“Don’t you have anything better to do than follow me around?” Megan snapped. “I don’t need a watchdog.”

Caleb raised an eyebrow. “How about a friend?”

“You’re not my friend. We both know that. Look, Agent Davis, I know the drill. I’ve watched enough television to know that you have to consider me a suspect. I have no problem with that. Take my DNA, my fingerprints, whatever. But please hurry, so you can quickly rule me out and focus on finding my son…”

Her chin wobbled a little and she seemed to be fighting for control. It was too much for him, more than he could handle after the dramatic emotions of the day. With a sigh he reached for her and pulled her into his arms. She was perfect there. Soft and womanly, all the things he had been telling himself he could manage without. Her arms slid around his waist, and she rested her head against his chest. Something hard and cold inside him seemed to crack apart, leaving only sweet, healing peace.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

RaeAnne Thayne lives in a graceful old Victorian house nestled in the rugged mountains of northern Utah, along with her husband and two young children. Her books have won numerous honours, including several readers’ choice awards and a RITA® Award nomination by the Romance Writers of America. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers. She can be reached through her website at www.raeannethayne.com or at PO Box 6682, North Logan, UT 84341, USA.

High-Risk Affair

RAEANNE THAYNE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Prologue

Being a special operative was hard, dangerous work but he wasn’t afraid to sacrifice for his country.

On his belly in the dirt, pitch-black darkness pressing in on all sides, Cameron Vance adjusted his night vision goggles and tried his best to get his bearings.

The goggles didn’t really work well here in the deep mining tunnels and he could barely see where he was going, but he knew he’d been in this part before. He recognized the rusted old mine cart and the fork in the tunnel. He pulled out the small penlight and found the small white arrow he’d drawn with chalk on an earlier trip to point the way out.

By the muted sounds he could hear ahead, he knew he was close to his mission objective—infiltrating a hideout full of Tangos and then taking them down.

They weren’t supposed to be there. For the last week, he had seen lights flickering up here on the mountain where there shouldn’t be any. Finally a few nights earlier, he decided he would have to investigate. It wouldn’t be easy. He would have to plan an elaborate deception, a daring escape, but he knew he had no choice.

It was his duty and obligation as a loyal soldier to look out for his country’s interests.

He had a cover to protect, though, and knew he couldn’t just come and go as he pleased. Finally, when he was sure everyone was asleep, he managed to slip out the window and climb carefully down. He had done it before, but those other times had just been practice. This was for real.

No one had detected his escape. He’d made sure of that. No one could have seen him leave the house or witnessed his careful hike up the mountain, his way lit only by the moonlight and his memory.

He moved to the fork in the tunnel, fueled by the adrenaline pumping through him and the deep certainty that what he did here would make the world a better place.

Others might find the heavy darkness inside the mine shaft a little scary. He knew plenty of guys who probably wouldn’t have the nerve to come in here. But he was a Navy SEAL, a trained fighting machine, and he wasn’t afraid of anything.

As he headed down the shaft, the light grew brighter and his goggles worked much better, casting a greenish glow on everything. He knew right where the Tangos were hiding—the large chamber he had found in an earlier exploration. It would be a perfect staging spot for whatever evil the terrorists might be planning.

It smelled strange here, something harsh and burning. He hadn’t remembered that before. Were they planning some kind of chemical attack? he wondered.

With renewed determination, he moved slowly toward the light, his heart pounding and blood pulsing through him.

He crawled the last fifteen yards on his belly, ignoring the dank stench and the rocks that scraped his skin.

The shaft sloped down into the large chamber, perhaps twenty feet across. He didn’t have the best vantage point from up here, but Cameron didn’t dare inch closer for fear they might see him.

He could hear them clearly enough, anyway.

“I don’t see the problem here,” one said, his voice sharp and angry. “I kept my part of the deal. I’ve been cooking my ass off for two weeks, working in this tomb here. I’m doing all the work and I deserve a hell of a lot more than some lousy quarter cut.”

Cameron frowned. Cooking what?

“You’re getting your fair share. Who’s taking all the risks? I’m the one out there setting up all the deals, working all the angles. I got the ammonia, I made the Mexican connections. Without me, you’d still be in your Beavis and Butt-Head lab cooking your little nickel bags.”

“And without me all you’d have would be a bunch of worthless chemicals.”

“You really think you’re so indispensable?”

The older-sounding man’s voice was low and sent a chill down Cameron’s spine as he crouched in the dirt. That voice seemed familiar, he thought. Where had he heard it before?

“I found this place for you, didn’t I? Nobody’s ever going to find this lab here. It’s perfect. And you have nothing to complain about with the quality of my product. Pure ice, man.”

The other man’s laugh sounded rough. “Hate to break it to you, Wally, but good cooks are thick on the ground. Anybody who can follow a recipe can do it. Hell, my aunt Mabel could do it. And she might not have the very unfortunate habit of sampling the merchandise.”

“Yeah? Well, why don’t you just go drag your aunt Mabel in here to finish this batch? I’m out of here. And maybe I’ll just drop a bug in the Mexicans’ ears about your double-dealing? I doubt they’ll be crazy to know you’ve promised the same shipment to two different parties.”

A long silence filled the mine and Cameron thought about inching forward for a better look at what was going on, but he decided he would be wise to stay put for now.

“Surprised you, didn’t I?” the one named Wally said after a minute. “You didn’t think I knew about your little side deal.”

Cameron listened to their argument with mounting confusion. They didn’t sound like terrorists. What were they talking about? Whatever it was, he thought it would probably be best if he sneaked back out and contacted local authorities. He started to inch down the way he had come, but he’d only gone a few feet when he dislodged a rock. It went rolling down the slope and thudded off the bottom. He could swear his heartbeat sounded like thunder.

“What was that?” A flashlight beamed in his direction, but Cameron slid farther down the incline to avoid the light.

“Probably a rat,” Wally said. “The place is lousy with them.”

“I’m beginning to figure that out,” the other one said in a strange, hard-sounding voice.

Cameron started to slip farther down the slope, intending to make his way back carefully when he heard a strangled cry from the chamber.

“What the hell is this?”

“You’re the smart one. You tell me.”

“What, you going to shoot me now?” Wally’s voice was filled with a panic Cameron suddenly shared. “Come on, man. Put it away. Twenty-five percent of the cut is fine. I was just dicking around with you.”

“That’s your mistake,” the other man said. “I never had much of a sense of humor.”

Suddenly Cam heard a loud bang and then a scream that was cut off abruptly by another bang.

He gasped and instinctively scrambled down the slope, forgetting all about stealth and making far more noise than a good Navy SEAL should.

“Who’s there? Anybody there?”

