by Cindy Skaggs
“That’s my thinking.” Logan grabbed Sofia’s frigid hand. He wanted his family to believe the easiest explanation. They didn’t have time to get into Eli’s kidnapping earlier in the year. “They’re just a group of dumb kids who wandered off.” As he spoke, Logan made contingency plans.
“Kids who wander off are easy targets, especially these days.” Steve pulled on his coat as he spoke. “I’m going to canvass the neighborhood. I’ll see more on foot, taking the kid’s-eye view, as it were.”
Sandy gave Steve a hug before he took off out the front. “I was going to look more around here, in case they found a cave to hide in.”
Like he, Blake, and Mick had done when they were too young to know better. “Ma, this is a suburb. They don’t have caves.”
“Sure they do, they’re just less wild than were you were growing up.” Sandy reached over and rubbed Sofia’s arm in a gesture of understanding. “They’re fine. I feel it in my bones. Do you have keys to the garage? I thought I’d take a look.”
“No key—it’s a code.” Sofia’s hand trembled in Logan’s grip. “Eli’s too little to reach the keypad.”
“But the girls aren’t. If anything happens to my grandbabies…” Sandy’s eyes were red rimmed with unshed tears. “I can only imagine what you’re going through, but we’ll find them. I’ll help. Everyone’s looking.” She was babbling, but when she slowed to take a breath, she straightened her shoulders as if pulling herself together. “The garage. Maybe? The girls are older. They should know better, but if it came to it, they could reach the keypad.”
Logan didn’t believe for a second the kids were hiding in the garage. Anna and Emma were good kids. They were too young to go out and sneak a cigarette or any of the things he and his friends had done when they were young and dumb, but looking would keep his mother occupied. “Does Eli know the code?”
Sofia shook her head. “God, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve never told him, but he sees me punch it in every morning.”
“I’ll go check,” Sandy offered. “I need something to do. Norma can man the phones.” Sandy ran off on her mission.
Logan led Sofia up the stairs to Eli’s room. The scattering of toys screamed little boy. He closed his eyes, but he couldn’t keep the image of the kidnapping victim he’d lost—
Sofia pulled from his grasp to drift like a ghost around the room. Her fingers touched beloved toys and dirty clothes.
The pain in his chest bloomed, so tight he couldn’t breathe. He didn’t need to see the room to humanize the victim. In his heart, Eli was his. Losing him, losing his nieces, was too much to ponder. He cleared his throat. “What is Vicki involved in?”
“Nothing. She was never involved in the family business.”
Vicki was the sister to one of New York’s most dangerous crime bosses. Logan had never considered Vicki Calvetti an innocent. “She obviously knows something. Call her. Let her know Eli, Anna, and Emma are missing because of her. I want answers.”
Tears tightened Sofia’s eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. “Fine.” She stepped into Eli’s bathroom to make the call, freeing Logan to make calls of his own. And damn, but it hurt to call for information about the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.
“Not much more than I already told you, but there’s chatter about a high-level Calvetti hit man heading this way.”
Logan cursed. “What the hell is a Calvetti operative doing in Colorado?”
Blake’s answer fueled the ache clenching in his gut. By the time Sofia stepped into the doorway, Logan had the information he needed, and it wasn’t good. “What did Vicki say?”
“No answer.”
The sister to the mob was a pain in his ass. “I made a call. Analysts have been going through Nick’s records following the events in New York.” Where Sofia and Eli had nearly died. Logan fought the memories. “Looks like your ex was negotiating a merger with a Colorado crime organization.”
“Nick was moving here?”
“Plans were in place. That’s why he had such a large contingency of goons when he tracked us down.”
Sofia sagged against the doorframe. “I never would have gotten free of him.”
“That’s not what happened.” Nick and his top lieutenant were dead. Sofia was free, and Logan would make sure she stayed that way. “Blake is trying to run down information while he keeps watch at the back gate. Mick has friends in dark places. If this is mob related, we’ll know soon enough. Until then, we operate locally.”
