The Cowboy's Secret Son

“So you left.”

“She worries about me,” the kid said.

I’ll bet she does, Mark thought. He put his hand on the back of the narrow shoulders, directing the child toward the waiting chopper. There was no resistance this time, and as they walked, Mark noticed the uneven stride again. He glanced down at the boy’s feet, which were shod in ordinary sneakers.

“Blister?” he asked, still using his hand to direct the kid around to the other side of the helicopter.

He opened the door on the passenger side of the cockpit and put his hand under the boy’s elbow, preparing to help him inside. The kid squirmed away, the move almost like the one he’d made to throw Mark’s hand off his shoulder. And it was as effective.

“I can do it,” he said, that hint of defiance back.

Again Mark refrained from arguing. After all, there was nothing wrong with wanting to stand on your own two feet, even if they were blistered. It took the kid a few seconds to assess the unfamiliar situation. When he had, he put one foot on the skid and grasped the leather loop above the door. He scrambled into the seat, shooting a triumphant glance downward at Mark.

Resisting the urge to smile at that rather obvious, if silent, “I told you so,” Mark closed the door and walked around the nose of the chopper. He climbed inside, automatically fastening his harness as soon as he was settled in the seat.

The boy watched and then began fastening his own, making quick work of the procedure. Since Mark occasionally had to help adults figure out how to work the device, his opinion of the kid’s intelligence edged upward a notch or two.

He reached behind the adjacent seat and pulled out a flight helmet. Very few of his passengers wanted to wear one, and given the fact that most of them were his employers, he didn’t insist.

“Put it on,” he ordered this time, handing the helmet to the boy. If he had expected resistance, he was disappointed.

“Cool,” the kid said with a touch of awe in his voice.

Mark hid his grin by putting the helicopter into the air. The wind had picked up quite a lot in the short time he’d been on the ground, but he’d be flying south, away from the storm. At least he would until he got to the Salvini ranch, which was, of course, no longer the Salvini ranch, he reminded himself.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever known the name of the last owner. If he had, he couldn’t remember it. And he didn’t think Stumpy had mentioned the new owner’s. “What’s your name?” he asked.

He had to raise his voice to be heard over the engine. The kid had been watching the ground whip beneath him, which was an awesome sight the first time you experienced it. He turned his head, the helmet sliding around despite the chin strap. He raised both hands to straighten it as his eyes met Mark’s.

“Andrew Sullivan.”

“Nice to meet you, Andy.”

“Drew,” the child corrected.

“Drew,” Mark repeated obediently. “Mark Peterson.”

“You live around here.”

“Next door.”

“Cool,” the kid said again.

Mark allowed the smile he had resisted before. He glanced over at the boy, receiving an answering one. Wide and unabashed, it lit up the narrow features and lightened the dark eyes.

After a second or two, the kid turned back to watch the scenery below. Mark found himself hoping their passage would stir up some wildlife. He thought the kid would like to see that. It, too, would probably be deemed cool.

He was a little surprised at how gratified he was to have won that appellation. It had been a while since anyone had approved of him with quite that much undisguised enthusiasm. And that was definitely cool, he thought, again fighting a grin.

* * *

“I WISH YOU’D called me earlier,” the sheriff said.

“If I’d known he was missing earlier, believe me I would have,” Jillian said, not even bothering to hide her sarcasm.

She hadn’t liked Ronnie Cameron when they had gone to school together. Nothing that had happened today had changed her opinion. All she wanted him to do was to organize some kind of search, and instead, he seemed determined to let her know what a bad mother she was. Right now she didn’t need anyone else telling her that. Her guilt over letting Drew out of her sight while he was still so angry was quite sufficient without Ronnie’s comments.

“When’s the last time you saw him?” the sheriff asked, flipping the pages in the small spiral-bound notebook he had taken out of the pocket of his suede jacket. He licked the point of his pencil in preparation and glanced up at her expectantly.

Jillian wondered, her irritation growing, how long it had been since she had seen anybody do that and what it was supposed to accomplish. What was any of this supposed to accomplish?

Apparently Ronnie intended to write down everything she had already told him before he did anything. Jillian gritted her teeth over the delay, working to keep her temper in check. Not that she had much choice.

When she’d discovered Drew was gone, she couldn’t think of anything else to do except appeal to the sheriff for help. She had given the dispatcher all the information. And then she had repeated it for the sheriff as soon as he’d shown up, almost thirty minutes after she’d called the emergency number.

And she had searched the ranch herself before she’d called. Once she had, she had realized there was just too much very empty territory surrounding it for her to investigate alone. Besides, she couldn’t be sure how long Drew had been gone.

“A little after ten,” she said, trying to hold on to her patience. “He was playing a computer game.”

“And you didn’t see him after that?” Ronnie asked, carefully writing something in his notebook.

“That’s right,” Jillian said, taking a deep, calming breath.

“And you think he might have gone out exploring?”

“I said it’s possible. We just moved in a couple of days ago. I thought maybe… I don’t know. Maybe he just decided to take a look around and got lost.”

“Uh-huh,” the sheriff said, still writing.

“But…”

She hesitated, hating to confess the strained relationship with her son this move had caused. Ronnie’s blue eyes had lifted from his notebook at the pause. They held hers, waiting.

“He might have run away,” she said softly.

“Run away from home?”

She resisted the urge to state the obvious, nodding instead.

“Got his dander up about something?” Ronnie asked.

“He wasn’t too thrilled about the move.”

The sheriff’s eyes drifted over the buildings clustered around the house before they came back to hers.

“Could be hiding,” he said. “Lots of hiding places around here for a boy.”

“I called him. I went inside every one of the outbuildings and called.”