So much for concealing his presence. He groaned to himself, his stomach in knots. He’d blown it, big-time. He could hear the killer making his way up the incline toward him. He had to hide. He couldn’t make it to the entrance without exposing his location.

Another shaft led off to the left, but he’d never gone that way and didn’t know what he might encounter. He had no choice, though. The man had already killed once. Somehow Cam knew he wouldn’t think twice about doing it again.

He made his way cautiously down the tunnel, careful to make as little noise as possible until he was far enough away that he thought it would be safe to run. He moved as fast as he could, until the night vision goggles were useless and the batteries had faded.

He slid down the side of the tunnel wall into the dirt, his breathing ragged and his heart still racing. He couldn’t think like a Navy SEAL now, on a secret mission to save the world from the bad guys.

For now, he forgot all about his dad, about terrorists, about pretending to be something brave and heroic.

As he stared through the blackness, he could only be what he was—a scared nine-year-old boy who suddenly wanted his mom.

Chapter 1

2:00 a.m.

Megan Vance arose with a jerk, not sure whether the echo of screams in her ears had been real or imaginary.

Fear knotted her insides, every muscle was contracted, and her breathing came harsh and fast. For one wild, panicky moment she was consumed by a single overwhelming need—to check on her children.

She listened intently but heard nothing except the summer rain clicking against the glass of her bedroom window.

After a moment, she sagged back to the pillow, embarrassed at herself. It was only a nightmare, nothing to send her into a panic. She forced herself to relax her muscles one by one and deliberately moderated her ragged breathing until it was slow and even.

She hadn’t had one of those in a while. Though already the details had mercifully faded and she couldn’t remember what had left her so terrified, she knew by the sick feeling still lingering in her stomach it must have been a bad one.

She sat up, scrubbing at her face while the last tendrils of the nightmare uncoiled from around her chest. After Rick had died, she used to have them nearly every night—gruesome, twisted journeys through her subconscious, full of monsters and demons.

She could remember a few of the more vivid dreams and they usually involved the horrible deaths of everyone she knew and loved.

Little wonder, she supposed. She had already lost so much. The roll call of people she had loved and lost seemed to grow longer all the time. Her mother—cancer when Megan was twelve. Her father—a cop killed in the line of duty a year later. Her baby brother Kevin—a New York City firefighter killed on 9/11 in Tower One.

And Rick.

Last month had marked two years since her husband’s death. She wondered when she would stop expecting his phone call in the middle of the night, telling her his SEAL team had been called up to some trouble spot or another.

I’ll be back soon, babe. Love you.

Oh, how she had dreaded those phone calls.

She had lost much but not everything. She still had Cam and Hailey, the joys of her life.

She rolled over onto her back and thought about them. Her children. Hailey, funny and sweet and girlie but with a tough streak that always took Megan by surprise. And Cameron, smart and stubborn and courageous even when he had to endure things no child should have to face.

They had saved her these last two years. The normal routine of mothering them—the car pools and soccer games and doctor’s appointments—had taken the wild edge off her grief and given her something else besides herself to focus on.

She sighed, praying again that moving them away from San Diego to the wilds of Utah had been the right decision for all of them. Her children needed family. She needed family and a support system, and her sister Molly was all she had left.

Moving closer to her and her noisy brood and strong, kind husband had seemed like a stroke of genius, in theory. Her job as a CPA was mobile, and she could find work anywhere helping small businesses with their payroll and accounting.

Rick used to tease her about her obsession with numbers. To a man who jumped out of airplanes and climbed every mountain he could find, she supposed it was an obsession. But Megan enjoyed what she did and was good at it.

In only the few short months they had been in Moose Springs, she had already built up a nice client list. Everything seemed to be working out just as she hoped.

Still, Megan couldn’t help worrying. Oh, Hailey seemed to be adapting all right, but Cameron had been angry about leaving behind all his friends, his soccer team, the climbing wall Rick had built for the children inside their San Diego home.

Most of all, he hadn’t wanted to leave his dad’s SEAL team members, who had taken the boy under their considerable wing after they had lost one of their own.

He would adjust, she told herself again. Lately he seemed to enjoy exploring the foothills around their house and once school started in a few weeks he would make new friends, find a new soccer team, develop new interests.

The wind rattled raindrops against the glass again and Megan sat up, reaching for her robe. She would just peek in on them. That didn’t make her a neurotic mother, just a loving one.

She automatically went to Cameron’s room first. His seizures tended to hit when he was awake but he’d had a few in his sleep.

In the glow of the night-light shaped like a soccer ball, she could see his form under the covers, the blankets over his head as he preferred.

She stood for a moment looking around the room. She always found it a little painful to see this shrine to his father’s memory. Navy recruiting posters covered all the walls and Cam had hung one of Rick’s SEAL T-shirts in a place of honor, along with his father’s picture and the many medals he’d been awarded, both before the Afghanistan helicopter crash that killed him and posthumously.

Her sister thought Megan shouldn’t encourage his obsession with all things military. With his epilepsy, he could never be able to serve in any branch of the service, let alone a physically demanding special forces unit like the SEALs.

But Megan hadn’t the heart to take this away from him, not when it was the only way he knew to connect with the father he had idolized.

With one more look at the bed, she closed the door and walked across the hall to check on Hailey.

Unlike her brother, who liked to sleep like a potato bug all curled up under his covers, six-year-old Hailey sprawled across her bed, her quilt thrown off and her pink ruffly nightgown riding up to her knees.

Her bedroom was like her—pink and girlie, with a cupboard full of Barbies and her American Girl doll on the nightstand, standing guard over the only discordant element in the room, Hailey’s pet rat Daisy.

The rat blinked at her, turned around once in her cage, and went back to sleep. Megan shuddered. She hated the darn thing and had lobbied hard to leave her behind with a classmate back in San Diego, but Hailey wouldn’t be swayed.

She tucked the blanket back up over her daughter, knowing it would be down again in a few moments, then left Hailey’s door ajar.

In the hallway, she contemplated going back to bed but she wasn’t at all sleepy. With her mind racing now, she knew trying to sleep would be futile for some time.

She would go down and make some tea, she decided, and perhaps grab her knitting bag and knit a few rows on her latest project to calm herself and relax enough to go back to sleep.

She walked down the stairs and out of habit checked the dead bolt and the security system.

She started for the kitchen then paused, something niggling at her. The nightmare she couldn’t even remember now had left her unsettled, uneasy. She frowned and turned around, some motherly instinct guiding her back up the stairs to Cameron’s room.

She had learned not to question that intuition. More than once she had been guided to drop whatever she was doing to search for him, only to find him in the grips of a seizure.

His epilepsy had been under control with medication for some time and he had been sleeping soundly five minutes ago, but she knew that could change in an instant.

