Home to Stay

  Ten minutes after she’d received the call from Dispatch, she and Darwin were in her SDPD-issue Ford Explorer heading to Cuyamaca Park. The adrenaline was pumping, a good thing, since it was blocking out the dread.

  She could do this. She would do this.

  A child’s life depended on it.

  As she merged onto I-5 San Diego Freeway South, a moment of guilt had her wondering if she should’ve told her captain about Charlie. Would that have made a difference? Would it have kept Logan from assigning her to search and rescue? It was too late for second-guessing. She’d simply have to do the best she could.

  When her phone rang, she answered it.

  “Shannon, it’s Logan.”

  Speak of the devil. “I’m on my way,” she assured her captain.

  “Good. I knew you would be. I wanted to tell you that you’re up for this. You’re skilled and so is Darwin. Two of the best rookies I’ve worked with.”

  She could hear the sincerity in his voice. The pep talk bolstered her confidence. “Thanks, Jagger,” she said, calling Logan by his alias. “I appreciate your belief in me.”

  “It’s earned. Give me an update when you have something.”

  “Roger that.”

  She focused on her driving and soon she was passing through the entrance to the park. She checked in at the ranger station and was escorted to the Evanses’ campground.

  Her stomach tensed as the site came into view.

  A tall, rangy man, dressed in plaid shorts, a white T-shirt and wearing black-and-white high-top running shoes, sat at a picnic table. He had his elbows on his knees and his head cradled in his hands. She couldn’t see his face, but his dark brown hair was standing on end. His arms and legs were scraped and bleeding in places, and his T-shirt had a long tear on one side.

  A woman, roughly the same age and with nearly the same color hair, sat huddled against him, an arm around his shoulders. Shannon wondered, as she climbed out of her SUV and released Darwin, why his wife—assuming that was who the woman was—seemed to be holding up much better than the man.

  Shannon turned her attention to the elderly couple on the other side of the table. The man was holding the woman, who was crying silently. Obviously the grandparents. Shannon waved to a ranger when he noticed her arrival. He walked briskly toward her and quickly briefed her on the situation. They’d been searching for over an hour, and had found no trace of the boy.

  Shannon knew—and not just because of her police training—that wasn’t good news.

  The ranger pointed out the boy’s father and signaled for her to follow him.

  “Mr. Evans?” Shannon said softly when they’d reached the picnic table. The woman looked up but the man didn’t. “Mr. Evans,” she repeated, more loudly this time.

  When his head jerked up, his forest green eyes—an unusual blend of green and brown—bored into hers. Their intensity triggered an involuntary urge to step back.

  He had a strong jaw, straight nose. Good features. He might’ve been attractive under normal circumstances. But right now, his skin was splotchy, his hair even more disheveled from this angle, his eyes red-rimmed and his lips compressed so firmly they were edged with white. He had an angry scratch on his left cheek, just below his eye. The desperation she saw in his eyes evoked memories of Charlie and nearly destroyed her composure.

  Everyone’s attention was now on her and she had to maintain control.

  “Mr. Evans, I’m Officer Shannon Clemens with the San Diego Police Department. I’m here to help find Dylan.” She had to give him hope. She could see he was barely hanging on. “We’ll locate him,” she promised. She prayed they could.

  Because it was too disconcerting to keep looking into his tormented eyes, she shifted her gaze to the woman. “Mrs. Evans, your son—”

  “It’s Ms.,” the woman corrected her. “I’m Meghan. Dylan’s aunt.”

  “Okay.” Uncertainty formed a hard, tight knot in her stomach. She wished Cal hadn’t taken this particular week off—and that her first solo search and rescue assignment didn’t involve a boy nearly the same age as Charlie had been...

  Shannon forced herself to stay focused, stay sharp. “Darwin.” She pointed to her dog. “He’s trained in search and rescue. Darwin and I will do everything we can to find Dylan. Before we start, I need your help.”

  The father straightened. “Of course. Whatever you need.”

  She took a deep breath to brace herself. “I require something that’s Dylan’s and has his scent on it, to get Darwin familiar with it. The more recent, the better.”

  He lurched to his feet. “Yeah. Sure. His sleeping bag. He was in it before he disappeared.”

  “Good, but I also need something smaller. Something I can take with me to refresh Darwin’s memory, if necessary. An article of clothing Dylan slept in perhaps?”

  He clenched his hands, the knuckles turning white. “He... He’s wearing the clothes he slept in.”

  Twelve years later, she still remembered that all-consuming, devastating feeling of having a loved one go missing. Maybe it was wrong, but Shannon touched his arm. “Let’s see what there is in the tent that we can use,” she said gently.

  She settled on a pair of socks that had been stuffed into Dylan’s sneakers. When the father said that was the only pair of shoes he’d brought for Dylan, she made a mental note to consider how far the boy could’ve wandered without shoes.

