Autumn Chill in Utah Springs
highlight_author
RaeAnne Thayne
highlight_reads
18.1K
highlight_chapters
17
CHAPTER 1
2:00 a.m.
Megan Vance arose with a jerk, not sure whether the echo of screams in her ears had been real or imaginary.
Fear knotted her insides, every muscle was contracted, and her breathing came harsh and fast. For one wild, panicky moment she was consumed by a single overwhelming need—to check on her children.
She listened intently but heard nothing except the summer rain clicking against the glass of her bedroom window.
After a moment, she sagged back to the pillow, embarrassed at herself. It was only a nightmare, nothing to send her into a panic. She forced herself to relax her muscles one by one and deliberately moderated her ragged breathing until it was slow and even.
She hadn’t had one of those in a while. Though already the details had mercifully faded and she couldn’t remember what had left her so terrified, she knew by the sick feeling still lingering in her stomach it must have been a bad one.
She sat up, scrubbing at her face while the last tendrils of the nightmare uncoiled from around her chest. After Rick had died, she used to have them nearly every night—gruesome, twisted journeys through her subconscious, full of monsters and demons.
She could remember a few of the more vivid dreams and they usually involved the horrible deaths of everyone she knew and loved.
Little wonder, she supposed. She had already lost so much. The roll call of people she had loved and lost seemed to grow longer all the time. Her mother—cancer when Megan was twelve. Her father—a cop killed in the line of duty a year later. Her baby brother Kevin—a New York City firefighter killed on 9/11 in Tower One.
And Rick.
Last month had marked two years since her husband’s death. She wondered when she would stop expecting his phone call in the middle of the night, telling her his SEAL team had been called up to some trouble spot or another.
I’ll be back soon, babe. Love you.
Oh, how she had dreaded those phone calls.
She had lost much but not everything. She still had Cam and Hailey, the joys of her life.
She rolled over onto her back and thought about them. Her children. Hailey, funny and sweet and girlie but with a tough streak that always took Megan by surprise. And Cameron, smart and stubborn and courageous even when he had to endure things no child should have to face.
They had saved her these last two years. The normal routine of mothering them—the car pools and soccer games and doctor’s appointments—had taken the wild edge off her grief and given her something else besides herself to focus on.
She sighed, praying again that moving them away from San Diego to the wilds of Utah had been the right decision for all of them. Her children needed family. She needed family and a support system, and her sister Molly was all she had left.
Moving closer to her and her noisy brood and strong, kind husband had seemed like a stroke of genius, in theory. Her job as a CPA was mobile, and she could find work anywhere helping small businesses with their payroll and accounting.
Rick used to tease her about her obsession with numbers. To a man who jumped out of airplanes and climbed every mountain he could find, she supposed it was an obsession. But Megan enjoyed what she did and was good at it.
In only the few short months they had been in Moose Springs, she had already built up a nice client list. Everything seemed to be working out just as she hoped.
Still, Megan couldn’t help worrying. Oh, Hailey seemed to be adapting all right, but Cameron had been angry about leaving behind all his friends, his soccer team, the climbing wall Rick had built for the children inside their San Diego home.
Most of all, he hadn’t wanted to leave his dad’s SEAL members, who had taken the boy under their considerable wing after they had lost one of their own.
He would adjust, she told herself again. Lately he seemed to enjoy exploring the foothills around their house and once school started in a few weeks he would make new friends, find a new soccer team, develop new interests.
The wind rattled raindrops against the glass again and Megan sat up, reaching for her robe. She would just peek in on them. That didn’t make her a neurotic mother, just a loving one.
She automatically went to Cameron’s room first. His seizures tended to hit when he was awake but he’d had a few in his sleep.
In the glow of the night-light shaped like a soccer ball, she could see his form under the covers, the blankets over his head as he preferred.
She stood for a moment looking around the room. She always found it a little painful to see this shrine to his father’s memory. Navy recruiting posters covered all the walls and Cam had hung one of Rick’s SEAL T-shirts in a place of honor, along with his father’s picture and the many medal she’d been awarded, both before the Afghanistan helicopter crash that killed him and posthumously.
Her sister thought Megan shouldn’t encourage his obsession with all things military. With his epilepsy, he could never be able to serve in any branch of the service, let alone a physically demanding special forces unit like the SEALs.
