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Only it felt as though several minutes had passed, and the lights still weren’t coming on. Maybe it had only been seconds. But even seconds were too long in a blackout like this. She swayed against the remembered images of hands grabbing her in the night, of her dead friend Whitney and a teenage girl whose life and death had been relegated to a dusty cold case file.
“Stop it.” Rubbing at the bruise forming on her hip, letting the soreness clear her mind, Katie forced her eyes open, willing her vision to focus in the darkness and her memories to blur. Her work took her to the past, but she lived in the here and now. With Tyler. He’d be frightened of the pitch-black, too. She had to find her son. “Think, woman,” she challenged herself. “Tyler?”
But the only change in the shroud of blackness was her brain finally kicking into gear.
“Ugh. You’re an idiot.” Rational thought finally returned and she pulled out her phone, adjusting the screen to flashlight mode to make sure someone could see her before shining it up toward the tech booth in the balcony and shouting again. “Lights, please? Doug?” Her light wasn’t that powerful, but the booth looked dark, too. “Is anybody up there? I’m on my way out. My son’s here, too. Please.”
She waited in silence for several more seconds before she heard a soft click from the stage. She turned and saw the ropes of running lights that marked the edge and wings of the performance space had come on. This way, they beckoned. Really? That was the help she was going to get? Put in place to help the actors find their way offstage during a blackout at the end of a scene, the small red bulbs barely created a glow in the shadows.
“Thanks! For nothing,” she added under her breath, pointing her phone light to the floor to illuminate the stairs she climbed to get onto the stage. Somebody with a twisted sense of humor must be trying to teach her a lesson about her tardiness. Up here, at least, she could follow the dimly lit path the actors did, and she ended up pushing through the side curtains to get to the backstage doors and greenroom and dressing areas beyond.
Her stomach twisted into a knot when she pushed open the heavy firewall door. It was dark back here, too. Her annoyance with Doug turned to trepidation in a heartbeat. “This isn’t funny,” she called out. Where had everybody gone? Where was her son? “Tyler? Sweetie, answer me.”
She kicked the doorstop to the floor to prop the steel door open. Okay. If somebody wanted to spook her, wanted to teach her a lesson about keeping others late at the theater, he or she had succeeded.
But with her son missing, she couldn’t allow either fear or anger to take hold. Katie breathed in deeply, waiting until she could hear the silence over the thumping of her heart before following her light into the greenroom, or cast waiting area. Turning her phone to the wall, she found the light switch and lifted it. Nothing.
Had someone forgotten to pay the light bill? Was the college saving money by turning off the electricity after ten? She glanced back toward the stage. The running lights were still glowing. Even if they were battery-powered, someone had to have turned them on. And she knew she hadn’t imagined those footsteps earlier. She wasn’t alone.
“Tyler, honey, if you’re playing some kind of game, this isn’t funny.” She shouted for the security guard who worked in the building most nights. “Mr. Thompson?”
Was Doug Price playing a trick on her for turning him down again? Did he think she’d be freaked out enough that she’d run to him and expect him to be her hero? If that was what this was about... Her blood heated, chasing away the worried chill. Oh, she was so never going out with that guy. “Tyler? Where are you?”
Why didn’t he answer? Had he fallen asleep? Had something happened to him?
Uh-uh. She wasn’t going there.
Katie shined her light into the men’s dressing room. Lights off. Room empty. She sorted through the costumes hanging on the rack there, peeked beneath the counter. Nothing. She opened the door to the ladies’ dressing room, too, and repeated the search.
“Tyler Rinaldi, you answer—”
A boot dropped to the floor behind the rack of long dresses and ghostly costumes. Katie cried out as the layers of polyester, petticoats, wool and lace toppled over on top of her. Hands pushed through the cascade of clothes, knocking her down with them. “Hey! What are you...? Help! Stop!”
She hit the tile floor on her elbows and bottom, and the impact tingled through her fingers, jarring loose her grip on the phone. Her assailant was little more than a wisp of shadow in the dark room. But there was no mistaking the slamming door or the drumbeat of footsteps running across the concrete floor of the work space and storage area behind the stage.
