The Chesapeake Diaries Series 7-Book Bundle: Coming HOme, Home Again, Almost Home, Hometown Girl, Home for the Summer, The Long Way Home, At the River's Edge

by Stewart, Mariah

  “Sir, have you seen two boys around this tall?” Dallas asked one older gentleman who sat on a folding chair watching a softball game.

  “You gotta be kidding, lady.” He laughed. “You know how many kids ‘that tall’ have gone past here in the past hour alone? Kids are everywhere today.”

  “Thanks,” she muttered.

  The boys were not in the park, nor were they down at the dock. They saw Beck’s car pull into the municipal building’s parking lot and ran to see if he’d had any luck, but he got out of the car shaking his head.

  “No luck, guys,” he told them. “But Hal and Mia are both out looking for them by car now. There’s always the chance that I missed them somehow. I’ve called everyone on duty and asked them to check whatever area they’re in and report back. The whole town is covered now, so we should start hearing back soon. Why don’t you come in and wait for—”

  “I can’t,” Dallas told him, the tears she’d been holding back finally starting to flow. “I need to keep looking.”

  “Me, too.” Brooke nodded.

  “Let’s check the house,” Grant suggested. “Maybe they went back there for some reason.”

  “Bathroom, maybe?” Brooke guessed.

  “Could be. Brooke, why don’t we get Clay up here to drive back to the farm, see if they headed out there for some reason.”

  “All right.” She dug the phone from her pocket and walked toward the road as if she couldn’t stand still.

  “Let’s get my car and drive up to River Road,” Grant told Dallas.

  “You drive up, I’ll walk,” she said. “Maybe I’ll see something along the way that we’d miss if we were both in the car.”

  “You want to drive and I’ll walk?”

  She shook her head and backed toward the road. “I want to walk. I’ll meet you there.”

  Dallas all but ran back to Charles Street and all the way to River Road. At some point, Grant must have passed her, but she didn’t notice, just as she was unaware of the darkening sky and the distant rumble of thunder. She broke into a trot when River came in sight, her eyes darting back and forth across the sidewalk. She didn’t know what she thought she’d find, but it was the only thing she could think of to do. When she reached the edge of Berry’s property, she ran across the lawn, unable to wait until she reached the drive. Grant was on the front porch when she got there. The look on his face made it clear that he’d seen no sign of the missing children.

  “Does Cody have a house key on him?” Grant asked.

  “No. But he knows where Berry keeps a spare.” She ran around to the basement entrance and moved a rock that was near the flower bed. “It’s still here.”

  “Maybe he used it, went inside, used the bathroom or got a snack, locked up the house—”

  “Put the key back under the rock?” Dallas finished the sentence, then shook her head. “If he’d come home, and if he’d gotten the key, he’d have left it inside, and probably left the front door open.”

  She started toward the back of the house. “Maybe they’re out back …”

  They called both boys, but there was no response. The dogs were barking inside and Dallas used her own key to let them out. She ran through the house, calling their names, from the basement to the third floor, but the house was silent.

  She went outside and sat on the steps when her legs gave out on her. Her head in her hands, and shaking all over, she began to weep.

  Grant came up the stairs and sat next to her, his arms around her, and rocked her slowly.

  “Someone’s taken them,” she said through her sobs. “Someone has them, right now. It’s the only explanation I can think of.”

  “Dallas, let’s not—”

  “I know my son, Grant. There’s no way he’d disappear like this on his own, and not for this long a time, unless something or someone was stopping him. If he’d gotten separated from Brooke, he’d have gone back to the tented area. He’d go where he knew someone he knows would be. If he didn’t find us, he’d have gone to Berry, or if he couldn’t find her, he’d have gone to Scoop. At the very least, they’d have gone back to Clay.” She shook her head, her voice breaking. “I think someone has them. I think they’ve been kidnapped …”

  Chapter 21

  Dallas sat still as a stone on a chair in the living room. Her heart had been racing since the moment she realized that Cody and Logan were not with anyone they should have been with. That had been seven hours ago. Since then, Beck had closed off all roads leading in or out of town, and had set up a checkpoint where the backseats and the trunks of all vehicles leaving St. Dennis were checked. Hal viewed the surveillance tapes from every shop on Charles Street, and Clay Madison and his buddies had gone up and down every street in town calling for the boys.

