A Son's Tale. Tara Quinn Taylor

glanced back at the freehand drawing. If that man…that fiend…had her son…

      If he touched him…

      Sammie could already have been—

      No, he’d run away. He was fine. Just hiding from her. And they’d find him. Sammie wasn’t as grown up as he thought.

      “What about an Amber Alert? Can you issue one of those now?” Did they have reasonable belief that Sammie had been abducted? If they issued an Amber Alert anyone who saw him would know that he was missing.

      “We issued it half an hour ago.”

      Which meant they no longer thought Sammie had just run away.

      The words struck a new chord of fear that Morgan couldn’t ignore.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CALEBKNEWLONGnights. He’d lived with them for most of his life. Which stood him in good stead over the next several hours as he stayed with the Lowens and Julie Warren and waited for news of Sammie’s whereabouts.

      He’d offered to stay. Morgan had accepted his offer immediately, with none of her usual assurances that she would be fine. He made coffee and small conversation when fatigue and panic threatened to get the best of the women. He sat quietly, a steady breath in the storm when detectives reported in or the phone rang.

      And he studied Mr. Lowen with the outside eye of a scholar. Or so he told himself.

      “I didn’t realize George Lowen was your father,” he said softly, sometime after ten that evening as Morgan accepted his invitation to step outside for some fresh air.

      He’d thought the man heartless when, two years before, Lowen had bought up a block of real estate that included the city’s oldest library and the complex that held the young artists’ league studios and small gallery and tore it all down to replace it with a gated community of luxury condominiums. His perusal of George Lowen over the past few hours hadn’t softened his opinion of the business mogul much.

      With her hands hugging her upper arms, Morgan shrugged. “We don’t associate much.”

      He hadn’t realized she had parents in the area until a few hours before.

      “He’s here tonight.”

      “Yeah.”

      Her expression blank, she gazed out into the darkness.

      “You have to keep hoping, Morgan. Hope gives you the strength you need to take the next breath.”

      They were walking on the sidewalk in front of her place. While the curb was lined with cars—his, Julie’s, her parents’, and the detective’s who’d replaced Elaine Martin and was going to sit with them through the night to monitor any possible contacts from kidnappers—the street was quiet. Searchers would resume looking for signs of the young boy at daylight.

      And every hour that passed made it less likely that they’d be able to return Sammie safe and sound.

      “It’s so dark out.”

      “Is Sammie afraid of the dark?”

      “No. It’s just…I know that the first hours are critical… .”

      The first three hours were the most critical if Sammie had been kidnapped. Most child murders happened within three hours after abduction. Not that he was going to tell her that.

      “You hear about children being taken, you know to keep your kids safe, and you do everything you can. But still, it’s one of those things—you just don’t ever think it’ll happen to you.”

      He’d never seen it that way. Or if he had, he’d been too young to remember a time when it felt like the world was a safe place for kids.

      “Eight hundred thousand kids go missing each year in the United States. That’s two thousand a day or one every forty seconds. But most are safely returned.”

      She stopped pacing in front of her house and faced him, studying him in the blackness. Light from the streetlamp shone on one side of her face, giving it a white hue that was almost sickly, and throwing the other side of her into shadow. But he could see the panic in her eyes.

      “I… Are you sure you want to be here?”

      “I can go if you’d like.”

      “No!” Her hand reached toward him and then hugged her arm again without ever making contact with him. “I… You can stay if you want. I just…I’m not sure why you’d want to. It’s late. You have to be tired.”

      “I wouldn’t sleep if I went home. I’d be thinking about you and your son. Wondering if you’d had any news.”

      “You don’t even know Sammie. And I’m just a student… .”

      “It wouldn’t matter to me if you were a stranger, Morgan, I’d still want to help if I could. But you are far from a stranger. I’ve been reading your essays for four years. I got to know you through them. And…I’ve enjoyed our recent conversations. I’d like to help if I can.”

      “Don’t you have someone at home waiting for you?” she asked, looking down the street in one direction and then the other before glancing back at him.

      “A Mrs. Whittier, you mean?” Had she been hoping she’d see Sammie walking up the street toward them? He’d been looking for that very thing all night long.

      “No, everyone knows you’re single. But that doesn’t mean you live alone.”

      “I live with my father. He knows where I am and why.”

      “Oh.”

      He’d never felt such an urge to talk. To share. And just as compelling was the reticence that had become a natural part of him.

      “I…we…knew someone once. A woman in the town where we lived. Her child was taken. It’s not something you ever forget.”

      “Did you know her well?”

      Thinking of Rose Sanderson, of things the woman had done and said, he told the complete truth. “No.”

      “How old was her child?”

      “Two.” He wanted Morgan to know that she wasn’t alone. That other people knew exactly what she was feeling.

      “A boy or a girl?”

      “A girl.”

      Her eyes filled with a painful mixture of compassion and fear and too late he knew what the next question was going to be.

      “Did they find her?” Was the child returned safely to her mother’s waiting arms?

      “No.” With a finger under Morgan’s chin, he held her face gently aloft, looking her straight in the eye, and said, “Of those eight hundred thousand kids that go missing each year, only one hundred and fifteen of them are stranger abductions and less than a hundred of them are victims of homicide.”

      “Says who?”

      “Washington, D.C.—the U.S. Department of Justice.”

      She looked at him—and kept looking—as though the connection of their gazes was holding her upright.

      She wasn’t Rose Sanderson. And this time he might be able to help.

      * * *

      TWELVEHOURSBEFORE, 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