But Megan hadn’t the heart to take this away from him, not when it was the only way he knew to connect with the father he had idolized.
With one more look at the bed, she closed the door and walked across the hall to check on Hailey.
Unlike her brother, who liked to sleep like a potato bug all curled up under his covers, six-year-old Hailey sprawled across her bed, her quilt thrown off and her pink ruffly nightgown riding up to her knees.
Her bedroom was like her—pink and girlie, with a cupboard full of Barbies and her American Girl doll on the nightstand, standing guard over the only discordant element in the room, Hailey’s pet rat Daisy.
The rat blinked at her, turned around once in her cage, and went back to sleep. Megan shuddered. She hated the darn thing and had lobbied hard to leave her behind with a classmate back in San Diego, but Hailey wouldn’t be swayed.
She tucked the blanket back up over her daughter, knowing it would be down again in a few moments, then left Hailey’s door ajar.
In the hallway, she contemplated going back to bed but she wasn’t at all sleepy. With her mind racing now, she knew trying to sleep would be futile for some time.
She would go down and make some tea, she decided, and perhaps grab her knitting bag and knit a few rows on her latest project to calm herself and relax enough to go back to sleep.
She walked down the stairs and out of habit checked the dead bolt and the security system.
She started for the kitchen then paused, something niggling at her. The nightmare she couldn’t even remember now had left her unsettled, uneasy. She frowned and turned around, some motherly instinct guiding her back up the stairs to Cameron’s room.
She had learned not to question that intuition. More than once she had been guided to drop whatever she was doing to search for him, only to find him in the grips of a seizure.
His epilepsy had been under control with medication for some time and he had been sleeping soundly five minutes ago, but she knew that could change in an instant.
She studied the shape on the bed under that Army green blanket. Something was off. Though she hated to wake him, she reached for the blanket and tugged it down, then felt her whole world turn ice-cold.
Instead of Cameron’s tousled blond hair and freckled nose, she found a rolled-up sweatshirt. She yanked the blanket off and gasped at the pillows stuffed there to approximate a nine-year-old boy’s shape.
Her son was gone!
4:45 a.m.
“You sure you’re up to this again so soon? I can find somebody else.”
FBI Special Agent Cale Davis turned off his electric razor and flipped up the lighted visor mirror of the agency SUV. “I’m good,” he answered. “I’m glad you called me.”
His partner frowned at Cale’s assured tone as he drove through the predawn darkness through a sparsely populated region of Utah.
“I should have tried a little harder and found someone else.” Gage McKinnon gave a heavy sigh. “Allie’s going to skin me alive when she finds out I called you. You only had two weeks off and you need at least double that after what happened.”
“Leave it, McKinnon. I’m fine. Two weeks was more than enough.”
Gage looked as if he wanted to argue, but he didn’t, much to Cale’s relief. He would prefer talking about anything else but his last case and its horrible ending.
“What else can you tell me about this missing kid?” he said to turn the subject.
The SUV’s headlights illuminated a carved and painted wooden sign for Moose Springs, population three hundred and eleven. Probably some overachieving Boy Scout’s Eagle project, he thought.
The town was about an hour east of Salt Lake City, bordering the Uinta National Forest. He’d been here only once before in an official capacity, in a case involving a good friend, Mason Keller. Unofficially, he had been here many times. Mason and his wife Jane lived on a small ranch nearby and the town had always struck him as clean and friendly. Mayberry R.F.D. in a cowboy hat.
He didn’t want to think something dark and sinister might lurk here. Yet when the FBI called out its Crimes Against Children unit, chances were good all was not as picture-perfect as he wanted to believe here in this quiet community.
“Cameron Vance, nine years old,” Gage answered him after a moment. “Father, Rick Vance, killed in action in Afghanistan. Mother Megan, thirty-two, works out of the home as an accountant. Mom puts the boy to bed at usual time. Goes in to check on him around two and finds him gone, a blanket rolled up to make the casual observer think he’s sleeping away. There was no sign of forced entry and the alarm system was engaged and undisturbed, but there was also no obvious escape route either from the second-story window. No dangling bedsheets, no convenient awning. It’s fifteen feet to the ground, heck of a leap for a nine-year-old kid.”
