Not only did he want to trust her, he wanted to help her find whatever measure of peace might be possible under the circumstances.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Vance," he said quietly. "I know this is terrible for you. But there are hundreds of people out there doing everything possible to find your son before that happens."
She nodded tightly and let out a shaky breath. "I know that. This waiting is just so horrible."
He had seen it in every one of those seventy-nine missing child cases he had worked. Sometimes parents only had to wait and hour or two. Others waited days, holding out a frantic hope only to see it cruelly dashed when their child's-body w.as found.
He thought of Lynn and Sam McKinnon, the parents of his partner Gage. Their daughter Charlotte had been stolen from them at age three from their Las Vegas front yard. For nearly twenty-four years, they had never given up hope of finding her, though the girl's disappearance had haunted the family every day for decades.
And then, when they should have lost all hope, Charlotte had been miraculously returned to them.
The McKinnons had lost their daughter's childhood, but they had her back with them again. He knew plenty of parents who still waited and would probably never find the answers they sought.
He could only hope Megan Vance wouldn't be one of them.
"You shouldn't be waiting alone. Isn't there someone who could sit with you?"
Someone besides me, he thought. An FBI agent who had spent years slogging through the absolute worst humanity dished out against the innocent was probably not the most comforting companion for a parent in crisis looking for hope and encouragement.
Her lovely features twisted into a grimace. "I sent everyone away. I swear, if one more person pats my hand and asks me how I'm holding up, I'm going to rip somebody's eyeballs out."
He blinked rapidly, surprised to find himself smiling a little. After the last two weeks, he hadn't been sure he would be able to find anything to smile about again. How strange that he should find it in the frustrated words of a terrified mother.
He leaned a hip against the counter. "Do me a favor and keep your hands in your pockets, then, just in case I happen to forget that I've been duly warned."
Though she didn't smile in return, the tightness of her features eased a little.
They lapsed into silence and he sipped his water, wishing he had some comfort to offer. His mind pored over the facts of the case, his working theory right now that the boy had climbed out on his own.
She might be able to shed some light on a few inconsistencies in the case.
"Mrs. Vance—"
"Megan, please," she said.
"Megan." It was a lovely name, one that, combined with her green eyes and vibrant hair, made him think of fairy sprites and rolling fields of clover and...
He broke off the thought. Where the hell had that come from? He was here to do a job, not suddenly wax poetic over a woman's name.
Annoyed at himself, his voice came out more brusque than he intended. "I know Cameron had epilepsy. Do you think that hinders his physical abilities at all?"
Her brow furrowed. "I'm not sure what you mean."
"How athletic is your son?"
She sighed. "More than I have ever been comfortable with, if you want to know the truth. Because of his condition, I've always been a little overprotective, afraid he'll have a seizure in the middle of doing something physical and hurt himself. It's easy to forget that beyond his epilepsy, he's just a typical boy who loves sports. Everything physical—soccer, basketball, baseball. You name it."
"I noticed your son has some pictures in his room of your late husband in-climbing gear."
She smiled, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. "I guess you could say Rick was an adrenaline junkie. He always skied black diamond runs, kayaked Class Five rapids and climbed any route above a 5.8."
There were some who would put Cale in that same category. When he wasn't working, he was usually heading to southern Utah to bike the slickrock or go can-yoneering through the slots. Adrenaline junkie was probably an accurate term.
"What about you?" he asked Megan.
A corner of her mouth lifted, though the worry in her eyes robbed the expression of any semblance to a smile. Seeing her halfhearted effort still gave him a catch in his chest and he was astonished to find himself wondering what a full-on smile from her would look like.
"I knit, Agent Davis. That's about as exciting as I get."
"You never joined your husband when he climbed?"
She shrugged. "I went along a few times when Rick and I were first dating. Trying to be a good girlfriend, you know, interested in the things he liked to do. But I'm not crazy about heights, and he figured that out pretty quickly and wouldn't let me harness up anymore. After that, I just took along a book, found a shady spot and tried not to get too nervous about watching him conquer some tricky cornice or something. Why are you asking about climbing?"
He trusted her, he thought again. She deserved to know the direction the investigation was taking them. "Can you come outside with me to take a look at something?"
She looked puzzled but rose immediately and followed him out the back door and around the side of the house toward Cameron's bedroom.
"You told Sheriff Galvez the alarm system was set and the dead bolt was locked on the outside doors, correct?" he asked as thev walked.
"Yes."
"Are you positive about that?"
"Absolutely. I double-checked them when I woke up, before I found Cam missing. I always do when I wake up in the night. I'm still a city girl at heart, I guess."
"If that's true, the only other exit is out the window. You told the sheriff that when you found Cameron wasn't in bed the window was open but the screen was in place, right?"
"That's right."
"The state crime scene detective has determined the screen was in backward, as if someone replaced it from the outside. That's consistent with the window-as-exitroute theory, but we can't find any evidence on the ground of ladder impressions. It's always a possibility the rain may have washed it away. Or Cameron may have taken another route down."