Katie’s thoughts raced as she clawed her way free through the pile of fallen clothes and felt around in the darkness to retrieve her phone. Had she interrupted a robbery? There were power tools for set construction and sound equipment and some antiques they were using as props. All those things should be locked up, but an outsider might not know that. Was this some kind of college prank by a theater student? Could it be something personal? She wouldn’t have expected Doug to get physical like that. Had she offended someone else?
Her fingers brushed across the protective plastic case of her phone and she snatched it up. She pushed to her feet and smacked into the closed door. “Let me out!” She slapped at the door with her palm until she found the door handle and pulled it open. “Stay away from my son! Tyler!”
But by the time she ran out into the backstage area in pursuit of the shadow, the footsteps had gone silent. The exit door on the far side of the backstage area stood wide open and a slice of light from the sidewalk lamp outside cut clear across the room. After so long in the darkness with just the illumination from her phone, Katie had to avert her eyes from even that dim glow. She saw nothing more than a wraithlike glimpse of a man slipping through the doorway into the winter night outside.
Following the narrowing strip of light, she stumbled forward, dodging prop tables and flats until the door closed with a quiet click and she was plunged into another blackout.
She stopped in her tracks. The one thing she hated more than the darkness was not knowing if her son was safe. And since she couldn’t find him...
She pushed a command on her phone and raised it to her lips. “Call Trent.”
Inching forward without any kind of light now, she counted off each ring of the telephone as she waited for her strong, armed, utterly reliable friend to pick up. She thought she could make out the red letters of the exit sign above the door by the time Trent cut off the fourth ring and picked up.
“Hey, sunshine,” he greeted on a breathless gasp of air. “It’s a little late. What’s up?”
Oblivious to the current irony of his nickname for her, Katie squeezed her words past the panic choking her throat. “I’m at the theater... The lights...” She bumped into the edge of a flat and shifted course. “Ow. Damn it. I can’t see...”
A warm chuckle colored the detective’s audible breathing. “Did you leave your car lights on again? Need me to come jump-start it?”
“No.” Well, technically, she didn’t know that, but she didn’t think she had.
“Flat tire? Williams College is a good twenty minutes from here, but I could—”
“Trent. Listen to me. There is some kind of weird...” As his deep inhales and exhales calmed, she heard a tuneless kind of percussive music and a woman’s voice laughing in the background. The man is breathless from exertion, Katie. Get a clue. “Oh, God,” she mumbled as realization dawned and embarrassment warmed her skin. “I’m so sorry. Is someone with you?”
Instead of answering her question, Trent’s tone changed from winded amusement to that steely deep tone that resonated through his chest and reminded her he was a cop. “Weird? How? Are you all right? Is Tyler okay?”
Trent Dixon was on a date. He might be in the middle of more than a date. She’d forgotten about setting him up with that friend from the coffee shop a few weeks back. Trent wasn’t her knight in shining armor to call whenever she had a problem she couldn’t fix. He wasn’t Tyler’s father and he wasn’t her boyfriend. Trent was just the good guy who’d grown up across the street and had a hard time saying no to her. Knowing that about him, because she was his friend, too, she’d worked really hard not to take advantage of his good-guy tendencies and protective instincts. “Is that Erin Ballard? I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. You have company.”
“I dropped Erin off an hour ago after dinner. I stopped by the twenty-four-hour gym because I needed to work off some excess energy. And it’s too cold to go for a run outside.” He paused for a moment, wiping down with a towel or catching his breath. “Apparently, I’m not the only night-owl fitness freak in KC.”
He felt energized after his date with Erin? Was that excess energy a code for sexual frustration? Had he wanted something more from Erin besides dinner and conversation? Or had he gotten exactly what he wanted and was now on some kind of endorphin high that wouldn’t let him sleep? The momentary stab of jealousy at the thought of Trent bedding the willowy blonde she’d introduced him to ended as she tripped over the leg of a chair in the darkness. “Damn it.”
