Chapter Nine

Harper waited in the dark for Ryker, focused on his silhouette moving around the campsite. What if whoever was in the tent pulled out a gun and shot him? What if it wasn't Kim and Mick at all, but someone else who didn't like someone creeping up on them in the middle of the night?

What if she was wrong and the little girl she thought she had glimpsed in the back of the white Jeep wasn't Charlotte at all? What if it was a little boy, or a dog, or a figment of her imagination, conjured up because she wanted so badly for Charlotte to be found?

But no, she had seen the girl. And she had definitely seen a blonde woman who could have been Kim. And the other vehicle had run away from them, as if wanting to escape.

She was sure she had never been anywhere so quiet. She sat on the ground behind a boulder the size of a compact car and the silence rang in her ears. She breathed in the aroma of sun-warmed rock and pi?on and wondered what Ryker was doing right now.

The crunch of gravel set her heart to pounding, and she strained her eyes to see across the expanse of ground between here and the trees where the tent was staked. The moonlight washed everything into shades of gray and blurred the outlines like a monochrome impressionistic landscape.

Someone was coming. Someone tall and broad-shouldered, moving quickly and with confidence through the scattered rock. She relaxed and stood to meet Ryker as he drew near.

"They're gone," he said. "But they were here. I found Charlotte's shoes."

She wanted to cry out in frustration that they had been so close to the little girl, yet she had vanished again. "Where did they go?" she asked. "We were right behind them."

"We drove past this turnoff to the end of the road. They knew we were following them, so they probably waited until they were sure we were past and turned around and went back to the highway."

"Do you think they'll come back?" Harper asked.

"Probably not." He put his arm around her. "Come on. Let's go. As soon as we have a phone signal, I'll call the sheriff and let him know what I found. They can get someone up here to watch in case anyone returns. But my guess is they've moved on."

They trudged back to the Jeep, the walk seeming to take much longer now. Harper's feet dragged and her stomach growled. She wished she was home with her feet up, eating dinner and binging some mystery show on television, rather than being caught in the middle of a real-life mystery.

But then she focused on Ryker's broad back and felt guilty for those thoughts. When she left him, she could go back to her normal life, but he could never escape the reality that his daughter was missing.

They reached the Jeep and had to endure the slow, rough drive back to the county road, and another five miles on that road before they had a cell-phone signal. At last, Ryker pulled over at a scenic overlook and punched in a number. "Sheriff, this is Ryker. I've found where Kim and Mick were camping. They got away in a white Jeep. They covered the license plate with mud, so I couldn't read it. Charlotte is definitely with them. I found some clothes and a pair of her shoes at their camp."

He listened for a long moment, then gave directions to the camp. Then he hung up and turned to Harper. "If you want, you can call someone to pick you up. But I have to stay and take the sheriff and the crime-scene crew back to the campsite."

"I'll stay." Her stomach growled. "At least for a little while."

He leaned over the seat and pulled out a backpack. "I've got some protein bars and nuts in here."

"I've got a couple of apples."

They divided the food between them and ate. It wasn't the worst dinner she had ever had, and when she was done she was no longer hungry. In between bites, Ryker told her what he had seen at the campsite. "They had bought Charlotte some new clothes," he said. "And she had her own cot."

"So they're taking care of her."

"They're dragging her with them all over the mountains," he said.

She said nothing. Taking care of the child wasn't the same as doing what was best for her.

"The tent and all the camping equipment looked new," Ryker continued. "Which makes me wonder if they really planned this, or if it was a last-minute decision."

"If they didn't plan ahead, that could make it harder for them," she said.

"Harder for Charlotte, too."

"She knows you're looking for her."

"Does she? She's only four. What if they told her I wanted her to go with them?"

Harper didn't know what to say. He knew his daughter better than she did. But she had been a little girl once, and he hadn't. "When I was Charlotte's age, I thought my father could do anything," she said. "He could climb mountains and fix cars and make pancakes and tell silly jokes, and he knew the names of the stars and the names of all our neighbors. If I had been lost or afraid or homesick, I would have believed he would come for me."

