The fact that Clarence considered her break more important than the wishes of the bank’s vice president put a smile on Kerry’s face. Since she’d started the job she’d oftentimes worked through breaks and beyond office hours to make sure her work was completed punctually. It was nice to know someone appreciated her dedication, especially someone like Clarence who’d been with the bank for more than twenty years and pulled a considerable amount of weight with the president.
“I’d better get it anyway,” she told him. “After all, it’s past my lunch break. I’m supposed to be at my desk at this time of the day.”
Tucking her short black bob behind her ears, she hurried back to the L-shaped desk and plucked up the ringing phone.
“Kerry WindWalker speaking.”
“Kerry! Thank God you finally answered! I thought you might be out and I don’t know what to do!”
For a second, the frantic sound of Enola WindWalker’s voice didn’t quite register with Kerry. Her mother never called the bank and interrupted her work.
Kerry’s smooth brow was suddenly furrowed as she anxiously gripped the receiver. “Mom? Is that you? Is something wrong?”
“Oh—Kerry—I don’t know how to tell you this but—I can’t find Peggy.”
Kerry’s blood suddenly turned to ice water. Peggy was her three-year-old daughter, the very existence of her being.
Trying not to go into instant panic, she said, “Mom, take a deep breath and calm down. Surely, she’s around there somewhere. Have you looked under the beds? In all the closets? You know how your granddaughter likes to play hide-and-seek.”
Kerry could hear Enola struggling to stifle a sob and the sound shot shards of fear straight through her. At fifty-six, Enola was a strong, steadfast woman. In fact, Kerry couldn’t ever remember seeing her mother rattled, even years ago, when she’d been dealing with an alcoholic husband. For her to be so close to breaking now was enough to tell Kerry that something was terribly wrong.
“I’ve searched the house,” Enola told her. “I’ve searched the yard. I walked down the road as far as I thought her little legs might be able to go and called to her. If she’s hiding, she won’t answer. It’s been nearly an hour now since I missed her!”
Fear wadding in her throat, Kerry glanced up to see Clarence was still waiting in the doorway. From the anxious expression on his face, the older man had already sensed that something was wrong. “Peggy—my daughter—is missing,” she explained to him.
Grim-faced, the loan officer strode quickly over to Kerry’s desk. “Have the sheriff’s office or city police been notified?” he asked briskly.
Kerry directed her attention back to her mother on the other end of the telephone line. “Mom, have you called any sort of law officials?”
“Yes, I’ve called Bram Colton—he’s not here yet. But most of the neighbors are already out hunting for her. I think—”
Enola continued talking, but Kerry ignored the rest of her words as she shook her head at Clarence and managed to choke out, “She’s called the sheriff, but he hasn’t arrived at my mother’s house yet. Peggy’s been missing for nearly an hour.”
“Get over there. I’ll explain things here for you,” he said definitively.
As she watched Clarence hurrying out of the room, she said to her mother as calmly as possible, “I’m leaving the bank now, Mom. Just hang on and I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Outside in the parking lot, Kerry jumped in her car and headed home, to the west outskirts of Black Arrow. Shaded by two huge cottonwoods, the house was old, built in shotgun fashion with a wide porch running the entire width of the front. Throughout the years, the lapped wooden siding had been painted first one color and then another. Presently, it was a bleached-out yellow with equally faded brown trim. The shingles needed replacing, the front screen door was warped and one end of the porch floor sagged. But to Kerry the old place had always been home and so far it was the only home that little Peggy had known.
Even though the WindWalker property wasn’t far from the city limits, the road running in front of the house had never been paved. Gravel spewed from Kerry’s tires as she brought her compact car to a stop in the short driveway.
Watching from the porch, a petite woman dressed in jeans and a blue T-shirt with a single black braid lying against her back raced out to meet her daughter. Tears had dried on her cheeks, but were threatening to spill from her eyes once again as she grabbed onto Kerry’s shoulders and hugged her fiercely.
“Oh Mom, what happened? Where do you think she is?”
Releasing her hold on Kerry, Enola wiped her eyes and began in a broken, trembling voice, “I’m so sorry, honey, it’s all my fault. Peggy and I were outside—in the back at the vegetable garden. I heard the phone ringing and ran into the kitchen to get it. I told her to wait for me there—that I’d be right back. She seemed to be happy and preoccupied with pulling radishes and I was only gone a minute. Two at the most. But as soon as I stepped into the backyard again, she was nowhere to be seen.”
Kerry momentarily closed her brown eyes and sent up yet another silent prayer for her daughter to be found safe and sound. “Don’t blame yourself, Mom. We both know how adventurous Peggy is and you can’t keep your eyes on her every second of the day.”
“Yes, but I should have made her come with me—”
Determined to hold herself and her mother together, Kerry took Enola firmly by the arm and led her toward the house. “Right now it won’t do anyone any good for you to be worrying about ifs or should haves, Mom. Let’s just try to figure out where she might have gone. Was Fred with her?”
The spotted bird dog was only twelve weeks old, but already he acted as if he were grown and would run off and hunt whenever the urge struck him. Peggy was infatuated with the little guy and Kerry had the sinking feeling her daughter had followed the pup away from the house.
“He was there with us when I went to answer the phone. Do you think she’s wandered off with him?”
Kerry nodded, then drew in a shaky breath as another, more frightening thought entered her mind. “Unless, God forbid—you didn’t see a car or anyone walking past here when you went to answer the phone?”
Enola shook her head emphatically. “No. There was no one. I would have heard a car and if anyone had walked near the house, Fred would have been barking up a storm.”
That much was true, Kerry thought with relief, then turned toward the sound of an approaching vehicle just in time to see a white pickup truck with the sheriff’s logo emblazoned on the side door wheeling into the driveway then halting beside her car. Immediately she recognized Bram Colton behind the wheel. The young Comanche County sheriff had already built a reputation for getting the job done. Kerry only hoped it held true in this case.
“There’s the sheriff,” she said to her mother. “Let’s go tell him everything you just told me.”
A quarter of a mile away from the WindWalker residence, Jared Colton studied the blueprints he’d rolled out on the hood of his truck. He’d been a petroleum engineer for close to ten years now and he’d encountered