  To be on the safe side, Shannon also took the T-shirt Dylan had worn the evening before and a picture the father had in his wallet.

  Again she laid an encouraging hand on his arm. “I promise we’ll do everything we can to find your son.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  SHANNON CLIPPED A leash to Darwin’s collar. She let the dog smell both articles of clothing before storing them in her pouch, and instructed him to “find.”

  Based on the information she’d been given, she estimated that Dylan had been missing for about three hours. That was a considerable time for a young boy to be alone in a forest.

  But not so long that Darwin couldn’t pick up his trail. The dog’s behavior confirmed Shannon’s assessment of the elapsed time. The boy’s scent had dissipated sufficiently that Darwin was sniffing the air rather than the ground. They entered the forest at a run. Shannon said silent thanks for the hours she spent at the gym. Not wanting to break Darwin’s concentration, she matched her speed to his.

  She dodged branches, leaped over fallen logs and, when she couldn’t avoid it, crashed through undergrowth to keep up with him. Once or twice when Darwin slowed, she pulled Dylan’s picture out of her pocket. Each time she looked at the image of the smiling little boy, she thought of Charlie. Her remorse over Charlie’s death, and the possibility that she might not be able to find and return Dylan safely to his father caused a constriction in her chest that made it hard to inhale.

  Distracted, she nearly tripped over Darwin when he paused at a fork in the trail. He turned in circles, uncertain which way to go. Shannon let him scent Dylan’s clothing again. With a short bark, he was off once more.

  Shannon was breathless by the time they reached a narrow gravel lane that appeared to be a service road. Darwin stopped and looked to Shannon for direction. When she held out the sock for him and urged him to “find,” he started down the road, but Shannon called him back.

  It seemed that Darwin had lost the trail and was going to run down the road, probably because it was the path of least resistance.

  She placed her hands on her knees and leaned forward to catch her breath.

  She’d failed Charlie and now she was failing Dylan, too. The thought of that turned the constriction into a roiling, greasy mess in her gut.

  No longer able to contain it, she bent over the bushes and lost the contents of her stomach.

  Feeling steadier,
she forced herself to concentrate on her task. A little boy’s life depended on it, and she wouldn’t risk his life by not doing her job to the best of her ability.

  Shannon tried one more time with Darwin, but he kept wanting to run down the road. Dylan couldn’t have walked down that road barefoot. That thought had her considering the good two miles that she and Darwin had run. How likely was it that a four-year-old could’ve walked that far, and without shoes?

  Had she made a mistake? Had Darwin? Had they gone the wrong way at the fork in the trail?

  The park rangers had dogs and handlers searching, too. If she and Darwin couldn’t find the boy, maybe one of them would. But she knew the rangers’ dogs were multipurpose, while she and Darwin specialized in searches. Because of that, they were considered Dylan’s best chance.

  Dejected, Shannon led Darwin back to the campsite at a brisk jog. Along the way, she called Logan and provided him with an update. He said he was en route and would see her at the site.

  It was hard telling her boss that she’d failed. She didn’t know how she was going to break the news to the boy’s father. How could she confess to him that her best hadn’t been good enough?

  She hadn’t been able to find his son.

  The pain of losing Charlie all those years ago seemed as intense at that moment as it had back then. She remembered the police officer who’d broken the news to her parents that he’d found her little brother. But by then it had been too late.

  She remembered how it had felt not to know if Charlie was dead or alive...and if he was alive, to worry about him suffering. The officer back then had brought closure for Shannon and her parents. Not the way they’d hoped, but it was closure nonetheless.

  There would be no closure for Sawyer Evans, at least not that morning.

  The bile had left a bitter taste in her mouth. She popped a breath mint as she neared the campsite. It would be challenging not to let Dylan’s father see her emotions when she spoke with him; he didn’t need to know she’d lost her breakfast.

  She saw him standing at the edge of the small lake, his back to her, legs spread, hands in the pockets of his shorts. A quick scan of the area told her that he was alone. She assumed his family was inside one of the tents. A ranger’s pickup was parked by the roadway, the ranger sitting behind the wheel and talking on his phone.

  She gave Darwin the hand signal to “down-stay” next to her Explorer, poured some water in his bowl and walked quietly toward the father.

  “Mr. Evans?”

  His head snapped around, and she nearly cringed at the desperate hope she saw in his features and his bloodshot eyes. As the hope transformed into desolation, she understood that he already knew the outcome, because she’d returned without Dylan. His whole body sagged as if the air had been sucked out of him, and he looked so bereft, she wanted to wrap her arms around him. Instead, she shoved her hands in her own pockets, her stance mirroring his.

  “I’m sorry. We didn’t find Dylan.”

