High-Risk Affair

by RaeAnne Thayne

  "Morning," he said somewhat tersely. He rose to leave, but Hailey stopped him by slipping away from her mother and thrusting the basket of muffins at him.

  "You can have a muffin if you want. Me and Aunt Molly made them for my mom, but you should eat one too, so you won't go hungry while you look for Cameron."

  He just couldn't figure out a graceful way to refuse this sweet little girl with her missing teeth and her braids. He finally reached into the basket and pulled one out. His shoulder suddenly throbbed and he didn't think it was a coincidence.

  Hailey didn't really look anything like Soshi Decker, except for the missing teeth. But when he saw her freshfaced innocence, his brain kept flashing to images of Soshi gurgling and gasping and trying to stay alive as her blood flowed to the wooden floor of that damn cabin.

  "Uh, thanks," he said, pushing those grim images as far away as he could.

  He needed to leave this warm, sunlit kitchen. He needed to go out and do something physical. Maybe he would ask Daniel if he could take a turn searching the backcountry. McKinnon wouldn't like it, but he was fairly sure his partner would understand.

  "It's good, isn't it?" Hailey asked him with an eager smile.

  He chewed and swallowed a mouthful of fragrant muffin. He imagined it probably tasted delicious but when he was focused on a case like this, everything seemed to taste the same.

  "It's great," he managed to say with enough conviction he was fairly sure could convince a six-year-old. He looked at her smile, so much like her mother's, then set the muffin down abruptly as a stunning thought occurred to him.

  How the hell could he have missed such an obvious source of information? In all this craziness, had anybody bothered to ask Hailey about her brother's whereabouts?

  Megan and her sister were busy discussing a strategy for the media statements Molly, as the family spokesperson, would be making throughout the day.

  He took advantage of their distraction to pull Hailey slightly away from them, using the excuse that he needed help finding a glass for some water to go with the muffin.

  She helped him eagerly and after he filled the glass with water and they stood at the sink, he considered the best way to approach her. He wasn't sure he was in the best place mentally to interrogate a six-year-old girl right now, but Gage wasn't here yet and he was suddenly filled with an urgency he couldn't explain.

  "You know there are a lot of people out there looking for your brother," he finally began.

  She nodded, solemn suddenly at the reminder of Cameron. "I know they are. T prayed really hard that they would find him today and he could come home. Do you think he will?"

  "I hope so, sweetheart."

  He crouched down to her level. "Hailey, I want you to think about something and think about it really hard, okay?"

  "Okay." She looked confused and a little nervous, and he hoped to hell be wasn't blowing this.

  "If you were the boss of all those people who are out there looking for Cameron, is there any place you would tell them to look? Any place at all where you think he might go?"

  "Like where?"

  "I don'tknow. Does Cameron have a special place? Did he ever talk to you about any place he would like to go?"

  Her brow furrowed as she considered his words. "I don't know," she said after a moment. "Maybe the big hole."

  His heart seemed to stutter in his chest, and he was fairly certain he would have toppled over if not for the kitchen cupboard holding him up. "What big hole, Hailey?" he managed through a throat suddenly dry.

  She pressed a hand over her mouth as if to yank the words back. "I'm not supposed to say. Cam will be mad."

  "What aren't you supposed to say?"

  She looked around to see if anyone else had overheard them. He followed her gaze and saw Molly and Megan were still busy at the table. "It's Cam's secret place," she whispered. "He said if 1 told, he would cut off all my hair in the middle of the night. I don't want to be bald."

  Cale drew in a ragged breath. "Sweetheart, your brother might be hurt somewhere. I promise, he's not going to be mad at you for telling. He would want you to tell me so we can find him and bring him home to have one of these yummy muffins."

  She held the basket out to him again, momentarily distracted. "I helped Aunt Molly add the chocolate chips. I even got to work the mixer thing. But I can't lick the spoon because that can make you sick."

  "Right. You worked really hard to make these muffins, and I know you would want your brother to come home so he can have one. If he is in the big hole like you said, we need to help him so he can get out of there and come home."

  "And my mommy and Aunt Molly and everybody won't be so sad?" she asked.

  "I promise." He only hoped it was a vow he could keep. "Tell me about the big hole Cameron found."

  Hailey scratched her chin and studied him for a minute. He had never been so grateful for anything in his life when she seemed to reach a decision to trust him.

  "One time we were supposed to stay in the yard but Cameron wanted to go 'sploring, so we snuck under the fence and went to look for rabbits on the mountain. We saw one go behind a rock and we followed it and found the hole. We looked in but we didn't have a flashlight."

  "It was a cave?"

  "I guess. Cam wanted to go in, but I said I was gonna tell and he called me a big tattletale."

  She cast a furtive look at her mother, then looked back at him. "We went home," she said, her voice low. "But I think Cameron went back a different day."

  He flashed back to the photographs he and Megan had looked at the evening before of Cameron caving Timpanogas with his father, of the bright enthusiasm on the boy's face.

  The kid had, by all accounts, used tiny finger holes to climb out of his two-story bedroom window.

