Chapter Six

Friday afternoon, Harper's mother called and invited her to dinner, so Harper headed there after work. Her parents' two-story, cedar-sided home was in a neighborhood of similar homes built in the mid-to-late-1990s, showing its age but still well-cared for. Harper parked in the driveway in front of the garage and—as she always did when she visited—looked up to the right front bedroom, which had been hers for most of her life. She had last checked the bedroom about ten days ago, and it had been exactly as she left it, as if her parents were expecting her to move back in any moment.

She knocked, then let herself in the front door. "I'm in the kitchen!" her mother shouted. Harper headed in that direction, but stopped in the living room to say hello to her father, who was watching a World War II documentary on television. Tom Stanick was a self-employed financial advisor. For as long as Harper could remember, he had rented an office above the local bank. Time had added silver to his still-thick hair, and more lines around his eyes and mouth, but he was still a handsome man. "Hello, sweetie," he said. "What a nice surprise."

"Mom called and invited me to dinner."

"That's nice, but you know you don't have to wait for an invitation. You can stop by anytime."

"I know, Dad." He, especially, seemed to miss having her in the house. She was an only child, which meant they had no one else to focus on. It had taken her a long time to forgive them after the way they had acted over her pregnancy, but her ire had gradually faded. They had wanted the best for her, and after her miscarriage they had been gentle with her, welcoming her back home and encouraging her to think of the future and her education.

Ryker was gone by the time she'd returned to Eagle Mountain, and she didn't stay long either, moving that fall to Ohio, where she had enrolled in a small arts college and pursued a degree in graphic arts.

Tension between her and her mother had increased after she had eloped with Franco, a Bronx-born musician who her mother, especially, hadn't approved of. But Valerie had gritted her teeth and tried to be welcoming. "I'm sure we'll feel more comfortable with him once we know him better," she had said after meeting him for the first time at their wedding.

But he and Harper had been together such a short time that a second meeting had never happened.

Harper had been determined to build a new life on her own in Ohio after the divorce, but the company she worked for folded and she had been unable to find a new job. When her dad contacted her about an opening at Taylor Geographic, she had resisted the idea. But of course, the job was perfect, and her parents had welcomed her back with open arms. She had lived with them for six weeks before finding her own apartment in Eagle Mountain, but in that time they had settled into a new peace. She was ready to move on with her life, and that meant letting go of her resentment over how things had worked out with Ryker, and their role in that.

"Hi, Mom." Harper hugged her mom around the shoulders, and snatched a piece of carrot she was chopping for salad.

"Hello, Harper. You can set the table. Dinner is almost ready."

While Harper set the table, her dad came in and filled water glasses, so that when her mother carried the steaming platter of spaghetti and meatballs to the table, all was ready. This was how so many evenings in her life had started—the three of them gathered at this same oak table, chatting about their day or the latest happenings in town. The very sameness of these moments over the years comforted her. She hoped one day she would have a family that could build this kind of tradition.

"I just saw a news bulletin about that missing child," her dad said as he scooped salad onto his plate. "They think the couple suspected of taking her are driving a white Jeep."

"Well, I hope they find her soon," her mom said. "You can't go anywhere without seeing that poor child's face on a poster."

"Apparently, they suspect Ryker's ex-wife of kidnapping her and taking her to Utah," her dad said.

Her mom shook a bottle of salad dressing. "I don't know how a man like Ryker ended up with sole custody of a little girl," she said.

Harper tried to let a lot of things her mother said to annoy her slide, but this wasn't going to be one of them. "Ryker is a wonderful father and he's sick about Charlotte being gone," she said. "And the reason he ended up with sole custody is because her mother abandoned her."

Her mom froze and fixed her daughter with a gaze sharper than the knife she was using to slice into a meatball. "How do you know this?" she demanded. "Have you talked to him?"

"Yes, I've talked to him. Ryker is my friend, and he's going through something terrible right now."

The meatball was too tender to require the ferocity with which her mother was attacking it. "I don't like the idea of you seeing him again," she said.

"This isn't about what you like, Mother." Harper forced herself to pause and breathe deeply. She wasn't a sullen teenager anymore. They could discuss this like adults. "And I'm not seeing him. He came by the office today to get some maps. For the sheriff's department."