She studied the shape on the bed under that Army green blanket. Something was off. Though she hated to wake him, she reached for the blanket and tugged it down, then felt her whole world turn ice-cold.

Instead of Cameron’s tousled blond hair and freckled nose, she found a rolled-up sweatshirt. She yanked the blanket off and gasped at the pillows stuffed there to approximate a nine-year-old boy’s shape.

Her son was gone!

4:45 a.m.

“You sure you’re up to this again so soon? I can find somebody else.”

FBI Special Agent Cale Davis turned off his electric razor and flipped up the lighted visor mirror of the agency SUV. “I’m good,” he answered. “I’m glad you called me.”

His partner frowned at Cale’s assured tone as he drove through the predawn darkness through a sparsely populated region of Utah.

“I should have tried a little harder and found someone else.” Gage McKinnon gave a heavy sigh. “Allie’s going to skin me alive when she finds out I called you. You only had two weeks off and you need at least double that after what happened.”

“Leave it, McKinnon. I’m fine. Two weeks was more than enough.”

Gage looked as if he wanted to argue, but he didn’t, much to Cale’s relief. He would prefer talking about anything else but his last case and its horrible ending.

“What else can you tell me about this missing kid?” he said to turn the subject.

The SUV’s headlights illuminated a carved and painted wooden sign for Moose Springs, population three hundred and eleven. Probably some overachieving Boy Scout’s Eagle project, he thought.

The town was about an hour east of Salt Lake City, bordering the Uinta National Forest. He’d been here only once before in an official capacity, in a case involving a good friend, Mason Keller. Unofficially, he had been here many times. Mason and his wife Jane lived on a small ranch nearby and the town had always struck him as clean and friendly. Mayberry R.F.D. in a cowboy hat.

He didn’t want to think something dark and sinister might lurk here. Yet when the FBI called out its Crimes Against Children unit, chances were good all was not as picture-perfect as he wanted to believe here in this quiet community.

“Cameron Vance, nine years old,” Gage answered him after a moment. “Father, Rick Vance, killed in action in Afghanistan. Mother Megan, thirty-two, works out of the home as an accountant. Mom puts the boy to bed at usual time. Goes in to check on him around two and finds him gone, a blanket rolled up to make the casual observer think he’s sleeping away. There was no sign of forced entry and the alarm system was engaged and undisturbed, but there was also no obvious escape route either from the second-story window. No dangling bedsheets, no convenient awning. It’s fifteen feet to the ground, heck of a leap for a nine-year-old kid.”

Not if the kid was a limber little monkey like Charlie Betran, Mason and Jane’s adopted son, Cale thought.

“What compelled the mother to check on him? Does he make a habit of wandering?”

“According to initial reports from local authorities, Megan Vance said she had a nightmare around that time and checked both children out of habit.”

“Any idea what time he disappeared?”

“We’ve got a four-hour window between ten when Mrs. Vance checked on him before going to bed and two when she awoke again.”

“She didn’t hear any suspicious noises?”

“Nothing, just the wind.” McKinnon studied the GPS coordinates on the dashboard unit, then turned at the next street and headed out of town again before going on with his narrative. “After she finds him missing, the mother spends a little time looking around the house and yard, then calls local authorities around oh-three-hundred, who immediately issue an Amber Alert and call us.”

“What makes anybody think a crime has been committed here? Sounds like the kid just sneaked out. It seems a little early in the game for Amber Alerts and calling in the FBI.”

“You’d think,” Gage said, “but this has the potential to be a high-profile case and I think the local authorities want to make sure all their bases are covered from the beginning. They’re running it as a crime scene until they have evidence that it’s not.”

Another high-profile case. Great. Cale closed his eyes. The image of two pretty little girls with dark curls instantly burned behind his eyelids and he jerked them open again.

He wasn’t sure he had the stomach for this again.

“I’m not seeing it from the information you’ve given me. What makes this case stand out?”

“Besides the fact that his father was a national hero who died serving his country, the kid has epilepsy. There’s an urgency here because the mother’s terrified he’s had a seizure somewhere.”

If anyone could find the boy, Gage was the man. His partner was known as The Bloodhound and he specialized in missing children cases. He had an uncanny knack for finding lost kids.

Cale had often wondered if his partner’s own history gave him some kind of sixth sense, some inner eye that guided his actions.

On the other hand, he had his own grim history and his past usually seemed more of a hindrance than a help.

“What do you see as our role here?”

“Purely advisory at this point, providing assistance to the local investigators as needed.”

Judging by the bright flash of emergency vehicles against the night sky, they were approaching the boy’s house. Gage climbed a slight grade and the whole chaotic scene stretched ahead of them.

In the strobing glow from a dozen cop cars and search and rescue vehicles, Cale saw the house was a two-story log structure with a steeply pitched gable on one end and a wide porch along the front.

A basketball standard hung from the detached garage, and two bikes were propped against the porch.

Most of the vehicles were parked some distance from the house. He saw this as a good sign that local authorities had been careful to protect the scene as much as possible.

Gage pulled in next to a van with the logo of one of the local TV stations emblazoned on the side. Then the two of them headed for the house.

They showed their badges to the uniform cop at the door. Once inside, Cale’s gaze was instinctively drawn to a woman on the couch. Though she was surrounded by a bevy of uniformed personnel, somehow she seemed alone in the room.

The mother. It had to be. She was small and red-haired, with a wispy haircut and delicate features that just now looked ravaged.

He could fill a chapel with the faces of all the grieving mothers he’d had to face in his career, but somehow each one managed to score his heart anyway.

He forced himself to turn away from her raw devastation, focusing instead on a dark-haired, muscular man who stood in the center of the action, towering above everyone else.

The Moose Springs sheriff was no stranger to him, and it looked as if Daniel Galvez had the situation well in hand.

Galvez made eye contact with him briefly, then broke off his conversation with the officer and headed in their direction, his big hand outstretched.

“Davis! Sorry I had to drag you boys from the FBI down here already, but we don’t want to miss anything on this one.”

“No problem,” Cale said. “This is my partner, Gage McKinnon.”

The two men shook hands. “I know you don’t have time to babysit us,” Gage began, “but can you just spare a minute to bring us up to speed on the search so far?”

Galvez shook his head. “We’re baffled. The kid seems to have vanished. At this point, we haven’t turned up any signs that anyone else was involved but we just don’t know.”

“What about friends? Could he have snuck out to meet up with someone?”

“He doesn’t have many. His cousins, mostly. Megan and the kids only moved to town a few months ago.”

“What about search dogs?”

“They’re on their way. They’ve been in Wyoming looking for a lost hiker but should be here by the time the sun comes up, when we can mount a full-scale search of the surrounding mountains.”