  There’d been no sign of either boy.

  Beck had called the FBI and requested their assistance, and several agents had already arrived in St. Dennis. Agents in Arizona had been dispatched to the rehab center where Emilio was staying, and while no one was saying he was a suspect, after informing him that his son was missing, they requested and received a list of everyone who’d visited him since he signed himself in.

  “You don’t really think he’d kidnap his own son, do you?” Dallas asked when she’d been told.

  “It’s not unusual for noncustodial parents to take off with their kids, or hire someone to do it for them,” explained Beck’s wife, Mia, who as a former FBI special agent had been involved in several such investigations.

  Dallas had shaken her head. “He wouldn’t want to be bothered on a full-time basis. Believe me, I know this man. And he’d never have taken Logan, too. Uh-uh,” she’d said softly. “Emilio is capable of many things, but this isn’t one of them.”

  Her head pounded and her throat was raw, and the hole in the bottom of her stomach just kept getting bigger and bigger as time passed with no word from or of the boys. Her hands shook when she tried to lift the glass of water or the cup of coffee that Grant brought her from time to time, and her legs were like rubber when she tried to stand. She sat next to a traumatized Berry and held her hand, and tried to keep herself in check for her aunt’s sake. Dallas knew that it would take next to nothing to put either of them over the edge at that point, so she focused on giving the illusion of remaining calm and rational, when inside, she knew she was neither.

  Brooke was at her family farm with her mother and the FBI agents who were busy searching the fields and the marsh across the road from the property, but there’d been no sign that the boys had ventured that far out of town. So far, three agents had gone through Berry’s house from the attic to the basement, and had covered every inch of the carriage house.

  Outside, the storm that had been threatening all day had unleashed a furious wind and a torrent of rain that hit the living-room windows unrelentingly. Lightning split the sky over the Bay and thunder clapped overhead.

  “If he’s out there, he’s cold and he’s wet and he’s scared to death,” Dallas said mostly to herself.

  Grant had held her as she sobbed and done his best to keep both Dallas and Berry grounded, holding their hands and reminding them that the search had begun immediately once the boys were determined to be missing. He answered the questions that the agents had about the festival and who had been where at what time, and all the while he was sick inside at the thought that something really bad had happened to the two boys.

  Every time the phone rang, Dallas jumped, afraid to answer it, and afraid not to. She’d been instructed by the agent in charge what to do if the call was from someone claiming to have the boys—what questions to ask, what not to say while the agents attempted to trace the call. But the only calls she received were from Paige, who’d heard that the boys were missing, and who, with Steffie, was on the way to River Road, and from Emilio, who was on his way east and demanded to know how Dallas could have been so neglectful that some pervert had been able to walk away with his son.

  “Hey.” Grant had taken h
er chin in his hand and forced her to look into his eyes. “Emilio is an ass. You know it and I know it. His opinion isn’t worth shit. Don’t let him put this on you.”

  “It is on me,” she’d said quietly. “I should have kept a closer eye on him. I shouldn’t have let him and Logan go off alone.”

  “They weren’t alone,” he’d reminded her. “They were with Clay, and then they were with Brooke. And I’m not pointing the finger at either of them, Dallas, but you can’t be with a child every second of every day. And they still could turn up.”

  “The FBI is here,” she reminded him. “They’ve put a tap on my phone and they have agents crawling all over St. Dennis. They apparently don’t think the boys will just ‘turn up.’ ”

  “That’s their job. They’re doing what they do whenever there’s a report of a missing child,” he told her. “They have a protocol to follow and that’s what they’re doing.”

