A Son's Tale

TWELVE HOURS BEFORE, her greatest dream would definitely have included Caleb Whittier as a key player—in her home, with her.

Tonight he was included in her darkest nightmare. And her only dream was holding Sammie, safe and healthy, in her arms again. Her education didn’t matter. The day care and Saturday’s festivities were trivial. Nothing mattered if Sammie was gone.

Someone ordered pizza. The smell made Morgan sick to her stomach. Julie left, going home to be with her husband and twin daughters. Everything else stayed the same. Alarmingly the same.

Nothing was happening.

Until the phone rang just after midnight. Morgan’s body suffused with weakness even while her heart pounded so hard she could feel its beat.

“Wait,” the detective on duty, Rick Warner, said, looking at her. The hand Morgan held suspended over the receiver, ready to pick up, was shaking. The call display flashed Unknown Caller.

“Remember what they told you, Morgan.” George Lowen stood over her, having come in from the business papers he had strewn all over the kitchen table as soon as the phone pealed. “Keep them talking. Stay calm. Be agreeable…”

She tuned out the voice. She couldn’t deal with her father and kidnappers at the same time.

“You’ll do fine.” Cal Whittier dropped quietly onto the couch next to her. Not touching her. Just there.

The detective nodded and Morgan picked up, the call broadcast to the room on a special speaker they’d hooked up. “Hello?”

“Your father killed my wife. I got your kid. Fair trade.” Click.

She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.

No one spoke at first, as the caller hung up far too soon for anyone to put a full trace on the call.

“What the hell?” George Lowen turned his back just as Grace came into the room. Morgan’s mother had been lying down on Morgan’s bed. Her usually immaculate, tastefully dyed brown hair was mussed. Her eyes were swollen, her lightweight navy slacks and white blouse wrinkled.

“Who was on the phone?”

Detective Warner spoke into a cell phone. And hung up. Caleb Whittier took the receiver out of Morgan’s grasp.

“The call came from a prepaid cell phone. No way to trace it,” the detective said. “But they got the tower the signal came from. First and Main.”

“Fifteen miles from here,” George bit out.

“He’s still in the area?” Hope shot through Morgan even while she was falling apart at the seams.

“We know the area the call came from,” Detective Warner said softly, his brown eyes warm but tired looking. He didn’t try to hide the graveness of the situation from her.

Morgan couldn’t move. “He said he has Sammie.”

“I know.”

“So what do we do now?”

Those dark eyes were so hard to take. “We wait.”

“We wait.” How could her voice sound so calm when she was screaming inside? Seething with panic and dread and anger and fear and… “For what?”

“For him to call again.” Detective Warner’s voice was as calm as hers. Did the man also have feelings underneath? Things she couldn’t see? Or was this all just another job to him? Did he know what his words were doing to her?

Did it matter?

“What about that tower?” George demanded, standing halfway across the room. “I want every inch of that area canvassed. I’ll provide the resources. If you people can’t man the search I’ll hire someone who can.”

Her father’s autocratic tone cut through her—and gave her hope at the same time.

“It’s a multiple base station site. The call likely came within a mile or two of the tower, but the range could extend as much as thirty miles or more, depending on the strength of the phone used. It’s late at night so there are fewer transmissions going out, which means that range is wider.”