He and Abernathy made their way over to where two men were arguing loudly. Eva craned her neck, trying to see what was going on. She stood to get a better view, gasping in horror when she noticed one of the men punch the other one in the face mere inches from Finn.
“Who starts a fight in a café known to be a cop hangout?”
She was talking to herself, as everyone’s attention was centered on the ruckus. She took a step forward, not liking the thought of Finn getting in the middle of a fight. But she needn’t have worried. Between Finn and a man she assumed was another cop, they managed to separate the two men, each slapping cuffs on their respective perpetrator.
Relieved the crisis was over, Eva turned back to the table, looking for Mikey. His chair was empty.
“Mikey? Mikey!” She shouted to be heard over the din, raking her gaze around the restaurant. But there was no sign of the boy.
Mikey was gone!
EIGHT
“Finn!” The panic in Eva’s voice caught his attention. He released the guy he’d just handcuffed, pushing him toward Ian, one of his fellow officers, to look over toward Eva. “Mikey’s gone!”
“Gone?” He and Abernathy charged past the diner onlookers to reach her side. “What happened?”
“I don’t know!” Eva’s blue eyes were wild with fear. She gripped his arms tightly. “I turned my back on him for only a minute when I thought that man was going to punch you in the face. When I looked back, he was gone. It’s my fault, Finn. This is all my fault!”
“No, it’s not.” Fighting a sense of panic himself, Finn surveyed the patio, then the interior of the diner, thinking it was possible the child had decided to head to the bathroom. He hurried over to check, but the restrooms were empty. There was no sign of the little boy’s blond head anywhere in sight. Returning to the table, Finn’s gaze landed on the child’s blue raincoat draped over the seat. He grabbed it.
“Find, Abernathy,” he commanded, opening the coat so that his K-9 partner could sniff the interior closest to where Mikey’s skin had been. “Find Mikey.”
Abernathy buried his nose in Mikey’s raincoat for several long moments. Finn knew that Mikey’s scent was well-known to Abernathy, considering how much time they’d spent at Pete’s house, but this was part of the K-9 training process, signifying they were on the job.
Abernathy put his nose to the ground around the chair Mikey had used. He alerted there, but Finn encouraged him to keep going. The K-9 followed the invisible trail of Mikey’s scent through the open patio space to the sidewalk outside the diner. Finn’s stomach clenched as he realized that despite his assurances to Eva that she and Mikey would be safe here, he’d been wrong.
So very, very wrong.
“Find, Abernathy,” he encouraged, following the K-9 outside. Similar to the day of Cocoa’s dognapping, the dog turned and headed down the sidewalk to the next intersection. There, Abernathy sniffed along the ground, turning in a circle before sitting down. When the Lab looked up, Finn thought he perceived a concerned and pleading expression in the dog’s dark eyes, as if he was waiting for the next command.
“I know. I’m worried about him, too.” Finn bent over to give Abernathy a quick rub and a treat before leading him back to the doorway of Griffin’s diner.
“He lost the trail?” Eva’s hopeful expression collapsed, and her eyes filled with tears. “I can’t believe this is happening. What if they hurt him, Finn? He’s just a little boy! We need to find him!”
“I’ll call the team. We’ll have all officers drop whatever they’re doing to search for Mikey.” He used his radio to call for backup, putting out the word that a three-year-old child had been taken from Griffin’s. He requested an Amber Alert, too, informing the dispatcher of what Mikey had been wearing. A red-and-white-striped shirt with navy shorts and slip-on athletic shoes.
“Eva, do you have a recent picture of him on your phone?”
She nodded and quickly texted it to him. He in turn sent it to the dispatcher to use for the Amber Alert.
Within five minutes, additional cops and their respective K-9 partners arrived. He held out Mikey’s raincoat to the newcomers—Carter Jameson and his white German shepherd, Frosty, Reed Branson and his bloodhound, Jessie, and Tony Knight and his chocolate Lab, Rusty. They were the first three responders, and he was grateful that each of their K-9s were trained to follow a very specific scent. Even those who weren’t would join in the search, but he appreciated the extra expertise.