"Like what?"
He pointed to the discovery he'd made earlier with Wilhelmina Carson. "Take a look at those holes there. What do they look like?'"
She frowned. "I don't know. Termites?"
He caught his smile before it could even start. If those were termite holes, the whole house was in serious trouble. "Look at how uniformly round they are, and the placement of them."
She stuck a finger in the lowest one, the same one he had used to launch upward. "I'm sorry. I don't understand."
He sighed, his shoulder already crying out in protest at what he knew he would have to demonstrate again. He slipped off his shoes and socks again and used the finger holes to scale the wall, stopping a few lengths below where he'd climbed with Willy.
When he dropped to the ground, she stared at him as if he had just stripped naked and cartwheeled across her flower garden.
"You can't honestly believe Cam used those tiny holes to climb out of a second-story window?"
"The crime scene investigator dusted for prints. She found several sets of prints inside the holes. All of them consistent with what we believe are Cam's from the evidence in his bedroom."
"He's nine years old, for heaven's sake. And small for his age!"
"How much climbing experience has he had?"
She shivered, though the hot wind still blew out of the mountains. "Some. Okay, quite a bit. We had vaulted ceilings in our house in San Diego and Rick...Rick built a climbing wall in the playroom. Cam loved it, probably because it made him feel closer to his father."
She stared at those holes, her delicate features troubled. "Suppose I buy your theory that he climbed out of his room on his own. Why on earth would he do such a thing in the middle of the night? Where would he go? Cam didn't have friends around except his cousins. He wasn't happy about moving away from San Diego, but he had no
reason to run away!"
Her voice broke on the last word, and her struggle for control was painful to witness.
He didn't know what to say, hesitant to offer her false hope, so he opted to change the subject.
"Have you eaten anything today?" he asked. "You should keep your strength up."
"Why does everyone seem to think 'ail I need to do is eat to survive this horrible experience? I've heard those same words from half a dozen people today."
"Sorry. Habit, I guess."
She sighed. "No, I'm sorry. I'm not hungry right now. I'll have time to eat after my son is in my arms again."
He had no answer to that and could only hope she wouldn't starve to death waiting for her son.
"Cameron will be home again, Agent Davis," she said, her voice wavering only a little. "I know it in my gut. I don't care how many cases you've worked on that have ended badly. This one won't. It won't."
I hope you're right, he thought, but couldn't bring himself to say the words as they walked back into the house.
6:22 p.m.
"Great green globs of greasy grimy gopher guts, dadda, dadda dadda da, dadda dadda dadda da. Great green globs of greasy grimy gopher guts and I forgot my spoooooooon."
His voice wobbled a little on the last word of the Boy Scout song he'd learned from his cousin Nate, but since there was nobody around to hear, Cameron didn't do anything to hide it.
This was about his zillionth time through that stupid song and he still couldn't remember all the words. Still, singing it kind of helped him keep the panic away and not feel so alone in here.
He was so turned around now, he didn't have the first idea which way to go.
His cousin was an Eagle Scout and right then he would have given anything to be able to ask Nate what he should do.
When they used to go on fishing trips and stuff, his dad taught him that if he was ever lost in the mountains, he should just stay put until somebody found him. But he knew he couldn't do that in here since nobody would even know where to start looking for him.
He didn't want to die.
He'd been worrying about that more and more as the hours went by. After his dad was killed, he had hurt so much and missed him so bad he thought he wanted to.
He still missed him and it still hurt thinking about all the fun stuff they used to do together. But he still had Hailey and Mom. They would be really sad if he died in here, and he didn't want his mom to cry anymore.
There were too many other things he would miss if he died. Spitting watermelon seeds off the back step with Hailey. Lying on the trampoline in the backyard with his mom, counting the stars. Heck, this weekend was the Moosemania parade and carnival, and Nate promised he would ride the Vomit Comet with him, which sounded totally cool.
If he died, he could never be an Eagle Scout like his cousin and he would never be able to learn the other words to that dumb song.
Somewhere in the distance, he suddenly heard a loud creak, then a rumble. That was about the third time he'd heard a noise like that. At first, he thought the whole mine was going to collapse but now he figured it was just the earth settling a little.
He took one more bite of granola bar, then stowed it back in his pack and turned on his flashlight again. He was down to one spare set of batteries and he was going to have to use them soon since these were getting dim.
More tired than he'd ever been in his life, Cam stood up and forced himself to keep going. The walls were tight here and he felt like toothpaste squeezing through a tube, but when he shined the wavering beam of the light ahead, he could see the passageway open up a little more. Just a little farther now.
The batteries died when he was just about through the tight part. Since there wasn't room to maneuver his pack out and change them, he decided to press on until the passage widened.
He hated the total darkness but he forced himself to go forward. Another foot, then another, each step taking him closer to his mom and his sister.
He hoped, anyway.
He breathed a sigh of relief when he felt the passageway widen. Just a little farther now and then he would stop and change his flashlight batteries.