  “Miss MacGregor.” The agent in charge of the investigation, Vic Turner, stepped into the living room. “If we could just go over a few things with you again …”

  “Certainly.” She nodded.

  “You’ve said there’d been no strange phone calls, no suspicious cars in the area, no one hanging around the property …” He was going back over her previous statement.

  “That’s correct. I haven’t noticed anything like that since we arrived in St. Dennis,” she told him.

  “Dallas, there was the boat early in the week,” Grant reminded her.

  “What boat?” the agent turned to him to ask.

  “We were out on the dock one night and a boat came into the river off the Bay and slowed for a moment, then took off downriver,” Grant said.

  “Had either of you seen this boat before?”

  Dallas and Berry both nodded. “It’s been around for the past few weeks,” Dallas replied. “And now that I think about it, it has seemed to slow down then speed up again.”

  “But that’s the boat that took the photos,” Grant said.

  “What photos?” the agent asked.

  Dallas explained about the pictures in the tabloids several days earlier.

  “Do you have the paper?” Turner asked.

  “No,” Dallas said, “but there might still be a few at the store.”

  “What kind of boat was this?”

  Grant described it. “As a matter of fact, it was almost identical to a boat owned by a gentleman in town. I can get the specifications on it, if you’d like.”

  “Please.” Turner nodded.

  Grant went into the kitchen to make the call to Carter Harwell.

  “Miss MacGregor, can you think of anything else?” Turner sat on the edge of a nearby chair.

  “I can’t. I’ve gone over every minute since we arrived, and I can’t think of any time when anything happened that set off any alarms.” She turned to Berry. “Have you thought of anything, Berry?”

  Berry shook her head. “I can’t think of anyone who’d want to harm that dear boy.” She corrected herself: “Those two dear boys.”

  Grant came back into the room with a description of the boat, which he handed to the agent, telling him, “There are several marinas upriver. If the boat is docked on the New River, someone will know about it.”

  The doorbell rang and everyone jumped, but when the agent answered the door, Steffie and a white-faced Paige were on the porch. They came in carrying several bags from Scoop. After hugs all around and some tears, Stef said, “We brought ice cream. We figured no one would be eating dinner and maybe you’d want something later. I’ll just put it in the freezer. Unless you want some now?”

  When everyone shook their head, Dallas took the bags and went into the kitchen, followed by Steffie.

  “This was nice, Stef, thanks,” Dallas told her.

  “We didn’t know what to do,” Stef admitted. “So as soon as the shop cleared out, we grabbed some stuff out of the cooler and locked the door and jumped in the car. I’m afraid I’m not much help. I don’t know what to say or do.”

  “Neither do I,” Dallas admitted, tears in her eyes. “On the one hand, I feel that if something horrible has happened to Cody, I’d know, wouldn’t I? I’m his mother. I should know if something bad …” She choked back a sob. “On the other hand, if nothing’s happened to him … where the hell is he? Why isn’t he here?”

  Steffie shook her head.

  No one slept except Paige, who curled up on a Victorian love seat around midnight.

  “She must be exhausted,” Berry observed. “That’s the most uncomfortable piece of furniture in the house.”

  Though the worst of the storm passed during the night, rain was still coming down in the morning and the wind was only beginning to die down. At eight A.M., the doorbell rang, and Agent Turner answered it. There was muffled conversation in the foyer, then Emilio blasted into the room.

  “I shouldn’t have let you take him,” he shouted at Dallas. “I should have fought for custody. You—”

  “You traded him for a beach house in Malibu, a cabin at Lake Tahoe, and a fake Italian palazzo in the Hollywood Hills.”

  “Agent Turner, please have this man removed from my house,” Berry said calmly. “He isn’t welcome here.”

  “You crazy old bat, you’re just as much to blame as she is,” he continued to rant.

  Grant stood. “That’s enough. You have ten seconds to turn around and start for the door.”