"Ryker has done well for himself, getting that job as a sheriff's deputy," her dad said.

Harper sent her father a grateful smile, but she didn't keep the expression long, as her mother said, "I'm surprised he was able to become a law enforcement officer, considering his past."

"He didn't do anything wrong." Harper laid down her fork, her appetite vanished. "He was cleared of all charges."

Her mother looked away. "I'm entitled to my opinion. And you can't say Ryker was good to you. As soon as you were out of sight, he left town and ended up married to an awful woman who has now kidnapped his child."

"You kept us apart," Harper said. "He probably thinks I left him. And he certainly had no idea his ex-wife would kidnap Charlotte. That's a terrible thing to say."

"I stand by my opinion."

Her father sent Harper a look that told her not to waste her time arguing with her mother. She focused on her food, though she scarcely tasted the meal as she ate. This wasn't a new conversation for them, but her mother's refusal to see Ryker in any other light frustrated her almost beyond bearing.

When dinner was over, she thanked her mom and prepared to leave, but her father said, "Harper and I will do the dishes, dear."

"Thanks for not arguing with your mother," her dad said when he and Harper were scraping plates and loading the dishwasher. "I know it's not always easy."

"Why is she so set against Ryker? He didn't do anything wrong."

"I'm not trying to justify her feelings, but losing a child is every parent's worst nightmare. When Aiden disappeared, your mother was so upset. And when they accused Ryker of being involved, all she could see was that her only child was in danger. She can't let go of that feeling."

Harper slid a handful of silverware into the basket on the door of the machine. "It's ridiculous. The Vernons are very nice and Ryker is a good man. And from what I've seen, he's a great father, and he's worried sick about Charlotte."

"You're not a teenager anymore. You get to decide who you want as a friend. And for what it's worth, I don't think Ryker would be a bad choice."

"Thanks, Dad. That means a lot."

"Your mother loves you and she doesn't want to see you hurt, but that doesn't mean she's right about everything."

There were plenty of days when Harper thought she herself might be wrong about everything. Acknowledging that made it a little easier to forgive others' mistaken opinions. She had certainly thought she had been wrong about Ryker in those lonely days after her miscarriage, when he never responded to the letter she had written, giving him the news. But in her heart, she had never believed he would be so cold. When he told her he never received her letter, she felt the truth of his words, and that particular wound, at least, was less painful.

"Search and rescue may go to search for Charlotte again soon," she said.

"Good luck. And be careful."

"I always am." At least with her physical body. With her heart...maybe not so much.

S TRAPPED INTO THE passenger seat in the cockpit of the small fixed-wing aircraft—which was parked at the airfield in Delta—on Saturday morning, Ryker tried to pay attention to the safety briefing the pilot was giving him. Alissa Mayfield had short, sandy hair and freckles and said she had been flying planes for twenty years. Ryker studied the array of dials, gauges, switches and lights in front of her and thought brain surgery might be easier than sorting out all of that. Alissa followed his gaze and laughed. "It's not as complicated as it looks," she said. "Trust me, I know what I'm doing." She handed him a headset. "It gets really noisy in the air. This will protect your ears, and there's a speaker and microphone so we can communicate."

He donned the headset and heard her voice in his ear. "You want to take a look at Galloway Basin and the Camp Frederick area, is that right?" she asked.

"Right. I want to look at the undeveloped mining claims in the area for any signs of new or updated construction. And any vehicles parked on any of the claims." Or a little girl who might run out to wave at a plane. If that happened, it was going to take everything in him not to insist they land immediately.

"Got it. I can fly pretty low with this in most areas, but let me know if there's anything you want to take a better look at." The engine started and the roar—even muffled by the headset—vibrated through him.

The plane taxied down the runway and he gripped the seat. He wasn't a fan of heights when he was standing still, but this sensation of rushing down the runway, then rising into the air made his palms sweat and his breath come in gasps.

But then they were soaring, the ground falling away quickly. "It's a good day for flying," Alissa said. "Nice and calm."

He couldn't help but think of the aerial photography he had been poring over the previous day. They followed the silver ribbon of the highway over Dixon Pass for a while, then angled west, soaring over dense stands of fir and spruce, the roofs of luxury homes set among the trees. Then the trees grew less prominent, and the landscape was dominated by rock in sunset shades from yellow and orange to a red so deep it was almost purple. "This is the Galloway Basin area," she said. "I think most of the mining claims you're looking at are above tree line."

