A Cop In Her Stocking

“I think you should sit down.”

Sit down? Like hell. “What happened?” Panic shrieked inside her, but her voice became quieter the louder her fear.

He paused, searching for words or still waiting for her to take a seat, she didn’t know.

Clearly something had happened. Something she hadn’t seen coming. Something she’d missed. “Tell me, Ty. Please.”

He gave a slow nod. “I’m so sorry, Megan.”

Her lungs contracted. She couldn’t breathe. “My mother?”

“It’s Connor. He was abducted from the store.”

She shook her head. It didn’t make sense. “But he was with you.”

He flinched ever so slightly, as if the statement caused him pain. “The entire department is looking for him. Store security, too. We’ll find him, Megan. We’re going to find him.”

“No. No.” She couldn’t stop shaking her head. She hadn’t seen this coming, all right. She hadn’t seen it, because it was impossible. “He was with you. This can’t happen.”

“I’m so sorry.”

She swayed. Her knees felt like they were going to buckle, but she willed herself to stand on her own. This couldn’t be happening. There had to be some kind of explanation. Some kind of sick joke. She waited for him to tell her that he was kidding, to take it all back, to…something, but she knew deep inside that something wasn’t going to come.

Her baby was gone.

Chapter Three

Ty didn’t know how much Megan was absorbing. She stared at him, green eyes wide and a little glassy. And although she nodded at the appropriate times, there was a blankness to her expression that felt hard and brittle at the same time, like the face of a porcelain doll.

“Doug.”

“Officers are trying to reach him.”

“Could he…could he have taken Connor?”

“We’re looking into it. Believe me.” Ty wanted to go question the bastard himself, but the lieutenant wouldn’t allow it. Probably a good idea. If Doug did sneak Connor out of the store under Ty’s nose, Ty wasn’t sure he could leave the interview without beating the tar out of him.

Still, compared to the alternative, Doug being the kidnapper would be a huge relief. “You can help us determine if Doug took him.”

“How?”

He motioned to Baker. Even though the detective was supposed to be in charge of this notification and interview, he’d hung back and let Ty take the reins. Todd Baker was a good guy.

Baker set up his laptop on the coffee table and recalled the pictures they had downloaded from the security footage. The first image of the kidnapper came on the screen, a shot of the parka-clad man approaching Connor. Ty was also visible just a few feet away.

Megan gasped.

“You recognize him?”

She shook her head. “No. Not really. I mean, it could be Doug, but…” Her eyebrows pulled low over worried eyes. Her chin trembled. “I can’t really tell.”

“We have a few different angles.” Ty glanced at Baker.

He rolled the snips of video and magnified the kidnapper. “Better?”

Megan shook her head. Tears wound down her cheeks, but she didn’t make a sound.

Baker stopped the video on an image. A sliver of the kidnapper’s cheek peeked from beneath the hood. “That’s as good a shot of his face as we could come up with.”

It was strange, Ty had to admit. In each bit of video, the kidnapper had averted his face at just the right angle and pulled up his hood in just the right amount to avoid security cameras.

Megan shook her head. “I don’t know. It could be Doug. It also could be almost anyone.”

Ty stared at the image, comparing it to his memories of Doug Burke’s face. She was right. It could be almost anyone.

“You lost him…how did you lose him? You’re right there.” Her voice was only a whisper, yet it cut into him like a whip crack.

He met her eyes. They glistened in the muted light of the window. A few tears spiked her lashes and escaped down her cheeks.

He could understand her frustration, understand her fear. Scratch that. He couldn’t truly understand. But he could imagine it. And if he were in her place right now, he imagined he would be furious. One thing was certain. He more than deserved her fury. “I’m so sorry, Meg.”

She didn’t answer. She looked back at the image on the computer.

“The department is working on finding him,” Baker said in a steady voice. “We are searching every inch of the mall. We’ve contacted the FBI, in case we need their help. We are prepared to issue an Amber Alert. Everyone is on this.”