“What about closer to home?” Cale said with a meaningful look at the mother.

Galvez suddenly looked tired. “I just don’t know. My gut’s saying no. Like I said, the family has only been here a few months, but as far as I can tell there’s nothing in their background to point any fingers to the mother. From all accounts, Megan Vance is a devoted mother who’s had a rough road.”

She certainly looked devastated by her son’s disappearance, Cale thought with another glance at the woman on the couch. But he knew outward appearances could sometimes hide rotten insides.

“You said they’ve only been here a few months,” he said. “Where were they before they moved?”

“San Diego.”

“Why the move?”

“Mrs. Vance’s sister lives about a half mile down the road with her husband and four children,” he answered. “Molly and Scott Randall. I gather Mrs. Vance wanted to be closer to family. It would be tough raising two kids by yourself.”

Sometimes the strain of twenty-four-hour single parenting could make even the most seemingly devoted parent crack. Cale had seen it before and he wasn’t willing to rule anything out yet.

“I’m assuming you want to talk to Megan Vance,” Galvez said.

No. He wanted to stay as far as possible from that traumatized-looking woman on the couch. But he knew his job.

“Definitely.”

His partner gave him a careful look. His shoulder ached. Cale wondered how long it would be before everybody stopped looking at him as if he were a big bundle of unstable plastic explosives just waiting for an ignition source.

He returned Gage’s scrutiny with cool regard, and after a moment the other agent nodded.

“You run the mother. I’ll go talk to the crime scene unit and see if they’ve come up with anything,” McKinnon said.

He headed up the stairs and Cale turned toward the mother. Up close, Megan Vance looked even more fragile. Breakable, like an antique pitcher teetering on the edge of a shelf.

She clasped her hands tightly together on her lap, but he could see even that couldn’t still their trembling. Her whole body shook, he saw as he approached. Not constantly, but every few seconds, a shiver would rack her slight frame.

“Mrs. Vance, I’m Special Agent Caleb Davis with the Salt Lake office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I wonder if I could have a minute of your time.”

The woman next to her bristled. She was older and rounder than Megan Vance but shared the same brilliant green eyes. The sister, he guessed. “She’s told you all what happened a million times already. How many times do you people have to put her through this?”

“Molly, it’s all right,” Megan said, her voice quiet but determined. “Will you grab another cup of coffee for me? Agent Davis?”

He shook his head. The sister looked reluctant, but she rose and left them alone.

Megan Vance faced him, her hands tight together and her remarkable eyes filled with raw emotion. For one insane moment, he was stunned and appalled by his urge to gather her close and promise everything would be all right. He shoved it away.

“I’m very sorry about your son, but I can assure you many excellent people will be helping in the search.”

She drew in a slow breath and when she met his gaze, he could see a layer of steel underneath the pain.

“I don’t need platitudes, Agent Davis. I need action. Why is everyone standing around and not out there looking for my son?”

He had to respect her grit. “It’s very important in cases like this not to go racing off in a hundred different directions and run the risk of trampling over your son’s trail. When the sun comes up in an hour or so, you’ll see everybody here jump into action.”

“I can’t stand that he’s out there in the dark somewhere. I need to be out looking for him.”

Despite his best efforts to remain impartial, the emotion in her voice seemed to slither through his defenses.

“I know it’s tough but the best thing you can do for Cameron right now is to help us narrow the direction of our search. Would you mind going over the timeline with me?”

After a moment, she nodded. “I put him to bed as usual at about 9:00 p.m. He was sleeping soundly at ten when I checked on him—I tucked the blanket up so I know for sure he was in bed at that time. I woke at two and went to check on him and he was gone.”

“What woke you?”

She paused slightly. “I had a nightmare.”

“Is that unusual for you?”

“Not really.”

“And do you usually check your children when you wake from a bad dream in the middle of the night?”

He hadn’t meant to make his questions sound like an interrogation, but her mouth tightened.

“Look, Agent Davis, I know the drill here. I’ve watched enough television to know you have to consider me a suspect. I have no problem with that. None whatsoever. Take my DNA, my fingerprints, whatever. I’ll take a lie detector test or anything else you want. But please hurry, so you can quickly rule me out and focus on finding my son.”

Chapter 2

6:32 a.m.

He was in serious trouble.

Cameron hit the glow on his watch and groaned at the time. His mom was going to have a total cow. Most mornings she got up early to work in her office before he and Hailey woke up. If she checked on him like she usually did, by now she had probably found the stupid wadded blankets he thought had been such a great idea.

It seemed like such a baby thing to do now, something even Hailey could come up with.

If she had checked on him like usual, she must have figured out he was gone. He felt sick to his stomach just thinking about how worried she must be. She totally freaked out if he even walked an aisle away from her at the grocery store.

Had she called the police? Gosh, he hoped so. He thought of that terrible scream and the thud of a body falling and shivered in the cool, damp air, wishing he had the new jacket he’d taken off inside the entrance.

He had been lost in the maze of tunnels for more than four hours, and he had to admit that he was starting to get a little nervous about finding his way out again.

Like an idiot, he had gone way too far into the mine after that gunshot. He had just wanted to escape that ugly scene. By now, he was so turned around he didn’t know which way he’d come.

None of this seemed familiar. These tunnels were more narrow, barely wide enough for him to get through in spots.

He had tried to backtrack but was now more confused than ever.

His night vision goggles were worthless in here with no light to draw on, so he had abandoned them a ways back and pulled his flashlight out of his bag.

He wasn’t completely unprepared. He might have made mistakes, but at least he hadn’t been that stupid. After he first found the mine entrance a few weeks earlier, he had checked out a book on spelunking from the library, slipping it between a book on soccer and a middle reader mystery so his mom wouldn’t see it and suspect anything.

The book said to always wear a helmet for head protection when exploring underground places. A caver could bump his head on a low ceiling if he wasn’t careful.

All he had was his bike helmet so he had used that. He was grateful for it now since he’d already bonked his head twice in the low tunnels.

The book also said to take along three sources of illumination. Besides the now-worthless night vision goggles, he had two flashlights with two extra sets of batteries for each.

They weren’t going to last long, he knew. Since he was taking a short break, he turned off the flashlight for now to conserve energy, grateful it hung on a lanyard around his neck so he couldn’t lose it. That was a trick his dad taught him when they used to go fishing and stuff, always to keep his light handy.

His dad would have been really mad at him for worrying his mom like this.

He sighed, taking a sip from one of two water bottles he’d stowed in his backpack earlier that evening. He also had a couple of granola bars, some hard candy and a banana.

Without his mom seeing, he had also managed to sneak a few other survival items out of his dad’s stuff stored in the garage, like a first aid kit, one of those shiny survival blankets and a lighter.

