Shirlee McCoy - Tracking Justice

Yeah, Ernie had been overflowing with little tidbits of information. Especially when he’d been drinking.

A police cruiser pulled in behind her, lights on. No sirens, though. No doubt Slade had called in a tail. He’d probably call it an escort. Either way, Eva knew her rights, and she didn’t stop or slow down. That was another thing Ernie had taught her.

He’d also taught her that people couldn’t be trusted. Not strangers, not friends and certainly not family. A good lesson that she’d forgotten once and would never forget again.

The road leading out of the neighborhood was nearly empty, the moon hanging low above distant trees. A quarter mile, and she was outside Sagebrush city limits, sparse trees and thick scrub lining the two-lane highway. She knew the way to the Lost Woods. There weren’t many people in Sagebrush who didn’t. The place was legend, the deep wilderness a siren’s song that had called more than one explorer to his doom.

She shivered, flicking on the heater and grimacing as cold air blew out of the vent. The car was a junker, but it ran. Until she finished school and got a better-paying job, there was no way she could afford better. It didn’t matter. She and Brady had what they needed and they had each other. She’d told herself that often over the years. She’d believed it, too. As much as she cringed when she thought about the mistake she’d made, the lies she’d bought into, the things she’d given away, she couldn’t regret Brady.

A tear slipped down her cheek. The second of the night, and if she wasn’t careful there would be more. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel, her fingernails digging into hard plastic as she turned onto the narrow road that led to the east entrance of the woods.

If Justice had tracked Brady to the woods, it meant he’d found the trail and been on it for nearly half a mile. Good news, but Eva didn’t want to think about Brady wandering through the wilderness. Anything could happen in the thick shelter of the Lost Woods. Anything could be lost there and never found again.

She pulled in behind a line of police cars, search-and-rescue vehicles and TV-news vans. A crowd of people stood in the glow of several oversize spotlights, huddled around a long table, staring at something spread across its top. A tall broad-shouldered man gestured to the table and then to the entrance of the woods, his sweeping motion including stately pine trees crowded close and giant oaks that seemed to bar entrance to the forest’s dark interior.

Detective Austin Black.

Exactly the man Eva wanted to see.

She grabbed Brady’s coat and jumped out of the station wagon, ignoring the officer who was getting out of the patrol car behind her.

“Detective Black!” she called, pushing past a couple of news photographers.

“Come on over.” He didn’t look surprised to see her. Had probably been warned that she was on her way. Good, because she didn’t want to waste more time arguing about whether or not she should be there.

She squeezed in between him and a dark-haired officer who held the leash of a border collie.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Justice and I tracked your son to the entrance of the woods. We were able to follow the scent trail to a stream about a half mile in. We lost it there, but I think Justice can pick it up again. We’ll have four teams working quadrants from here.” Detective Black jabbed at a map of the Lost Woods, the cool leather of his jacket brushing her cheek. She caught a whiff of pine needles and soap and some indefinably masculine thing. It settled into the pit of her stomach, mixing with her fear and worry, the combination shivering through her blood, lodging in the base of her skull. It pounded there. The beginning of a migraine.

She took a deep breath, trying to ignore the stabbing pain and concentrate on the map.

“Do you really think he’s in the woods?”

“It’s not what I think that matters. It’s what Justice’s nose says, and it’s saying your son went into the woods. I don’t know yet whether or not he’s come out.”

“Is it possible that he ran from his kidnapper and came here on his own?” That would be so much easier to think about than Brady with someone who had beaten a man just a few hours ago.

“His kidnapper was still with him at the stream. I found footprints on the bank. One child-size print. Three adult boot prints.”

“There’s more than one kidnapper?”

“I didn’t say that. I just said there were multiple footprints.” He turned his attention back to the team.

“We’re going to split up from here. I’d like you to cover that section, Lee.” He used a highlighter to mark a rectangle of forest, and the man beside him nodded. He marked two other sections, calling out names of people Eva didn’t know, but who she had to trust to do everything they could to find her son.

“I’ll take the last quadrant,” he said, marking the spot. Acres of land. That’s what he was talking about. Miles of wilderness they had to search, and Brady maybe somewhere in the middle of it.

“Any questions?” Austin asked.

No one on the search team seemed to have any.

Eva did.

She wanted to know what the temperature was, wanted to know how long it would take for a little boy dressed in nothing but flannel pajamas to succumb to hypothermia. She wanted to know what kind of person would beat an elderly man, steal a dog, kidnap a child, and she wanted to know how likely it was that Brady was still ali—

No.

She already knew the answer to the last one. He was alive.

She could feel it in her gut. She backed away from the table and the map and the group, because she couldn’t bear to look at that expanse of wilderness and picture her son lost somewhere in the middle of it. Something bumped into the back of her legs. Or maybe she bumped into it. Whatever the case, she nearly fell over.

“Careful.” A warm hand wrapped around her wrist, and she looked straight into Detective Black’s midnight-blue eyes. Thick black lashes, laugh lines fanning out from the corners. Handsome, hard-edged and someone she desperately wanted to believe in.

“I’m okay.” She pulled away, looked down at the thing that she’d tripped over.

The dog.

Justice, with his tongue lolling and his dark eyes gleaming, his droopy face matched by his droopy ears. He looked sweet and a little silly, and Eva thought again that Brady would love to meet him.

She touched his head, feeling knobby bones beneath velvety fur. “Brady would love you.”

“Hopefully they’ll meet soon.” Austin scratched the bloodhound behind his ears, crouched and held Brady’s shirt in front of him. A piece of Brady’s shirt.

His favorite blue one, cut into pieces.

She’d buy him another one when he got home. Maybe she’d buy him four, because the little savings that she’d managed to secret away didn’t matter if he wasn’t around when she spent it.

She swallowed hard as Austin put the square of fabric into a plastic bag, tucked it into a backpack and shoved a hardhat fitted with a searchlight onto his head.

“How long do you think it will take to find him?” she asked.

“I don’t know, and it wouldn’t be fair to you if I speculated. I’ll be calling updates in to Captain McNeal, though. He should be here shortly.” He gazed down at her. “Why don’t you wait for him in your car so you don’t get hounded by the press?”

“I—”

Austin issued a command to Justice and walked away, obviously not interested in a discussion.

That was fine.

Eva wasn’t interested in one, either.

She followed him across the small clearing that narrowed onto a hiking path, buttoning her coat against the cold wind as they walked deeper into the blackness of the woods.