Ty had already told her all this, but he was grateful for Baker’s calm, reliable recitation. Maybe Leo was right. Maybe Baker should have broken the news to Megan instead of him. He had a steady influence Ty couldn’t come close to matching. But the thought of not being there when Megan needed him wasn’t acceptable. Not again.

“How did it happen? What were you thinking? What were you doing that you weren’t watching him?” She hadn’t looked up, but it was clear she was talking to him.

He opened his mouth, then shut it tight. What could he say? That he was looking at lingerie? That he was fantasizing about how she’d look in it? Imagining taking it off her? “I was…shopping. I only took my eye off him for a moment.” He decided not to mention the Giftinator. Megan would only think he’d been flirting instead of paying attention to her son. It hadn’t been like that, not at all. But he wouldn’t be able to convince her.

Not that it mattered. He’d been absorbed in his own world, his own concerns. He hadn’t been focused on her son. He deserved all the blame she could heap on him.

“A moment…” She buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders jerked, a silent sob shuddering through her body.

He wanted to touch her, soothe her, promise it would be okay. But he doubted she would accept his touch, and right now even he had trouble believing that promise.

“I want to go to the mall. I have to go to the mall.” She pushed herself up from her chair. “I need to find him.”

He stood and reached out. But instead of grasping her arm, he let his hand hover in the air.

Baker stood, as well. “We have officers all over the store. People from our department. From the sheriff’s department. Store security. They are professionals. Let them handle this.”

She shook her head. For a moment, Ty thought she might bolt for the door, then she focused on him. Her eyes shifted back and forth as if she didn’t know where to look.

If Ty knew anything about Megan, even after all these years, it was that she was not good at accepting anything from anyone. Not help, not reassurance, not promises—regardless of whether those promises were likely to be kept. But she was comfortable doing. “There’s nothing you can do there that they can’t. But here, there’s a lot only you can do here.”

“Only me…like what?”

“First, you need to stay by the phone.”

“You think there might be a phone call? Like a ransom call?”

“Maybe. Or someone might find Connor or see him and give you a call. You need to be here to answer.”

She stared past him, focusing on the twinkle lights and colorful jumble of decorations covering her Christmas tree, her eyes unseeing, her expression blank.

“There’s more, more you can do.”

She returned her gaze to his.

“We need recent pictures of Connor to release to the media and use in the search. Can you compile some?”

“Of course.” Taking a deep breath, she turned away from him and half ran toward the bedroom. A few moments later, she came back with a wad of photos cradled in her hands. “I have a lot of them. I printed them out to make a collage for my mom as a Christmas present.”

She shuffled through the stack of pictures as if they were playing cards. “School pictures, some from his birthday, Halloween. No. What am I thinking? He’s in a costume on Halloween. That’s not going to help.” Except for a few stray tears, she hadn’t cried since he’d broken the news, but now tears swamped her eyes and gushed down her cheeks.

“I’m so sorry, Meg,” he said again. He could never say it enough. He took a chance and grabbed hold of her hand.

Her throat moved as if she was swallowing emotion, preventing it from further breaking free. Finally she looked him in the eye. “I know you didn’t mean to lose him. I’ve had him wander off when I was shopping with him, too.”

The fact that she would think about reassuring him in the midst of all she was facing made him feel worse than he already did. He rubbed his hand up her arm, as if simple friction would warm the chill that he knew was running through her. “We’ll find him. We’ll get him back to you.”

“I should have told him to stay next to you in the store, to hold your hand. I should have known something like this could happen. I meant to remind him to stay close to you before he left, but it slipped my mind. God, I’m so stupid.”

He couldn’t stand this. “No. I’m stupid. I wasn’t paying attention. I lost Connor.”

She shook her head, but the tears didn’t stop flowing. She pushed the photos into his hands. “Here. I’ll see if I can find any better ones.”

He set the pictures on the table and took both her hands in his. He looked down into her wet green eyes, eyes that were so desperate. “I will find Connor. I will make all of this okay. I promise.”

Maybe an impossible vow. But God help him, he had never meant anything more.

