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By then she’d started dating a handsome young law student. Megan didn’t think her sister ever would have married the love of her life until Megan reached adulthood if she hadn’t interfered.
One night when Molly had been busy in the kitchen, she had taken Scott Randall aside and told him bluntly that if he wanted to marry her sister, Megan would be happy to go live with friends for the remaining two years of high school so they wouldn’t have to start married life with an annoying teenage girl underfoot.
Scott had been surprised at first at her bluntness, then had laughed, hugged her, then pulled out of his pocket the ring he planned to give to Molly that very night.
Together, the two of them had worked for two weeks to convince Molly there was no obstacle to her marrying the man of her dreams.
They had all grieved together on 9/11 when their New York firefighter brother had died running into Tower One of the World Trade Center. And Scott and Molly had packed up their family and come to stay for a month in San Diego after Rick’s death.
She knew she relied on her sister’s strength too much. At some point she needed to stand on her own.
But not now. She couldn’t survive this without her sister’s help—and she knew Megan would use up every bit of her emotional reserves if she didn’t convince her to rest.
“Go on home and take it easy. Scott and the kids need you and so does Hailey. I’ll let you know how things are going here.”
Molly looked torn. “Are you sure?”
She nodded firmly. “Go.”
“All right. I’ll take a few hours to check on things at home and make sure nobody’s set the house on fire. You take care of yourself while I’m gone, promise? You need to rest and eat something, honey.”
“I will,” she lied.
Her sister kissed her cheek, and the worry in her eyes took Megan’s breath away. Somehow, seeing the edge of panic in her sister who was usually so calm and in control seemed to magnify Megan’s own gut-wrenching fear.
After her sister left, she crossed to the window above the sink and looked out at the mountains behind her house. As the weather forecasters had warned, a hot, dry wind blew down the mountains, rattling the branches of the crabapple tree outside her kitchen window and fluttering the heads of the daisies and columbines in her flower garden.
People were coming and going in every direction. Megan had never felt so helpless.
This was the first time she had been completely alone since she had called the police and then Molly in the early hours of the morning. It had been hard enough keeping her fear under control in the presence of others. She found it impossible when only in the company of her own terrible thoughts.
Where could he be? Was he safe? Why hadn’t they found him yet?
She knew there were several theories buzzing around the command center. There were no doubt some—like Agent Davis—who suspected she had harmed Cam in some way and then had reported him missing to cover up her heinous crime.
Though it stung to know people might be so cynical, she couldn’t really blame them. She supposed it was logical to look at those closest to the child in cases like this. Knowing that, though, didn’t make the shame of those suspicions any easier to bear.
She knew there were also those who believed Cam might have wandered away. If that was the case, why hadn’t they found him yet? The mountains were vast, but he was just a nine-year-old boy. He couldn’t have wandered that far.
Still, that was far easier to digest than the third alternative, that someone had taken him out of his bedroom for reasons she couldn’t even bear thinking about.
She had no enemies in Moose Springs, no one willing to exact revenge on her through her child. She knew only a few people—some clients, some of her sister’s friends, a handful of people she’d met at church. If this had been a random act, why target Cameron?
Please keep him safe, she prayed silently as a thousand doubts and fears stampeded over her.
“Mrs. Vance? Are you okay?”
She opened her eyes and saw with some degree of consternation that the grim-faced FBI agent had entered the kitchen. He had changed from his suit to jeans and a black T-shirt with FBI on the back and he studied her with an odd look in those icy blue eyes—a strange mix of concern and reluctance, as if he hadn’t expected to find her here.
“No. I’m sorry, but I’m not okay.” She didn’t know if she ever would be again.
“Did your sister leave?”
“I sent her home to get some rest,” she answered. “The press conference exhausted her.”
“Did you watch any of it?”
She nodded. “As much as I could stand. I had to turn it off near the end.”
She had had enough after the media started asking questions about Rick’s death and the stress a grieving widow must be facing as she raised two young children on her own.
“Your sister was a perfect spokesperson—calm and controlled, but impassioned and forceful at the same time.”
“That’s Molly in a nutshell.”
