by Lara Lacombe
“If this doesn’t work...” She trailed off, unwilling to give voice to her fears. What if she was wrong, and Joseph hadn’t taken her baby to the park? Was she wasting her time and efforts, time that would be better spent looking elsewhere?
But what other choice did she have? Emma couldn’t rest while her baby was gone. She had to trust that Detective Randall and his team were doing their best in El Paso. They thought it unlikely Joseph had fled to Big Bend, which meant they weren’t going to spend time looking here. Even though they figured it was a long shot, Emma refused to leave any stone unturned in the hunt for Christina. If that meant spending the rest of her life wandering the desert, then so be it.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Matt said. He reached across the table and placed his hand over hers. His palm was warm against her skin. Even though he was a stranger, Emma drew comfort from his touch. She hadn’t been with anyone since Chris’s death, and a frisson shot up her arm as she realized how much she’d missed the touch of a man. Her body cried out for more contact, but not in a sexual way. She simply wanted to be held by someone bigger and stronger, someone who could fold her into his arms and make her feel safe. She wanted to lay her head against Matt’s chest and surrender her worries and fears. For one brief, aching moment, she wanted a man to take care of her, to fix her problems and give her the gift of rest.
It was a lovely fantasy, but that’s all it would ever be. In reality, there was no knight in shining armor waiting in the wings, ready to swoop in and rescue her from the nightmare her life had become. And while Emma prided herself on her accomplishments as a single mother, she wasn’t too proud to admit that she missed having a partner, someone to share things with and lean on for support when the going got tough. She’d had that once with Chris. Would she ever find it again?
Doesn’t matter, she told herself. Her loneliness wasn’t important, not right now. She couldn’t allow self-pity to distract her from her search. She’d never forgive herself if she missed a clue because of pointless navel-gazing.
“I’m trying to stay positive,” she said, forcing herself to return to the conversation. “But it’s hard. Every minute that passes without her feels like an eternity.”
“I can imagine.” Matt’s eyes were full of sympathy and a hint of understanding, as if he had some idea of what she was going through.
“Do you have children?” He’s probably a great dad, she figured. She imagined him playing catch with a towheaded boy, a smaller version of himself. She felt a pang in her heart as she pictured him hugging his son, burying his nose in the little boy’s hair. Does he take it for granted, the way I used to?
To her surprise, the light left his eyes and a wall shot up between them. “No,” he said shortly. “I’m not a father.” His tone was curt; it was clear she had inadvertently touched a nerve.
“Oh,” she said dumbly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
He ignored her apology, changing the subject. “You said you and your brother camped here a lot as kids. I’m going to grab a map of the park so you can mark where you think he’d go.” He pushed back from the desk and stepped away, leaving Emma alone with her cold cup of coffee.
She gripped the mug, staring into the dark liquid. For the first time in days, she felt like she could catch her breath. And as she watched Matt walk back toward the desk, moving with an easy confidence she envied, a strange sensation took root in her chest. It took her a few seconds, but she finally identified the feeling.
Hope.
* * *
This was shaping up to be a lot harder than he’d thought.
Joseph frowned as he watched his niece play with a small cloth ball, rolling it across the surface of the sleeping bag. She was all smiles now, but he’d learned quickly that her mood could change on a dime. Not even ten minutes ago she wailed loudly after he’d removed a rock from her mouth. Her quicksilver temper was enough to give him whiplash. How did Emma handle this? He was only three days in and ready to throw in the towel.
“Not much longer,” he said quietly, not wanting to disturb the baby’s play. He’d given Emma a deadline for the money—he’d been quite generous with the amount of time he’d granted her to get the funds.
It didn’t have to be this way. Bitterness rose in his chest as he pictured his sister. He’d come to her in good faith, asking for help to pay his gambling debts. She hadn’t been his first choice. He’d much rather take care of his own problems—he had his pride, after all. But the debt was out of control, and there was no way he could scrape together that kind of cash in time to keep the enforcers at bay.
Karnov was not a patient man. Whispers swirled that he was in with the Russian mafia. Joseph had dismissed them as mere rumors, but now he realized what a mistake that had been.
Even now, he broke into a cold sweat at the memory of Karnov’s warning. Joseph had literally been plucked off the street and thrown into the back of a van, a cloth bag jerked down over his head. When they’d stopped, he’d been manhandled into a warehouse. Someone had pulled the bag away to reveal an unsmiling Karnov and a gun, inches away from Joseph’s nose.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Karnov had said.
“Please, I’ll do anything.” Joseph had nearly soiled himself, and only the two men gripping his arms had kept him from falling to his knees. “I just need a little time to get the money together. A month, that’s all.”
“Two weeks.” Karnov uncocked the pistol and let his arm hang by his side. “And I’m charging you interest. Now it’s five hundred thousand.”
The figure had taken Joseph’s breath away, but he couldn’t exactly protest. “Thank you,” he’d said, swallowing hard. Not for the first time, he cursed his bad luck. First, he’d backed the wrong football teams. Then, he’d tried to buy himself out of the hole by betting on ponies. That had only made things worse.
