JENNA STARTED to shake so badly she could hardly keep her grasp on the phone. She felt Adam’s arms go around her, felt him give her a kiss on the top of her head, and his warmth and calm helped to bolster her. “What is it?”
“Since I talked to Adam, I’ve been checking with different police departments between here and the address you gave me as Dennis’s last known residence. Just across the Oregon border, in Medford, an elderly woman reported seeing a man drag a little boy away from a pay phone outside a drugstore. She said the boy seemed frightened, reluctant. She insisted the man had to be some kind of sexual predator, but the uniforms up there didn’t take the incident too seriously because she calls in so often. Most of what she reports turns out to be nothing. But in this case the description of the man’s car matches the one Dennis was driving.”
Jenna’s heart beat faster with hope. “Medford is on the way to Portland.”
“Yep, right off Interstate 5. I think we’ve got a start. At least we know what direction he’s taking. I just wanted you to know we’re doing something about this, Jenna. We’ll get your son back.”
“Thanks, Todd. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.” After stoically withstanding the coolness of Dennis’s family, Jenna felt the kindness of Todd’s voice slip beneath her resistance like smoke beneath a door. Tears started streaming down her cheeks again, tears she couldn’t hold back. She hung up quickly so Todd wouldn’t hear the wobble in her voice, but there was no hiding what she felt from Adam.
“So he is on his way to Oregon,” Adam said. Pulling her up and against his chest, he stroked her back while she cried. “I’m going after them.”
Jenna straightened, collecting her thoughts. “I’m going with you.”
“But what if we’re wrong and the sighting’s a fluke? Don’t you want to be here in case—”
“No. I know Dennis. He’s running back home. His family acts like they don’t care about him, because they’re so disappointed in him, but his brothers have tried to help him a dozen times. He’ll use Ryan as an excuse to get some money out of one of them, probably Russ, and claim he’s going sober and getting a job.”
“All right. Gram and Pop will be here. They can call us the minute they hear anything.”
As if Adam’s words had conjured up his grandmother, Mrs. Durham knocked softly on the open door to announce her presence. “What have you learned?” she asked, hobbling into the room.
Adam helped her to a seat, evidently sensing, as Jenna did, that the crisis had stolen her energy for the day. He told her what Todd had found out and what Jenna suspected, then asked, “Are you holding up okay, Gram?”
“Fine,” she said, but her eyes filled with tears. She self-consciously wiped them away with fingers slightly bent from arthritis, but it was then that Jenna understood how much the Durhams cared for Ryan. Over the previous months he’d become their grandson in every way that mattered, and at that moment they became Gram and Pop to her, too.
Pop came in and stood behind his wife. Somehow that unity, that common bond of love for her son, helped calm Jenna’s frantic heart. They were all searching for Ryan, praying for his safety, drawing close in their worry and fear. Dennis’s parents might be uninterested in Ryan, and her parents were gone, but in the Durhams, her son had the very best grandparents in the world. Together they would get him back.
But did that together include Adam? Jenna eyed him and tried, once again, to keep some emotional distance between them.
Don’t depend on him, no matter how tempting his strength. He won’t be here forever. He won’t last.
She decided to think about Adam later, except that later didn’t exist. While Ryan was gone and possibly in danger, there was only now, which made it so damn easy to lean on him when he put his arm around her.
* * *
ADAM TURNED the radio down when he noticed that Jenna had nodded off. They’d had little rest with which to confront the emergency that had greeted them this morning, and the motion of the car had eventually put Jenna to sleep. They’d have to stop at each town they came to once they crossed the Oregon border, to ask after Dennis and Ryan, but he wanted to give Jenna as much time as possible to get her strength back before he had to wake her.
A gentle rain fell and beaded on the windshield as Adam drove. He automatically flipped on the wipers, and their rhythmic slap, combined with the steady hum of his tires, began to ease the tension that cramped the muscles of his back. Memories of Jenna’s son—Ryan’s gap-toothed smile the day they’d ridden bikes together, the feel of the boy’s skinny arms locking around his neck the night of his bad dream, Ryan’s trusting young chatter when they’d gone out for burgers—threatened to bring the worry back with a vengeance, but he refused to give it audience. Telling himself they’d find Ryan soon, he forced the fear of what might happen if they didn’t to the back of his mind. Then he turned his thoughts to Mike, and Bernstein and Lowe, and the decision he’d made on the phone that morning—and waited for the devastation to hit.