He looked as if he wanted to say something else and continued to study her with that probing look she found so uncomfortable.
“Was there something you needed, Agent Davis?” she asked when the silence between them stretched on a little too awkwardly. She deliberately used his title and that seemed to jar him back to awareness.
He blinked. “Right. I came in for a drink. That hot wind out there is a killer.”
Between the rain of the night before and the hot dry wind today, conditions couldn’t have been more unfavorable for tracking one missing little boy.
“I hope the searchers are keeping hydrated.”
“They’re all under strict orders, eight ounces of water for every hour they’re out in the sun.” He paused. “You know they had to call off the search dogs, don’t you?”
She nodded tightly. She had been devastated when Daniel Galvez had told her the news, explaining that the swirling wind and the volunteer searchers were all muddying the scent and the dogs hadn’t been able to pick anything up.
“The handlers will take them out again tonight after they’ve rested, when it’s cooler and the wind dies down,” Agent Davis said. “They might have better luck then.”
Nighttime. She couldn’t bear to think of Cam being out there somewhere in the dark, alone and wanting his mother. Even more frightening, each tick of the clock was one more minute he spent without his life-saving seizure medication.
“Do you know anything about epilepsy, Agent Davis?”
He finished a swallow of his water before answering. “Some. My first partner had a sister with it.”
“My son suffers from grand mal seizures. After much trial and error, we’ve been lucky to find a medicine combination that has worked for him for the last few years. As long as he takes his meds twice a day, his seizures are controlled. He’s now missed one dose. By this evening he’ll have missed two doses. He’s out there somewhere, and every moment that passes until we find him puts him in more jeopardy of having a seizure that could kill him.”
Chapter 4
She had nothing to do with her son’s disappearance.
Cale wasn’t sure exactly what convinced him in her impassioned speech. He only knew that as he listened to her, he realized he could never believe she was hiding anything about her son or her treatment of him.
Megan Vance was exactly as she seemed—a frightened mother worried for her child. He would bet his reputation on it.
He had put his trust in the wrong people a few times before. He didn’t know anybody in the Bureau who hadn’t made some mistakes. But something told him, without any shadow of doubt, that this wouldn’t be one of those times.
He believed her. Though he had tried to keep an open mind and consider the possibility that she might have harmed her son and filed a false missing persons report, he just couldn’t buy it. Nothing in her background or in her behavior set off any red flags.
Not only did he want to trust her, he wanted to help her find whatever measure of peace might be possible under the circumstances.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Vance,” he said quietly. “I know this is terrible for you. But there are hundreds of people out there doing everything possible to find your son before that happens.”
She nodded tightly and let out a shaky breath. “I know that. This waiting is just so horrible.”
He had seen it in every one of those seventy-nine missing child cases he had worked. Sometimes parents only had to wait and hour or two. Others waited days, holding out a frantic hope only to see it cruelly dashed when their child’s body was found.
He thought of Lynn and Sam McKinnon, the parents of his partner Gage. Their daughter Charlotte had been stolen from them at age three from their Las Vegas front yard. For nearly twenty-four years, they had never given up hope of finding her, though the girl’s disappearance had haunted the family every day for decades.
And then, when they should have lost all hope, Charlotte had been miraculously returned to them.
The McKinnons had lost their daughter’s childhood, but they had her back with them again. He knew plenty of parents who still waited and would probably never find the answers they sought.
He could only hope Megan Vance wouldn’t be one of them.
“You shouldn’t be waiting alone. Isn’t there someone who could sit with you?”
Someone besides me, he thought. An FBI agent who had spent years slogging through the absolute worst humanity dished out against the innocent was probably not the most comforting companion for a parent in crisis looking for hope and encouragement.
Her lovely features twisted into a grimace. “I sent everyone away. I swear, if one more person pats my hand and asks me how I’m holding up, I’m going to rip somebody’s eyeballs out.”
He blinked rapidly, surprised to find himself smiling a little. After the last two weeks, he hadn’t been sure he would be able to find anything to smile about again. How strange that he should find it in the frustrated words of a terrified mother.
