Her Christmas Guardian

by Shirlee McCoy

  “You’re not being reasonable,” Cyrus responded. “And that’s not going to help us locate your daughter.”

  “She’s being plenty reasonable,” Boone said. “And I guess if there’s something that needs to be said, it may as well be said in front of her.” He dropped down beside her, his thigh brushing hers, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “You know the rules,” Cyrus responded. “We keep things quiet until we’re sure of what we’re looking at.”

  “Sometimes rules are meant to be broken. I think this is one of those times.” Boone snatched the box of animal crackers from the table, dug into it. “The way I see things, if I were in Scout’s place, I’d be wanting to know every detail of the investigation.”

  “The way I see things,” Cyrus replied, “we follow the rules, because they’re there for a reason.”

  “You know what?” Jackson grabbed the box of animal crackers from Boone’s hand. “You need to stop with the sugar, and you both need to stop bickering like a couple of old fishwives. The fact is, Scout, we got a ping on the cell phone that called yours. The police and FBI are already in the area, and we’ve got permission to be part of the search team.”

  “You think you’ve found her?” She jumped up, hope soaring. “I need to clean up her room, buy a new mattress for her bed.”

  “Hold on now.” Boone grabbed her arm. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. That’s one of the reasons we don’t usually share this kind of information. Clients get their hopes up and sometimes those hopes are dashed.”

  “But you may know where she is.” And that was a lot. That was more than they’d had that morning.

  “We’ve got a general area,” Cyrus responded. “But we’re talking miles and miles of forest. She could be anywhere in it. The best thing you can do is go with Jackson, look for the missing box. If we don’t find your daughter today, that might help us find her tomorrow.”

  For the first time since she’d met him, he actually sounded...kind.

  “He’s right. For a change.” Boone nudged her toward Jackson. “Go on and find the box. I’ll call you if we find anything.”

  “I’d rather go with you. If you find Lucy, she’s going to need me.”

  Boone shook his head. “That’s a rule we’re not going to break.”

  “We’d better go. Your landlady is going to be waiting.” Jackson had her arm and was leading her to the door before she could think to protest.

  They walked out into late-afternoon sunlight, a cold breeze scattering leaves across the driveway. In the distance, steel-gray clouds dotted the horizon. They’d have rain before sundown. Lucy loved the rain. She loved the way it pattered on the roof, and she loved jumping in puddles on the driveway.

  Scout wanted to believe that her daughter would be home before the first drop fell. She wanted to believe that she’d be able to tuck Lucy into bed tonight, but she felt hollow, her faith shriveled up and useless.

  Jackson opened the door of a blue SUV, and she climbed in. She thought he’d shut the door, but he stepped back and Boone appeared, leaning in so that they were close enough for her to see the hints of green in his eyes, the tiny scar on his cheek.

  “You didn’t say goodbye,” he said.

  “No one gave me a chance.”

  “You know that this is the way that it has to be, right?”

  She wasn’t sure she did, but she was too tired to say it. Her head ached; her body ached. She wanted to go to bed and wake up and find her daughter safe in her bed.

  “Scout?” He touched her cheek, his fingers warm and light against her skin. “If it could be any other way—”

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I think I do. You feel helpless and hopeless, like all your power has been taken away. That’s not what I want for you. What I want is for you to have your daughter back. I want you to wake up to her giggles and go to sleep knowing she’s safe in her bed. I don’t want you to spend the next week or month or year wondering if she’s okay, wondering if she’s being fed, if she’s warm, if she’s even alive.”

  Her heart jerked at the words, because she heard the pain in them, saw it on his face and in his eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, Boone,” she whispered, and she knew he understood, because he smiled that easy smile that was becoming as familiar as sunrise.

  “So am I, but it doesn’t change anything. I still wake up every morning wondering and go to bed every night wondering and live every day of my life hoping and praying that my daughter is alive. If I can keep that from happening to you, I’m going to. If that means leaving you behind while I go search, that’s what I need to do.”

  “I understand.” More than she had in the house, more than she’d have thought she could. This wasn’t a power play; it wasn’t Boone making decisions because he could. It was him caring deeply, wanting things to work out almost as badly as she wanted them to.

  “Good, because I don’t want you running off to try to find Lucy yourself. Stay with Jackson. Do what he says. I need to be fully focused on finding your daughter, and I can’t waste any energy worrying that you’re heading into danger.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Promise me,” he urged. “Because I really can’t stomach the thought of you being on your own. Not after everything that’s happened.”

  She didn’t like making promises. They were difficult to keep and way too easy to break, but she couldn’t deny Boone. Not when he was watching her so intently, not when he’d shared so much of his heart. “I promise,” she said.

  “Good.” He lifted her hand, kissed her palm, folded her fingers over the spot. “I’ll see you later.”

  He closed the door and walked away, and she sat exactly where she was, her hand fisted over his kiss, while Jackson backed out of the driveway and headed toward town.

  * * *

  Boone waited until the SUV disappeared from sight, then turned to face Cyrus. “Let’s head out. You have the gear in your truck or do we need to try to get our hands on some?”