Sofia remained outside the door as though she couldn’t walk through. Couldn’t stand to be near him, and the separation, the tension between them broke something free that he shouldn’t feel. That shouldn’t interfere with the investigation. “Are you mad at me for letting Eli go missing?” he asked.
“No.” Her eyes narrowed. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”
He gestured to the doorway. “Because you’ve built a wall between us. I keep thinking about it. Was I supposed to be watching him? Was it my fault he took off? Do you blame me because it’s my nieces with him?”
“No, God.” Sofia pressed her fingertips to her eyes, and when she removed them, her gaze was unreadable. “Not for a second. The instant he went missing, I wanted you because I knew you’d find him. That you wouldn’t stop. I knew—” She paused for emphasis. “I knew—I know I can count on you to protect him.”
“Then why?” He gestured at the space separating them.
“Because of my past. Because I can’t count on me the same way I count on you. Your family is the most normal thing I’ve seen outside the Disney Channel, and I’m a mess. If they find out this is my fault, that your mother’s grandbabies are missing because—” She cleared her throat to stop the threatening tears. “You deserve better. They deserve better.”
“Bullshit.” He couldn’t listen to her tear what they had apart. “You are fierce and loyal and talented and a whole bunch of other adjectives I can’t think of right now. Quit letting your past define you, because it’s putting a wedge between us, and it’s killing me. Eli is—” The band around his chest tightened. He stepped toward her. “I swear on everything I am. I will find him.”
Tears glistened as she met him halfway and wrapped her arms around him. “I trust you,” she whispered.
But Logan feared failing. The emotions rushing through him screwed with his focus. Last time Eli had gone missing, finding him had been Logan’s path to redeeming his past. Now, Eli was his son. There was no redemption without him.
Chapter Five
Sandy burst into the room. “They aren’t there now, but they’ve been in the garage. I found this.”
The empty box from the dino dig. “Thank God,” Sofia said, followed immediately by No, he didn’t. He had willfully left the house to open the dino dig after she’d told him to wait. “Eli,” Sofia yelled. She ran through the house with Logan at her heels, both of them calling for Eli. The garage door stood open. Sofia took the stairs to the garage apartment at a run. Her hands shook when she opened the door. The place was nice and tidy. And empty. No kids.
Disappointment weakened her knees, but Sofia refused to fall. She tried to wrangle her scattered thoughts. This wasn’t the first time Eli had gone missing. Last time, Eli had been in the hands of mobsters for seventy-two hours, but this time he’d only been gone a short while. She could do this. When was the last time she’d seen him? “I told him he couldn’t dig the dino bones.” Was he old enough to defy her? God, if he put her through this… Her hands shook.
“Settle down,” Logan said. “This is an indicator that they came out here on their own, which suggests they weren’t abducted.”
The word sent her heart into near convulsions, because they didn’t know that. Not really. It just meant that Eli had willfully left the house in defiance of what he’d been told, endangering himself, Anna, and Emma. What happened after was anyone’s guess. “Okay,” Sofia said, backtracking down the stairs and out the still-open door. “Ma
kes sense, but where would they go from here?” They went to the backyard and climbed through the playhouse and behind every shrub and bush. No kids. The house didn’t have a basement.
Blake and Mick checked in. The neighborhood was a ghost town at this time on Christmas Day. Michelle called to say they’d driven every street in the neighborhood. The screaming panic in her voice on the phone fed the rising tsunami in Sofia’s chest. Tears bit the back of her eyes. She didn’t stop them but let them slide unchecked down her cheeks.
Logan pulled her into his solid chest. The last time Eli had disappeared, she would have given her soul for the protective weight of Logan’s arms around her. The last time… Hadn’t she suffered enough? This time she allowed herself the luxury of Logan’s touch, of his strong shoulders and all encompassing hold. He ran a soothing hand up her spine. “It’s just a couple of kids who wandered off. Nothing more,” he said, his deep voice sure.
“But what if someone finds them wandering alone?”