Surprisingly enough, what he felt fell far short of devastation. He wasn’t even sure it was regret. Concern for his clients seemed to be chief among his emotions. He’d called the office to tell the secretaries to reschedule all his appointments and appearances, and to send someone else to those that couldn’t be postponed, but he needed to follow up and make sure every client was given to a competent colleague.
And then what? Did he go out on his own? He’d given Bernstein and Lowe more than a decade of his life. Why didn’t he feel—
“What are you thinking?”
Adam glanced over to see Jenna watching him. “You didn’t sleep long.”
She rested her head in her palm and propped her arm on the door, but didn’t look away. “You didn’t answer my question. What’s going on inside that head of yours?”
“Nothing in particular,” he lied. “Why?”
“You had an odd smile on your face.”
Adam supposed his expression probably was odd. Who would have thought he could cut himself loose from Bernstein and Lowe so easily and feel…what? Free? Free from Mike’s demands and expectations, and the grueling all-consuming pace he’d set for himself?
Briefly he considered telling Jenna what had happened, then decided against it. He didn’t want her to feel responsible for his decision. And he sure as hell didn’t want to frighten her by making her think their relationship was more serious at this moment than she felt it should be. He needed to lull her along, become part of the fabric of her life again, slowly convince her that he belonged there.
Her gaze didn’t waver. “So you’re not going to tell me?”
“Are you sure you want to know?” He gave her a wicked grin and raised his brows. “I was thinking about last night.”
A reddish stain darkened her cheeks, and she glanced out at the passing greenery. “Men,” she groaned, then turned back to him, and he could tell by the pensiveness in her eyes that she had something to say.
“What’s that look about?” he asked.
She scowled. “It certainly has nothing to do with sex. Being female, I can think of other things.”
“Not last night, you couldn’t.” He laughed, unable to resist the opportunity to remind Jenna that she was the one who’d traipsed through the hall to reach him.
Suddenly she laughed, too, and it did Adam’s heart good to see her smile again. “You should be used to that,” she said. “Don’t you drive all the women crazy?”
Her voice was almost flippant, but Adam sensed there was something deeper underlying her words. “Are you asking me if you’re only one in a crowd, Jen?”
“No.” She fiddled with the jeans she’d put on, along with a sweater, before they’d left the Victoriana, and Adam reached out to stop her before she could put her fingers in her mouth to bite her nails—nails that had already sustained considerable damage since they’d learned of Ryan’s disappearance. “I mean, yes,” she admitted with a frustrated sigh.
He gave her a sideways glance. “Jenna, I told you while I was making love to you that you mean something to me. My feelings haven’t changed with the rising of the sun.” He’d told her that he’d never been able to forget her, that he never could, but he hadn’t said he loved her. The words had nearly escaped him a dozen times. He knew he loved her, had always loved her, but each time he’d been tempted to make the declaration, he’d choked it back, determined to wait until she gave him some indication that she might return his feelings. Or at least that she wouldn’t throw the words back in his face.
She didn’t answer for a long time. When she did, she surprised him by saying, “What are you doing here, Adam? This is my problem, my nightmare. You should be in San Francisco, at work. I heard you on the phone earlier, telling whoever it was that they had to cancel all your appointments and…and everything. You don’t have to do this.”
“You’re right. I don’t have to be here,” he said. “That should tell you something.”
“What? What does it tell me, Adam?”
“You’ll figure it out when you listen with this—” he pressed a hand to the soft swell above her heart “—and not this.” Pulling gently on her ear, he grinned, knowing the real question was whether or not she’d let herself trust what her heart was telling her.
* * *
“WHERE DID YOU GET this?” Stunned, Jenna stood behind Adam in a dingy service station only fifty miles from the Oregon border and gazed down at a flyer with her son’s picture. Across the top in big block letters it said MISSING.
Adam tacked one up on the wall. “What did you think I was doing while you were at the police station? Enjoying a leisurely lunch?”
Jenna barely heard him. The fact that he’d made up hundreds of flyers wasn’t so surprising; the fact that he was offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of her son was. “How could you do this?”
He shrugged. “It was easy. I typed the body of it on my laptop, used the copier at the Victoriana to add Ryan’s picture, and there you are.”
“You know what I mean. I don’t have this kind of money.”
