Cal debated his response in terms of being kind to her. And then spoke. “He left class, with permission, to use the restroom. That’s all you know. The kidnapper has it in for your father. He obviously planned this whole thing. He didn’t just happen to be in the right place at the exact time that Sammie misbehaved. And while Sammie doesn’t have a father, you’ve been discussing things with me, getting male perspective and allowing Sammie some freedoms based on our conversations.”
Her silence gave him pause. He sure as hell hoped he hadn’t made things more difficult for her.
“You think this…this monster was watching Sammie? That he’d have taken him, anyway, the first chance he saw?” Her leg bounced up and down. Continuously. Getting faster.
“Probably.”
“I keep a close eye on him. As you know, that’s part of what he complains about.”
“You obviously do a great job if this guy thought his best chance of getting to your son was while Sammie was in a secure school situation being watched over by trained professionals.”
The bouncing stopped. She rocked forward. And back. And then forward again.
“Sammie says I don’t let him grow up and be a man, but this is why…” Her voice broke with the threat of more tears. “I’m so sorry,” she said on a sigh. “I’m losing it here.”
“You have absolutely nothing to be sorry about and you are not losing it. As a matter of fact you’ve held up astonishingly well, considering. This is the first time I’ve seen you really cry.”
“It’s not something I do in front of my father.” She sounded stronger again.
“In front of your father? You’re kidding.” He said the words, and yet, thinking of the man inside the door behind them, what she’d told him made sense.
“From the time I was little I learned to hold back my tears around him,” she said softly. “Crying pisses him off. He says it’s a tactic females use to try to control men. It’s a sign of weakness. Of victimization rather than accountability.”
The guy was a first-class bastard.
But he was there. Insisting that mountains would move and his grandson would be brought home to them. From what Cal had seen, George Lowen was willing to get out there and move the mountains himself if need be.
“I must respectfully disagree. Crying is normal. Healthy. And part of being human.”
“When’s the last time you cried?”
He didn’t answer, knowing that his silence was an answer in itself.
“You just said it’s part of being human.”
He wasn’t surprised that she’d called him on the inconsistency.
“Which is why I’ve always envied people who could cry,” Cal said, the night, the circumstance, putting him in strange territory, making him a stranger to himself.
This night, these circumstances—it wasn’t real life.
It was a snippet of time outside of ordinary living. An anomaly that would seem surreal once Morgan’s son was home safe and sound.
“So why don’t you cry?”
“I’m not sure. It’s not like I sit around and try,” he said, giving her a sideways glance, glad he seemed to be distracting her. She was listening so he continued. “Might have something to do with the fact that I never knew my mother. She died when I was six months old.”
“That’s horrible! What happened?”
“She taught a program for accelerated students and was on an oceanography field trip. She went into the water at night with a couple of other teachers, on an ocean life study, and she and another teacher got tangled in the reef and drowned.”
“I’m so sorry! That’s awful.”
For his father it had been. Cal didn’t have any memories of her at all. But he missed knowing a mother—her absence had made him particularly eager to accept and return Rose Sanderson’s motherly care.
“Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“Nope. It’s just me and Dad.”
“He never remarried?”
“No.”
“So you went into teaching because of her? Because of your mother?”
It wasn’t that simple. “I teach because I enjoy it.” And because his father—who’d lost his prestigious career in education because of something Cal had told the police that had incriminated an innocent man—lived vicariously through him.
“You’re sure good at it.”
Before he could say more and risk crossing the boundaries between teacher and student and professionalism, the receiver in her hand pealed, splintering the quiet of the night.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“PLEASE…LETME SPEAK to my son… .” Morgan’s voice broke as she started to cry, something she couldn’t help in spite of her father standing over her as she answered the phone.
Cal was there, too, somewhere behind her in the living room. Her knees were weak and wobbly as she stood at the card table, watching Detective Warner’s face.
He nodded, mouthed that she was doing fine, and then the voice that she recognized from earlier that night—a voice she somehow knew was going to live within her forever—spoke again.
“Good, you’re begging for the life of your loved one. Just like I did.”
Click.
Morgan’s stomach felt like lead as Detective Warner listened to the earbud that connected him to his people and then shook his head.
“They got the tower,” he announced. “A different one. It’s forty miles away.”
“He’s moving,” George Lowen said.
“Or his cell phone provider has good range and other towers had conflicting signals,” Grace said from the doorway leading into the bedrooms. “You heard what he said earlier, George, depending on cell providers—”
“It’s the middle of the night,” George interrupted, his impatience evident in spite of the soft tone he used to address his wife. “There can’t be that much business out there. He’s moving south.” George left the room, cell phone to his ear, barking orders to someone to get cars on every road going south out of Tyler.
Cal Whittier was behind her, a steady presence, and still Morgan struggled to maintain composure as panic surged through her. She looked at Detective Warner.
“We’ve got officers combing south, as well, Ms. Lowen. And we’ve notified law enforcement within a six-state radius. The Amber
