“We need to get out there and look for him, Knox. Maybe he fell somewhere and hit his head, or broke his leg.” Allison grabbed Knox’s forearm, her fingers icy cold and her eyes wide with alarm. “Maybe he’s lying unconscious in a yard up the street right now. We’ve got to find him.” Her voice held more than an edge of hysteria.
Knox took her by the shoulders firmly. It was obvious she was in complete denial to the idea that Cody might have been taken by somebody. “I checked the yards, Allison. He isn’t there. Can you think of any other friends he might have gone to play with?” he asked.
“I don’t know...maybe Tim. Cody has gone to his house for playdates before.” Her face was almost as white as her blouse.
“You call anyplace you think he might have possibly gone and I’m going to call the sheriff.” Knox knew without a doubt that she wasn’t going to find Cody at any friend’s house.
He’d gotten off the bus and there’s no way he would have just dropped his backpack to the ground and wandered off. Somebody had grabbed him. Knox knew it with a gut instinct. Somebody had kidnapped his son, and the faster the sheriff and his men got involved, the better the odds of finding him.
Knox should have never picked up the backpack. He’d had enough law enforcement training to know better. But the horror of seeing it on the ground had circumvented all good sense. He’d grabbed it up and held it to his chest...not a response of a trained Texas Ranger, but rather that of a desperate father.
He made the 9-1-1 call and they waited for the sheriff to arrive. He paced the floor while Allison sat on the edge of the sofa, her eyes half-glazed with fear, and there was nothing he could do, nothing he could say to take the fear away. It resonated in his gut, as well.
She grabbed the backpack and opened it. “Maybe there’s a note or something inside that might tell us where he’s gone.”
She pulled out a couple of textbooks and a notebook. She thumbed through the notebook but apparently didn’t find anything that might tell them where Cody had gone. She set the backpack next to her and gazed at him with frightened eyes.
Minutes ticked by in agonizing silence. Knox was intensely aware that each minute was a minute lost in searching for his son. The burn of anger in his belly couldn’t compete with the taste of fear in his mouth.
What was happening? Who might be responsible for Cody’s absence? He swallowed hard against the fear, not allowing it to completely consume him.
Allison now gripped her cell phone so tightly in her hand that her fingers were white. Her home phone receiver was in her lap. He knew she was hoping for a call from somebody, from anybody, letting her know that Cody was all right and would be home soon.
Knox moved to the front window and stared outside. Where in the hell was the sheriff? They needed to form a search party immediately. They needed to get people out on the streets asking questions and hunting for Cody.
He would be out there right now, interviewing all the people who lived on the block where he’d found the backpack, if it wasn’t for the fact that Allison looked as if she was hanging on to her sanity by a thread.
“It’s got to be Chad,” she finally said, breaking the painful silence. “He said he’d screw up my life, and what better way than this?”
If Chad had taken Cody in an effort to get back at Allison, then the man better not hurt his son in any way. If he did...then Knox would kill him without blinking an eye.
“Would he have gotten into a stranger’s car?” he asked.
“Never. I’ve had all those talks with Cody. We even have a safe word in case of an emergency when somebody else might have to pick him up for any reason.”
“We need to just wait for Sheriff Jeffries,” Knox replied. “I’m sure he’ll check out Chad.” It was now almost an hour from when Cody should have been home, over twenty minutes since Knox had called 9-1-1. Didn’t anyone in this damned town care that a little boy was missing?
He was just about to make a second call when the sheriff’s car finally pulled up in the driveway. He watched as Sheriff Bud Jeffries got out of his car.
The lawman looked to be in his middle forties. A bit of scalp shone through thinning blond hair as he slowly ambled toward the front door.
Knox despised the man already. He wanted sure, determined footsteps to carry help their way. He wanted a man with a mission in his eyes...the mission to find a missing child who should have been home an hour ago.
Knox opened the door to allow him inside. “Knox Colton,” he said grimly as Allison joined them just inside the door.
“Sheriff Jeffries,” he replied.
“Sheriff, Cody didn’t come home from the bus stop,” Allison said. “And Knox found his backpack on the ground between here and the bus stop.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “Somebody must have taken him. We think he’s been kidnapped.”
“Whoa, let’s not jump to conclusions here,” Bud replied with a small laugh. “How long has he been gone?”
