacks bore few wrinkles. “I’m going to be offering a million-dollar cash reward to anyone who provides the information that brings my grandson home.”
Detective Warner stood. “Let me talk to my captain,” he said. “As you know from our conversation last night, he’s planning to go to the press in a few hours. We can’t stop you from making your own announcement, but I know he’s going to want you to coordinate the press release with the department. We’re trained to deal with these types and know the things to say that get the best response the most times. And regardless of that, it would be best for us to make a joint statement—puts more pressure on the perp if he knows we’ve joined forces—and the captain’s going to insist that you run the responses through us. Anything else will jeopardize our investigation and potentially put your grandson in more harm.”
Cal stood next to Morgan, whose weary gaze moved between her father and the detective with whom they’d all spent the night. She turned to Cal and he lowered his head to catch her whispered, “This is so my father, and I hate it. What if his high-handedness makes things worse? But I’m grateful, too. Am I nuts?”
“No. He’s out of line. But if he gets results, then he’s doing the right thing.”
Grace, having come in from the bedroom each time the phone rang, raised her head from the back of the chair to follow her husband’s exchange.
“Tell your captain that I’ll agree to a joint conference if your people can be ready at seven. And he cannot insist on anything. However, if you can have a contact response team ready to begin receiving calls within the hour, and will agree to let my representatives be privy to each and every response as well, I will agree to sending all possible leads to the care of the police. We realize the offer of a reward will bring out false leads and we’ll need the manpower to follow each of them until we can weed them out. I want my grandson back.”
Warner nodded and reached for the cell phone he’d been using all night to confer with his team.
“And tell him that I will make available to him any monies he needs to get this done,” George added, leaving the room without a glance at his daughter.
He motioned for Grace to join him, though, and with a quick squeeze of Morgan’s shoulder as she passed them, the older woman followed her husband from the room.
Morgan’s lips and chin were trembling and Cal knew that unless Sammie Lowen was found safe and sound, this was one of life’s pains that would not get better with time.
* * *
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.
* * *
“YOUREALLYDON’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.
* * *
HALFANHOUR 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.
“That’s right, he does.” Cal turned around, his face darkened with stubble, his eyes slightly puffy from lack of sleep, and still his smile was warm and nurturing and filled with a peculiar understanding—as though he not only saw her but felt her, too.
“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
GEORGEWASONthe 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.
* * *
MORGANCOULDHARDLY 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.

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Tara Quinn

Тип: электронная книга

Жанр: Современные любовные романы

Язык: на английском языке

Издательство: HarperCollins

Дата публикации: 16.04.2024

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О книге: Twenty-five years ago…a mysterious crime was committed in Comfort Cove, Massachusetts. Frank Whittier was accused–but never charged. And it ruined his life.Now…Cal Whittier, Frank′s son, is determined to protect him, to safeguard his father′s identity. After years on the run, they finally have their lives on an even keel, with Cal teaching at a college in Tennessee. Two things could change all that.First, a cop in Comfort Cove starts looking into the case again. And second, Cal gets involved with single mother Morgan Lowen. He has plenty of reasons to avoid her–not the least of which is that she′s an adult student in one of his classes. And in Cal′s situation, any relationship is risky. Still…it could be the best risk he′s ever taken!

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