"That's right." Forgetting his fear of heights, he leaned forward to peer out the side window, past the wing of the plane to the scenery below. He was reminded of the train sets he had seen set up in museums. There were no trains here, only the scars of dirt roads winding among old tree stumps that were once evergreens cut for their timber for the mines over a century ago. Colorful spills of mine waste flowed like melted candle wax down the sides of the mountains, and piles of gray rock marked the openings where trams had once been loaded with ore to be transported to stamp mills. The rusted, bent tram rails stitched across the landscape in places, along with snarls of cables from the old overhead trams. Clusters of gray lumber were all that remained of the buildings that had once housed hundreds of miners and support staff, while isolated cabins marked the smaller claims, where one or two people had tried to wrest riches from the mountains.

They flew over an expanse of treeless green—startling in its emerald lushness—through patches of orangey-brown, like stains on velvet, that marked clumps of beetle-killed timber. "That's the old Alexander mine." Alissa pointed to their right. "Those grass berms and holding ponds are part of the mitigation process to leach the arsenic, magnesium and other hazardous metals from the water before it empties into the river or soaks into the soil."

They flew on. Ryker spotted a cow moose and her calf, a trio of backpack-laden hikers climbing up a trail leading to the top of a peak, and clusters of Jeeps on the backroads like the toy cars he had played with on the living room rug as a boy. But no one who looked out of place. And no sign of life on any of the claims.

"We need to head back now," Alissa said after a while.

"Okay," he answered.

He was too distracted by thoughts of Charlotte to even be nervous about the landing. When they were on the ground and the plane was silent, they removed their headsets and he unbuckled his seat belt. "Thanks for taking me up," he said.

"I'll go out with you again, whenever you want," she said. "I've got two kids of my own."

"Thanks. I may take you up on that."

He returned to the sheriff's department to pore over more maps and photographs, hoping to spot some clue that would lead him to the right place. The alternative was to go home and do nothing, and he couldn't bear that. But all these mining claims were beginning to look alike, and there were a lot of trees obscuring some claims. It would be so easy to overlook the very place Kim and Mick were hiding.

The door opened and Gage stood there. "I thought I saw the light on," he said. "You look like you've been here a while."

"What time is it?" Ryker stretched, his neck popping loudly as he did so.

"After seven." Gage moved into the room. "I heard you went up in a plane today."

"I did. But I didn't see anything."

"There's a lot of territory to cover."

"Yeah. And maybe the feds are right and they're in Utah."

Gage rested one hip in the table and crossed his arms. "Four years ago, my little girl Casey disappeared," he said. "She wasn't kidnapped, she was lost, up on Dakota Ridge."

"I didn't know that. How long was she missing?"

"Three days, but it seemed like a lot longer. She wasn't my daughter then, I was just a deputy on the scene, but I was still worried sick. My wife, Maya, was Casey's aunt. Casey's parents—Maya's brother and his wife—were murdered. Casey got away and was hiding in the woods, afraid to come out. She was only five, and she's hard of hearing. The search for her is how I met Maya. We ended up adopting Casey. Anyway, that's all to say I know a little of what you're going through and I hope you have the same good outcome."

"How's Casey doing?"

"She had nightmares for a while. And sometimes she misses her parents. But overall, she's doing good." He smiled. "She's crazy about the baby, so that's good. I hope they'll be close."

"Thanks for telling me."

"Yeah, well, what you're going through has me and Maya reliving all of that."

He nodded. "I keep thinking about my cousin, Aiden."

"I remember when that happened," Gage said.

"People thought I was responsible."

"But you weren't."

"No. But they never found his killer. Some people still aren't convinced of my innocence."

"You can't worry about them." He stood. "Focus on the people who are supporting you. Anything you need at all, just ask."

"Thanks." But what he needed was his daughter. Kim was the only person who could give her back and right now that wasn't happening.

Seven years ago

"Y OU HAVE THE right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."

"But I haven't done anything wrong," Ryker interrupted the beefy, blond sheriff's deputy who stood in front of him.