He didn’t dare use the lighter inside the mine, though. He knew enough from reading that spelunking book to know there could be bad air inside these places and he didn’t want to risk it.

He looked at his watch again: six forty-five. How long would it take the police to start looking for him? And how would they ever figure out he was inside here, trapped in miles of tunnels with a dead guy?

He shivered again, wishing with all his heart he was back in his bed complaining at his mom for coming in to wake him up so soon.

8:15 a.m.

The community had turned out in force.

Megan stood on her porch and looked out at the crowds of volunteer searchers waiting for assignments to begin combing the foothills above her house.

The sun had barely crested the mountains to the east, but already an empty field at the edge of her five acres had been turned into a staging area for the search.

A Moose Springs Search and Rescue trailer served as the mobile command center, and she could see horses and all-terrain vehicles being unloaded and dozens of strangers with water bottles and fanny packs milling around as the various agencies involved worked out all the necessary search details.

How could this all have happened so suddenly? The FBI agent had been right. Once the sun rose, the search effort had ramped up significantly. Now everything looked organized and efficient. For the first time since she found that horribly empty bed, hope began to flutter through her.

“Looks like word travels fast.”

She turned to find the FBI agent who had grilled her for more than an hour. Caleb Davis stood on the edge of the porch. She didn’t know if he watched her or the volunteer searchers, since dark sunglasses shielded his eyes.

Megan had to fight down her instinctive defensiveness, her deep sense of invasion at the questions he had asked. She knew he had only been doing his job, and she knew later she would probably appreciate his thoroughness. But the hour spent under his microscope had been grueling and intrusive.

Can you go over what woke you again? What led you to go into Cameron’s room? Do you often check on him in the night?

He had asked the questions a dozen different ways. His voice had been cool, controlled, but all the time he questioned her, Agent Davis had studied her out of polar-blue eyes that looked as if they could pierce titanium.

She had answered his questions over and over, never wavering in her story. She still couldn’t tell whether or not he believed her story from any reaction on his lean, harshly handsome features. At this point, she didn’t give a damn. She just wanted her son home—and she could only pray the people gathering in that meadow down there could facilitate that.

“They don’t even know us,” she spoke her thoughts aloud. “Where are they all coming from?”

Agent Davis removed his sunglasses. Their gazes met and for an instant she almost thought she saw a slight softening of his hard edges. It disappeared so quickly she wondered if she had imagined it.

“A missing child usually rallies the troops,” he answered. “I should warn you that all indicators are predicting this will be one of those high-profile, media circus kind of cases, especially given your late husband’s military record and the urgency of Cameron’s medical condition.”

The very idea turned her stomach. She had faced enough cameras after Rick’s death to last a lifetime. The San Diego media had jumped on the story of a hometown hero dying in a secret rescue mission in Afghanistan. News vans had been parked on her street for a good two weeks after his funeral, and she and the children had been virtually cloistered inside her house.

Though she had tried to be a good example of a strong, resilient military wife, the newspaper photographs had plainly showed the ravaging grief she hadn’t been able to hide.

“Don’t be surprised when more searchers and more media representatives show up as the day goes on,” Agent Davis continued. “Unfortunately, people around here have had probably too much experience with this sort of thing. Seems like every summer a Boy Scout gets separated from his troop and disappears in the Uintas.”

“Are they all eventually found?”

A muscle flexed in his jaw but he didn’t answer her. She was suddenly chilled from more than just the cool morning air. She gripped the railing so hard the wood dug into her flesh. “I want to search. I need to do something.”

Again, she thought she saw a flicker of compassion in his eyes, quickly veiled.

Why was he so hesitant to show any emotion? she wondered, then pushed the thought away. She didn’t care. He could be made up of nothing but granite as long as he helped find her son.

“It would be best if you stayed close to the house in case we have more questions for you.”

“Would you stay put if your child were out there somewhere?”

She didn’t wait for an answer, just hurried down the porch steps toward the bustling activity, driven only by this raging need inside her to act.

As she hurried across her property, she was aware of Caleb Davis dogging her steps. Was he suddenly her designated handler? she wondered. She wanted nothing more than to escape those piercing blue eyes, but she had a feeling he wasn’t an easy man to evade.

At least she had managed to lose Molly for now. Her sister had returned to her house down the road to check on Hailey and make sure she was comfortably settled with Molly’s four kids and her husband, Scott. They would shower her daughter with attention, Megan knew, and keep Hailey busy and distracted so she wouldn’t spend all her time worrying about the brother she adored.

She only wished she could be so lucky, but she knew nothing would distract her from this grinding fear inside her.

With no real plan in mind, only this urgency to act, she hurried up the metal steps to the command trailer. As soon as she opened the door, she realized this had been a mistake.

A group of men and women filled every available space inside the trailer and they were all listening to Sheriff Galvez give instructions. He broke off when he caught sight of her, his dark eyes suddenly filling with a compassion she saw mirrored on the faces of everyone else inside the trailer.

She shouldn’t have interrupted them. All she had done was distract them from the search effort.

Painfully aware of Agent Davis behind her, no doubt watching her out of those sharp, piercing eyes, she cleared her throat. “Hello. I’m sorry. I…I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just wanted to tell you all thank-you for what you’re doing. Please find my son.”

“We’ll do the best we can.” A round, balding man she thought she had met at church spoke up.

“Just hang in there, Megan,” said Wayne Shumway, one of her clients at her CPA firm. She had a vague memory of him asking her if the Internal Revenue Service would let him write off his training expenses for the time he contributed to the county’s volunteer search and rescue team.

Their sympathy was suddenly more than she could bear. She wouldn’t have believed it, but she almost thought she preferred the FBI agent’s cool impassivity to this cloying, smothering compassion.

She mustered a smile, murmured another thank-you, then hurried from the command center.

Her emotions were thick and close to the surface as she hurried out of the trailer, so heavy inside her she staggered under the weight of them. An overwhelming, helpless fear was foremost among them, and she had to stop a few dozen yards from the trailer and close her eyes, whispering another hurried prayer for her son’s safe return.

When she opened her eyes, she found the FBI agent beside her, watching her with that same carefully neutral expression. She wanted to lash out at something and Caleb Davis happened to be the most convenient target just now.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than follow me around?” she snapped. “I don’t need a watchdog.”

He raised a dark, slashing eyebrow. “How about a friend?”

“You’re not my friend. We both know that.” To her horror, her voice trembled on the last word and suddenly her anger disappeared as quickly as it had erupted. All her emotions bubbled closer to the surface, threatening to spill over.