“Almost an hour now,” Knox responded tersely.
Bud ran a hand down his shirt front, where the buttons strained across a slightly paunchy belly. “It’s a beautiful day outside. Maybe he and a couple of friends are playing together and forgot all about the time. It happens a lot.”
“Cody knows he’s supposed to come straight home from the bus stop,” Allison replied as she swiped at an errant tear that fell on her cheek.
“Ah, but sometimes boys will be boys, right?” Bud replied with a rueful smile.
Knox’s hands curled into fists at his side. Dammit, he wanted the sheriff to be as frantic as they were. He wanted the man to feel a sense of urgency. Something was wrong; otherwise Cody would be there.
“Allison has checked with all his friends. He isn’t with any of them. As she told you, I found his backpack on the ground between here and the bus stop. Cody would have never left his backpack anywhere,” Knox replied evenly. “You need to get some men out here and set up a search.”
Bud’s brown eyes narrowed slightly. “I don’t take my orders from a Colton.”
Knox stepped back in surprise and his blood boiled, but he maintained his control with tremendous effort. After all, they needed this man and his resources right now.
“Then consider me just an ordinary taxpayer,” Knox replied curtly.
Bud took a step back from him and grimaced, as if aware that he might have crossed a line.
“You need to check out Chad,” Allison said. “I showed you the horrible texts he sent to me. He swore he’d make me pay for firing him.” A sob escaped her and Knox placed an arm around her shoulder.
“We’ve got a child missing under suspicious circumstances, given that his backpack was on the ground where it shouldn’t have been,” Knox said.
“Ms. Rafferty, was your son upset with you for any reason when he left for school this morning?”
Allison stared at him as if in disbelief. “No, Cody wasn’t upset with me or anything else in his life. He’s a happy boy and if you think he ran away, then you’re dead wrong. He didn’t run away,” she replied.
“Time is passing by with no answers. For God’s sake, do something,” Knox said in open frustration.
Bud frowned. “I’ll get a couple of deputies out here to canvass the area and I’ll head over to Chad’s to check him out. In the meantime, let me know if you hear from Cody. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he showed up here anytime after having a bit of an adventure with a friend.”
“He’s not taking this seriously,” Allison said once Jeffries had left the house. The tears she’d obviously tried to hold back since they had called 9-1-1 now fell in earnest down her cheeks. “Where’s our son, Knox? Where can he be?”
He grabbed her to him and she buried her head in his chest as she cried. “We’ll find him, Allison. I promise we’ll find him and bring him home safe and sound.”
As she continued to weep, he hoped and prayed that he hadn’t just made a promise he couldn’t keep.
* * *
“We questioned everyone who was home between here and the bus stop,” Deputy Wendall Kincaid explained.
“Nobody we spoke to saw anything suspicious and none of them saw Cody,” Deputy Jim Baker added. “But most people had no reason to be looking out the window at the time the bus stopped.”
Allison stared at them wordlessly, willing them to say something different, wanting desperately for one of them to tell her that Cody was safe and sound in the back of their patrol car. “So what happens now?” she finally asked.
“Do you know your son’s school bus driver?” Wendall asked.
“We already called her,” Knox said. “She told us that Cody was on the bus and got off at his stop as usual this afternoon. He was walking down the sidewalk toward home when she pulled away.”
“And when he went to school this morning, he didn’t say anything that might indicate to you that he planned to stop somewhere after school?” Wendall looked at Allison.
She searched her mind frantically to remember everything that had happened that morning before school. She’d fixed Cody pancakes for breakfast and they’d laughed at her attempt to make them in the shape of horses. He’d told her he had a math test that day but he was confident he’d ace it. It had been one of their routine, normal morning conversations.
“Nothing,” she replied desperately. “Cody knew that Knox would be waiting here for him this afternoon and he was looking forward to spending time with him.”
“Have either of you spoken to Sheriff Jeffries? He was going to check out Chad Watkins, who has made some threats against Allison,” Knox asked.
“We haven’t been in contact with him since he radioed us and told us to get over here,” Wendall replied.
“So what happens now?” Allison asked again. “Can’t you get more deputies to look for him? Maybe you should check with the Billings brothers. They’ve been giving me a lot of trouble lately.”
