Page 136 of The Bitterroot Inn (Jamison Valley 5)
“My son.” I didn’t look at him while I talked but just kept searching. “Have you seen a little boy? Brown hair. He’s wearing a neon-yellow shirt and jeans.”
“No, but I’ll help you look.”
In the background, I heard him describe Coby to other people who then started their own search.
Please god. Let me find him. Where is he?
“Coby!” Hunter and I both called, over and over with no response.
“I’ll check the maze,” Hunter said. “You go check by the barn.”
I nodded and started running toward the barn, searching frantically for my boy. The blood rushed in my ears as I searched in a complete panic. Terror coursed through my veins. Nothing, not even the night Everett had kidnapped me, could compare to the fear of losing Coby. My legs and arms tingled as I searched the barn. My system was so hyped on adrenaline I stumbled a few times as I ran. “Coby!” I shouted his name, over and over, but he didn’t show.
He wasn’t hiding again, was he? He wouldn’t be trying to scare me now, not after Hunter had scolded him, would he?
No. No way. I knew my son, and he knew me. If he could hear the panic in my voice, he would not have stayed hidden.
I came barreling out of the barn and nearly crashed into a couple of women coming in with their kids. “Have you seen a little boy in a neon-yellow shirt?”
When they both shook their heads, I pushed past them and sprinted back to the main area. Other people were calling Coby’s name as they looked around hay bales and building corners, but he was nowhere.
Ready to scream at the top of my lungs, I opened my mouth but stopped when a light flashed on the far side of the gravel parking lot. It was fast, just a neon-green flicker, but it caught my eye. I knew that light. It was the flicker of Coby’s light-up shoes, the ones my parents had bought him for his birthday.
“Coby!” I screamed and started running. “Hunter. He’s in the parking lot!” I shouted over my shoulder as I kept running, my tennis shoes kicking up small rocks as I moved.
Hunter caught up to me fast, his long strides sprinting past me on the gravel. “Coby!” he yelled.
Why wasn’t Coby answering? He should be shouting “Mommy” or “Hunter” and be running back to us as fast as he could. Where was he?
I rounded the back of a large truck just as my son’s yellow shirt disappeared into the backseat of a black sedan.
Just as Eleanor Carlson slammed the door and ran around to the driver’s seat.
Just as she drove off with my son as Hunter sprinted through a cloud of dust, trying to catch them with no success.
Hunter
By the time we ran to Maisy’s car and sped out of Howell Farm, Nell was long gone. We’d followed her trail of dust on the gravel, but when she hit the paved county roads, her trail disappeared. Anywhere else, and we would have been able to track her down, but the roads that led to Howell Farm formed a more complicated labyrinth than the corn maze.
I made a guess, choosing the road that led back to town, but Nell must have chosen a different route because her black sedan was nowhere in sight.
Coby was gone.
All I saw was open road as I flew back toward town. Open road, and Maisy shaking in the passenger seat. The color had vanished from her skin and her eyes were vacant. When I clutched her hand, it was ice cold.
“We’ll find him.” I squeezed her hand before letting it go and digging out my phone. My foot pressed harder on the accelerator as I flew toward town, calling 9-1-1 as I drove.
By the time we’d made it to the sheriff’s station in Prescott, the place was swarming. The minute a call had come into dispatch that a child had been taken, every deputy had abandoned their Sunday-afternoon plans and raced for the station.
Jess had been waiting for us. He’d shuffled us into a conference room and started asking questions. Maisy and I had given him a recap, describing Nell’s and Coby’s clothes and Nell’s car, then he’d left us to kick off the AMBER Alert and give his team orders.
Leaving Maisy and I alone, forced to watch the activity in the bull pen through a long window.
Deputies all dressed in plain clothes were buzzing around the open room, most of them on the phone. They’d been making calls to other county justice departments, enlisting support to set up roadblocks. They’d also been notifying airports and Amtrak of the situation and passing on Nell’s and Coby’s descriptions.
All the while, Maisy and I sat helpless.
Sitting in black swivel chairs, we sat fucking helpless.