  It wasn't a stretch at all to imagine him wanting to explore the murky delights of a cave on his own.

  "Why do you say that?" he asked Hailey.

  "One time he left with his backpack and wouldn't let me go with him. He said I was a stupid girl and would be too slow. He said if I told Mommy, he would cut off all my fyair and he would hide my Holly Hobbie somewhere I would never find her."

  Adrenaline gushed over him, and it was all he could do not to reach out and kiss Hailey right in the middle of her little forehead. This was it, the lead they had been looking for. He knew it, with a gut-deep assurance he couldn't explain.

  "Do you remember how to get to the big hole?" he asked.

  She cocked her head, frowning with concentration. "I don't know. Probably. All the rocks kind of look the same, but I think I remember how to find it. It's shaped like a boat, kind of."

  "Is it a long way from here?"

  She shrugged. "Kind of. I don't know if you can go. You have to crawl under a fence and you might be too big."

  "Maybe I can climb over it."

  "That might work."

  He rose, eager to go, even as prudence warned him to handle this carefully. He couldn't just haul Hailey up on the mountainside without explaining to her mother what was happening, but he hated the idea of raising false hope in Megan if the lead didn't go anywhere.

  "I'm going to talk to your mom for a minute, and then you and I will go see if we can find the big hole, okay?"

  "And Cameron?"

  "I hope so, sweetheart. I really hope so."

  He approached the table, considering his words carefully even as his heart pumped with excitement. A hidden cave. That could explain why they hadn't found any trace of him.

  As encouraging as he found the information, he knew they were a long way from having the boy home safe. If the boy had found some kind of cave and tried to explore it on his own, Cale knew from his own caving experience that a hundred different hazards awaited a lone nine-year-old boy inside, anything from cave-ins to hazardous gases to hypothermia.

  "Megan, I need to borrow Hailey for a few moments."

  She frowned in confusion. "Hailey? Whatever for?"

  He let out a bre
ath and plunged forward. "She has a possible lead into where Cameron might have gone."

  She and her sister stared at him, their similar green eyes dark with shock. "What?! Where?" Megan exclaimed.

  He was uncomfortably aware of her sister looking on but couldn't keep himself from reaching for Megan's hand. "Look, I don't want you to get your hopes up, but Hailey said she and Cameron stumbled onto some kind of cave or something up in the foothills one day when they were playing. They didn't go inside that time, but she seems to think there's a chance he might have gone back to explore it later."

  A bright and terrible hope flared in her eyes, warring with disbelief. "He wouldn't!"

  "I'm not so sure of that, from what you've told me about him and what evidence I've seen myself."

  Her fingers fluttered in his. "Oh, dear heavens. Anything could have happened to him in there!"

  "Calm down, Megan. I know it's hard, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Hailey is only six. years old. We have to keep in mind that her information might not be the most reliable."

  She bristled, a mother bear defending her cub. "She's very smart for her age."

  "I can tell that. But she also knows how much everyone wants to find Cameron. How much she wants to find him. She might be letting her own imagination run wild on her."

  "But you don't think so."

  He squeezed her fingers. "At this point I don't know. But I promised you I would keep you as informed as possible, so that's why I'm telling you. If it's all right with you, I'd like to take Hailey up and see if she can find the spot again."

  "Of course. I'm coming with you."

  He wanted to argue with her, but he had seen that stubborn light in her eyes enough over the course of the last twenty-four hours to know it would be useless. Besides, Hailey was her daughter. She had the right to accompany her, whether he liked it or not.

  "Even if Hailey can find the cave opening again, you have to understand that we can't go inside without proper gear and trained personnel," he warned. "It's too tlangerous."

  "Of course. Let's go."

  "Wait here. I need to brief the sheriff on this new information."

  "Hurry," she urged, and he hoped to hell he wasn't setting her up for another crushing disappointment.

  She knew Cale's advice not to pin all her hopes on this possibility was wise. But as she and Sheriff Galvez followed him and Hailey through thick sagebrush and scrub oak, Megan couldn't help the flutters of anticipation in her chest.

  Cameron was close. She could feel it. They had to he on the right track. They had to be.

  After the men helped her and Hailey over the wire fence between her property and the Forest Service land bordering it, they walked steadily uphill. Her house was in sight the entire time, and from here she could see the bustle of activity from the media and the searchers coming and going.

  The morning was cool and lovely, in sharp contrast to the hot wind of the day before. The air was sweet with the scent of sage and rubber rabbit brush and mule ear daisies, familiar smells she had come to love in her few months here.

  She had walked this deer trail often with her children, and they usually surprised a rabbit or deer or the occasional elk. One evening, they had even seen a lone coyote on the ridgeline, though he had loped away the moment he caught their scent.

  "Are we getting closer?" Cale asked Hailey when they had climbed perhaps a quarter mile from the house.

  "Yeah," Hailey said. She pointed to a stand of scrub oak ahead of them. "On the other side of those little trees."

  Doubt started to creep in again as Megan registered their location.,"I've walked that way many times before and never noticed any kind of cave," she said to Daniel.

