Six Seconds. Rick Mofina

emerged.

      “We believe this is your son,” Ned Rimmer said just as the video froze and static snowed on the images.

      Rimmer was an LAPD detective—“retired six years now” after a drug dealer’s bullet took his left eye. Rimmer wore an eye patch, a ponytail and a sour disposition most days. He was still a detective, just not the kind he’d planned on being.

      Rimmer and his wife, Sharmay, an emergency dispatcher with a penchant for dangling earrings, belonged to the Guardian Rescue Society, a national group of law enforcement types who volunteered their money, resources and time, to find children in parental abduction cases who’d slipped through the cracks.

      Logan’s file was passed to them months ago when Maggie had first sought help from support groups who’d circulated her plea among their circles.

      She’d never heard of the society until today when Sharmay called her at the bookstore, identified herself, then said, “We believe one of our Guardians may have located your son, Logan Conlin.”

      Stunned into silence, Maggie gripped the phone.

      “Hello? Maggie?”

      “My God, do you have him? Where is he? Is he okay? I have to see him!”

      “We don’t have him yet. We’d prefer to discuss details at our Los Angeles office. Please come as soon as it’s convenient so we can advance the case.”

      An hour later, after following Sharmay’s directions, Maggie had parked her car on a street that bordered Culver City and West L.A.

      The society’s L.A. chapter was in a second-story office above the Flying Emerald Dragon takeout restaurant. The aroma of deep-fried chicken and stir-fried vegetables filled it now as Maggie sat before the video monitor.

      “Here we go. Fixed it,” Rimmer said. “This footage comes to us from our New York chapter from Wayne Kraychinski, retired NYPD detective first grade.”

      As the Rimmers had explained it, Kraychinski checked Logan’s profile with his school sources, as he does with all the cases his chapter takes on.

      Kraychinski got a lead in Queens concerning a boy fitting Logan’s age and description. According to the history, the boy had recently moved to the community with his father, a trucker, who fit Jake Conlin’s general profile.

      Kraychinski and some of the other Guardians initiated surveillance.

      “We’ve got a series of sequences recorded over a few weeks,” Rimmer said.

      The camera shook and a boy about eight to ten years old in a hooded sweatshirt swam into view but not in sharp focus. Maggie couldn’t see his face clearly, or his full body and gait. The boy was among a group walking through a schoolyard to a basketball court.

      “Now, this is where they reside.”

      The video jumped to a row of tired-looking two-story detached homes shoehorned into a Queens neighborhood. One house had a rig out front. No trailer. A green Peterbilt. Being married to a trucker, Maggie knew vehicles. Jake drove a Kenworth but he could’ve sold it or traded it for a Peterbilt.

      Next, the boy was in a park with other kids on skateboards.

      Again, his back was to the camera. He was wearing a ball cap and was sitting on the grass bordering the skating area. Maggie caught her breath as he turned to offer his profile, but a shadow blocked the image before it disappeared.

      Maggie covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a groan.

      Is it Logan? She couldn’t be certain.

      “Now,” Rimmer said, “this next sequence, which is the money sequence, was obtained by Kraychinski’s friend, Ella Bell. She’s a former Customs officer. Ella used a minicamera hidden in her hat to employ a ruse for interaction.”