High-Risk Affair

“My guess is practice. The holes are already worn in spots.”

“That would explain why the boy’s fingerprints are the only ones I can find on the window ledge. Am I wasting my time looking for evidence somebody else was involved in the kid’s disappearance, then?”

His gut was telling him the boy escaped completely on his own, for reasons Cale didn’t yet understand.

He really hoped that was the case, for the mother’s sake, and that searchers would find him camped out in the mountains somewhere oblivious to all the trouble he had left behind.

“It’s never a waste of time to check out all the angles. I could be completely off base here.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“You didn’t hear it from me,” he answered. “Until we know otherwise with absolute certainty, the FBI will continue working this case as a possible abduction.”

And he would do his best not to spend more time than absolutely necessary dwelling on the missing boy’s mother, with her soft skin and her scared eyes.

12:25 p.m.

This wasn’t the right way, either.

In the fading light of his flashlight, Cameron saw a huge pile of rubble blocking the shaft he had been certain would take him back to familiar ground.

He turned off the flashlight to conserve whatever juice he had left and slumped to the ground, feeling worse than the time his soccer team back in San Diego had lost the championship game in the league playoffs by one stinking last-minute goal.

He pressed one hand to his whirly stomach and used the other to wipe away the hot tears burning his eyes. He had been so sure this way would lead him back to the tunnels he had explored, where he could follow his own chalk marks back to the entrance and go home.

Home.

He wanted so much to be there, safe in his own room with the pictures of his dad on the wall and his soccer trophies on a shelf by his bed.

He sniffled, wiping his nose on his shirt. Was anybody looking for him yet? He could bet his uncle and cousins were out there. But his stomach hurt even worse thinking about it. Nobody would have any idea where to look for him, and that was the scariest thing of all.

He knew a good Navy SEAL left no trace behind him, and Cam had been careful to wipe away his tracks leading into the shaft and to cover the entrance with a dead sagebrush.

If only he hadn’t been so careful, maybe someone would find the mine entrance and figure out he was in here.

He never knew dark could be so dark. It was heavy and scary—he couldn’t even see his own hand when he held it right up to his eyes.

The two times he had sneaked into the tunnels before, he hadn’t stayed very long and he had always had plenty of light. It had been more exciting than scary, like exploring a whole new planet somewhere that nobody else knew about.

It was exciting then. Now the dark was so heavy and sometimes he couldn’t even tell whether his eyes were open or closed.

He had two more sets of batteries and a spare flashlight, but he didn’t know how long he was going to be in here. He didn’t want to use all his light and then be left with nothing.

He didn’t want to die in the dark somewhere, alone and scared. He wiped his nose again, wondering what he should do. He had turned so many corners in the mine that he didn’t have the first idea which way would lead him out.

Overwhelmed by his fear and at the thought of dying, he couldn’t keep in a sob. He cried for a minute, then tried to stop. He wasn’t making any progress sitting here like a big baby and bawling his eyes out. Every minute he wasted was another minute he had to stay in the dark.

His breath came in little baby gasps, but he managed to quit bawling after another minute or two. He would say a prayer, he decided. That’s what his mom told him to do whenever he was worried or scared or hurting.

Though he whispered the words, they sounded loud and echoing in the total quiet of the tunnel.

“Help me out of here, please. I promise if You do, I’ll never sneak out at night again, even when I’m a teenager, and I won’t yell at my sister when she touches my stuff. I’ll share my Play Station with her and I won’t talk back to my mom, even in my head.”

He paused, not sure what else to say. “You know,” he said after a minute, “I could really use my dad’s help in here. If he’s not busy, could You send him down to help me out? Amen.”

He felt a little better after he prayed, though he had to admit to some disappointment when the way out of the mine shaft didn’t suddenly glow in front of him in big flashing lights.

After a minute, when nothing supermiraculous happened, such as his dad’s angel suddenly showing up, he sighed and pulled the water bottle out of his pack, allowing himself just a tiny sip.

He was so thirsty he wanted to suck down the whole thing, but he knew that would be a bad idea. He might need some later.

He would just go back the way he had come this time and try a different route. Sooner or later, he would find his way out.

He stood up, then remembered something else and raised his eyes to the ceiling of the chamber. “One more thing,” he prayed out loud. “Can You please help my mom not to be so mad at me?”

1:30 p.m.

She was suffocating under the weight of all the solicitude being piled on her.

Just now it was her big sister adding another layer.

“Honey, you can’t stay here all day,” Molly entreated, her green eyes dark and worried. “Why don’t you come on back to our place where things are a little more quiet and rest for a while?”

“I can’t leave right now,” she said firmly.

“Our house is just down the road. You know Daniel will let us know the minute they find him.”

She deeply appreciated her sister’s stubborn optimism, but she still wasn’t willing to leave the house. Not until Cam was found.

“You go, Mol,” she replied. “I know you’re exhausted from that press conference.”

Megan couldn’t help thinking Molly was the one who looked as if she needed to rest. Her pretty soccer mom of a sister looked ravaged, totally wiped out by the stress of this ordeal.

Guilt pinched at her. Had she asked too much of Molly to put her in front of the cameras?

“I’m fine,” Molly answered. “I only hope whatever I said to the media will somehow help us find Cam.”

“It will.”

She hugged her sister, thinking how much she owed her. Molly had been there any time Megan needed her, a quiet, steady source of strength and support.

Megan had been twelve, Molly nineteen—a freshman in college—when the cancer that had ravaged their mother for more than a year ultimately took Carol Kincaid’s life. Megan could never forget that her sister had left school and returned home to Boston to care for her and Kevin, their brother who had been fourteen at the time.

When other girls her age were busy with boyfriends and algebra finals and trips to Cancun for spring break, Molly had been home with them doing laundry, fixing lunches, helping with homework. She never complained, but Megan knew it couldn’t have been easy on her.

A year later, they were all barely beginning to find their way through the grief over their mother’s death when the unthinkable happened—their police officer father was struck and killed by a drunk driver while he was standing on the side of the road giving a routine traffic ticket.

With patience and love, Molly had pulled her and Kevin through the devastating pain. Completely on her own, her twenty-year-old sister had kept their little family together for three years until Kevin left for college.