And so, out of options, he’d come to his sister, tail between his legs.
“I’ll pay you back,” he’d promised. And he’d meant it. He had no intention of mooching off his baby sister; it was more like he’d asked her for a loan.
But Emma hadn’t seen it that way. “Joseph,” she’d said, perfectly replicating the note of disappointment their mother had mastered over the years. “How could you do this to yourself again? You’re smarter than that.”
He was smart, that much was true. But neither the football teams nor the ponies respected intelligence. It was all a game of chance, and Lady Luck hadn’t smiled on him in far too long. He certainly hadn’t meant for things to get so out of hand, but life was a cruel bitch sometimes.
The downturn in his fortunes had stung, but not nearly as much as his sister’s denial. Emma’s refusal to help him was a betrayal of their relationship, and it cut him to the quick. She had the money—he knew she’d gotten a fat settlement from the other driver after Chris’s death. But she lied to his face, acting like she had nothing to give.
“I don’t have the money.” She’d said that several times, as if repetition would convince him to believe her lies. “The other driver doesn’t have money, so I’m not getting any.”
Yeah, right. Did she think he was stupid? The guy who was responsible for killing Chris might not be Mr. Moneybags, but Joseph knew he was paying. Maybe not all at once, but a monthly sum had to add up quick, and it had been over a year since the judgment. By his reckoning, Emma was sitting on a nice lump of cash. It might not be enough to pay his debt in full, but it would definitely buy him some breathing room. He’d heard through the grapevine that Karnov’s enforcers were brutal, going so far as to remove body parts from debtors.
But no matter how clearly he explained the situation, she clung stubbornly to her lies.
“I know you want to use the money for Christina’s education,” he’d said. “And I’ll have plenty of time to pay you back. You won’t even miss the funds.”
“No, Joseph. I can’t help you.”
More like won’t, he’d realized as he left her apartment. If he’d had more time, he probably could have come up with a way to persuade her to lend him the money. But a few hours after his conversation with Emma, Karnov’s thugs had found him and administered a painful beating. His ribs still ached from the blows.
“Next time, we take things,” the square-jawed enforcer had made a scissoring motion with his fingers as he and his partner left Joseph in a heap on the floor.
With his time running out, Joseph had resorted to desperate measures to secure his sister’s help. He felt bad about taking the baby, but really, Emma had only herself to blame. If she had simply agreed to help him instead of being stingy, he never would have had to take Christina.
The baby in question was apparently bored with her ball. She began to crawl, her gaze focused on the open backpack lying a few feet away.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Joseph muttered. He reached out to snatch the bag from her grasp, depositing it on the other side of the tent.
Deprived of her goal, Christina opened her mouth and let out a piercing wail. Fat tears began to roll down her chubby cheeks, and her face turned pink with distress.
“It’s okay,” Joseph said, scrambling to find some kind of distraction to stop the crying. The sound of her voice was like nails on a chalkboard, and he felt his hackles continue to rise with every passing second.
“Are you hungry?” In desperation, he twisted the top off a pouch of baby food and stuck it in her mouth. Christina blinked in surprise at this unexpected development. She gummed the nozzle for a moment, testing the plastic. Apparently deciding the offering was acceptable, she began to suck on the pouch, restoring a peaceful quiet to the tent.
Joseph let out his breath, grateful for the reprieve but knowing it wouldn’t last long.
Bringing the baby to Big Bend hadn’t been one of his smarter decisions, but there was no other place he could think of to hide while Emma got the money together. He’d camped here so much as a kid, but now that he was responsible for a child, he realized how difficult those trips must have been for his own father. There weren’t a lot of creature comforts out here in the wilderness. But fortunately Christina was too young to notice that. He’d grabbed diapers and baby food before taking her, figuring that was all he’d need. Camping with an infant was not exactly fun, but at least they were isolated enough that her cries wouldn’t bother anyone else. A single man with a baby would raise suspicion; all he had to do was lie low for a few more days, and his problems would be solved.
He knew Emma had called the police. They were probably searching for him now, thinking he was a danger to his niece. It wasn’t true—he had no intention of hurting the baby. As soon as he got the money, he’d make sure Emma got her daughter back. But he wasn’t going to stick around for the reunion. He was going to have Emma leave the money at a public location. Then he was going to tell Karnov where to find it. Let the Russian deal with the police when he sent his goons to retrieve the funds. Joseph smiled at the thought, imagining the square-jawed thug taking a few on the chin as he was arrested. Karnov would be pissed to learn he’d been double-crossed, but Joseph didn’t care. He’d be long gone by the time it all got sorted out. Besides, he was technically paying his debt. It wasn’t his fault Karnov wasn’t going to get to keep the money.
Joseph retrieved the ball and set it in front of Christina. She eyed it with interest, the now-empty pouch dropping from her mouth.
“Ba, ba, ba,” she babbled. She rocked forward to grab the ball, treating Joseph to an eye-watering whiff of her diaper.
