Home To Stay

His mother was calling him. Her voice was faint but distinct.

Elation surged through him. Dylan must’ve found his way back to the campsite.

“I’m coming, Mom!” he shouted and thrashed through the forest, running as fast as he could.

The thorns and branches clawing at his arms and legs didn’t slow him. He ran full speed in the direction of his mother’s voice. His muscles screamed and each breath was agony, but the thought of Dylan, safe and sound in his mother’s arms, propelled him forward.

What seemed like an eternity later, he hurtled through the brushwood bordering their campsite.

His energy gone, he bent over. Panting, trying to control his nausea, his eyes landed on his mother sitting at a picnic table. He swept his gaze around, searching for Dylan.

He saw his father and Meg talking to a couple of park rangers, but he didn’t see his son. Limping over to his mother, his voice gravelly, he asked, “Where’s Dylan?” But he knew the answer. Her tear-streaked face, swollen eyes and red nose said it all.

Dylan hadn’t returned.

His mother rose, took a couple of halting steps toward him and collapsed in his arms. He held her while she wept.

When had his mother become so frail? Bird bones, he thought, as she shuddered in his embrace. Over the top of her head, Sawyer met his father’s eyes. The torment in them was a reflection of what he felt himself.

One of the park rangers walked over. “Mr. Evans, we need to speak with you.”

* * *

SHANNON CLEMENS’S DREAM had finally come true. She was now officially a member of the San Diego Police Department’s K-9 Unit. Not on probation anymore, but a full-fledged K-9 officer, with her own specialization. It hadn’t come easy. She’d worked diligently for it.

The K-9 Unit was one of the toughest in the department to get into.

And she’d done it! For the last few months, she’d been conferring with the unit’s captain, Logan O’Connor, to identify the appropriate specialization for her and her police-service dog, Darwin. Well, now she was formally assigned to do search and rescue. She’d thought she might want to do explosives detection, but the incident at the San Diego International Airport half a year ago had helped her decide against it. Search and rescue presented its own challenges for her, but maybe it was destined that was where she’d end up.

She shifted her head on the pillow and watched the beautiful brown-and-black German shepherd lying on his own bed in a corner of her room. Darwin was only two years old, and was already showing exemplary skills and high detection accuracy. He was born in the Czech Republic, bred to be a service dog and had joined the SDPD K-9 Unit about the same time Shannon had. He was trained in tracking, building and area searches, article search, suspect apprehension and, like all dogs in the unit, handler protection and obedience. She was proud of Darwin, not just because she loved him, but because she’d been instrumental in his training.

Darwin moaned in his sleep and curled into a tighter ball. Shannon grinned at the way he’d tucked his snout under his tail.

She couldn’t believe that Darwin was assigned to her and she had her dream job. Here they were...partners!

When her cell phone rang, Darwin immediately looked up. Shannon glanced at her bedside clock as she reached for the phone on her nightstand. It was just after six.

“Clemens,” she said.

“Officer Clemens, this is Dispatch. I’m sorry to call you on your day off, but we have an incident at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. Usually we’d send Officer Palmer and Scout for this, but he’s not available at present.”

Shannon swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up. Since Darwin had strolled over, she rubbed him behind the ears. She knew that Cal Palmer, the only other SDPD K-9–Unit officer who specialized in search and rescue, was enjoying a well-deserved vacation. He and his wife, Jessica, were due to have a baby soon, and they’d decided to take their two girls on a Disney cruise before the arrival of their new addition. They were on a ship, and there was no way to summon Cal back, even if the SDPD had wanted to.

“No problem,” Shannon said. “What’s the situation?”

“We have a missing child. Four years old. He reportedly wandered away from his family’s campsite. We don’t know how long he’s been gone, but the State Park Rangers don’t want to take any chances. They’ve asked for our assistance in finding the boy. They need all the help they can get to cover the twenty-six thousand acres of forest, should it come to that.”

Shannon was familiar with the park, roughly forty miles east of San Diego in the Laguna Mountains. She’d frequented it with her family and her childhood friend, Kenny, when she was younger, and now she liked to go hiking there. In fact, she’d run training exercises in the park with Darwin.

But a missing child...that was not what she would’ve wanted for her first solo search assignment.

She tried to ignore the cold dread that slithered along her spine and wrote down the particulars.

The missing boy was four-year-old Dylan Evans. His father, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. Shannon’s heart went out to the man. She was certain the last thing he would’ve expected when he went camping with his family was that he’d wake up in the early hours of the morning to discover that his son had somehow gotten out of their tent and disappeared. Dylan was potentially alone in a wilderness that was home to mountain lions and other creatures that posed a threat to a young boy’s survival.

Oh, she was well aware of the hazards a child could face in the park on his own. Time was very much of the essence.

“I’m on it,” she said and glanced at her clock again. “I should be there in under an hour.”

She didn’t bother to shower. While Darwin ate his breakfast, she had a toasted bagel, then dressed quickly. To get her chin-length blond hair in some semblance of order, she ran a wet brush through it. She retrieved her equipment duffel from the bottom of her closet and rushed down the stairs.

Ten minutes after she’d received the call from Dispatch, she and Darwin were in her SDPD-issue Ford Explorer heading to Cuyamaca Park. The adrenaline was pumping, a good thing, since it was blocking out the dread.

She could do this. She would do this.

A child’s life depended on it.

As she merged onto I-5 San Diego Freeway South, a moment of guilt had her wondering if she should’ve told her captain about Charlie. Would that have made a difference? Would it have kept Logan from assigning her to search and rescue? It was too late for second-guessing. She’d simply have to do the best she could.

When her phone rang, she answered it.

“Shannon, it’s Logan.”

Speak of the devil. “I’m on my way,” she assured her captain.

“Good. I knew you would be. I wanted to tell you that you’re up for this. You’re skilled and so is Darwin. Two of the best rookies I’ve worked with.”

She could hear the sincerity in his voice. The pep talk bolstered her confidence. “Thanks, Jagger,” she said, calling Logan by his alias. “I appreciate your belief in me.”

“It’s earned. Give me an update when you have something.”

“Roger that.”

She focused on her driving and soon she was passing through the entrance to the park. She checked in at the ranger station and was escorted to the Evanses’ campground.

Her stomach tensed as the site came into view.

A tall, rangy man, dressed in plaid shorts, a white T-shirt and wearing black-and-white high-top running shoes, sat at a picnic table. He had his elbows on his knees and his head cradled in his hands. She couldn’t see his face, but his dark brown hair was standing on end. His arms and legs were scraped and bleeding in places, and his T-shirt had a long tear on one side.

A woman, roughly the same age and with nearly the same color hair, sat huddled against him, an arm around his shoulders. Shannon wondered, as she climbed out of her SUV and released Darwin, why his wife—assuming that was who the woman was—seemed to be holding up much better than the man.

Shannon turned her attention to the elderly couple on the other side of the table. The man was holding the woman, who was crying silently. Obviously the grandparents. Shannon waved to a ranger when he noticed her arrival. He walked briskly toward her and quickly briefed her on the situation. They’d been searching for over an hour, and had found no trace of the boy.

Shannon knew—and not just because of her police training—that wasn’t good news.

The ranger pointed out the boy’s father and signaled for her to follow him.

“Mr. Evans?” Shannon said softly when they’d reached the picnic table. The woman looked up but the man didn’t. “Mr. Evans,” she repeated, more loudly this time.