A vehicle approached and slowed. A black-and-white sheriff's department SUV pulled in behind the Jeep and stopped. Ryker switched on the Jeep's interior lights, then stepped out where he could be better seen. Harper lowered the window and waved. Sheriff Travis Walker got out of the SUV and moved toward the Jeep as a second sheriff's department vehicle turned in and parked. Seconds later, Gage Walker joined his brother and Ryker. "Three more deputies are on the way," the sheriff said. "Where is the campsite you saw?"

"I marked the mileage on our way out," Ryker said. "In three quarters of a mile, take a left onto the Jeep road that leads to a trailhead. Travel two point seven miles on that road. You'll see a big boulder on the left, and directly behind that boulder is a narrow dirt track. It's hard to see coming from this direction. That track ends at a clump of trees and in those trees is the campsite."

Travis looked past Ryker to Harper. If he was surprised to see her here, he gave no indication. "Did you see the camp, too?" he asked.

"I saw the trees and part of the tent, but I waited behind while Ryker went to investigate." She swallowed, suddenly nervous. "But I saw the white Jeep with Charlotte in the back seat, and Kim in the passenger seat."

"We'll need a statement from you later," Travis said. He returned his attention to Ryker. "Ride with me up to the camp so I can take a look. Then I'll bring you back here and the deputies will take over from there. You and Harper can come to the station tomorrow to give your statements."

Ryker turned to her. "I'm sorry you'll have to wait a little longer."

"It's okay." She took out her phone. "I've got a book on here I can read." She almost joked that she had been waiting for him for so many years, what was a few more minutes or hours? But she wasn't ready to admit that truth out loud. For so long she had told herself she was fine without Ryker in her life.

Until he was with her, and she realized she wasn't.

W HEN R YKER FINALLY returned home, he spent another restless night, anxious to know what evidence the deputies had found at the camp. Travis had ordered him not to return to the scene after he took Harper back to her place, so he had no choice but to go home and pretend nothing had happened. He was apparently a lousy actor, because his mother asked him what had happened to make him so agitated. He ended up telling her and his dad the whole story, meaning all three of them had slept little that night.

The next morning, he showered, shaved and put on his uniform, as he had been doing all week. Though he arrived at the sheriff's office before first shift began, Travis was already there. "What happened last night after I left?" Ryker asked.

"We took everything inside the tent for evidence," Travis said. "We left the tent in place and Declan is watching to see if they come back for their belongings. Wes will take over at nine."

"I can take a shift watching the tent," Ryker said.

"No you cannot. You're too involved already."

"You don't think I can remain professional?" Ryker asked.

"I'm not sure I could, if my kid was involved." Travis's tone softened. "I can tell by looking at you you've hardly slept since Charlotte disappeared. You're not in any shape to be out there in the field. I'm fine with you being here. I get it, you don't want to sit at home doing nothing. But you have to let the rest of us handle this."

He knew the sheriff was right. He also knew that Travis could have ordered him to go home and wait for them to call, and he appreciated that he hadn't done so. "All right," he said. "Thanks."

He returned to the conference room and the maps laid out on the table. He called up the aerial views of the terrain around the trailhead where they had turned around the night before, and found the little clearing where the tent had been. There was nothing there when these photos had been taken over a year ago, but he would have expected that. He looked through other photos and studied other maps, but his heart wasn't in the work anymore. Now that he knew Kim and Mick and Charlotte were close to Eagle Mountain, he wanted to be out there actively hunting them, not sitting here, helpless.

At noon Adelaide knocked on the door, then entered the room. She set a brown paper bag in front of him. "I made you a sandwich," she said. "I know you probably don't feel like eating, but think of it as something to do."

She left before he could even say thank you .

The sandwich was good, and she had included an apple and cookies she had probably made herself. He was reminded of the lunches his mother had packed for him when he was a child. The lunches she packed now for Charlotte.

As if summoned by the memory, he thought he heard his mother's voice down the hall. "I need to see Ryker. Please, where is he?"

"Mom?" He went to the door and was startled to see Wanda hurrying toward him, an envelope clutched in her hand. Gage followed her. She shoved the envelope at Ryker, her hands visibly shaking. "I went home at lunch and this was in the mailbox."

He took the letter, handling it by the corners, though it was already wrinkled where she had clutched it so tightly in her hand. It was addressed to him in a loopy cursive writing, with no return address. His stomach dropped. "It's from Kim," he said.