“No what ifs. Deal with what is. The kids aren’t at the park, or the house, or in the garage apartment. This is his neighborhood, but Eli doesn’t go out by himself. Where else would he even know?”
Of course, the kids could simply walk aimlessly through the neighborhood and at some point they’d cross one of the people looking for them.
“Did Eli spend much time with Vince?” Logan asked.
“Some,” Sofia admitted, feeling like the worst mom ever for having let Eli spend time with the man who kidnapped him, but Vince had been Eli’s bodyguard. Vince should have been safe. “Why?”
Logan dropped his head back to glare at the sky. He patted her back and freed her from his embrace. “I think I know where he went.” He walked over to the fencing behind the garage.
What? “Vince’s emergency exit?” The bodyguard had built a secret exit in the fencing between her house and the backyard neighbor. “You boarded it up.”
“Not so much.” The sorrow lining his eyes matched the tiredness she felt to her soul. “I am so sorry. A secret panel in the fence is so rare, and I didn’t think anyone would use it. That you would ever have cause to use it again.” Logan went up to what looked like a regular section of fencing and pushed a trigger against the post. The fencing slid aside and opened into the neighbor’s yard. Sure enough, Eli, Anna, and Emma sat on the dead grass, their heads rounded over the brick of sand where dino bones hid. They were chipping away at it with tools they’d filched from the garage.
“Thank God.” Sofia dropped to her knees by Eli.
The girls looked up, guilt on their faces. “Uncle Logan.”
“Did you hear us calling?”
Emma remained stone still, but Anna nodded.
Sofia didn’t look at Logan but heard the command and censure in his dark tone. “Go in the house, girls. Have your grandma let your mom know you’re okay.”
“Yes, sir,” they said in unison as they stood and left the yard.
“Eli.” She barely recognized her own voice. She wanted to lose her temper with Logan for not boarding up the fence. She wanted yell at Eli, spank him, lecture him until his ears bled, but then he looked at her with those big brown eyes and curled his lip into the puppy-dog pout Logan had taught him. The sight of her boy after all the worry and fear was too much. She burst into tears and pulled him into her arms.
The tension in his little shoulders melted as he let her absorb him into her embrace. Normally a highly active boy, he sat complacent in her arms as she bawled like a lunatic. Tears streamed down her face as she let the warmth of his little body wash over her. This, right here, this little boy, was all that mattered in the world.
She hadn’t cried the last time they found him. There had been too much unsettled, too many other worries. How would Nick respond? Would Eli ever be safe? Would the FBI go after her for involvement in the kidnapping?
The consequences of that horrid weekend had been all encompassing, and she hadn’t let herself deal with the aftermath, knowing that despite being saved, Eli might never be safe with a father like Nick Calvetti. She’d compartmentalized the kidnapping and had never reopened that dark box.
The disappearance today hit a trigger, and once pulled, the box sprang open and couldn’t be shoved back into a tidy corner of her mind. Silent tears flowed until they weren’t silent, until they were dragged from her soul with long sobs that shook her body like an earthquake. She’d nearly lost him, after everything she’d sacrificed; after all the preparations and paranoid protectiveness, he had still disappeared.
The memory broke her heart. Maybe it had broken before, but she’d been so hell-bent on reclaiming her son that she’d isolated the pain. Now, the fear exploded to life. Nick had nearly sacrificed Eli in order to keep his criminal territory intact. In order to maintain respect. That’s all Eli had meant to his biological father. A possession to be bartered and sold like any other.
How could Sofia have chosen so wrong? How could she know if she was making the same mistake again?
Her knees buckled, and they fell back, would have fallen into the winter-dead grass, but Logan caught them in his arms and wrapped himself around them. The warmth was instantaneous, but the cold and the fear were insidious. She let Logan hold them because she didn’t have the energy to step away, but inside, she made the move.
Once upon a time, she thought she had loved Nick Calvetti. The man had been a psychopath, and she had married him. Had a son with him. Could she ever take such a risk again?