MEGAN WAS EXHAUSTED, frustrated and more than a little panicky by the time Ty’s lieutenant arrived at the apartment to fill her in on the search and ask her to repeat everything she’d already discussed with Ty. At Ty’s direction, she’d written a detailed description of her son and everything he’d been wearing down to the Hot Wheels sneakers on his feet. She’d also compiled a list of names, addresses and phone numbers of family, friends, babysitters, anyone she could think of who had come in contact with Connor, both in Lake Hubbard and Chicago.

Ty had made copies of all the photos she’d dug up, ready to send them to every law enforcement agency in the vicinity and nonprofit organization that helped find missing children.

She knew Ty would be helping her find Connor even if he didn’t feel guilty about his role in losing him. He was a police officer, after all. This kind of thing was his job. And more than that, it was the kind of person Ty was, the kind he’d been raised to be.

But although she felt plenty angry that he’d lost her son, she couldn’t see what good anger and blame would do. Not now. There wasn’t time. All she could focus on right now was getting her son back, and she badly needed to trust that Ty and the Lake Hubbard police department could help her do that.

“Ms. Garvey?” Ty’s lieutenant perched on the edge of a chair and leveled her with an officious look. “With your permission, we would like to put a trap and trace on your phone.”

Lieutenant Leo Wheeling had to be the squarest man she’d ever met. His attitude, his blocky chest and short legs, his cropped blond hair and carefully trimmed mustache, everything about the man was right angles. And although she’d learned from experience not to rely on anyone but herself, the sheer regular nature of the guy made her want to trust he’d come through. “You think the kidnapper will call?”

“We hope he will.”

“To ask for ransom?”

“Yes.”

She motioned to the shabby little apartment, the cheap Christmas tree she’d bought in a discount lot, already dropping needles. The decorations made of paper and pipe cleaners and good old-fashioned popcorn on strings she’d used to round out the few good decorations she had left from the house in Chicago. Not to mention the sparse secondhand furniture underneath it all, a veritable museum of particle board and pilled cushions. “I obviously have no money. What could he want that I could give him?”

“We don’t know, Ms. Garvey. We are trying to cover all the bases.”

She nodded. She should be glad of that, not giving the man a hard time.

A knock sounded at the door. Ty opened it. A familiar-looking man dressed in a suit and dark overcoat pushed into the room and focused on her. “Megan. I came when I heard.” He thrust out his hand and grasped hers, but instead of giving it a shake, he simply held it and stared into her eyes.

He looked so familiar. The sharp nose. The high forehead. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“Evan Blankenship. We went to high school together.”

Memories shuffled into place in her mind. “Of course. You were a few years older, right?”

“You had to remind me.” He chuckled and glanced at the other newcomers over his shoulder, then back to her.

“And I heard you married Dee Dee Harris.” Megan almost lapsed into the envious nickname Dee Dee had been given by the other girls in high school, Harris the Heiress, but stopped herself just in time.

“Three years now.” Evan held up his ring as if offering proof.

“Lucky man.” It seemed ridiculous to be chatting about normal life as if everything was…normal. But somehow just the ordinariness of the exchange made Megan feel a little more grounded.

“Don’t I know it. I was also elected mayor of Lake Hubbard in a special election this fall. That’s why I stopped by, to offer my support as an elected official and an old friend.”

“Uh, thank you.”

“And my help. Seriously, Megan, if there’s anything Dee Dee and I can do to get your little boy back—connections, money, anything at all—you let me know.”

She fished for a way to respond, finally settling on another “Thank you.”

“I understand the FBI is on its way?”

Again Megan nodded. She hadn’t been sure how to take this outpouring of generosity from a man she hadn’t talked to since high school. Even then, he’d been Doug’s age, not hers. She’d hardly known him. But after that last comment, she had to wonder if he was here to see the FBI. Maybe Mayor Evan Blankenship had watched too many crime shows on TV and simply wanted to see the bureau in action.

She gave him what she could muster for a smile and excused herself. She didn’t like being so cynical, thinking poorly of others’ motives, not trusting anyone at their word, but she couldn’t help it. The last years had bled her dry of trust and optimism, and the past couple of hours didn’t seem likely to change that.