She blinked them back fiercely, aware of the FBI agent studying her. After a moment, he made a sighing kind of sound and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, an old-fashioned white one like her father used to carry. It took her by surprise and also sent a few of those tears leaking out.

She sniffled for a moment into his handkerchief but regained control quickly. She couldn’t afford to break down, not when Cameron needed her. She lifted her face to the warm summer sun, wondering how such a horrible thing could happen on a day that looked so beautiful.

The heavy rains of the night before left the morning fresh and clean and gorgeous, the kind of day she had come to love in the few months she had been in Utah.

A light wind poured off the mountains, sweet with pine and sage from the acres of national forest land bordering her property. After growing up in Boston and spending all her married life in the hustle of San Diego, she found she loved living out here on the edge of the wilderness, watching mule deer forage in her garden, listening to the shrill cry of hawks overhead and the distant yip of coyotes in the evening.

Now she hated it. Cameron could be anywhere out in that vast tract of land—and that was the best-case scenario. She couldn’t bear thinking that someone might have broken into her house and taken him under her very nose.

She drew a shuddering breath, feeling again the watchful gaze of Caleb Davis. She knew she was at the top of the suspect list right now, as far as the FBI agent was concerned. The knowledge burned, but she knew she couldn’t let it get to her.

“Tell me, Agent Davis. How many missing child cases have you investigated?”

If she hadn’t been looking closely at him, she might have missed the slight twitch of a muscle in his jaw before his expression returned to impassivity.

“A few,” he answered.

Some demon compelled her to push him. “Too many to count?”

“Seventy-nine, in the eight years I’ve been with the FBI’s Crimes Against Children unit.”

Seventy-nine. She shivered at the number, at the pain she knew it must represent, and at his preciseness in remembering it. All that heartache. She couldn’t bear it.

“How many of those have been resolved in a way you would deem successful?”

She didn’t want to ask but couldn’t seem to help herself.

Not enough.

He didn’t say the words, but she could see them in the sudden flare of darkness in the clear depths of his eyes. The unsaid message hovered between them, dank and ugly, and then he veiled his expression again.

“I know it’s an impossible thing to ask, Mrs. Vance, but you can’t think about those other children. All your energy right now should be focused on your own son.”

Before she could answer, the door of the command center trailer opened and the rescuers emerged into the sunlight. Daniel Galvez was the last to leave. He caught sight of them standing near the fence and walked to them. Megan was aware of the careful way he looked at her, as if he were afraid she would break apart right in front of him.

She felt like it, but she managed to hold on to whatever remnants of control she had left.

She was more surprised when he gave the same concerned scrutiny to Caleb Davis.

“Don’t even ask. I’m fine,” the FBI agent growled.

She gazed between the two men, baffled at their byplay. “I’m sure you are,” the sheriff said. “McKinnon wouldn’t have brought you back for this one if you weren’t.”

Davis said nothing. He just put his sunglasses back on.

Megan finally broke the awkward silence. “I’m sorry I interrupted you back there,” she said again.

The sheriff turned his attention to her. “Don’t worry about it. You should be included in the loop—I promise I’ll do my best to keep you informed of the search logistics. The first wave of searchers is already out there combing the grid, and another wave is receiving instructions so they can leave shortly. Search dogs will be here in the next hour or so, though the rain of last night and the wind that’s predicted to pick up in a couple hours may hamper their efforts.”

She was aware of Caleb Davis standing beside her, ever watchful. She found a strange comfort in his presence, though it made absolutely no sense, given his hour-long interrogation of her.

“Thank you,” she said to Daniel. “I do appreciate knowing what’s happening. Please, Sheriff, what can I do?”

He sighed and gestured to the news vans jockeying for position down the road. “I hate to burden you with this right now, but the media is already clamoring for some kind of statement from the family. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. But we do need to get the word out that Cameron’s missing, in case someone might have seen something. Do you feel up to talking to the press?”

She pressed a hand to her stomach at the instinctive recoil there. How could she possibly stand before the harsh glare of cameras and strip her soul bare? Could she endure that sense of invasion again, that emotional purge? Her nails dug into her palms. She would hate it. But for Cameron she would endure anything.

“Mrs. Vance, may I make a suggestion?”

She turned to Agent Davis. “Of course.”

“Quite often in cases like this, the immediate family of a missing child appoints a spokesperson to handle the media, to make public statements, address media requests, that sort of thing. Perhaps your sister or brother-in-law would be willing to take care of that burden for you until you feel up to the challenge of facing the media.”

She seized on the idea. “I’ll talk to Molly when she returns from checking on Hailey.”

“I believe I saw her Expedition pull up a few minutes ago.” Daniel gestured to the row of vehicles in the driveway.

She followed his gaze and saw with mixed emotions that her sister had indeed returned. She must be inside the house.

As much as she needed Molly right now, she dreaded seeing her own fear reflected in her sister’s eyes.

“Thank you. I’ll go talk to her now,” she said.

She walked away from the two men, painfully aware of them watching her every step of the way.

Did the sheriff suspect her of harming her son, as well? She had met him a few times in town, and he had always been friendly and approachable. She hated that he might suspect her of something terrible.

Oh, she couldn’t bear this. She just wanted Cameron in her arms again and for all these people to be gone so she and her family could get back to the business of life.

Cale watched Megan Vance climb the redwood steps of the back deck leading to her house. She paused for a moment on the steps, her head angled toward a lone soccer ball rolled into a corner of the deck. Even from here he could see her shoulders slump, fear and tension in every line of her slender form.

She looked more breakable with each passing moment. He could only hope she had a good support system, that her sister could help pull her through.

She was going to need all the help she could get.

He hated this part of his job, dealing with the tumult of emotions in those left behind.

An image of Amanda Decker’s wild rage two weeks earlier lashed him. Why couldn’t you save them? she had half sobbed, half screamed. You were right there! Why couldn’t you help them?

He knew she had only been speaking out of grief and shock, but her words had been like hydrochloric acid on his already raw emotions. Later she had visited him in the hospital to apologize for her outburst and to thank him for his efforts, but it didn’t take away the searing guilt.

Cale mentally kicked himself. He couldn’t afford to think about Mirabel and Soshi Decker right now. He hadn’t been able to help them, but his complete and abject failure in that case didn’t mean he couldn’t help Cameron Vance and his pale, fragile mother.

“What’s your gut telling you on this one?” Daniel Galvez asked him. “In my book, Megan Vance is either one hell of an actress or she had nothing whatsoever to do with her son’s disappearance. You think we’re looking at some kind of stranger abduction?”

He jerked his mind away from the image of two little coffins being lowered into the ground and made himself focus on this case. “We’ve got to consider every option here. The window was open. Even though it’s a second story, someone determined enough could find a way to get in and take the boy.”

