High-Risk Affair. RaeAnne Thayne
command trailer. As soon as she opened the door, she realized this had been a mistake.
A group of men and women filled every available space inside the trailer and they were all listening to Sheriff Galvez give instructions. He broke off when he caught sight of her, his dark eyes suddenly filling with a compassion she saw mirrored on the faces of everyone else inside the trailer.
She shouldn’t have interrupted them. All she had done was distract them from the search effort.
Painfully aware of Agent Davis behind her, no doubt watching her out of those sharp, piercing eyes, she cleared her throat. “Hello. I’m sorry. I…I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just wanted to tell you all thank-you for what you’re doing. Please find my son.”
“We’ll do the best we can.” A round, balding man she thought she had met at church spoke up.
“Just hang in there, Megan,” said Wayne Shumway, one of her clients at her CPA firm. She had a vague memory of him asking her if the Internal Revenue Service would let him write off his training expenses for the time he contributed to the county’s volunteer search and rescue team.
Their sympathy was suddenly more than she could bear. She wouldn’t have believed it, but she almost thought she preferred the FBI agent’s cool impassivity to this cloying, smothering compassion.
She mustered a smile, murmured another thank-you, then hurried from the command center.
Her emotions were thick and close to the surface as she hurried out of the trailer, so heavy inside her she staggered under the weight of them. An overwhelming, helpless fear was foremost among them, and she had to stop a few dozen yards from the trailer and close her eyes, whispering another hurried prayer for her son’s safe return.
When she opened her eyes, she found the FBI agent beside her, watching her with that same carefully neutral expression. She wanted to lash out at something and Caleb Davis happened to be the most convenient target just now.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than follow me around?” she snapped. “I don’t need a watchdog.”
He raised a dark, slashing eyebrow. “How about a friend?”
“You’re not my friend. We both know that.” To her horror, her voice trembled on the last word and suddenly her anger disappeared as quickly as it had erupted. All her emotions bubbled closer to the surface, threatening to spill over.
She blinked them back fiercely, aware of the FBI agent studying her. After a moment, he made a sighing kind of sound and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, an old-fashioned white one like her father used to carry. It took her by surprise and also sent a few of those tears leaking out.
She sniffled for a moment into his handkerchief but regained control quickly. She couldn’t afford to break down, not when Cameron needed her. She lifted her face to the warm summer sun, wondering how such a horrible thing could happen on a day that looked so beautiful.
The heavy rains of the night before left the morning fresh and clean and gorgeous, the kind of day she had come to love in the few months she had been in Utah.
A light wind poured off the mountains, sweet with pine and sage from the acres of national forest land bordering her property. After growing up in Boston and spending all her married life in the hustle of San Diego, she found she loved living out here on the edge of the wilderness, watching mule deer forage in her garden, listening to the shrill cry of hawks overhead and the distant yip of coyotes in the evening.
Now she hated it. Cameron could be anywhere out in that vast tract of land—and that was the best-case scenario. She couldn’t bear thinking that someone might have broken into her house and taken him under her very nose.
She drew a shuddering breath, feeling again the watchful gaze of Caleb Davis. She knew she was at the top of the suspect list right now, as far as the FBI agent was concerned. The knowledge burned, but she knew she couldn’t let it get to her.
“Tell me, Agent Davis. How many missing child cases have you investigated?”
If she hadn’t been looking closely at him, she might have missed the slight twitch of a muscle in his jaw before his expression returned to impassivity.
“A few,” he answered.
Some demon compelled her to push him. “Too many to count?”
“Seventy-nine, in the eight years I’ve been with the FBI’s Crimes Against Children unit.”
Seventy-nine. She shivered at the number, at the pain she knew it must represent, and at his preciseness in remembering it. All that heartache. She couldn’t bear it.
“How many of those have been resolved in a way you would deem successful?”
She didn’t want to ask but couldn’t seem to help herself.
Not enough.
He didn’t say the words, but she could see them in the sudden flare of darkness in the clear depths of his eyes. The unsaid message hovered between them, dank and ugly, and then he veiled his expression again.
“I know it’s an impossible thing to ask, Mrs. Vance, but you can’t think about those other children. All your energy right now should be focused on your own son.”
Before she could answer, the door of the command center trailer opened and the rescuers emerged into the sunlight. Daniel Galvez was the last to leave. He caught sight of them standing near the fence and walked to them. Megan was aware of the careful way he looked at her, as if he were afraid she would break apart right in front of him.
She felt like it, but she managed to hold on to whatever remnants of control she had left.
She was more surprised when he gave the same concerned scrutiny to Caleb Davis.
“Don’t even ask. I’m fine,” the FBI agent growled.
She gazed between the two men, baffled at their byplay. “I’m sure you are,” the sheriff said. “McKinnon wouldn’t have brought you back for this one if you weren’t.”
Davis said nothing. He just put his sunglasses back on.
Megan finally broke the awkward silence. “I’m sorry I interrupted you back there,” she said again.
The sheriff turned his attention to her. “Don’t worry about it. You should be included in the loop—I promise I’ll do my best to keep you informed of the search logistics. The first wave of searchers is already out there combing the grid, and another wave is receiving instructions so they can leave shortly. Search dogs will be here in the next hour or so, though the rain of last night and the wind that’s predicted to pick up in a couple hours may hamper their efforts.”
She was aware of Caleb Davis standing beside her, ever watchful. She found a strange comfort in his presence, though it made absolutely no sense, given his hour-long interrogation of her.
“Thank you,” she said to Daniel. “I do appreciate knowing what’s happening. Please, Sheriff, what can I do?”
He sighed and gestured to the news vans jockeying for position down the road. “I hate to burden you with this right now, but the media is already clamoring for some kind of statement from the family. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. But we do need to get the word out that Cameron’s missing, in case someone might have seen something. Do you feel up to talking to the press?”
She pressed a hand to her stomach at the instinctive recoil there. How could she possibly stand before the harsh glare of cameras and strip her soul bare? Could she endure that sense of invasion again, that emotional purge? Her nails dug into her palms. She would hate it. But for Cameron she would endure anything.
“Mrs. Vance, may I make a suggestion?”
She turned to Agent Davis. “Of course.”
“Quite often in cases like this, the immediate family of a missing child appoints a spokesperson to