Her brain was frozen with a horrifying disbelief that this was happening. It was past dinnertime. Cody should be sitting in a restaurant with his father celebrating their newfound relationship. Or he should be here and she’d make grilled ham and cheese sandwiches with chicken noodle soup...one of his favorites.
“I’m sure Sheriff Jeffries is going to put more men on this, but in the meantime maybe you should contact some of your own friends to search for him,” Jim said sympathetically.
“We’re going to go back and knock on more doors and see if we can find somebody who might have seen Cody after he got off the bus,” Wendall added.
Allison stumbled backward to the sofa and sat as Knox walked with the two deputies out the front door. She was in a horrible nightmare and the only thing that would wake her up was the sound of Cody’s voice, the sight of him right here where he belonged.
She wanted to run outside. She needed to race up and down the streets and knock on doors, calling his name until he answered her, and yet she was afraid to leave here in case somebody brought him home or he called her to come and get him.
Kidnapped. Was that really what had happened to him? The word had no place in her reality. If Chad had taken him to teach her a lesson, then what was it she was supposed to learn? And when would he bring him back?
Tears once again burned hot at her eyes, but she consciously swallowed against them. She couldn’t fall apart right now. Her son needed her to be strong.
She jumped up off the sofa as Knox came back inside. “I don’t know how seriously the sheriff is taking it, but those two deputies seem to be taking it very seriously,” he said.
“Wendall has a boy a year younger than Cody,” she replied. “And Jim has two little girls.” Both of them were parents. They’d know what she was going through. They’d do everything they could to get Cody back for her.
“I called Thorne and Mac to come over and help with a search. Maybe you could make a pot of coffee?”
“Of course,” she replied, grateful for something, for anything to do besides fall completely apart. She went into the kitchen and prepared the coffee. As she waited for it to brew, she stared out the window.
It wouldn’t be long before dusk would fall and after that the darkness of night. Surely he’d be home before his bedtime. Surely she’d get to tuck him in tonight as she had so many times before. When night came, he needed to be in his bed with the stars on his ceiling shining down on him. She had to believe that.
She closed her eyes as she remembered the sweet kiss on the cheek Cody had given her that morning before he’d left for the bus stop and how they’d laughed at her silly-looking pancakes. She’d give anything she possessed to hear his laughter once again, to feel his kiss once again.
If he had made a mistake and gone to play and lost track of the time, she wouldn’t be angry with him as long as he came home.
The coffee had just finished making when Sheriff Jeffries arrived once again. The fact that he didn’t have Cody in tow increased the despair inside Allison.
“Unfortunately I haven’t been able to locate Chad,” he said. “He’s not at his home and he isn’t in any of the bars. The bartender at the Whiskey Sour said he was in earlier and left about three thirty. I’ve instructed my men to stop him if they see him.”
“What about the Billings brothers?” she asked. “Have you spoken with them?”
Bud frowned. “Why would I talk to them?”
“You know they’ve been vandalizing my jobs,” Allison replied, her voice slightly raised.
“I know no such thing,” Bud replied. “I know you’ve had some vandalism and that you suspect them, but we haven’t found any proof that they’re responsible. Besides, Brad and Bob aren’t the kind of men who would take a kid.”
“But Brad is the kind of man who would threaten a woman in her office,” Knox replied. She could feel the tension that rolled off him.
“Yeah, Brad told me about his knucklehead move to talk to Allison in her office,” Bud replied with a wry grin. “I told him not to pull something like that again.”
“So maybe he decided to take Cody instead,” Allison replied. “Sheriff Jeffries, you have to take this seriously.”
“I am taking it seriously,” he replied and puffed up his chest. “I’ve told all the men on the streets to look for the boy.”
“Cody. His name is Cody,” Knox replied evenly. “We’re planning on getting together a search party with friends and relatives. Do you want to coordinate it?”
“I’m overseeing the search by my own men and attempting to find Chad. I can’t be at ten places at one time,” Bud replied defensively.
Lazy, Allison thought bitterly. Even now, with a child missing from his home, Bud didn’t want to commit himself to working too hard. There had been many in town who had been complaining about Bud’s indolence.
“Wouldn’t it help your men to have a picture of Cody?” Knox asked, his voice the deceptive calm that she knew hid a wealth of anger.