“Katie?”
“I’m sorry.” She should be thinking of her son, not Trent. Not any misplaced feelings of envy for the woman who landed him. Tyler was the only person who mattered right now. And a panicked late-night call to a man she had no claim on wasn’t going to help. “Never mind. I’m sorry to interrupt your evening. It’s late and I need to get Tyler home to bed. Tell Erin hi for me.”
“Katie Lee Rinaldi,” Trent chided. “Why did you call me?”
“I’ll handle it myself.”
“Handle what? Damn it, woman, talk to me.”
“Sorry. I don’t need you to rescue me every time I make a mistake. Enjoy your date.”
“I’m not on a... Katie?”
“Good night.” She disconnected the call, ending the interrogation.
Seconds later, the phone vibrated in her hand. The big galoot. He’d called her right back. Not only did she feel guilty for interrupting his evening, but now she realized just how crazy she’d sounded. Practically perfect Erin Ballard would never panic like this and make a knee-jerk call to a friend for help.
Pull it together and think rationally. She should simply call 9-1-1 and report a break-in or say that an intruder had vandalized the lights in the theater. She could call Uncle Dwight. But as Kansas City’s DA, it would only be a matter of minutes before half the police department knew that she’d lost her son and wasn’t fit to be his mother.
Katie inhaled a deep breath, pushing aside that option as a last resort. She didn’t ever want to be labeled that impulsive, needs-to-be-rescued woman she’d been as a teenager again. Katie Rinaldi stood on her own two feet. She took care of her own son. The two of them would never end up like the girl in that file again.
“Tyler!” With her phone on flashlight mode once more, she hurried as quickly as she dared toward the exit sign. “If you are playing some kind of game with me, mister, I’m grounding you until you’re eighteen.”
Silence was her only answer.
Had Tyler gotten tired of waiting for his flaky, work-obsessed mother and headed on out to the car? Or was he still inside someplace, trapped in the darkness like she was? Why didn’t he answer? Could he answer?
First that damn case file and now this? She couldn’t stop the nightmarish memory this time. Her feet turned to lead. Katie didn’t have to close her eyes to remember the hand over her mouth. The prick of a needle in her arm. Her limbs going numb. Cradling her swollen belly and crying out for her baby as she collapsed into a senseless heap. The night she’d been abducted she’d gone to help Whitney and wound up in the same mess herself. A few weeks later, she’d given birth to Tyler in a sterile room with no one to hold her hand or urge her to breathe, and she’d nearly given up all hope of surviving.
But the tiny little boy the kidnappers laid in her arms for a few seconds had changed everything, giving her a reason to survive, a reason to escape, a reason to keep fighting.
If anything happened to her son...
If he’d been taken from her again...
Finally. Her palm flattened against ice-cold steel. Burying her fears and summoning her maternal strength, Katie shoved open the back door. A blast of bitter cold and snowy crystals melting against her nose and cheeks cleared her thoughts. “Tyler!”
It was brighter outside the theater, even though it was night. The campus lights were on, and each lamppost was adorned with shiny silver wreaths that shimmered with the cold, damp wind. The rows of lights illuminated the path down into the woods behind the auditorium and marked the sidewalk that led around the back of the theater to the parking lot on the north side. New snow was falling, capturing the light from the lamps and reflecting their orange glow into the air around her.
There were dozens of footprints in the first layer of snow from where the cast and crew had exited out to their cars. But there was one set of man-size prints leading down the walkway into the trees, disappearing at the footbridge that arched over the creek at the bottom of the hill. Good. Run. Whoever had been in the darkened building with her was gone.
But the freezing air seeped right into her bones when she read the hastily carved message in the snow beside the tracks.
Stop before someone gets hurt.
She shivered inside her coat. “Gets hurt?” She looked out into the woods, wondering if the man who’d trapped her in the dressing room was still here, watching. “Stop what? What do you want? Tyler?”
