was one young woman, Dana believed, who would make it and emerge strong and capable.
Dana was intensely grateful that A Woman’s Lifeline provided free on-site child care while its clients met with their caseworkers. She had seen Phoenix when she first talked with Lucy, and the sight of him had been like a stiletto to her heart. His brown eyes, blond hair and grin couldn’t possibly look as much like Gabriel’s as her first reaction suggested. Even so, it was far safer to avoid seeing him at all.
Lucy jumped to her feet as Dana stood and threw her arms around her. “Thank you!” Tears shimmered in her eyes. “You’ve done so much for us. It’s like a miracle.”
“You’re very welcome,” she said. “Watching you succeed is going to give me more satisfaction than you can imagine. And, just so you know, I have no doubt whatsoever that you will succeed.”
Lucy was still wiping her eyes when she exited. Dana was surprised to find she had to blow her nose, too.
Fifteen minutes before her next appointment gave her time to have a cup of coffee. She was leaving her office when her mobile phone rang, the sound muffled because her purse was in a desk drawer. Knowing she was most often with clients during the day, friends and family rarely called during working hours. Heart pounding, she went back to her desk, fumbled the drawer open and delved into her handbag until she came up with the phone. She hated the hope that rose every single time the damn thing rang. Eleven years of painful, useless hope. It would be a neighbor letting her know she had a package UPS dropped off, or her dentist’s office urging her to schedule a cleaning.
She didn’t recognize the number, but it was local. She answered with a simple “Hello.”
“Ms. Stewart?”
The familiar voice made her dizzy enough to grope for the arm of her desk chair and then sink into it.
“This is Commander Knapp from the Aurora PD.”
As if she wouldn’t know who he was. Dana could not summon a single word.
“I’m happier than I can say to tell you we’ve had a hit on NamUs.” He knew he didn’t have to explain anything about the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, not to her. “Your son is alive and well in a small town in Oregon.”
Something that should have been happiness but felt more like anguish swelled in her, pressing against her rib cage, rising in her throat, burning in her sinuses. She tried to speak, but she seemed to burst open at that moment, sobbing as she had never sobbed before. She couldn’t stop herself. She sat there, gripping the phone, and cried without even trying to check the deluge.
“Ms. Stewart?” Commander Knapp’s tinny voice rose from the phone. “I’ll give you a few minutes to process the news and then I’ll call back.”
She couldn’t even say thank you. The phone slipped from her fingers and dropped to the desk blotter. Tears kept gushing. Snot ran down her upper lip. A box of tissues kept for clients sat on the corner of her desk, but she couldn’t so much as reach for it.
Why did this feel so much like grief? Or was she letting go of an overload of grief that had built, day by day and year by year, until it was too much to contain?
Someone knocked. When she didn’t answer, the door cracked open. Jillian Markham, who had the next office, took one look and then rushed in.
“Oh, my God! Dana, what’s wrong?”
Dana’s face contorted and she cried harder.
Jillian saw the phone. “Bad news?”
Dana managed to shake her head.
“Oh, honey.” Jillian bent to hug her, deftly swiping her nose and cheeks with a tissue at the same time. “Just let it out.”
Dana couldn’t have said why that struck her as funny, but suddenly she was laughing and crying at the same time. Her body shook even as she soaked her coworker’s blouse, but Jillian only held her tighter.
Slowly, slowly, the storm abated. Maybe she’d run out of tears. Exhaustion swept through her, and she sagged. She felt as if she could slither to the floor, becoming a puddle.
“Honey?” Jillian pulled back a little, her face worried. “Let me get a wet washcloth and we’ll clean you up a little.”
She couldn’t have been gone a minute. The slightly rough cloth, wet with cold water, felt astonishingly good. Dana couldn’t remember the last time anyone had babied her like this—and that included her mother. She wouldn’t have permitted it. Yet here she sat, docilely accepting it.
Finally, Jillian patted her face dry, then perched on the edge of Dana’s desk. In her thirties, too, she was a curvaceous brunette whose husband was a physics professor at the University of Colorado. Dana always tried not to look at the framed photos of Jillian’s husband and two children on her desk.
“Can you tell me about it?” she asked.
Could she? Dana scrunched up her face and worked her mouth. The muscles were still obedient, if oddly numb.
“My son was abducted when he was a baby. Eight months old.” She could talk after all. Until now she’d only ever spoken of Gabriel to other parents who had lost a child. None of her coworkers knew, not even the ones like Jillian she considered to be friends. If they had, they might have worried about her. Pity, sympathy, might have broken her. “He was stolen from his crib. Police never found a trace. Nobody noticed anyone around the house.” Her mouth was dry. She finished, “That was eleven years ago.”
“I wish I’d known,” Jillian whispered. Suddenly tears glittered on her lashes. “I’m so sorry.”
“The phone call. It was the police detective who investigated.” Pressure built in her chest again. “They’ve found him, Jillian. Gabriel is alive. I don’t even know why I cried.” The words were so stunning, so beautiful, she had to say them again. “He’s alive!”
And, just like that, the pressure became a radiance that was surely visible through walls.
“He’s alive.” She smiled, she laughed and she cried again, Jillian doing the same. “I’ve waited eleven years to say this. My Gabriel is coming home.”
* * *
A MAN WHO’D once melted into the shadows and waited without moving for hours on end when he’d been hunting bad guys, Nolan couldn’t make himself sit down. He prowled the downstairs, wound so tight he expected to snap. Why hadn’t the woman called?
“Crap.” He rolled his shoulders. Maybe she’d never call. Maybe she’d had five more children by now and written off her firstborn. He could hope.
Christian was huddled upstairs in his bedroom. He’d promised to come down when he heard the phone ring, but he hadn’t promised to speak to Dana Stewart. His mother.
Nolan reached the living room wall and spun to continue his restless pacing.
The news had come a lot faster than he’d expected and could not have been worse. Either Marlee herself had stolen Christian—whose name had been Gabriel Angus Stewart—or she’d gotten him from someone who’d done the stealing.