He leaned a hip against the counter. “Do me a favor and keep your hands in your pockets, then, just in case I happen to forget that I’ve been duly warned.”
Though she didn’t smile in return, the tightness of her features eased a little.
They lapsed into silence and he sipped his water, wishing he had some comfort to offer. His mind pored over the facts of the case, his working theory right now that the boy had climbed out on his own.
She might be able to shed some light on a few inconsistencies in the case.
“Mrs. Vance—”
“Megan, please,” she said.
“Megan.” It was a lovely name, one that, combined with her green eyes and vibrant hair, made him think of fairy sprites and rolling fields of clover and…
He broke off the thought. Where the hell had that come from? He was here to do a job, not suddenly wax poetic over a woman’s name.
Annoyed at himself, his voice came out more brusque than he intended. “I know Cameron had epilepsy. Do you think that hinders his physical abilities at all?”
Her brow furrowed. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“How athletic is your son?”
She sighed. “More than I have ever been comfortable with, if you want to know the truth. Because of his condition, I’ve always been a little overprotective, afraid he’ll have a seizure in the middle of doing something physical and hurt himself. It’s easy to forget that beyond his epilepsy, he’s just a typical boy who loves sports. Everything physical—soccer, basketball, baseball. You name it.”
“I noticed your son has some pictures in his room of your late husband in climbing gear.”
She smiled, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I guess you could say Rick was an adrenaline junkie. He always skied black diamond runs, kayaked Class Five rapids and climbed any route above a 5.8.”
There were some who would put Cale in that same category. When he wasn’t working, he was usually heading to southern Utah to bike the slickrock or go canyoneering through the slots. Adrenaline junkie was probably an accurate term.
“What about you?” he asked Megan.
A corner of her mouth lifted, though the worry in her eyes robbed the expression of any semblance to a smile. Seeing her halfhearted effort still gave him a catch in his chest and he was astonished to find himself wondering what a full-on smile from her would look like.
“I knit, Agent Davis. That’s about as exciting as I get.”
“You never joined your husband when he climbed?”
She shrugged. “I went along a few times when Rick and I were first dating. Trying to be a good girlfriend, you know, interested in the things he liked to do. But I’m not crazy about heights, and he figured that out pretty quickly and wouldn’t let me harness up anymore. After that, I just took along a book, found a shady spot and tried not to get too nervous about watching him conquer some tricky cornice or something. Why are you asking about climbing?”
He trusted her, he thought again. She deserved to know the direction the investigation was taking them. “Can you come outside with me to take a look at something?”
She looked puzzled but rose immediately and followed him out the back door and around the side of the house toward Cameron’s bedroom.
“You told Sheriff Galvez the alarm system was set and the dead bolt was locked on the outside doors, correct?” he asked as they walked.
“Yes.”
“Are you positive about that?”
“Absolutely. I double-checked them when I woke up, before I found Cam missing. I always do when I wake up in the night. I’m still a city girl at heart, I guess.”
“If that’s true, the only other exit is out the window. You told the sheriff that when you found Cameron wasn’t in bed the window was open but the screen was in place, right?”
“That’s right.”
“The state crime scene detective has determined the screen was in backward, as if someone replaced it from the outside. That’s consistent with the window-as-exit-route theory, but we can’t find any evidence on the ground of ladder impressions. It’s always a possibility the rain may have washed it away. Or Cameron may have taken another route down.”
“Like what?”
He pointed to the discovery he’d made earlier with Wilhelmina Carson. “Take a look at those holes there. What do they look like?”’
She frowned. “I don’t know. Termites?”
He caught his smile before it could even start. If those were termite holes, the whole house was in serious trouble. “Look at how uniformly round they are, and the placement of them.”
She stuck a finger in the lowest one, the same one he had used to launch upward. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
He sighed, his shoulder already crying out in protest at what he knew he would have to demonstrate again. He slipped off his shoes and socks again and used the finger holes to scale the wall, stopping a few lengths below where he’d climbed with Willy.
When he dropped to the ground, she stared at him as if he had just stripped naked and cartwheeled across her flower garden.
“You can’t honestly believe Cam used those tiny holes to climb out of a second-story window?”
