“He did. I told him no again, too.”
Tyler tugged off his mittens and held his pink fingers up in front of the heating vent. “I thought maybe you were still in there talking to him. He’s a good director and all, but I don’t want him to be my dad.”
Katie reached for Tyler’s hands and pulled them between hers to rub some love and warmth into them. “He won’t be.” Not that he’d had a chance, anyway. But endangering her son certainly checked him off the list. “I can guarantee that.”
“Good.” When he’d had enough of a warming reassurance, Tyler pulled away and kicked his feet together, knocking snow off his shoes onto the floor mat. “Do you think Padre’s toes will freeze out there tonight? Dogs have toes, right?”
“They do. But he must have dug himself a snow cave or found someplace warm to sleep if he’s survived a whole week outdoors in the wintertime. I think he’ll be okay. I hope he will be.” Katie smiled wryly before turning on the windshield wipers and clearing away the wet snow. She shifted the car into gear, but paused with her foot on the brake to inspect the empty parking lot one more time. Maybe Tyler hadn’t been in any danger. Maybe she hadn’t really been, either. But why leave that message? And if the intruder had run along the pathway, had Tyler seen him either sneak into the building or run out of it? The man could easily have parked in another area of the campus so she wouldn’t be able to spot him. But could Tyler have gotten a description that might put him in some kind of future harm? Her grip tightened around the steering wheel. “Did anybody talk to you while you were out here by yourself?”
“Wyatt and Kayla said goodbye. Kayla’s dad asked me if you were still here. I told him as long as the car was, you were, too.”
She’d make a point to thank Mr. Hudnall for checking on her son tomorrow night. “I meant a stranger. Anybody you didn’t know? Was anyone watching you or following you?”
Tyler dropped his head back in dramatic groan. “I know about stranger danger. I would have shouted really loud or run really fast or gotten into the car with Kayla’s dad because I know him.”
“Okay, sweetie. Just checking.”
He sat up straight and turned in his seat. “But if I had a phone—”
“Maybe later.” She laughed and lifted her foot off the brake. “I need to talk it over with Aunt Maddie and Uncle Dwight first. We’re on their phone plan.”
And now the sulky lip went out. “Am I going to get anything that’s on my Christmas list?”
“There are already some presents under the tree.”
“None of them are big enough to be a dog. And none of them are small enough to be a phone. They’re probably socks and underwear.”
“I’m sure you’d be really good with a pet, sweetie, but you know we can’t have a dog in our apartment.” She pulled the car up next to the sidewalk at the corner of the theater building. “Hold on a second. I propped the door open in case I couldn’t find you out here. I need to go close it so we don’t get in trouble with the college. Sit tight. Lock yourself in until I get back.”
After pulling her lime-green mittens back on and tying her scarf more tightly around her neck, Katie climbed out, waited for Tyler to relock the doors and hurried back to the exit. She glanced through the woods and walkway for the stray dog or a more menacing figure, but saw no sign of movement among the trees and shadows. But she slowed her steps once she shifted her full attention to the door. It was already closed, sealed tight. Had she not wedged the broom in securely enough?
Pulling her phone from her pocket again, Katie checked the time before turning on the camera. She’d only been gone a few minutes, hardly enough time for the security guard to make his rounds. And if he’d been close by already, why wouldn’t he have answered her shouts of distress or turned on a light for her to see?
Who had closed this door? The same unseen person who’d flipped on the running lights and hidden in the dark theater?
The man who’d run off into the woods after knocking her off her feet?
No matter what the answers to any of those questions might be, Katie worked around enough cops to know that details mattered. So she moved past the door and angled her phone camera down to take a picture of the disturbing message.
Her breath rushed out in a warm white cloud in the air, and she couldn’t seem to breathe in again.
The message was gone.
The marks of her heeled boots were clear in the new layer of snow. But the rest of the footprints—boy-size tennis shoes, paw prints, the long, wide imprints of a stranger running away from the theater—Stop before someone gets hurt—had all been swept away.
A chill skittered down the back of her neck. She was bundled up tight enough to know it wasn’t the snow getting to her skin. This was wrong. This was intentional. This was personal.
Katie backed away from the door. The man inside the theater had come back. He could still be here—hiding in the trees, lurking on the other side of that door, watching her right now. Waiting for her.
She glanced back and forth, trying to see into the night beyond the lamplights and the snow. Nothing. No one. She hadn’t seen the man who grabbed her the night she’d been kidnapped, either.
She was shaking now. Katie didn’t feel safe.
Her son wasn’t safe.
“Tyler.” She whispered his name like a storm cloud in the air as she turned and raced back to the car, banging on the window until Tyler unlocked the door and she could slip inside. She relocked the doors and peeled off her mittens before reaching across the seat and cupping his cheek in her palm again. “I love you, sweetie.”
His skin was toasty warm from the heater, but she was shivering inside her coat as she shifted into gear and sped across the parking lot to the nearest exit.
“Mom? What’s wrong?”
Tyler’s voice was frightened, unsure. She was supposed to be his rock. She was a horrible mother for worrying him with her paranoid imagination. She was putting him in danger by not thinking straight.
“I’m sorry, sweetie. I’m okay. We’re both okay.” She shook the snowflakes from her dark hair, smiled for him, then pulled out onto the street at a much safer speed. “Why don’t you tell me more about Padre.”
* * *
“CONFOUNDED WOMAN.” Trent slowed his pickup to a crawl once he saw that the parking lot outside the Williams College auditorium had nothing but asphalt and snow to greet him after his zip across Kansas City to get to Katie and Tyler.
As he circled the perimeter of the empty lot, just to make sure he hadn’t misunderstood the location of the distress call, and the tiny Rinaldi family truly wasn’t stranded someplace out in the bitter cold, Trent admitted that Katie Lee Rinaldi knew how to push his buttons—even though she never did it intentionally. It was his own damn fault. If he hadn’t felt especially protective of Katie ever since she’d decided back in high school he was the one friend she could rely on without question, and if all the hours he’d spent with Tyler didn’t make him think he wanted to be a father more than just about anything—more than making sergeant, more than playing for