“Didn’t I just change you?” he grumbled. He reached for a fresh diaper and the wipes as the baby cooed happily to her toy.
“Almost done,” he told himself as he set about the unpleasant task. “Just a few more days.”
They couldn’t pass quickly enough.
Chapter 3
“Is this going to take much longer?”
Matt glanced up from the computer screen to offer Emma what he hoped was a reassuring smile. She’d been pacing in front of his desk for the past twenty minutes, clearly on edge. She was obviously anxious to start the search, but there were things they needed to deal with before heading out into the park. He sympathized with her desire to do something, but he wasn’t about to head into an unknown situation without doing a little prep work first.
“I’m almost done,” he said. “Do you have a photo I can add?” He was putting together a flyer to print, a sort of wanted poster that showed the baby and briefly explained the situation. He wanted his fellow rangers to know what was going on, so they too could be on the lookout.
“A picture of Christina?” Emma asked. “Or Joseph?” Matt could tell by the way she practically spat her brother’s name that there would be no forgiveness for her sibling. Not that he blamed her—kidnapping wasn’t exactly something a mother could forget.
“I’ll take both, if you have them,” Matt said. It would be good to show Joseph’s face as well, especially since he might have the baby in a tent or otherwise have her face obscured when people were around.
Emma pulled out her phone and tapped the screen. After a moment, she flipped it around so he could look at it.
“That’s my love,” she said, choking up a bit.
Matt had to admit her daughter was a beautiful child. She had her mother’s curly dark hair and heart-shaped face. But her eyes were startlingly blue, like a cloudless summer sky. Deep dimples reminded him of a cherub, and her toothless smile held such joy Matt couldn’t help but smile back.
Seeing her made his heart ache for the child he’d lost. Even though he hadn’t been the father of Jennifer’s child, he’d been well on his way to falling in love with the little guy.
“How old is she?” he asked, unable to take his eyes off the picture.
“Ten months,” Emma replied.
Almost a year, he thought. A little older than Fisher had been when the DNA test results had proved Matt wasn’t his father. Did babies that young have memories? It broke his heart to think that Fisher, now three years old, might remember him or feel abandoned because he’d left.
Matt cleared his throat, trying to cast off his melancholy. “Too young to be away from you for long,” he said.
Emma nodded. “She’s eating solids now, so as long as Joseph has baby food she won’t starve. But she still likes a bottle, and he won’t know that.”
“We’ll find her,” Matt said. The thought of that innocent baby crying from hunger made his own stomach twist with anxiety. He hadn’t considered all the logistical reasons why Christina needed her mother—he’d just assumed maternal love was driving Emma’s sense of urgency. But now he realized all the practical issues involved—the diaper changes, feeding, dressing, rocking. All tasks that could technically be completed by anyone with half a brain, but from the baby’s perspective, her needs had only ever been met by her mother. To have a stranger caring for her now had to be stressful and frightening.
All the more reason to get out there and start looking.
“Send me that photo, please.” He rattled off his email address. “And send me any pictures you have of your brother.”
Her fingers flew across the screen of her phone. “Done.”
A moment later he heard the chime indicating a new email. He inserted the photos into the flyer and hit Print.
The printer across the room hummed to life and began spitting out pages. He walked over and grabbed the stack, bringing it back to his desk.
Emma reached for a sheet. She studied it carefully, her gaze lingering on the page. Her scrutiny made Matt self-conscious; hopefully he hadn’t made any spelling errors or other glaring mistakes.
It was a simple flyer, showing both Christina and Joseph and asking visitors to report any sightings to the park rangers or the police. He’d distribute some
among his coworkers as well, so they all knew to keep their eyes open. The more people aware of the situation, the better the chance of finding Emma’s daughter.
“This looks good.” Emma returned the page to the top of the stack and swiped at her eyes with the back of her hands.
Sympathy welled in Matt’s chest at the sight of her obvious pain. “I can change things if you want,” he offered, unsure of how to comfort her. Had it been a mistake to create the flyers? But how else could they spread the word?
She shook her head. “No, they look great. I just never imagined I’d see my baby’s face on a missing person poster, you know?”
“I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you,” Matt said. Walking away from Fisher was the hardest thing Matt had ever done, and he’d only known the little guy for a few weeks. Emma was functioning amazingly well for a mother whose child had been kidnapped—he didn’t think he would be so tough if he were in her shoes.
“She’s my world,” Emma said, sniffing. “I’ll never stop looking for her.”
But why are you searching alone? he wondered. Based on the little he knew, he didn’t think Christina’s father was in the picture. Why not? Emma didn’t look like the anonymous one-night stand type; being deployed while in the army had made him an expert of sorts at spotting the women who hung around base, only wanting a quick roll in the hay. No, he could tell Emma was the kind of woman who did relationships. She had a girl-next-door appeal that screamed “wife and family.” She was the type he and his army buddies had talked about settling down with after they’d had their adventures.