What’s up?”
Oblivious to the current irony of his nickname for her, Katie squeezed her words past the panic choking her throat. “I’m at the theater... The lights...” She bumped into the edge of a flat and shifted course. “Ow. Damn it. I can’t see...”
A warm chuckle colored the detective’s audible breathing. “Did you leave your car lights on again? Need me to come jump-start it?”
“No.” Well, technically, she didn’t know that, but she didn’t think she had.
“Flat tire? Williams College is a good twenty minutes from here, but I could—”
“Trent. Listen to me. There is some kind of weird...” As his deep inhales and exhales calmed, she heard a tuneless kind of percussive music and a woman’s voice laughing in the background. The man is breathless from exertion, Katie. Get a clue. “Oh, God,” she mumbled as realization dawned and embarrassment warmed her skin. “I’m so sorry. Is someone with you?”
Instead of answering her question, Trent’s tone changed from winded amusement to that steely deep tone that resonated through his chest and reminded her he was a cop. “Weird? How? Are you all right? Is Tyler okay?”
Trent Dixon was on a date. He might be in the middle of more than a date. She’d forgotten about setting him up with that friend from the coffee shop a few weeks back. Trent wasn’t her knight in shining armor to call whenever she had a problem she couldn’t fix. He wasn’t Tyler’s father and he wasn’t her boyfriend. Trent was just the good guy who’d grown up across the street and had a hard time saying no to her. Knowing that about him, because she was his friend, too, she’d worked really hard not to take advantage of his good-guy tendencies and protective instincts. “Is that Erin Ballard? I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. You have company.”
“I dropped Erin off an hour ago after dinner. I stopped by the twenty-four-hour gym because I needed to work off some excess energy. And it’s too cold to go for a run outside.” He paused for a moment, wiping down with a towel or catching his breath. “Apparently, I’m not the only night-owl fitness freak in KC.”
He felt energized after his date with Erin? Was that excess energy a code for sexual frustration? Had he wanted something more from Erin besides dinner and conversation? Or had he gotten exactly what he wanted and was now on some kind of endorphin high that wouldn’t let him sleep? The momentary stab of jealousy at the thought of Trent bedding the willowy blonde she’d introduced him to ended as she tripped over the leg of a chair in the darkness. “Damn it.”
“Katie?”
“I’m sorry.” She should be thinking of her son, not Trent. Not any misplaced feelings of envy for the woman who landed him. Tyler was the only person who mattered right now. And a panicked late-night call to a man she had no claim on wasn’t going to help. “Never mind. I’m sorry to interrupt your evening. It’s late and I need to get Tyler home to bed. Tell Erin hi for me.”
“Katie Lee Rinaldi,” Trent chided. “Why did you call me?”
“I’ll handle it myself.”
“Handle what? Damn it, woman, talk to me.”
“Sorry. I don’t need you to rescue me every time I make a mistake. Enjoy your date.”
“I’m not on a... Katie?”
“Good night.” She disconnected the call, ending the interrogation.
Seconds later, the phone vibrated in her hand. The big galoot. He’d called her right back. Not only did she feel guilty for interrupting his evening, but now she realized just how crazy she’d sounded. Practically perfect Erin Ballard would never panic like this and make a knee-jerk call to a friend for help.
Pull it together and think rationally. She should simply call 9-1-1 and report a break-in or say that an intruder had vandalized the lights in the theater. She could call Uncle Dwight. But as Kansas City’s DA, it would only be a matter of minutes before half the police department knew that she’d lost her son and wasn’t fit to be his mother.
Katie inhaled a deep breath, pushing aside that option as a last resort. She didn’t ever want to be labeled that impulsive, needs-to-be-rescued woman she’d been as a teenager again. Katie Rinaldi stood on her own two feet. She took care of her own son. The two of them would never end up like the girl in that file again.
“Tyler!” With her phone on flashlight mode once more, she hurried as quickly as she dared toward the exit sign. “If you are playing some kind of game with me, mister, I’m grounding you until you’re eighteen.”
Silence was her only answer.
Had Tyler gotten tired of waiting for his flaky, work-obsessed mother and headed on out to the car? Or was he still inside someplace, trapped in the darkness like she was? Why didn’t he answer? Could he answer?
First that damn case file and now this? She couldn’t stop the nightmarish memory this time. Her feet turned to lead. Katie didn’t have to close her eyes to remember the hand over her mouth. The prick of a needle in her arm. Her limbs going numb. Cradling her swollen belly and crying out for her baby as she collapsed into a senseless heap. The night she’d been abducted she’d gone to help Whitney and wound up in the same mess herself. A few weeks later, she’d given birth to Tyler in a sterile room with no one to hold her hand or urge her to breathe, and she’d nearly given up all hope of surviving.
But the tiny little boy the kidnappers laid in her arms for a few seconds had changed everything, giving her a reason to survive, a reason to escape, a reason to keep fighting.
If anything happened to her son...
If he’d been taken from her again...
Finally. Her palm flattened against ice-cold steel. Burying her fears and summoning her maternal strength, Katie shoved open the back door. A blast of bitter cold and snowy crystals melting against her nose and cheeks cleared her thoughts. “Tyler!”
It was brighter outside the theater, even though it was night. The campus lights were on, and each lamppost was adorned with shiny silver wreaths that shimmered with the cold, damp wind. The rows of lights illuminated the path down into the woods behind the auditorium and marked the sidewalk that led around the back of the theater to the parking lot on the north side. New snow was falling, capturing the light from the lamps and reflecting their orange glow into the air around her.
There were dozens of footprints in the first layer of snow from where the cast and crew had exited out to their cars. But there was one set of man-size prints leading down the walkway into the trees, disappearing at the footbridge that arched over the creek at the bottom of the hill. Good. Run. Whoever had been in the darkened building with her was gone.
But the freezing air seeped right into her bones when she read the hastily carved message in the snow beside the tracks.
Stop before someone gets hurt.
She shivered inside her coat. “Gets hurt?” She looked out into the woods, wondering if the man who’d trapped her in the dressing room was still here, watching. “Stop what? What do you want? Tyler?”
Confusion gave way to stark, cold fear when she zeroed in on the impression of a small, size-five tennis shoe, left by a brown-haired boy who hated to wear his winter
