A Son's Tale

She wanted to ask what the chances were that Sammie was still alive. Wanted to ask Detective Warner his professional opinion regarding her chances of ever seeing her son again.

Not trusting her ability to handle the answer, she withheld the question.

They’d had the dreaded call. Sammie wasn’t just a runaway. He’d been kidnapped.

CHAPTER SIX

“DO YOU MIND IF I sit outside on the front step for a few minutes?” Morgan directed her question to the detective sitting at his makeshift desk. Cal watched her, taking in the whiteness around her too-tight lips, the glossiness in eyes that normally glinted with eagerness, the strands of hair surrounding skin that had been devoid of makeup since she’d first cried it off more than twelve hours before.

He recognized the signs of a woman at the end of her rope. He’d watched the same thing happen to Rose Sanderson when she’d transformed from his future mother to the stranger who’d thrown him and his father out of their home.

“If my phone rings, I’ll come back in.…”

“Stay close.” Detective Warner’s tone held warning more than acquiescence.

Morgan nodded and stood. Unlike the last couple of times she’d left the room for some fresh air, she didn’t glance at Cal. Didn’t invite him along.

On a hunch, he went anyway.

And was glad he had as soon as he stepped out the door and saw his star student bent over, one side of her propped against the corner of the building as she sobbed.

It was the first time he’d seen her lose control all day. There’d been tears, plenty of them, but they’d been slow, silent drips down her cheeks, not this full-out explosion of anguish.

Cal went to her, pulled her away from the building and against him, half carrying her over to the steps and settling her against his body as they sat. He didn’t say anything. There were no words that could help. Nothing anyone could do to ease the pain that was eating her alive, short of returning her son to her.

But he could share the pain with her. It helped not to suffer alone. That much he understood.

He didn’t take it personally when she turned her face into his chest. Or when her hands worked their way around his neck and clung to him. He held her. Stroked her hair.

And cried inside—a little boy manifested into a man who’d outgrown the ability to shed tears.

“They’re hurting him, aren’t they?” Her words, muffled against his chest, were completely clear to him.

Cal had no sense of how much time had passed. His arms didn’t loosen their grip on the body he held. “We don’t know that.”

“But…” A dry sob interrupted

her. “If his goal is to torture us…”

Wanting to tell her not to let him win, not to torture herself with what-ifs, Cal said instead, “We don’t know his ultimate goal.” He’d read everything he’d ever found written about child abductions. He knew the profiling as well as any detective.

“And we don’t know who we’re dealing with. Some people just aren’t killers, no matter what life has done to them. They just don’t have it in them to hurt someone else physically. So they retaliate with mental and emotional abuse.” He wasn’t educating her. He was just talking in case hearing another voice made her situation better. He wasn’t even sure she could comprehend what he was saying at that point. Or that it mattered.

“If his ultimate goal is ransom, as is probable, chances are good that he won’t do anything to hurt Sammie. At least not until he’s made his deal.”

He had to be honest with her here.

“And chances are also good that the authorities will catch the guy before he gets to close his deal.

“Less than one hundred out of eight hundred thousand abducted children die each year,” he reminded her. “Sammie’s chances are very, very good. More than 99 percent.”

“But the girl you knew about—she had those same chances.”

“Which is why I’ve always believed that she’s still alive.”

Morgan’s breathing slowed. She pulled back slowly, dropping her arms, sitting up on her own. Hands wrapped around her stomach, she stared downward.

“Do you know how many kids are taken that aren’t found dead, but are never seen by their parents again?”