Confusion gave way to stark, cold fear when she zeroed in on the impression of a small, size-five tennis shoe, left by a brown-haired boy who hated to wear his winter boots. She hoped. The prints followed the same path as the senseless message. “Tyler!”
Thinking more than panicking now, Katie searched the shadows near the door until she found a broom beside the trash cans there. She wedged the broom handle between the door and frame in case the footprints were a false hope and she needed to get back inside the theater and search some more. She followed the smaller track down the hill. Had the man taken her son? Convinced him to come along with him to find his missing mother? Had she been stuck inside the building for that long?
But suddenly, the boy-size footprints veered off into the trees. Katie stepped knee-deep into the drift next to the sidewalk, ignored the snow melting into her jeans and headed into the woods. “Tyler!”
She heard a dog barking from somewhere in the distance. Oh, no. There was one thing she knew could make her son forget every bit of common sense she’d taught him. The boy-size prints were soon joined by a set of paw prints half the size of her fist. Both tracks ran back up the hill toward the parking lot, and Katie followed. “Please be chasing that stupid dog. Please don’t let anyone have taken my son. Tyler!”
The trail led her back to the sidewalk and disappeared around the corner of the building. Katie broke into a run once she cleared the snow among the trees and followed the tracks into the open expanse of asphalt and snow. She was almost light-headed with relief when she spotted the boy in the dark blue parka, playing with a skinny, short-haired collie mix in the parking lot. “Tyler!”
A blur of tan and white dashed off into the woods, followed by clouds of hot, steamy dog breath and a boy’s dejected sigh.
Thank God. Tyler was safe.
Sparing one moment of concern for the familiar collarless stray disappearing into the snowy night, Katie ran straight to her son and pulled him into her chest for a tight hug. She kissed the top of his wool stocking cap, hugged him tighter and kissed him again. “Oh, thank goodness. Thank goodness, sweetie.”
“Mo-om,” Tyler whined on two different pitches before pushing enough space between them for him to tilt his face up to hers. “You scared him away.”
Katie eased her grip around her son’s slim shoulders and brought her mittened hands up to cup his freckled cheeks and look down into those bright blue eyes that matched her own. “I was so scared. There was a blackout inside the theater and I couldn’t find you.” Since running across the parking lot in panic mode and hugging the stuffing out of him had probably already worried him enough, Katie opted to leave out any mention of the cryptic message in the snow or the man who’d pushed her down in the dressing room. “I kept calling for you, but you didn’t answer. What are you doing out here?”
“Feeding Padre. Doug told me he was out here again tonight, so I came to see him.”
“Doug did?” Why would the director send her child out of the theater on such a bitter night?
“He said he’d tell you where I was.” But Doug hadn’t. “I think Padre’s hungry, so I saved my peanut butter sandwich from lunch for him.”
Still feeling uneasy, her breath came in ragged puffs while Tyler knelt down to stuff an empty plastic bag into the book bag at his feet. Katie looked all around the well-lit but empty lot to verify that her red Kia was the only vehicle there and that no one else was loitering about. If Doug had meant to tell her Tyler’s whereabouts, he’d forgotten amid the busyness of shutting down a tech rehearsal and had apparently gone home without giving her mother’s concern a second thought. Maybe the mix-up was all perfectly innocent. But if he’d done it on purpose...
“Come on, sweetie. We need to go.” Katie draped her arm around Tyler’s shoulders when he stood back up and hurried him along beside her to the car. “Didn’t you eat your lunch?”
“Most of it. But I can always have a bowl of cereal when we get home, and Padre doesn’t have anybody to feed him.”
“Padre?” She swapped her phone for the keys in her coat pocket and unlocked the car.
Tyler opened the passenger door and climbed inside on his knees, tossing his book bag into the backseat. “Did you see the ring of white fur around his neck? It looks like the collar Pastor Bill wears, and everybody calls him Padre.”