"I recognized her writing," Wanda said. "I remembered it from the wedding invitation she sent."

Gage inserted himself between them. He had slipped on a pair of latex gloves. "Let me open it," he said.

Ryker let Gage take the letter, and he and Wanda followed the sergeant into the conference room, where Gage shoved aside the stack of maps and dropped the envelope onto the flat surface. He teased open the flap of the envelope with a penknife and carefully removed the single folded sheet of notepaper inside. Ryker stared at the words Kim had written, confused.

Dear Ryker,

Charlotte is my daughter and you have no right to keep her from me. We're going to take good care of her. You need to stop looking for us. Mick will be a good father and he'll do whatever it takes to protect her, so don't mess with us.

Kim

Gage flipped over the envelope and examined it. "The postmark is Green River, Utah," he said.

"We know they're not in Utah," Ryker said. "They were here, just outside of Eagle Mountain last night."

"Are you sure? How good a look did you get at them?"

"I never saw them," he admitted. "I saw the backs of the heads of two people in a white Jeep, driving in front of me. But Harper saw them. She said she was sure there was a little girl who looked like Charlotte in the back seat of the Jeep, and a woman who looked like Kim in the front passenger seat. And Charlotte's clothes were in that tent."

"You said the clothes were new," Gage said. "That Kim probably bought them for Charlotte. Maybe they belonged to some other little girl."

"The shoes were Charlotte's. They were the pink ones with flowers on the toes that she was wearing when they kidnapped her."

Gage's expression was pained. "We checked and those shoes are really common. They're sold in discount stores all over Colorado."

"Sergeant, don't you think it would be an amazing coincidence that a little girl who wore the same size clothing as my granddaughter, who owned the same shoes she was known to be wearing when she disappeared, who even favored the same colors as her, was at that remote camp in the mountains? Especially when Harper Stanick is sure she saw Charlotte in that car."

"Coincidences happen." Gage rubbed his jaw. "I'm not saying you're not right about your ex and her boyfriend being here last night. But if that's the case, who sent this letter from Utah?"

"Green River is less than three hours from here," Ryker said. "They could have driven there to mail the letter, then come back. They've probably seen the news reports about the FBI looking for them in Utah and figured this was a good way to keep them on the wrong track."

"And you're sure this is Kim's handwriting?" Gage asked.

"Yes," they both answered at once.

"I'll need to show this to the FBI," Gage said. "They're going to say it supports their theory."

"You'll give the information about the camp I found, too," Ryker said.

"I will. But they might insist on taking over the investigation."

"I don't care who's in charge, I just want somebody to find Charlotte," Wanda said.

Gage nodded. "That's what we all want." He took out an evidence bag and eased the letter inside, then put the envelope in a second bag. "Let us know if you get any more letters. And we'll contact the post office in Green River and see if they know anything about who mailed the letter, though likely it was dropped in a mailbox somewhere."

He left the room and Wanda dropped into a chair. "I can't stand this," she said.

Ryker rested a hand on her shoulder, but said nothing. She looked up at him, eyes red, her mascara running. "When you were a teenager and you told us Harper was pregnant, I was so upset. Not only were you too young to be a father, I thought I was too young to be a grandmother. But over the next few weeks, I grew used to the idea, and I even felt a little excited. Then Harper left and we didn't know where she was, and later we found out she had lost the baby..." She shook her head. "What I'm trying to say is that by the time you told us Kim was pregnant, I was in a completely different place. I was over the moon, and I hated that the two of you didn't live closer so I could be more involved. I don't know if I've ever been as happy as I was the first time I held Charlotte. As much as I love you and your sister, I was even happier about Charlotte. You know I was never that wild about Kim, but I was determined to love her because she gave me that beautiful granddaughter." She covered his hand with her own. "Having the two of you here, living in the house with us, has been the best thing I could have imagined. I know one day you'll probably move away. I hope you find someone who can make you happy and be the mother Charlotte needs." She gave a hiccupy laugh. "I have so many dreams. But you know that now, don't you? It's what parents do."

"I know," he said. He had found himself imagining what Charlotte might be as she grew up, what great things she might accomplish.

"But right now all I want is for her to be safe and home again with us," Wanda said.

"We're going to find her," Ryker said. "We're going to bring her home."