Finding His Child. Tracy Montoya
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leaned back and let the water stream over her hair, the sound of the shower jets drowning out everything else.
A serial kidnapper. She could barely bring herself to consider the possibility, although of course it had been lurking in the back of her mind like a malignant shadow.
Rosie Donovan had vanished over six months ago. Which meant that the serial kidnapper was most likely a serial killer—Patricio just hadn’t wanted to voice that possibility. And if they had a serial killer on their hands…
Tara was already gone.
One more colossal failure to add to a growing list. One more search she’d have to call off when the trail went cold. One more set of parents whose hearts she’d have to break. One more young girl sacrificed to the whims of a madman.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit.” She reached her hands up to tangle her fingers in the thick, wet ropes of her hair. And then her hands moved around to her face, scrubbing at her eyes, blending the tears into the water running down her cheeks.
She’d never forget the day Aaron Donovan had started hating her.
“Aaron, it’s been two weeks, with no new sign of Rosie.”
She mouthed the words in the shower as every last detail of that horrible day came back to her, playing in her mind like a motion picture she couldn’t turn off.
She remembered how his mouth had twitched ever so slightly when she’d said his daughter’s name. She’d reached up to wipe the rain out of her eyes. She hadn’t had time to put on a hat or rain hood, and her hair had been soaked through with icy water just like his. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but you know the likelihood of her surviving up there isn’t…” Sabrina hadn’t been able to bring herself to even finish that sentence.
His jaw, dusted with more than a five o’clock shadow, clenched tightly, and he quickly turned his head away from her—but not before she saw his gray eyes go wild with an angry grief.
“Aaron, I—” She took a deep, shaky breath. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through. But I had two hikers go missing a few hours ago.” Sabrina stopped talking for a moment. Just to gain control, to soften her voice and the words she was about to speak. “They deserve to have us put every last resource we have into finding them.” They still have time.
He turned back to face her, and Sabrina knew she’d never forget the deep, deep emptiness, the hopelessness in his expression. Every time she’d see him from this moment, it would bring back her failure. Failure to mobilize quickly enough, to get on the ridge fast enough, to find his beautiful teenage daughter before she’d gone so deep into the mountains, she might never be found. Sabrina had been a search-and-rescue tracker for almost ten years now, and it was always painful to tell the families that her team had been too late, that their loved one had stepped off an incline or succumbed to the elements, had encountered a cottonmouth or had fallen into one of the swirling mountain rivers. But she’d never, ever had someone vanish as completely as Rosie Donovan had. Never had to call off a search before she could bring closure to a family.
She’d heard about them, the ones who seemed to vanish. Other trackers had told her their own painful stories. But she’d prayed that such a thing would never occur under her watch. And it hadn’t, until Rosie had decided to go hiking alone.
The fifteen-year-old had made it to an old logging road, that much she knew. But the road was still well-traveled by cars, and Rosie’s footprints, as well as those of the unknown man who’d been following her had been obscured by tire marks. Sabrina had personally searched that road until the command center had ordered her to stop. They hadn’t found a single trace of Rosie Donovan, or her probable assailant.
Vanished.
“My daughter is still alive,” Aaron ground out, and though his words were spoken softly, each one had the weight of stone. “I know this.”
Sabrina couldn’t bring herself to respond.
A slight movement drew her glance downward. Aaron’s hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists, but that didn’t stop her from seeing that he was trying to keep them from shaking. Heaven help her, Aaron Donovan, one of the Port Renegade Police Department’s best detectives, was about to fall apart, and she was the reason. Her failure. Her decision. “She’s been with me all her life,” he continued, oblivious to Sabrina’s thoughts. “I’d know it if she were gone.” It was a statement, not a question, thank God. She couldn’t have answered it if it had been.
“I wish—” Sabrina stopped. She couldn’t leave him room to argue with her, to persuade her to keep throwing valuable time and resources at a hopeless cause. She tried to soften her words by putting a hand on his arm. He didn’t even seem to feel her touch. She could practically feel him willing her to say that word, to ignore the missing hikers from Tacoma and keep the search going, to go up on the ridge one more time and bring back his daughter. “We can’t keep searching forever, Aaron,” she said.
The look he gave her then made her ache. “I can.”
With a quick, jerky movement, Sabrina twisted the shower knob, abruptly stopping the water and the memory along with it. God, it hurt to think about Rosie, about Aaron. It hurt to think about what had happened to Tara.
Yanking open the shower curtain with a jerk that caused the metal holders to scream against the shower bar in protest, Sabrina stepped out, wrapping a towel around her body. It had been less than twenty-four hours. They could still find Tara. No matter what had happened to Rosie, Tara still had a chance, and Sabrina would give everything she had to try to bring Tara home. Safe. Alive. And if she happened to find the person who’d stolen Tara away in the process, she’d tear him apart.
Sabrina quickly dressed for work in a long-sleeved blue T-shirt, thick socks and a pair of nylon twill hiking pants lined with moisture-wicking mesh—not the sexiest things she owned, but they would keep her warm on the ridge. Pulling her towel-dried hair back into a messy knot on top of her head, she padded back downstairs to the kitchen, where her brother was still waiting for her.
“So, about Donovan…” he began without preamble, leaning against the kitchen island. “I think you should be careful. Word on the street is even though he’s returned to work and is trying to be a functioning member of society, he’s still pretty messed up.”
The implication behind his words made her forget all about the probably lukewarm coffee she’d been about to grab off the table. “Word on the—? How would you know what the word on the street in Port Renegade is? You just got here.”
He flashed a grin at her. “Made some calls.” As usual, he didn’t volunteer any more information. All the better to look like Creepily All-Seeing Big Brother, ready to jump out and smother you with overprotectiveness at the least sign of something suspicious.
“At six-twenty in the morning you made some calls? Who is up at oh-dark-hundred waiting to spill all the secrets of our fair city?”
“If I told you that, I’d have to—”
She rolled her eyes. “Kill me?”
“Nah. Just make you my receptionist.”
Sabrina grunted, taking a sip of the now lukewarm brew. It’d be a cold day in you-know-where before she’d confine herself to an office job, even at her beloved brother’s security company. “He’s a good cop, Rico. He got an award from the city last year for having an amazing homicide solve rate—I think the paper said somewhere over ninety percent.”
“Makes sense. My contact said the chief of police was willing to do backflips to keep him on board.” Patricio leaned back against the table, bracing himself with his hands. “All Donovan’s doing at work right now is reporting in once a week to shuffle some papers around so the brass can feel like they’re keeping an eye on him. Spends most of his time in the park.”
Clutching the mug with both hands, Sabrina looked down, tracing the patterns on her hardwood floor with her eyes. “Searching