Her throat thickened. Her chest physically hurt with each beat of her heart, and she knew the only thing that would make it stop was clutching Connor close. Standing, she excused herself and walked out of the living room and down the short hall.

She had to get away. Just for a moment. She had to catch her breath. She wanted to be somewhere she could feel closer to her son.

She slipped into Connor’s room and pulled in a deep breath. The place smelled of him, of crayons and Lincoln Logs and the orange-flavored candy he’d accidently gotten stuck in a corner of the carpet. She looked around at his toys, at his unmade bed, at his jammies lying in a wadded-up clump on the floor. For a moment, the walls blurred, the Thomas the Tank Engine clock became merely a smudge of bright reds and blues against the white wall.

She tilted her chin back and did her best to blink away tears. They would find him, wouldn’t they? She had to trust they’d find him. She didn’t know how she’d cope otherwise.

“Meg?”

Her body swayed toward the sound of Ty’s voice and his old nickname for her coming from right behind her. If she turned around, if she reached for him—allowed herself to curl up in his arms, to soak in his comfort, to accept his strength—she knew he’d oblige. He would again promise to find Connor. He’d reassure her that everything would be okay. She wanted those things so badly. She wanted to trust he could provide them.

But she knew things weren’t as simple as that. They never were. To get her son back, she needed to be strong. She couldn’t rely on anyone else to make things okay. She’d known that most of her life. She couldn’t let herself forget it now.

She wiped her cheeks with her fingertips. Pulling in a shuddering breath, she turned around and searched his face, his clear blue eyes, the creases around his mouth, the shadow of stubble beginning to show on his chin. But as much as she wanted to see relief in his eyes and the joy of good news curving his lips, they weren’t there.

She braced herself. “Have you gotten hold of Doug?”

“Still no answer.”

“You tried the cell number?” He nodded.

She dropped her focus to the carpet. Large, colorful Duplo Legos scattered the worn Berber. She had the urge to drop to her knees and fit them together, to fit something together, anything. The minute hand on the train clock clicked forward.

How long she stared at those blocks, she wasn’t sure, but she heard another tick. Then another. She could feel Ty watching her, but she couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes.

Connor. Out there somewhere. With a stranger.

She felt sick. She felt weak.

She felt angry as hell.

She folded her arms tight across her chest and hung on. “A few years ago, Doug got in some trouble with the law.”

Ty’s brows arched upward, as if he was surprised, but something in his eyes told her the expression was more acting than truth. Of course she’d be naive to think that the news of Doug’s embezzlement and the hell she’d gone through hadn’t reached their hometown. Lake Hubbard had grown a lot over the years, but it still had the feel of a small town. And in small towns, gossip traveled fast.

Gossip or not, she was grateful he didn’t ask questions. She didn’t want to get into the story. Especially with Ty. “He got out of it with a slap on the wrist and swears he’s a model citizen now, but he might not be eager to answer a phone call from police.”

“I see. Would you be willing to give him a call?”

She nodded. She prayed he had taken Connor. At least then she’d know her little boy was safe. She couldn’t rely on Doug for much, but for all his faults, he was truly fond of his son.

“It’s worth a shot. I’ll let Leo know. We can put your phone on speaker.”

“No. I want to make the call alone.”

His lips flattened into a line.

“I’ll use my cell. Please, Ty. This is all…too much.” She gestured to the officers down the hall in the living room. It appeared as though the mayor had left, but the lieutenant, Detective Baker and another detective she didn’t know still milled around the Christmas tree.

She didn’t want any of them listening in on her call to Doug. Whether Doug had Connor or not, he would blame everything on Ty, chalk up everything to their past relationship, as distant a memory as it was. Doug had always felt threatened by Ty, even though she and Ty had broken up long before. Even though she’d married Doug in the end. Sometimes his comments were very hurtful, and she didn’t want them on the speakerphone for all to hear.

Ty finally nodded. “Don’t let him upset you. Tell him it was all my fault. After all, it was.”

She’d seen the video, and she wasn’t so sure of that. Of course he would say the same thing if it wasn’t. “If you’ll excuse me?”