“Which is why I’m the one who’s offering the reward.” He stepped back to study Ryan’s picture. He’d placed it right in the middle of the wall, surrounded by photographs of other lost or stolen children, and it was the sheer number of those small faces that frightened Jenna. How many of them were ever found?
“But…” She didn’t know what to say. How could she thank him for such a grand gesture? Money motivated people, and only the promise of a large reward separated her kid’s picture from all the others. Surely they’d get Ryan back now.
As her gratitude overwhelmed her, she felt tears prick behind her eyes, and she didn’t bother to fight them. Nothing, least of all her pride, mattered more to her than getting Ryan back.
“Come on, don’t cry,” he said, lifting her hair off her neck and kissing the groove beneath her ear. “You can work it off as my love slave.”
His joke relieved the intensity of the moment, and she laughed in spite of her jumbled emotions. “How much did I earn for last night?”
He whistled. “If I had to put a monetary value on last night, I’d say I owe you money.”
“God, you know how to break a woman down.” Jenna’s worry for her son had twisted her stomach and her heart into such a painful knot that she wondered how other parents lived through the ordeal. But laughter helped ease some of the rawness of her feelings. She doubled her hand into a fist and gave Adam a playful punch, and he used the gesture to pull her into his arms.
Sobering once he got her there, he gazed down into her eyes. “You’re putting up a good resistance,” he said before his mouth quirked into another smile. “Have you ever seen Fatal Attraction?”
“No.”
“Some people can be pretty tough to get rid of.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That I’m not going anywhere.”
Jenna stared at him, wishing she could believe him, but experience had taught her too memorable a lesson. He’d stay until the novelty wore off or he met someone new in San Francisco. As long as he worked and lived there, it would be all too easy for him to walk away.
Shifting, she looked beyond him to the flyer, hoping she sounded calm and detached as she said, “The reward is really something, Adam, way above and beyond the call of duty. Ryan isn’t even your son.”
“How do you know he won’t be?” he asked, his voice soft but finally serious.
Jenna felt light-headed as his words sank in. “Because you know that would take a serious commitment, my attorney friend.”
He smiled. “I guess it would. But you know what? Losing you again is the only thing that really scares me.”
Until you have me back and the challenge is gone. Jenna kept her gaze on her son’s picture and tried to edge away from the emotional precipice that yawned before her. “I guess you’re putting your money where your mouth is, huh?”
* * *
DENNIS SAT ON THE HOOD of his car holding a sign he’d made from the flap of a cardboard box. It read, “Trying to get home. Please help,” but the patrons of the rest area mostly ignored him. They shuffled into and out of the cement washrooms, got a drink from the pebbled fountain and hurried on their way. The few he’d approached had shaken their heads and circled wide if they had to pass him again. And now that it was dark and getting late, Dennis doubted his luck would improve. Ryan had fallen asleep in the back of the car. Without him, strangers had no trust and even less sympathy.
“Screw ’em,” he muttered and pocketed the few bills and some odd change he’d managed to collect when he’d forced Ryan to hold the collection bucket. Standing, he stretched and thought how good a beer would taste, then circled to the driver’s side of the car and got behind the wheel.
At the squeal of door hinges, Ryan peered over the seat. His face was swollen from sleep, his hair mussed and sticking up on one side.
“Where are we?”
“After that little phone trick, you don’t need to know,” Dennis barked. His patience was wearing thin, not only with the boy but with life in general. After Ryan’s stunt in Medford, Dennis had cuffed him a time or two—nothing like the beating he would’ve suffered for such disobedience when he was a kid—but his son had barely spoken a word since. When Dennis tried to draw him out, Ryan had answered in monosyllables and kept his gaze firmly fixed to whatever he saw flying past his window.
But his son’s behavior hadn’t been the worst part of the day. They’d had to stop for long periods of time to beg for enough gas money to make the next town, and because of the stingy assholes they’d met, it was taking forever to get to Portland.
“Do we have enough money for dinner?” Ryan asked, rubbing his eyes.
“What do you mean? I just bought you a Happy Meal, and you didn’t even appreciate it.” Dennis started the car, hearing the foreboding sputter of the engine, a noise that had been getting louder all day, and backed away from the curb.
“That was lunch. Aren’t you hungry?” Ryan persisted.
Dennis was hungry—for a beer. And for a little peace. When he’d taken Ryan, he’d thought only of punishing Jenna, of showing her that he was every bit as good as she was and capable of raising their son. But the reality—constant bathroom breaks, recurring hunger, thirst and moodiness—was far different from what he’d envisioned. With his car acting up, his pockets empty and his son crying at any mention of his mother, Dennis doubted he could survive the rest of the night without a drink.