  “Do you even need to ask?” Cyrus led the way to his Chevy Silverado.

  “Would I be me if I didn’t?” Boone responded as he climbed into the passenger seat of the truck.

  “Would I be me if I wasn’t prepared for anything?”

  “I don’t suppose you would be.” If there was one thing Boone knew about Cyrus, the guy thought things through, planned them out. He didn’t act before he knew exactly what he was going to do and how he was going to do it.

  “Lucky for you. Otherwise, we’d be wasting more time trying to come up with what we need. Some of my equipment is state-of-the-art. It’s not all that easy to find.”

  “And some of it is so old-school, they probably had it during colonial days.”

  “Hey, man, don’t knock the old ways,” Cyrus retorted, shoving a key into the ignition and starting the car. “They worked for my grandfather and great-grandfather, and they work for me.”

  “I wasn’t knocking them. I was just pointing out that you work as well without all the fancy stuff as you do with it.”

  “Was that a compliment?” Cyrus asked as he pulled away from the house. “Because if it is, you must want something from me.”

  “Lunch would be nice.” All he’d eaten in the past twenty-four hours were a few handfuls of animal crackers. If he weren’t going on a search, he could have made it on that, but he was, and he knew his body enough to know what it needed to keep fueled.

  “Is there ever a time when you’re not thinking about your stomach, Anderson?” Cyrus grumbled, but he pulled into a fast-food parking lot and into the drive-through line.

  “Generally speaking? No. Practically speaking? Yes. When we’re deep in a mission, I don’t think about it at all. Which is why I’d like a double cheeseburger, large f
ries and a soda.”

  Cyrus mumbled something but made the order.

  Unlike Boone, he didn’t eat fast food or sweets. He preferred nice meals in fancy restaurants, bottled water and lots of fruits and vegetables.

  When the order was ready, he thrust the greasy bag into Boone’s hands and took off again. “Happy now?”

  “Ecstatic,” he mumbled through a mouthful of fries. “So, how about you tell me where we’re headed?”

  “Twenty miles east. The signal came from somewhere around an abandoned ski resort there. The place closed down in the 1980s. Plenty of places for our perp to hide with a little girl.”

  “How many buildings are we talking about?”

  “Fifty and a lodge spread across five thousand acres of pretty rugged terrain. The property got scooped up a couple of years ago, and the owner rents cabins during hunting season.”

  “Is he renting any now?”

  “Six. The renters checked out. No criminal records. No connections with San Jose or the Schoepflins. At least none that Charity could find. She’s still looking.”

  Another member of HEART, Charity was Jackson and Chance Miller’s sister. Though she had specific training in search and rescue, the brothers didn’t like to use her for anything more than computer research and general office help.

  She wasn’t happy about it, and she’d made it known.

  “She’s going to be upset when she hears we ran this search without her.”

  “She already knows, and she’s already upset. I’m just hoping she doesn’t show up at the search location. The Feds are running their own K-9 team, and if she shows up with Tank, they might renege on the invitation to join the search.”

  “We were invited?” Boone doubted it, but he knew Chance. His boss could convince just about anyone to do anything.

  “Or they were coerced.” Cyrus shrugged. “Either way, we’re in. I’ve already pinpointed the most likely location on a map. We’ll check in with the local P.D. and then track in on foot. There are three cabins near a small tributary of some sort. Might be a creek or stream. Not as big as a river.”

  “Did you get that from Charity or look it up yourself?”

  “I did a little research before I left D.C.”

  “You do know it’s her job to provide information about locations, right?”

  “She was working as fast as she could, getting me as much as she could, but up until we located the cell phone signal, her focus has been on digging into the Schoepflins’ past.”

  “She find anything interesting?”

  “Nothing that is going to help. Senator Dale Schoepflin is well liked and a shoo-in for the next election. He’s been married three times. The third time seems to be the charm. He’s been with Alaina Morris Schoepflin for fifteen years. No kids of her own. She pretty much raised Amber. People in their community like them. America likes them.” In typical Cyrus fashion, he was spouting out facts and lots of them. The guy had a mind like a steel trap. He never forgot a detail, never missed an important piece of information.

  “What about the son?”

  “Christopher is even more well-known. Married to Rachel Harris. They make the rest of us look bad.”

  “That’s it?” Boone prodded because it wasn’t like Cyrus to be short on details.

  “There’s plenty more, but none of it is pejorative. Jackson asked Stella to head to the airport. Christopher’s plane is supposed to arrive this afternoon. She’s going to see if she can get a little face-to-face time with him.”

  “Knowing Stella, she’ll manage it. Does anyone in the Schoepflin family own land out here?”

  “Wouldn’t that make things easy?” Cyrus asked with a cynical smile.

  “What would be easy is getting to the ski resort and finding out that Lucy has already been found.”

  “Easy and nice,” Cyrus responded. “But this is the real world, and as far as I’ve seen, there’s not a whole lot of either of those things in it.”

  Boone had lived long enough to know he was right. The world was filled with things that were difficult and harsh, ugly and mean.