Ty spun around and headed back down the hall. Her cell phone started ringing before she could get the door closed. She fished it out of her pocket with shaking fingers and flipped it open. “Doug?”

“Get the cops out of your apartment.”

Megan shuddered at the low, brutal voice. Not Doug. The kidnapper. It had to be. Somehow he’d gotten the number of her cell phone. And he was watching her apartment.

“Tell them someone you trust has your son.”

She wasn’t sure she could push a single sound from her throat, but somehow she managed. “Who?” There weren’t many people she trusted. And the police had probably checked with everyone she’d put on the list by now.

“A friend. The boy’s father. I don’t care who. Just convince the police they no longer have to look for your son.”

She could hardly breathe.

“Do you want to see your son again?”

“Yes. Okay. I’ll get rid of the police.”

“Then I want you to go to work tonight.”

She couldn’t have heard him right. “Work?”

“You do work for Brilliance Cleaning?”

“Yes.”

“You are scheduled to clean Keating Security tonight?”

He knew everything about her. “Who is this?”

“That’s not your problem. Your problem is that I have your son, and if you don’t do everything I say, you won’t see him again. At least not alive. Understand?”

A scream built in her throat. She pushed it back. “Yes. I understand.”

“While you are cleaning tonight, you will copy their client files off the secure server, including all the specifications of each client’s security system. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” She understood perfectly. He was asking her to steal sensitive files. Files that could be used to get into any of the security company’s clients’ businesses and homes undetected. Files that would work like a magic key, allowing him to walk in any of those places he wanted, take anything he wanted and never get caught.

But although she felt a pang of guilt at the idea of stealing the information for him, she wouldn’t let it stop her. In the end, it wasn’t much of a choice. Connor was the only thing she cared about. She would do anything to get him back. “Then what?”

“I’ll tell you after you have the files. Do what I ask, Ms. Garvey. I mean it. Or Santa won’t be coming to your house this Christmas.”

Chapter Four

“So you’ll do it? You’ll call the lieutenant and tell him you took Connor from the mall?” Megan held her breath. Doug had reacted to the news just the way she’d thought he would. A lot of blustering about Ty’s role, a lot of blaming. But in the end, he’d been just as worried about the ransom call as she was. She just needed to know that he’d hold up his end—she needed to hear him swear it—before she went out to talk to Lieutenant Wheeling.

“And then what happens? I take the blame for this? I get arrested?”

“I’ll back you up. I’ll tell them it was a misunderstanding, that we’ve worked everything out.” She wasn’t sure if that would be enough to protect him, but she hoped it would at least convince him to go along.

“And I’m supposed to stick my neck out and trust you to explain things?”

“I will explain things.”

“Right. If I had a more devious mind, I might think you and Davis set this up. That he faked the kidnapping so you could trap me with some kind of kidnapping charge and take full custody.”

She closed her eyes. She’d only needed Doug to come through for her twice in all their time together, after Connor was born and now. He’d failed her the first time. She had to make sure he came through for her now. “I will make sure you don’t get in trouble for this, Doug. I promise. But I need you to do this. Connor needs you to do this. Please.”

“I suppose.”

She recognized the smug tone in his voice. She could picture him right now in her mind’s eye, all inflated and self-important. The strange thing was, she didn’t care. She’d tell him anything he wanted to hear, just as long as he came through on his end. The only person she cared about was her son. “Thank you. You’ll call him now?”

“Yes.”

“You have his phone number?”

“He’s called me a dozen times in the past hour, I swear. All I have to do is call him back.”

“Thank you.”

“I want you to remember this, Megan.”

“Don’t you worry. I will.” She ended the call. She was still shaking, but at least she felt like she had a plan, a plan that was underway.

She’d wait for Doug to make his call, then give the lieutenant all the reassurances he needed from her end. He had no reason not to believe her. It would all go smoothly. It had to.

“Was that Doug?”

Ty’s voice jolted along her nerves like an electric shock. She’d been so focused on convincing Doug to call Lieutenant Wheeling and then doing her own explaining that she’d almost forgotten she also had to lie to Ty. “Yes. He promised to call your lieutenant back right away.”