“Dad, my stomach hurts. Can’t we get something to eat? Please?”
“Shut up!” Dennis growled. His hand flexed at the impulse to hit Ryan, but the boy flinched and ducked behind the seat before he could move. Gazing at his fisted hand in surprise, Dennis shook his head. Ryan hadn’t done anything wrong this time. It was after ten o’clock and his son hadn’t eaten since noon. Of course the boy was hungry.
Forcing himself to relax, Dennis shook out his hand and left the concrete oasis of the rest area behind as he again headed north on Interstate 5.
“We’ll get you something at the next stop,” Dennis muttered, but the weight of the change in his pocket felt far too light to purchase everything they needed: gas, food, beer.
More than anything, beer.
No. Dennis took firm hold of himself. They’d eat, put the rest in gas and forget the beer, he decided—until his craving grew so strong he broke out in a cold sweat. Then he decided to feed Ryan a cheap bean burrito, skip his own dinner and buy the beer, leaving the problem of gas money till tomorrow.
But by the time they reached Winston, Dennis had changed his mind. Ryan had fallen asleep again. The kid wouldn’t die if he had to wait until morning to eat, Dennis thought, because he already knew he was going to spend every cent they had at the liquor store—and on something far stronger than beer.
* * *
ADAM STRETCHED OUT on the motel bed, wondering if Jenna would allow him to hold her. She was curled on her side, facing the wall, and hadn’t spoken since they’d finally given up their search for the day. Though they’d hired kids in every town and city to post flyers and had received numerous calls because of the reward, they hadn’t learned anything that would lead them to Ryan.
“How are you feeling, Jen? Okay?”
She nodded.
“All this worry can’t be good for the baby.”
“It’s hard to think about the baby right now. All I can think about is Ryan.”
“Have you been to a doctor yet?”
“I have an appointment next week.”
“Good.”
He watched her for another minute, resisting the urge to gather her close. “I’m going to call Dennis’s brother, Russ.”
“I’ve tried a dozen times. The last time was just a few minutes ago. All I get is an answering machine,” Jenna said, turning toward him.
Adam vaguely remembered Russ and Dennis’s other siblings. At least a decade older, they’d left home before Adam and Dennis reached high school, but he’d seen them around town occasionally, when they’d come back to visit. “It can’t hurt to try again. Unless he’s out of town, he has to get home sometime. Isn’t he married?”
“Divorced.”
“Still…” Adam had transferred the information in Jenna’s old address book to his day planner and quickly found the number. Picking up the phone, he dialed, expecting to leave another message, when a male voice came on the line.
“Dammit, Jenna, this sure as hell better not be you again, or I’ll call the police and tell them you’re harassing me!”
“Is that any way to respond to the news that your nephew’s been kidnapped?” Adam asked.
Jenna sat up and climbed onto her knees, a hopeful look on her face. “Is he there? Is that Russ?”
Adam nodded as silence stretched between him and Russ Livingston. Then Dennis’s brother asked, “Who is this? The police?”
“No. This is Adam Durham—” Adam held Jenna’s hand away from the phone “—an old friend of Jenna’s. I’m helping her look for her son, and I’m calling to see if you’ve heard from Dennis.”
“I’ve heard your name too many times. Why the hell would I tell you?”
“Because you know your brother’s a drunk, and if anything happens to Ryan, you won’t want it on your conscience.”
“Dennis would never hurt his son.”
“He hurt his wife. Who knows what he might do if he really tied one on?”
Russ Livingston sighed. “He loved Jenna. She should’ve stayed with him. It’s her fault he’s the way he is.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You weren’t the one he was beating.”
“It wasn’t that bad. He only hit her once or twice.”
Adam tried to distance himself from the emotions that would have him arguing with this guy. “Look, I wasn’t there. I don’t know how bad it was, but then, neither do you. So let’s cut the bias and the loyalty rhetoric, and get down to what really matters now—Ryan. Dennis just got out of jail for threatening Jenna’s life—”
“What?”
“It’s true. You can call the Mendocino County Courthouse if you don’t believe me. He’s angry and he’s probably shaking from withdrawal and he’s broke. Where do you think he might go?”
Another long silence. “I don’t know. I haven’t heard from him in three weeks or more.”