Not if the kid was a limber little monkey like Charlie Betran, Mason and Jane’s adopted son, Cale thought.
“What compelled the mother to check on him? Does he make a habit of wandering?”
“According to initial reports from local authorities, Megan Vance said she had a nightmare around that time and checked both children out of habit.”
“Any idea what time he disappeared?”
“We’ve got a four-hour window between ten when Mrs. Vance checked on him before going to bed and two when she awoke again.”
“She didn’t hear any suspicious noises?”
“Nothing, just the wind.” McKinnon studied the GPS coordinates on the dashboard unit, then turned at the next street and headed out of town again before going on with his narrative. “After she finds him missing, the mother spends a little time looking around the house and yard, then calls local authorities around oh-three-hundred, who immediately issue an Amber Alert and call us.”
“What makes anybody think a crime has been committed here? Sounds like the kid just sneaked out. It seems a little early in the game for Amber Alerts and calling in the FBI.”
“You’d think,” Gage said, “but this has the potential to be a high-profile case and I think the local authorities want to make sure all their bases are covered from the beginning. They’re running it as a crime scene until they have evidence that it’s not.”
Another high-profile case. Great. Cale closed his eyes. The image of two pretty little girls with dark curls instantly burned behind his eyelids and he jerked them open again.
He wasn’t sure he had the stomach for this again.
“I’m not seeing it from the information you’ve given me. What makes this case stand out?”
“Besides the fact that his father was a national hero who died serving his country, the kid has epilepsy. There’s an urgency here because the mother’s terrified he’s had a seizure somewhere.”
If anyone could find the boy, Gage was the man. His partner was known as The Bloodhound and he specialized in missing children cases. He had an uncanny knack for finding lost kids.
Cale had often wondered if his partner’s own history gave him some kind of sixth sense, some inner eye that guided his actions.
On the other hand, he had his own grim history and his past usually seemed more of a hindrance than a help.
“What do you see as our role here?”
“Purely advisory at this point, providing assistance to the local investigators as needed.”
Judging by the bright flash of emergency vehicles against the night sky, they were approaching the boy’s house. Gage climbed a slight grade and the whole chaotic scene stretched ahead of them.
In the strobing glow from a dozen cop cars and search and rescue vehicles, Cale saw the house was a two-story log structure with a steeply pitched gable on one end and a wide porch along the front.
A basketball standard hung from the detached garage, and two bikes were propped against the porch.
Most of the vehicles were parked some distance from the house. He saw this as a good sign that local authorities had been careful to protect the scene as much as possible.
Gage pulled in next to a van with the logo of one of the local TV stations emblazoned on the side. Then the two of them headed for the house.
They showed their badges to the uniform cop at the door. Once inside, Cale’s gaze was instinctively drawn to a woman on the couch. Though she was surrounded by a bevy of uniformed personnel, somehow she seemed alone in the room.
The mother. It had to be. She was small and red-haired, with a wispy haircut and delicate features that just now looked ravaged.
He could fill a chapel with the faces of all the grieving mothers he’d had to face in his career, but somehow each one managed to score his heart anyway.
He forced himself to turn away from her raw devastation, focusing instead on a dark-haired, muscular man who stood in the center of the action, towering above everyone else.
The Moose Springs sheriff was no stranger to him, and it looked as if Daniel Galvez had the situation well in hand.
Galvez made eye contact with him briefly, then broke off his conversation with the officer and headed in their direction, his big hand outstretched.
“Davis! Sorry I had to drag you boys from the FBI down here already, but we don’t want to miss anything on this one.”
“No problem,” Cale said. “This is my partner, Gage McKinnon.”
The two men shook hands. “I know you don’t have time to babysit us,” Gage began, “but can you just spare a minute to bring us up to speed on the search so far?”
Galvez shook his head. “We’re baffled. The kid seems to have vanished. At this point, we haven’t turned up any signs that anyone else was involved but we just don’t know.”
“What about friends? Could he have snuck out to meet up with someone?”
“He doesn’t have many. His cousins, mostly. Megan and the kids only moved to town a few months ago.”
“What about search dogs?”
“They’re on their way. They’ve been in Wyoming looking for a lost hiker but should be here by the time the sun comes up, when we can mount a full-scale search of the surrounding mountains.”