“But why bother to stage things with the old pillow-under-the-blankets gag to fake out the mother?” Galvez asked. “That’s the kind of thing a kid would do on his own, don’t you think?”

He pondered the details he had learned from his interview with Megan Vance. “If someone knew the mother was a light sleeper and that she made it a habit to check on the children in the night—especially the boy with his medical condition—they might have been trying to buy a little more time.”

“How would a stranger know that?”

“Damn good question.” One he unfortunately couldn’t answer at this point in the investigation. “Where do things stand with the state crime scene unit?”

“They’re still working the boy’s room. Mrs. Vance just cleaned the room two days ago. Because the kid has allergies, too, she’s a pretty thorough housekeeper in there. Preliminary reports showed no sign of forced entry and no fingerprints but family members’. Megan’s and Cameron’s are the only ones we can find on the window or the windowsill. I think CSU is still working the scene if you want to hear the details from them.”

“I’ll do that. Thanks.”

At that moment, someone came out of the command center and called for the sheriff’s attention. Galvez sighed and turned away. “Let me know if you need any other information,” he said to Cale before he headed back the way he had come.

Cale paused for a moment, looking at the bustle of activity. Then on impulse, he walked around the house to check the perimeter of the building for more clues. He was pleased to find a state crime scene detective he had worked with before, Wilhelmina Carson, taking pictures of the outside of the two-story log home.

“Hey, Willy. What have you got out here?”

“Hang on,” she ordered in a distracted voice, still clicking away. After a few more shots, she dropped the camera and he saw surprise register in her eyes when she recognized him.

“Davis! I hadn’t heard you were back on the job.”

How long would it take before people stopped looking at him as if he were going to go freaking mental at any minute?

“You know me. I can’t stay away.”

She cleared her throat and he braced himself for what he knew was coming. “I’m really sorry about what happened to you, Cale,” she said quietly. “I worked the Decker scene. I know you did everything you could.”

He wasn’t sure he would ever be as convinced about that as everyone else seemed to be, but this wasn’t the place to argue the point. Instead, he gestured to the home’s exterior. “Have you seen any sign at all of forced entry?”

After a moment, she turned back to the case, though he could still see concern in her eyes. “Not much. The screen was in backward, with the tabs on the outside, indicating whoever put it back did it from out here. I don’t know if that’s significant at all.”

“No ladder impressions or anything like that?”

“Nothing. But keep in mind we had a solid rain for two hours between 3:00 and 5:00 a.m. That’s a sure way to screw up a crime scene.”

Which meant someone could have used a ladder or driven up to the house with a damn cherry picker, for all the evidence they could find.

He studied the exterior of the building. It was a straight shot from the boy’s second story window to the ground. He supposed it was possible Cameron could have jumped, but that was a mighty long way down for a nine-year-old kid.

When he was nine, he used to escape the hell of home by climbing out a conveniently situated tree out his bedroom window whenever he could. The only tree near Cameron Vance’s bedroom was a sycamore a dozen feet from the house. Though the trunk was thick and sturdy, no branches extended anywhere near the kid’s room.

He studied the distance. No way. The tree was too far from the house to provide any kind of useful escape route.

So how would he climb out the window to the ground if he were trying to sneak out in the night? If his shoulder didn’t have a bullet hole in it, he probably would extend out the window, grab hold of the roof line and move hand over hand to the corner of the house, where he could use the gutter spout to climb down, praying the whole way down it would hold his weight.

But he had two feet in height over the kid and years of climbing experience.

He looked at the log exterior of the house again and this time caught sight of something he’d missed before.

“Son of a bitch,” he exclaimed, moving closer for a better look.

Chapter 3

“What have you got?” Willy hurried toward him, her gaze sharp and intent.

He was always glad to work a case with the detective. She had a quick, analytical mind and always took a second or third look at the facts to make sure she wasn’t missing anything.

She wasn’t bad on the eyes, either, with tawny skin and the long-legged grace of a natural athlete. Not that he had ever spent much time noticing, but maybe he should. These last few weeks had made him painfully aware of the loneliness of his life outside of work. Somehow he had focused all his energy on the job, leaving nothing for a personal life.

When the job went wrong, he had been left with nothing.

Not that he wanted that kind of complication right now. But if he did, he ought to think about hooking up with someone tough-shelled and resilient, like Wilhelmina Carson.

He certainly wouldn’t be stupid enough to waste his time taking a second look at someone breakable like Megan Vance.

“Did I miss something?” Willy asked.

He put any thought of soft, fragile women out of his head, then slipped off his shoes and socks, gauging the wall carefully as he did. “I don’t know. See those holes up there?”

She looked baffled but studied where he pointed. “Those little things? I thought they were just screwholes or imperfections in the logs or something.”

“They’re a little too evenly spaced to be imperfections. Hang on.”

He stuck the index finger of his right hand in the lowest three-quarter-inch hole, then extended his left hand to the next highest. Pain radiated from his shoulder but he ignored it, as he’d been trying to do for two long weeks. As he suspected, the holes were about three feet apart, just about the width of a nine-year-old’s outstretched fingers.

“Damn. This kid is amazing.”

Ignoring the strident cry of protest from his shoulder, he pulled himself up the logs using the conveniently placed fingerholes, pausing about halfway between the ground and the boy’s window.

“You are frigging crazy, Davis!”

Below, he caught a clear view of Willy’s consternation. “You’re two weeks out of having your shoulder ripped open, you idiot. Let me find you a damn ladder.”

“I’m good. Just hang on.”

“Do I have to go find McKinnon to drag you down?”

Okay, this hadn’t been the smartest idea. His shoulder wasn’t anywhere near ready for this, especially when he was wearing a shirt and tie and his second-best summer weight slacks instead of Lycra and climbing shoes.

“I’m done.” He jumped the five feet to the ground. “You’re going to want to find that ladder now and dust those finger holes I didn’t use for prints.”

“You really think the boy climbed out on his own using those dinky finger holes?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time a kid climbed out an open window.”

“That took time and effort to drill those holes. This wasn’t something that happened overnight. Could someone else be involved?”

“Possibly, but I’m beginning to doubt it. Those holes are custom-set for a nine-year-old’s arm span. Did you notice how awkward they were for me to use, spaced so close together?”

Willy shook her head in disbelief. “All I saw was an agent with the Federal Bureau of Idiots trying to kill himself. Good grief, Davis. This kid is only nine years old! How the hell could he pull it off?”

“My guess is practice. The holes are already worn in spots.”

“That would explain why the boy’s fingerprints are the only ones I can find on the window ledge. Am I wasting my time looking for evidence somebody else was involved in the kid’s disappearance, then?”