  She had to believe Hailey's story, though. Her daughter surely wouldn't make up a fib about something so important.

  "There are old abandoned mines all over this area," the sheriff answered. "The federal government made a big push several years ago to seal off all the entrances and bulldoze over them to keep people from wandering in and being hurt."

  She let out a breath as a host of grim possibilities flashed through her mind. "Is it possible one slipped through the cracks?"

  "Who knows? I've got investigators checking with the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service to see what kind of history there might be here and if they can track any caves or mines."

  The location had been a huge selling point when she had been house-hunting. She had immediately fallen in love with the house. Besides its charm and proximity to Scott and Molly, she had loved the idea of having no neighbors behind her and being able to enjoy such wildness out her kitchen window.

  Now she was cursing the day she had even seen the place.

  "This is quite a long way from the house," she said. "Could he have made it by himself in the dark?"

  "He probably viewed it as a big adventure," Daniel answered.

  "There." From in front of them, Hailey suddenly pointed to a jagged pile of rocks.

  "Are you sure?" Cale asked her.

  Hailey nodded. "I remember. See? It looks like a big sailboat."

  They moved closer, and Megan was afraid her heart would pound out of her chest.

  If Hailey hadn't pointed it out for them, Megan knew the searchers scouring these mountains never would have found this spot on their own.

  "I know this is the right rock," Hailey said with a frown. "But all those bushes weren't there before."

  The sheriff grabbed the pile of brush and started (o pull it aside. "Someone has deliberately concealed the opening."

  When he and Cale finished clearing away the brush, they revealed an opening between two of the rocks, perhaps three feet square.

  "I told you it was a big hole," Hailey said.

  Megan hugged her daughter, unable to breathe for her growing excitement. Cameron was in there. She could feel it.

  "You were right, sweetheart. You were absolutely right."

  Chapter 9

  "You and Hailey wait here," Cale said. "We're just going to go inside a little, to see if we can find any evidence Cameron might have been here and to figure out what we might be up against."

  She wanted to protest—she couldn't bear any more of this endless waiting, and she wanted to run into that blackness herself to find her son. But she knew the cave was no place for her daughter. Instead, she nodded, pulling Hailey onto her lap.

  She passed the time while they waited by telling Hailey how proud she was of her remembering the cave and talking to her about what she was most looking forward to when she started first grade at her new school in only a few weeks.

  After what felt like eons—but was probably no more than five or six minutes—the men returned.

  Their excitement was palpable. She could sense it the moment they emerged into the sunlight.

  She rose and set Hailey down, holding her hand tight. "What is it? What did you find?"

  The sheriff held out a small black jacket. "That's Cameron's!" she exclaimed. The blood drained from her head and her vision wobbled, sending the slit in the mountains wavering in front of her eyes.

  She swayed a little, a combination of exhaustion and stress, but before she could gather the strength to steady herself, Cale hurried forward and caught her in his strong arms.

  How had she come to rely on him in such a short lime? she wondered. How had he become so important, this lean but powerful pillar of strength through this terrible time?

  "Stay with me, Meg. Come on."

  She drew in a breath, gathering her control, then stepped away from him. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm fine. That's Cameron's jacket. I bought it for him last month for school."

  "When was the last time you saw it?"

  "I don't know. Right after I bought it, I suppose. He look all his new school clothes to his room."

  "That doesn't mean he's down there," he warned her. "It only means he's been inside at some point in the last month."

  "He's there, Cale. 1 know it."

&nbs
p; She hugged him tightly, unable to contain the emo-tions pouring through her. He returned the embrace for a moment, then set her away from him. "You're going to have to be patient, Megan. I know it will be tough after you've already waited so long, but moving the search underground will be a long, tedious process. We're going to have to bring in searchers trained in this kind of rescue, and that's going to take some time."

  "Why can't we go inside and look now?"

  "An underground rescue is one of the most dangerous operations for searchers. We don't know what we're facing in there, what kind of conditions we'll find, so we have to be prepared for anything. It's going to take time and I think you need to go back to the house. Daniel is calling for an all-terrain vehicle to take you two down the mountain."

  She hated to come so close to her son only to retreat again. "I'm fine here."

  He squeezed her hand. "I think you're both better off waiting down at the house. Especially Hailey. We don't know how long this is going to take or what we're going to find, Megan."

  She drew in a shuddering breath at the grim reminder. Finding the jacket might be an encouraging sign but the search was far from over—and there was no guarantee it would end happily.

  Cameron had been missing for more than thirty hours and she couldn't bear thinking of all the things that could have happened to him in that time, especially if he had ventured into this underground deathtrap.

  "All right," she said after a moment. "We'll go back down the mountain and wait."

  "I'll keep you informed on how things are going, Megan. I swear it. I've got both climbing and caving experience, so I will be there every step of the way."

  A wave of warmth washed over her for this man who had been a stranger only the day before. "I can never thank you enough for all you've done. I don't know if I would have made it through the night without you."

  He looked uncomfortable at her words but was spared from having to answer by the arrival of a small off-road vehicle driven by one of the sheriff's deputies.

  "You can thank me after we find him safe and sound."