"You have the right to an attorney..." The deputy droned on with the rest of the warning Ryker had only heard previously on TV shows. He didn't look up from the card in his hand until he had read it all. "Do you understand what I just read you?" he asked.

"Yes," Ryker said. "Yes, sir."

"Sit down." The deputy indicated a wooden, straight-backed chair in the small, brightly lit room. "We have some questions for you."

"You said I didn't have to say anything," Ryker said.

"That's right." The deputy—his name tag said Rollins—crossed his arms over his barrel chest. He had thinning blond hair, the pink scalp showing through at the back. "But if you didn't do anything wrong cooperating with us will have you out of here sooner rather than later."

"Okay." He definitely wanted out of here. The deputy had driven him away from his cousin's house before his parents arrived. Did they even know where he was?

"Tell us what happened with the little boy, Aiden."

Ryker related the same story he had told multiple times by now—how he had put Aiden to bed at eight, fallen asleep while watching TV, checked on the boy about nine and found the window open, the screen off and the boy gone.

"So you're saying someone removed the screen, climbed in that window and took the little boy out of bed while you were in the next room and you never heard a thing?" Deputy Rollins squinted as if trying to make out something in the distance.

"Yes, sir. And I wasn't in the next room, I was down the hall." Still, why hadn't he heard anything? Surely, Aiden would have cried out.

"I find that hard to believe." Rollins leaned across the table toward him. "What I believe is that maybe the little boy was fussy, giving you a hard time. Maybe you lost your temper and hit him. An accident. Maybe he fell and hit his head and wouldn't wake up. It scared you, so you decided to hide the body and fake a kidnapping."

Ryker stared. "No! Aiden's a good kid. And he's just a kid. I'd never hurt him."

Rollins slammed his fist down on the table, making Ryker jump. "You need to tell us the truth, so we can find the boy. His poor parents are wrecks, wondering what happened to him. You're the only one who can help them."

"I don't know where he is," Ryker said. "You need to find him."

"You listen to me, kid." Rollins put his face so close to Ryker's he could smell onions on his breath. "I know nobody took that boy but you. You need to tell the truth."

A loud knock sounded on the door. Rollins looked up. "Who is it?"

"Carson Shay. I'm Mr. Vernon's attorney."

Ryker thought for a moment that Rollins wasn't going to answer, but after a moment, he straightened and went to the door. "Vernon hasn't asked for an attorney," he said.

"His father called me." He looked past Rollins to Ryker. "Hello, son. How are you doing?"

Not so good , Ryker thought. "I'm glad to see you," he said.

"Mr. Vernon won't be answering any more questions tonight," Shay said. He moved past the cop into the room. Rollins glared at them both, then left them alone. After the door shut, Ryker clenched his hands into fists, trying to stop himself from shaking.

"I didn't do anything wrong," he said. "I don't know where Aiden is. Why aren't they looking for him?"

"There are people looking." Shay stood in the same place Rollins had stood. He was probably in his late-thirties, with black, curly hair and black-rimmed glasses. He wore khakis and a dress shirt, but no tie, and was freshly shaven, even though it had to be after eleven at night. "I know you've probably gone over this a lot already, but I need you to tell me again what happened."

So once again, Ryker told his story and relived the horror of finding Aiden's bed empty and the window open. Shay made notes and nodded. When Ryker fell silent, Shay said, "They don't have enough evidence to charge you, so I'm going to take you home. But they will probably question you again. Tell them you won't talk without your attorney present. Then call me."

"Why do they think I did it?"

"You were right there in front of them. They came up with a story they thought fit. It's a lazy approach, but it happens. They'll try to find evidence to fit their story. My job is to hold their feet to the fire and insist they look at everything, not just the parts that make their job easy." He clapped his hand on Ryker's shoulder. "Let's get you home."

"Do other people think I hurt Aiden?" Ryker asked.

The fine lines around Shay's eyes deepened. "Some people will. You'll find out who your real friends are."

Harper , Ryker thought. I have to talk to Harper. "What time is it?" he asked.

Shay checked his watch. "It's ten minutes to one."

He couldn't call Harper now. She'd be asleep. He would call her tomorrow. She was going to have his baby. She needed to know he was innocent.

Except when he did finally call her, she was already gone.