  “Or what?” Emilio smirked. “Oh, wait. You’re the boyfriend.” He looked around Grant to address Dallas. “Too busy with the boyfriend to keep an eye on your son?”

  “Eight, nine …” Grant counted.

  “Sir, if I could ask you to step outside?” Agent Turner came into the room and took Emilio by the arm.

  “And who are you?” Emilio shook him off.

  “Special Agent Turner, FBI.” Turner held up his ID.

  Emilio nodded. “Good. The FBI has been called in. At least you did one thing right, Dallas.”

  “Sir, if you’d come this way?” Turner looked as if he’d heard enough.

  “I want you to know I’m going for custody when this is over. When they find him.” As he went to the door, he said, over his shoulder, “If they find him.”

  Turner’s hand was on Emilio’s arm, steering him toward the door.

  “I’m going to kill that man,” Berry announced loud enough to be heard in the entry.

  “Did you hear that, Agent Turner? The old lady just threatened me!” Emilio yelled as the agent closed the door behind them.

  “Dallas, I used to think that man was obnoxious,” Berry told her. “Now I believe he’s the very spawn of the devil himself.”

  “He’s upset about Cody,” Dallas said wearily.

  “We’re all upset about Cody,” Berry snapped. “He’s going to play this for all it’s worth, you wait and see. He’ll be setting up for a press conference before the day is over.”

  Emilio’s press conference took place approximately thirty minutes later, at the top of Berry’s driveway, early enough to make the morning news back in L.A.

  “Press whore.” Berry sniffed. “Who wants coffee?”

  She slowly made her way into the kitchen.

  “I can’t stand sitting here any longer,” Dallas told Grant. “I want to go out and look for my son.”

  “You can’t leave, Dallas. You have to stay in case someone calls.”

  Dallas’s eyes followed Berry. She turned to Grant and said, “I’ve never seen Berry look … well, old, but she’s added twenty years since last night. Cody means more to her than …” She bit her lip to keep from crying again.

  Grant took her hands and held them. “Come on. Let’s get some coffee.”

  They were seated at the kitchen table when Agent Turner came in.

  “I’ve advised your ex-husband to remain off the premises,” he told Dallas. “I’ve instructed Agent Hawkins to physically remove him if he returns.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked.<
br />
  “They’ve found a boy’s bike in the marsh across from the Madison farm. I’m going up to take a look.”

  “Neither Cody nor Logan had their bikes yesterday,” Dallas told him.

  “Mrs. Bowers has identified the bike as belonging to her son. We need to check it out.”

  Dallas nodded. After he left, Dallas got up and began to pace.

  “Why would Logan’s bike be in the marsh?” she muttered. “Though I suppose there’s a chance that they walked to the farm yesterday, then for some reason got Logan’s bike … but that doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “I think it’s more likely that Logan left the bike there before yesterday, and they’re just realizing it now. With all that rain last night, they probably couldn’t have searched the marsh very well,” Grant pointed out.

  “That seems logical, Grant,” Berry said wearily.

  “Berry, why don’t you go upstairs and lie down,” Dallas suggested. “You look so tired.”

  “I’m fine, dear. I couldn’t sleep anyway. Not until we know something.” Berry gazed out the window.

  Everyone fell silent again.

  Paige came into the kitchen a few minutes later with several books in her hands. She sat at the table and began to page through them sadly.

  “What do you have there, Paige?” her father asked.

  She held up one of the books. “I brought these for Cody the other night when I babysat for him. He loved these stories. I read them over and over and we talked about them.” She tried to smile. “He said he wished he could have an adventure like Max or Pippi did.”

  Grant stared at his daughter, then looked out the window. After a long moment, he turned to Dallas.

  “Dallas, did you say something the other day about Cody getting a boat?”

  She nodded. “A rowboat. Berry wanted to have Wade’s old one refurbished for him, but there was too much dry rot, so she bought him a new one. It’s his pride and joy.”

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  “It’s tied up at the dock.” She pointed out the window. “See there, the rope on the last piling?”