Katie closed the door and hurried around the front of the car to get in behind the wheel. Naming a dog she knew he couldn’t have was probably a bad thing, but she was more worried about blackouts and intruders and not being able to find her son. She placed her bag in the backseat beside Tyler’s, locked the doors and quickly started the engine so she could crank up the heat. “Why didn’t you wait for me? Or come get me as soon as you’d changed? I’m sorry I got distracted, but I was sitting out in the auditorium. I would have come to feed the dog with you. You shouldn’t be out here by yourself, especially at night.”
Tyler turned around and plopped down into his seat. “I know. But I wanted to see Padre before one of the other kids got to him first. He likes me, Mom. He lets me pet him and doesn’t bite me or anything. Wyatt already has a dog, and Kayla’s family has two cats. So he should be mine.”
She grimaced at the sad envy for two of the other children in the play. “Tyler—”
“When everybody else started to leave, I tried to get back in, but the door was locked. So I stayed outside to play with Padre.”
“Is that the real story? I don’t mean the dog. Doug sending you outside? Getting locked out?” She pulled off her mitten and reached across the car to cup his cheek. Chilled, but healthy. She was the only one having heart palpitations tonight. “There wasn’t anyone left in the cast or crew to let you back in?”
“Maybe if I had my own cell phone, I could have called you.”
“Really?” She pushed his stocking cap up to the crown of his head and ruffled his wavy dark hair between her fingers. “I was scared to death that something had happened to you, and you’re playing that card?”
He fastened his seat belt. “I put a phone on my Christmas list.”
“We talked about this. Not until middle school.”
“Johnny Griffith has one.”
“I’m not Johnny Griffith’s mom.” Katie straightened in her seat to fasten her own seat belt. “You’re up past your bedtime. Let’s go home before your toes freeze.”
“Did Doug ask you out again?” Tyler asked. “Is that why he wanted to get rid of me?”
She glanced over at the far too wise expression on her son’s freckled face. “He did. I told him no again, too.”
Tyler tugged off his mittens and held his pink fingers up in front of the heating vent. “I thought maybe you were still in there talking to him. He’s a good director and all, but I don’t want him to be my dad.”
Katie reached for Tyler’s hands and pulled them between hers to rub some love and warmth into them. “He won’t be.” Not that he’d had a chance, anyway. But endangering her son certainly checked him off the list. “I can guarantee that.”
“Good.” When he’d had enough of a warming reassurance, Tyler pulled away and kicked his feet together, knocking snow off his shoes onto the floor mat. “Do you think Padre’s toes will freeze out there tonight? Dogs have toes, right?”
“They do. But he must have dug himself a snow cave or found someplace warm to sleep if he’s survived a whole week outdoors in the wintertime. I think he’ll be okay. I hope he will be.” Katie smiled wryly before turning on the windshield wipers and clearing away the wet snow. She shifted the car into gear, but paused with her foot on the brake to inspect the empty parking lot one more time. Maybe Tyler hadn’t been in any danger. Maybe she hadn’t really been, either. But why leave that message? And if the intruder had run along the pathway, had Tyler seen him either sneak into the building or run out of it? The man could easily have parked in another area of the campus so she wouldn’t be able to spot him. But could Tyler have gotten a description that might put him in some kind of future harm? Her grip tightened around the steering wheel. “Did anybody talk to you while you were out here by yourself?”
“Wyatt and Kayla said goodbye. Kayla’s dad asked me if you were still here. I told him as long as the car was, you were, too.”
She’d make a point to thank Mr. Hudnall for checking on her son tomorrow night. “I meant a stranger. Anybody you didn’t know? Was anyone watching you or following you?”
Tyler dropped his head back in dramatic groan. “I know about stranger danger. I would have shouted really loud or run really fast or gotten into the car with Kayla’s dad because I know him.”
“Okay, sweetie. Just checking.”
He sat up straight and turned in his seat. “But if I had a phone—”
“Maybe later.” She laughed and lifted her foot off the brake. “I need to talk it over with Aunt Maddie and Uncle Dwight first. We’re on their phone plan.”