He put his left foot forward but to his horror, he hit nothing but air. A vertical shaft! He tried to pull his foot back to solid ground but felt the dirt and rocks on the edge of the shaft break loose under his boots. He had nothing to hang on to, nothing to keep him from pitching forward down into emptiness.
He screamed as he fell, and then the world went black.
Chapter 5
"So far we've got a whole lot of nothing." Gage sighed. "No prints, no trace, no evidence whatsoever that anybody forced Cameron Vance out of his bed. By all appearances, it looks like the boy left on his own, especially given the fingerholes you found and the absence of any other fingerprints in them but his. My canvass of the neighbors has turned up exactly nothing. Everyone was sound asleep in their beds after midnight."
They sat in a corner of the huge tent awning set up near the mobile command center for volunteers to rest and eat. A sandwich shop in town had donated enough food to feed a small army, and Cale and his partner were exchanging information over subs.
So much for the advice he had given Megan about eating to keep up strength. This was his first nourishment since they had arrived on the scene more than twelve hours ago.
He wasn't hungry, either, but he forced himself to eat, knowing he might not have a chance for twelve more hours.
"But what happened to him after he left the house? That's the question," Cale responded. "The search dogs haven't picked up jack, and there's no trace of the kid anywhere. If he did climb out that window, we have no idea which direction he headed in once he hit the ground."
"Those mountains are pretty vast. My guess is he's somewhere up there. I only hope the searchers can get a bead on him before nightfall. Even though it's hotter than hell right now, you know how the temperature drops in these mountains after the sun goes down. I hate the idea of any little kid having to spend a cold night alone in those hills, and especially one with a fragile medical condition."
Gage always was a sucker for a kid in trouble but since his marriage and entry into instant fatherhood three years earlier, he had become even more empathetic.
Cale wouldn't have expected it, but Gage had really taken to fatherhood after marrying a widow with two little girls. His wife Allie had given birth to a boy a few years earlier and the McKinnon family was warm and loving and happy.
Cale wasn't sure how his partner pulled it off, working among the dregs of society all day, then going home to his sweet wife and kids at night. But somehow Gage made it work. He was one of the best fathers Cale had ever known and his marriage had somehow made him even better at his job, with a new dedication and focus.
"Megan says he's a tough kid," Cale responded. "He must be if he was able to climb out the window and make it to the ground using only three-quarter-inch finger holes."
Gage gave him a quizzical look. "Megan?"
"Mrs. Vance," he corrected, though he had been thinking of her by her first name for several hours now.
His partner continued to study him, and Cale decided he didn't like having that analytical gaze aimed in his direction.
"I don't know how much longer we'll be working this case. You know that, don't you?" his partner said after a moment.
Cale nodded, though he didn't want to think about it. With no evidence of foul play coming to light to date, this case appeared to fall squarely under the sheriff's jurisdiction.
"When I briefed Curtis an hour ago, he was already making noises about pulling us in, questioning whether we should even be here or should turn our notes over to the local authorities."
He wasn't ready to give up looking for the boy. Somehow over the course of the day, this case had become about far more than just doing his job. "Curtis is a horse's ass."
McKinnon made a face. "Careful there. He's still your boss."
"Acting boss," he muttered. "On
ly until next month, when Moyer gets back from training in Quantico."
"In the meantime, we've got to do our best to play by Curtis's rules. And right now he's questioning our presence on a case that by all appearances looks like a kid who ran away looking for a little adventure and maybe got lost in the mountains. He's very cognizant that we've got no evidence to indicate otherwise."
"What we've got is a missing kid with a life-threatening seizure condition. Until we know for sure nobody else was involved in his disappearance, I'm not going anywhere."
McKinnon blinked a little at the force of his conviction, but to Cale's immense relief his partner said nothing. They continued their briefing, finished their sandwiches, then rose to return to work.
Cale must have stood too abruptly. His rickety folding chair started to topple backward and he instinctively reached to catch it, jarring his shoulder in the process.
He winced as pain scorched through him, then instantly regretted it when McKinnon made a sound of disgust.
"You need to take it easy, man."
"I'm fine," he insisted. He was, for the most part. As gunshot wounds go, this one had been relatively clean. He had lost a great deal of blood, but the bullet only took a chunk out of his collarbone and lodged in his deltoid muscle.
It still hurt like hell sometimes, but only when he overdid it. He supposed scaling halfway up a two-story wall using only fingerholes might qualify as overdoing it. Doing it twice was probably bordering on insane.
"Allie's going to kill me for dragging you out here before you were ready to be back on the job."
Cale shook his head. "I was ready. More than ready. I don't need more time to sit around and think."
He didn't want or need the compassion in his partner's gaze. "You can't tell me you're a hundred percent yet."
"Can't I?" he muttered.
"Not with any chance in hell of me believing you. How long have we been partners? Going on four years now, right?"
"Something like that."
"There have been some cases in that time that have messed with both our heads. CAC can be a tough assignment." He was quiet. "But since everything went down two weeks ago, there's a wildness in you I've never seen before."
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