Bud rocked back on his heels. “I was just about to ask for one.”
“Allison, do you have an up-to-date photo of Cody?” Knox asked gently.
The request suddenly made this even more horrifyingly real. When was the last time she’d taken a picture of her son? She couldn’t remember. God, she hadn’t taken enough pictures of him. She should have been taking one of him every single day.
“The latest one is his school picture,” she finally replied. “I have some in the kitchen desk drawer.” She went into the kitchen, sat down at the desk and pulled open the drawer that held the envelope of her son’s school pictures.
Her fingers trembled as she withdrew a sheet of four five-by-seven prints. One was missing. She’d cut it off and framed it the day he’d brought them home. It was on the stand next to her bed where she could gaze at it first thing in the morning and right before she went to sleep.
She stared at Cody’s image. He’d insisted he wear his favorite blue plaid shirt, which made his bright blue eyes appear even bluer. His wide smile invited everyone around him to smile, as well.
A lump formed in the back of her throat. Don’t cry, she commanded herself. To cry meant she had abandoned hope, and that was all she had right now. A warm hand fell on her shoulder. She looked up to see Knox, his gaze riveted to the pictures.
“Do you have any wallet-sized?” he asked.
“Is that what Sheriff Jeffries wants?”
“That’s what I want. I want to carry a picture of my son in my wallet.” A wealth of hunger, of love was in his voice.
If she focused on his emotion, she would have a complete and total breakdown. She pulled out a pair of scissors and cut a wallet-sized photo for him and the bigger one for the sheriff.
“You’ll keep us posted as to what you find out?” Knox asked Bud as he handed him the photo.
“Of course, and you let me know if the b...Cody shows up here. I’m assigning Deputy Kincaid and Deputy Baker to sit here with you. They’ll be back here in a little while.” With that Bud left.
For a long moment Allison and Knox stared at each other, and in that moment his eyes were completely unguarded and the pain that shone there mirrored her own. She wanted desperately to fall into his arms, but that wouldn’t make Cody magically appear.
“Do you really think he’s been kidnapped?” she asked softly. Her brain flashed on the fact that Livia Colton was someplace running free. Was she behind this? Oh God, she couldn’t even think such a terrible thing right now.
He released a deep sigh and jammed his hands in his pockets. “To be honest, I don’t know what to think.” His eyes were shadowed but the vulnerability that had been there moments before was gone. “But we have to consider that it’s definitely a real possibility.”
“He said the bartender told him Chad left the bar at around three thirty. He would have had time to take Cody,” she said.
At that moment a knock fell on the door. Knox answered to allow in Mac and Thorne. “Thanks for coming,” Knox said. “I’m not sure exactly what the sheriff is doing, but I figured we needed to get some people out searching.”
Mac frowned. “If I know Bud Jeffries, he’s doing as little as possible.”
Allison listened as Knox filled them in on finding the backpack in the next block over. She assumed Knox had told Mac and Thorne about Cody being his son in the last week.
Everyone froze as the house phone rang. Let it be Cody, Allison prayed as she hurried to pick it up. Knox’s hand crashed down on hers just before she answered.
“Put it on speaker,” he said urgently.
She realized he thought it might be a ransom call. A surge of nausea rose up inside her as she picked up the receiver. “Hello?” Her voice was a mere whisper.
“Allison, it’s Lauren Patten from the school. I was just wondering if Cody ever got home okay.”
Allison expelled a shuddery sigh, unsure if she was disappointed that it wasn’t a call from a kidnapper or relieved that it was the school receptionist. “No, Lauren, he hasn’t come home yet. We’ve gotten the police involved but we’d appreciate anyone who wants to join a search party for him.”
“I’ll see who I can round up,” Lauren replied.
“We’ve got about an hour and a half or so left of daylight,” Knox said when Allison hung up the phone.
“We’ll head out,” Thorne said and then left the house with Mac.
Once again Allison and Knox were alone with their despair, a living, breathing third person. “What do we do now?” she finally asked bleakly.
“We wait.”
The two words thundered in Allison’s head. How long before they had an answer? How long before she could clutch her precious boy to her chest and feel his heartbeat against her own? How long before Cody was home where he belonged?