It wasn’t Logan she didn’t trust. Sofia didn’t trust herself.
Chapter Six
Logan pressed his hand against Sofia’s back, but she shifted Eli to her hip and stepped away from him. The repercussions of the move worried him. Hell, they terrified him as he watched everything he loved isolated across a barrier he couldn’t breach.
The warm air and laughter in the kitchen felt artificial next to Sofia’s obvious tension. Something smelled burned over the savory aromas of a roasted turkey, gravy, and a mix of casseroles and vegetables. Once through the door, Sofia set Eli on the floor and headed to the stove, where Logan’s mom stirred the gravy.
“I burned the rolls in all the chaos. Sorry,” Sandy said.
The smile didn’t reach Sofia’s eyes. “No worries. I’ve got a second batch waiting—”
“Already in the oven,” Sandy said. “The gravy’s ready. Do you have a gravy boat?”
Logan didn’t hear Sofia’s response, and it didn’t much matter. She’d buried herself in dinner preparation. Like it or not, people were waiting for dinner, and for the time being, life moved on, but they were nowhere near finished.
In the living room, things had returned to predisappearance normal. Peter parked his solid backside on the sofa in front of the television once again. The ladies from Sofia’s book club were flirting with Blake and Mick. Sofia had gravitated toward these women almost immediately. Logan didn’t need a psych profile to know Sofia was using them as replacements for the grandmother she missed. No matter. They loved her as she was, moody and reserved but sincere and smart. Long past retirement age, the two women simply enjoyed Sofia’s company.
“Norma,” he said, addressing the woman sitting so close to Mick she was nearly tattooed to his side. The big man looked as comfortable as an atheist at a prayer meeting. “Was that a bottle of wine I saw you bring in earlier?”
“Sure was.” Her short, clipped speech was midwestern in origin.
“White or red?”
“White.”
“Do you mind opening it while I get a bottle of red? The opener is in the drawer next to Sofia.”
Her watery blue eyes winked up at him. “My pleasure.”
Maybe having Norma nearer would ease Sofia’s tension. “Blake,” Logan said. The other man stood, his slightly shorter frame easing across the crowded living room. At just under six feet tall, he was built lean like a fighter.
“Do you mind getting the non-wine drinkers something to drink while I go get the wine?
”
“No problem,” Blake said, but he pulled Logan into the entryway away from the general chaos of the other rooms. “What I told you about the Calvetti investigation is classified.”
“I appreciate it. It won’t go anywhere.”
“We go way back, so I know that, but after what happened today, maybe you should take a step back from that woman before it’s too late.”
“Kiss off,” Logan answered. The hell he took at work for dating a mobster’s ex-wife had no business at the Christmas table. “Her name isn’t that woman. It’s Sofia. And for your information, what happened today had nothing to do with her former life.” Logan rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. He didn’t want to have this conversation.
Blake clapped a hand on Logan’s shoulder and forced eye contact. “Man, I’m not trying to screw with your woman. It’s obvious you’re over the moon for her and the kid, but my loyalty is to you. Someone has to watch your back, because you’re obviously not.”
An arctic breeze settled over their conversation. Logan didn’t want to face judgment when he’d just gotten Eli home safely. And he sure as fuck didn’t want to have this conversation with someone who didn’t know the hell they had gone through all those months ago.
“I get it.” Blake nodded his head toward the door. “We have to be at Mick’s mom’s later, but we can leave early if you need the space.”
Shit, he’d finally climbed out of his cave to reconnect with friends, and the first time tension hit he went all asshole defensive. His mother would tan his hide for chasing off the guests before dinner. Not to mention the fact that Sofia needed the strength and loyalty of men like Blake and Mick in her life. “Fuck,” he muttered. This was not the way Logan had planned the day. “No. Sorry, I’m being a tool. Stay, just—” What? “It’ll be fine. Get everyone something to drink?” Logan glanced across the room at the dining room table. “Wineglasses are on the table, but you might get pilsners for the beer drinkers.”