His gut was telling him the boy escaped completely on his own, for reasons Cale didn’t yet understand.

He really hoped that was the case, for the mother’s sake, and that searchers would find him camped out in the mountains somewhere oblivious to all the trouble he had left behind.

“It’s never a waste of time to check out all the angles. I could be completely off base here.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“You didn’t hear it from me,” he answered. “Until we know otherwise with absolute certainty, the FBI will continue working this case as a possible abduction.”

And he would do his best not to spend more time than absolutely necessary dwelling on the missing boy’s mother, with her soft skin and her scared eyes.

12:25 p.m.

This wasn’t the right way, either.

In the fading light of his flashlight, Cameron saw a huge pile of rubble blocking the shaft he had been certain would take him back to familiar ground.

He turned off the flashlight to conserve whatever juice he had left and slumped to the ground, feeling worse than the time his soccer team back in San Diego had lost the championship game in the league playoffs by one stinking last-minute goal.

He pressed one hand to his whirly stomach and used the other to wipe away the hot tears burning his eyes. He had been so sure this way would lead him back to the tunnels he had explored, where he could follow his own chalk marks back to the entrance and go home.

Home.

He wanted so much to be there, safe in his own room with the pictures of his dad on the wall and his soccer trophies on a shelf by his bed.

He sniffled, wiping his nose on his shirt. Was anybody looking for him yet? He could bet his uncle and cousins were out there. But his stomach hurt even worse thinking about it. Nobody would have any idea where to look for him, and that was the scariest thing of all.

He knew a good Navy SEAL left no trace behind him, and Cam had been careful to wipe away his tracks leading into the shaft and to cover the entrance with a dead sagebrush.

If only he hadn’t been so careful, maybe someone would find the mine entrance and figure out he was in here.

He never knew dark could be so dark. It was heavy and scary—he couldn’t even see his own hand when he held it right up to his eyes.

The two times he had sneaked into the tunnels before, he hadn’t stayed very long and he had always had plenty of light. It had been more exciting than scary, like exploring a whole new planet somewhere that nobody else knew about.

It was exciting then. Now the dark was so heavy and sometimes he couldn’t even tell whether his eyes were open or closed.

He had two more sets of batteries and a spare flashlight, but he didn’t know how long he was going to be in here. He didn’t want to use all his light and then be left with nothing.

He didn’t want to die in the dark somewhere, alone and scared. He wiped his nose again, wondering what he should do. He had turned so many corners in the mine that he didn’t have the first idea which way would lead him out.

Overwhelmed by his fear and at the thought of dying, he couldn’t keep in a sob. He cried for a minute, then tried to stop. He wasn’t making any progress sitting here like a big baby and bawling his eyes out. Every minute he wasted was another minute he had to stay in the dark.

His breath came in little baby gasps, but he managed to quit bawling after another minute or two. He would say a prayer, he decided. That’s what his mom told him to do whenever he was worried or scared or hurting.

Though he whispered the words, they sounded loud and echoing in the total quiet of the tunnel.

“Help me out of here, please. I promise if You do, I’ll never sneak out at night again, even when I’m a teenager, and I won’t yell at my sister when she touches my stuff. I’ll share my Play Station with her and I won’t talk back to my mom, even in my head.”

He paused, not sure what else to say. “You know,” he said after a minute, “I could really use my dad’s help in here. If he’s not busy, could You send him down to help me out? Amen.”

He felt a little better after he prayed, though he had to admit to some disappointment when the way out of the mine shaft didn’t suddenly glow in front of him in big flashing lights.

After a minute, when nothing supermiraculous happened, such as his dad’s angel suddenly showing up, he sighed and pulled the water bottle out of his pack, allowing himself just a tiny sip.

He was so thirsty he wanted to suck down the whole thing, but he knew that would be a bad idea. He might need some later.

He would just go back the way he had come this time and try a different route. Sooner or later, he would find his way out.

He stood up, then remembered something else and raised his eyes to the ceiling of the chamber. “One more thing,” he prayed out loud. “Can You please help my mom not to be so mad at me?”

1:30 p.m.

She was suffocating under the weight of all the solicitude being piled on her.

Just now it was her big sister adding another layer.

“Honey, you can’t stay here all day,” Molly entreated, her green eyes dark and worried. “Why don’t you come on back to our place where things are a little more quiet and rest for a while?”

“I can’t leave right now,” she said firmly.

“Our house is just down the road. You know Daniel will let us know the minute they find him.”

She deeply appreciated her sister’s stubborn optimism, but she still wasn’t willing to leave the house. Not until Cam was found.

“You go, Mol,” she replied. “I know you’re exhausted from that press conference.”

Megan couldn’t help thinking Molly was the one who looked as if she needed to rest. Her pretty soccer mom of a sister looked ravaged, totally wiped out by the stress of this ordeal.

Guilt pinched at her. Had she asked too much of Molly to put her in front of the cameras?

“I’m fine,” Molly answered. “I only hope whatever I said to the media will somehow help us find Cam.”

“It will.”

She hugged her sister, thinking how much she owed her. Molly had been there any time Megan needed her, a quiet, steady source of strength and support.

Megan had been twelve, Molly nineteen—a freshman in college—when the cancer that had ravaged their mother for more than a year ultimately took Carol Kincaid’s life. Megan could never forget that her sister had left school and returned home to Boston to care for her and Kevin, their brother who had been fourteen at the time.

When other girls her age were busy with boyfriends and algebra finals and trips to Cancun for spring break, Molly had been home with them doing laundry, fixing lunches, helping with homework. She never complained, but Megan knew it couldn’t have been easy on her.

A year later, they were all barely beginning to find their way through the grief over their mother’s death when the unthinkable happened—their police officer father was struck and killed by a drunk driver while he was standing on the side of the road giving a routine traffic ticket.

With patience and love, Molly had pulled her and Kevin through the devastating pain. Completely on her own, her twenty-year-old sister had kept their little family together for three years until Kevin left for college.

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?”

“The crime scene investigator dusted for prints. She found several sets of prints inside the holes. All of them consistent with what we believe are Cam’s from the evidence in his bedroom.”

“He’s nine years old, for heaven’s sake. And small for his age!”

“How much climbing experience has he had?”

She shivered, though the hot wind still blew out of the mountains. “Some. Okay, quite a bit. We had vaulted ceilings in our house in San Diego and Rick…Rick built a climbing wall in the playroom. Cam loved it, probably because it made him feel closer to his father.”

She stared at those holes, her delicate features troubled. “Suppose I buy your theory that he climbed out of his room on his own. Why on earth would he do such a thing in the middle of the night? Where would he go? Cam didn’t have friends around except his cousins. He wasn’t happy about moving away from San Diego, but he had no reason to run away!”

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