“Do you have a pencil?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to give you my number. I think deep down you’re a decent guy, Russ, who wouldn’t like to see a little boy get hurt. I’m going to ask you to call me if Dennis contacts you. Will you do that?”
Another sigh. “Yeah.”
Adam put a calming hand on Jenna, who was staring at him with frightened eyes. “Thanks, Russ.”
“What did he say?” Jenna asked as soon as Adam had hung up.
After plugging his car phone into its charger, Adam lay back and pulled Jenna down beside him. With her head on his shoulder he idly stroked her hair and said, “He hasn’t heard from Dennis, but if he does, he’ll call us.”
“You’re sure?” she asked, her voice full of hope.
And though he wasn’t, he knew Jenna needed the reassurance enough to say, “I’m sure, sweetheart. I’m sure.”
* * *
THE FACE STARING BACK at him from a blue flyer posted on the wall of the twenty-four-hour liquor store looked surprisingly like Ryan. Dennis hadn’t seen it when they’d arrived several hours ago, shortly after eleven o’clock. But then, he’d been thinking of only one thing—getting a drink. It was only after he’d finished the bottle that he’d gotten up and stumbled from the back of the building to the front, where he’d left Ryan asleep in the car. He’d approached the liquor-store entrance, blinking at the bright light spilling through its glass front, wishing he had the money for another bottle—oblivion didn’t come as cheaply or easily as it used to—and that was when he saw it.
Tearing the flyer from the painted cinder-block wall, Dennis squinted to improve his blurry vision. He still carried the empty bottle because it felt good in his hands, but now he set it down and moved closer to the light.
Missing: Ryan Livingston, 4’5”, 75 pounds, blondish-brown hair, brown eyes, eight years old…
The flyer went on to give a description of himself, too, but it was the reward that sent his temper soaring.
“$25,000! Shit!” He whirled and kicked the bottle he’d left standing on the cement. It crashed and broke on the pavement not far from the car.
The clerk inside the liquor store must have heard the disturbance because he came to the door and told Dennis it was time to move on. “No loitering here,” he insisted, and stood waiting to make sure Dennis disappeared. “I’ll call the cops if you don’t leave.”
But Dennis paid no attention. Jenna was offering a $25,000 reward for the return of their son. Where would she get that kind of money? The whole thing reeked of Adam Durham. Worse, if a flyer could be posted here, at a run-down liquor store, there could be flyers everywhere. Everyone in Oregon would be looking for him, hoping to cash in!
“Son of a bitch!” he ground out, but the store clerk had already headed back inside, probably to call the police, and Dennis didn’t dare linger. The shock had left him nearly sober. He jumped into the Escort and started the car, hoping he had enough gas to get to some out-of-the-way place on the fringes of the city, some field or parking lot, where they could wait for morning. He was a sitting duck now, thanks to Jenna and Adam. If he wasn’t careful, he’d go back to jail, this time for kidnapping.
“Shit, oh shit, oh shit,” he muttered as the car rattled along. What now? He couldn’t go to Portland. He’d be stopped long before he got there, if not right afterward. He had to do something unexpected. But he had no money and was almost out of gas.
“What’s wrong, Dad?” Ryan’s voice came from the backseat.
“Nothing. Go back to sleep!”
“But I can’t. I’m cold and I’m hungry. Can’t we eat, please? You said we’d get something.”
“I said go back to sleep!” Dennis hadn’t meant to yell as loudly as he had, and regretted it the instant Ryan started to cry. He couldn’t think while the kid was blubbering in the back seat, mumbling about his mom and Gram and Pop Somebody, and how bad he needed to eat.
“Shut up or—”
Dennis caught himself before he finished the threat, not wanting to make the situation any worse. Ryan’s sobs died down, but the soft gasps that emanated from the back seat maddened Dennis almost as much as the outright crying.
Trying to ignore the urge to pound Ryan until the sounds stopped completely, Dennis decided he had two choices. He could abandon his son and take off on his own. The police probably wouldn’t waste their time searching for him if Ryan was back with his mother.
Or he could surprise them all by striking out across country and taking Ryan with him. With no job and no home, he might as well live in Carolina as Oregon. If he chose back roads and avoided any of the places his family lived, he had a good chance of slipping away, provided he could beg enough for gas and food or come up with money some other way.
And wouldn’t it just serve Jenna right if she never saw her son again!