  He’d seen the worst of the world and the people in it, but he’d also seen the best. In the midst of the darkest times, he tried to remember that.

  He reached for the radio and flicked it on, filling the silence with some bluesy tune that he knew Cyrus would hate. The guy was a great team member and, most of the time, a good friend, but he didn’t have much to offer in the way of positivity and optimism.

  Up ahead, the road curved toward distant mountains, the afternoon sun shining gold against the fading fall foliage.

  Somewhere, in the middle of that vast wilderness, Lucy was waiting to be found. He had to believe they’d find her, had to believe that God would bring them to exactly the place they needed to be at exactly the time they needed to be there in order to save her.

  TWELVE

  They were late, and Eleanor wasn’t happy.

  Scout couldn’t find it in herself to care. She wanted to be with Boone, searching the woods for Lucy, not standing in a cold storage unit while her landlady shifted boxes around from one area to another.

  “Are you sure it was here?” Eleanor asked, her dark eyes narrowed with irritation. “Because I don’t recall seeing it when I was here last.”

  “I’m positive,” Scout responded. “It was right next to the chair you said I could store here.” She pointed to the old rocker that used to be in Lucy’s room. She’d spent countless nights sitting in it, rocking her daughter to sleep. In those early days, there’d been times when she’d wanted nothing more than to fast-forward to a time when Lucy wouldn’t need her so much, when getting a full night’s sleep wasn’t just a pipe dream.

  Now Lucy almost never woke in the middle of the night. Up until the past few days, Scout had had plenty of sleep. She wanted to go back in time, though. She wanted to sit in that rocking chair in Lucy’s room, inhale the sweet baby scent of shampoo and baby lotion. She wanted to enjoy every moment of looking into her daughter’s face and not waste a moment wishing for something different than what was.

  She blinked back tears, rubbed the knotted muscles at the back of her neck. The headache she’d had since she’d woken in the hospital was still pounding behind her eyes, but she forced herself to focus. “Someone must have moved it.”

  “Who?” Eleanor sighed heavily. “No one has access to the unit but my renters, and they are all upright and honest people.”

  “You think they are.” Jackson lifted a tarp that had been thrown over several items. A couple of old bicycles and a jogging stroller appeared. A dresser. A lamp. A futon. No box, though.

  “I did credit checks on everyone. They all pay rent on time. Never had issues with neighbors reporting loud noise or partying. No police being called to the house.” She glanced at Scout. “Until recently.”

  “I’m really sorry about that.” Scout rushed to apologize. The last thing she needed was to be kicked out of her house, and she had no doubt that Eleanor was the kind of landlord who’d be more than willing to toss someone out on the street if she thought she had a good enough reason.

  “No need to apologize. I’m sure you didn’t bring these troubles on yourself,” Eleanor assured her, but she didn’t look as if she believed it. She looked as if she was annoyed, her dark gaze scanning the storage unit, her fingers tapping a quick tattoo on her oversize leather purse.

  “How many other renters use this unit?” Jackson asked. He didn’t seem to be bothered by Eleanor’s mood.

  “Three. I already gave the FBI the list, so I don’t know why we’ve got to go over it again.” She glanced at a fancy gold watch that had probably cost more than Scout’s car and frowned. “I have an appointment in thirty minutes, which means I need to leave in five. As sorry as I am for your loss,
Scout—”

  “She’s not dead,” she broke in, because she couldn’t stomach Eleanor’s word choice, couldn’t bear to hear it.

  “I meant ‘lost’ in a very literal sense. She is lost to you. For now. I’m sure the police and FBI will be able to track her down.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Scout pressed a hand to her stomach, trying to still its wild churning.

  “They’re doing everything they can to find her. These things take time and a lot of patience. I know it’s hard, but you just have to keep holding on to that hope you’ve got. Keep cooperating. Keep working with the men and women who are searching for your daughter,” Jackson said, patting her shoulder awkwardly. He meant well, but having him around wasn’t anything like having Boone there. She felt cut off from the investigation, separated from the one person who’d been keeping her informed.

  “I know.” She didn’t tell him that she was worried that no amount of work would be enough to bring her daughter home. She didn’t say that she could feel every tick of the clock as the day wore on and midnight drew nearer. She didn’t tell him how scared she was that when midnight came and went, her daughter really would be lost to her.

  She didn’t say any of those things because she didn’t think Jackson would understand the way Boone did. “I just want to do my part to help the investigation move forward. The box was here. If it’s not here, someone took it. There must be security cameras in a storage facility like this, right?”

  “I saw them on our way in,” Jackson replied. “I’ve already put in a call to the local police. They’re trying to get hold of the owner so the security footage can be released. For now, let’s take one more look around. I didn’t look inside any of the boxes when I was here earlier. Maybe that’s our next step.” He walked to a pile of neatly stacked boxes near the far wall.

  “It’s not there,” Eleanor said. “Those are my things. I keep them separated from my renters’. See the blue tape on the floor? Anything within that is not to be touched by anyone but me.”