“What about closer to home?” Cale said with a meaningful look at the mother.
Galvez suddenly looked tired. “I just don’t know. My gut’s saying no. Like I said, the family has only been here a few months, but as far as I can tell there’s nothing in their background to point any fingers to the mother. From all accounts, Megan Vance is a devoted mother who’s had a rough road.”
She certainly looked devastated by her son’s disappearance, Cale thought with another glance at the woman on the couch. But he knew outward appearances could sometimes hide rotten insides.
“You said they’ve only been here a few months,” he said. “Where were they before they moved?”
“San Diego.”
“Why the move?”
“Mrs. Vance’s sister lives about a half mile down the road with her husband and four children,” he answered. “Molly and Scott Randall. I gather Mrs. Vance wanted to be closer to family. It would be tough raising two kids by yourself.”
Sometimes the strain of twenty-four-hour single parenting could make even the most seemingly devoted parent crack. Cale had seen it before and he wasn’t willing to rule anything out yet.
“I’m assuming you want to talk to Megan Vance,” Galvez said.
No. He wanted to stay as far as possible from that traumatized-looking woman on the couch. But he knew his job.
“Definitely.”
His partner gave him a careful look. His shoulder ached. Cale wondered how long it would be before everybody stopped looking at him as if he were a big bundle of unstable plastic explosives just waiting for an ignition source.
He returned Gage’s scrutiny with cool regard, and after a moment the other agent nodded.
“You run the mother. I’ll go talk to the crime scene unit and see if they’ve come up with anything,” McKinnon said.
He headed up the stairs and Cale turned toward the mother. Up close, Megan Vance looked even more fragile. Breakable, like an antique pitcher teetering on the edge of a shelf.
She clasped her hands tightly together on her lap, but he could see even that couldn’t still their trembling. Her whole body shook, he saw as he approached. Not constantly, but every few seconds, a shiver would rack her slight frame.
“Mrs. Vance, I’m Special Agent Caleb Davis with the Salt Lake office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I wonder if I could have a minute of your time.”
The woman next to her bristled. She was older and rounder than Megan Vance but shared the same brilliant green eyes. The sister, he guessed. “She’s told you all what happened a million times already. How many times do you people have to put her through this?”
“Molly, it’s all right,” Megan said, her voice quiet but determined. “Will you grab another cup of coffee for me? Agent Davis?”
He shook his head. The sister looked reluctant, but she rose and left them alone.
Megan Vance faced him, her hands tight together and her remarkable eyes filled with raw emotion. For one insane moment, he was stunned and appalled by his urge to gather her close and promise everything would be all right. He shoved it away.
“I’m very sorry about your son, but I can assure you many excellent people will be helping in the search.”
She drew in a slow breath and when she met his gaze, he could see a layer of steel underneath the pain.
“I don’t need platitudes, Agent Davis. I need action. Why is everyone standing around and not out there looking for my son?”
He had to respect her grit. “It’s very important in cases like this not to go racing off in a hundred different directions and run the risk of trampling over your son’s trail. When the sun comes up in an hour or so, you’ll see everybody here jump into action.”
“I can’t stand that he’s out there in the dark somewhere. I need to be out looking for him.”
Despite his best efforts to remain impartial, the emotion in her voice seemed to slither through his defenses.
“I know it’s tough but the best thing you can do for Cameron right now is to help us narrow the direction of our search. Would you mind going over the timeline with me?”
After a moment, she nodded. “I put him to bed as usual at about 9:00 p.m. He was sleeping soundly at ten when I checked on him—I tucked the blanket up so I know for sure he was in bed at that time. I woke at two and went to check on him and he was gone.”
“What woke you?”
She paused slightly. “I had a nightmare.”
“Is that unusual for you?”
“Not really.”
“And do you usually check your children when you wake from a bad dream in the middle of the night?”
He hadn’t meant to make his questions sound like an interrogation, but her mouth tightened.
“Look, Agent Davis, I know the drill here. I’ve watched enough television to know you have to consider me a suspect. I have no problem with that. None whatsoever. Take my DNA, my fingerprints, whatever. I’ll take a lie detector test or anything else you want. But please hurry, so you can quickly rule me out and focus on finding my son.”