  Another emotion flitted across his face. Uncertainty? Relief that at least they hadn’t found him dead?

  She realized he might have feared the worst, but... She couldn’t even finish the thought. “We followed his trail to a service road,” she explained. “Without shoes, I don’t think he’d have walked along a gravel road...”

  “Then where did he go?”

  Shannon shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know.”

  “The rangers haven’t found him either.” He gestured toward the pickup. “They said you and your dog would find Dylan. You said it, too.”

  He took a step toward her. It was the look in his eyes that told her his temper was brewing. That was okay with her. Anger was better than misery, if it helped pull him out of the depths of despair.

  “What now? You’re not giving up, are you?”

  “No...of course not.”

  She heard a vehicle approach and glanced back. With mixed relief and trepidation, she watched Logan bring his Explorer to a stop next to hers. “Ah, excuse me a minute,” she said. “That’s the captain of our unit.”

  Logan climbed out, took one look at Shannon as she strode over to him and guided her to the other side of his vehicle, where they had some privacy. “Is there a new development?” he asked in a hushed whisper.

  “No, um, I told you on the phone...” She choked back a sob, and angled away so she wouldn’t embarrass herself further by crying.

  She felt his hand on her shoulder. “Shannon, talk to me.”

  “I...I...”

  He turned her to face him.

  When tears filled her eyes and threatened to overflow, she struggled to suppress them. She was not a crier as a rule, and she would not cry in front of her boss—or worse, the father of the missing boy.

  “I know this isn’t easy. Shannon... I never want you not to care, but now’s not the time to fall apart. We don’t know that the boy’s come to any harm.”

  “It’s not just the boy.”

  At Logan’s raised eyebrows, she took a deep breath. “When I was fourteen, my brother died. Charlie... He’d wandered into a forest. When the police found him, it was too late.”

  Logan took a step back. “Why didn’t you consider that relevant information to share with me?” he demanded.

  Shannon could see he was annoyed, and with good reason, she thought.

  “If not when we were discussing your specialization, then you should’ve told me when we spoke on your way here.”

  Shannon didn’t know what to say. Logan was right. Of course, he was right. She’d failed him. She’d failed Sawyer Evans. She’d failed Dylan. And if it came down to it...she’d failed herself, too.

  She wouldn’t be surprised if her captain decided to fire her over this. He expected truth and integrity from all his officers. She raised her hands. Dropped them again.

  Logan let out an aggravated breath and ran a hand over the top of his head. “I’m sorry about your brother. I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I lost Becca,” he said, referring to his younger sister. “But you should’ve confided in me.”

  Shannon’s mouth fell open, but before she could formulate any words, he continued. “We’ll talk about it later,” he said firmly. “Right now, our focus is on finding Dylan Evans.”

  When Shannon’s eyes misted again, he looked at her sternly. “Shannon, if you can’t do this, say so, and I’ll have someone else work with Darwin. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but the missing boy is our priority.”

  Shannon forced thoughts of Charlie to the back of her mind and nodded. “I can do it.”

  Logan watched her for a moment, then nodded, too. “Okay. I brought Scout with me,” he said as he walked to the back of his SUV and let Cal Palmer’s search-and-rescue dog out of the back. “I don’t doubt Darwin...or you, but two dogs are better than one in this case. The park has a lot of ground to cover. Not that I think a four-year-old could’ve gotten far from the camp.”

  She’d had the same thought earlier when she and Darwin had reached the service road. But if Dylan had been snatched by a mountain lion or a coyote... No. She’d stay positive. If she couldn’t, how was Dylan’s father supposed to?

  She called Darwin over as Logan clipped a leash to Scout’s collar. “Let’s move and you can fill me in on the details as we go.”

  She glanced over to where the father had taken a seat at a picnic table, his head in his hands again. His sister and parents had emerged from their tents and were clustered nearby, but she got the sense that he wasn’t aware of their presence, isolated in his own world of grief and anxiety.

  “Sure. Just give me a minute, please.”

  Shannon handed Darwin’s leash to Logan. She jogged to the picnic table and sat down next to Sawyer. “Mr. Evans...” She waited until he looked up at her with tortured eyes. The tightne
ss in her chest was immediate and acute, but she didn’t flinch or avert her gaze. “We’re not giving up on finding Dylan. You have my word.”

  “You said before...that you’d bring him back.”

  His anguished comment intensified Shannon’s sense of failure.

  Before she could respond, he held out a shaky hand and took hers. “I’m sorry. That was unwarranted. I know you’re doing your best. Please find him.”

  “The captain of our unit brought another search-and-rescue dog with him. We’ll go now.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  She released his hand and rose.

  Rejoining Logan, they gave both dogs Dylan’s scent and let them lead the way into the forest.

  “This is the same trail Darwin and I took earlier,” Shannon confirmed a few minutes later.

  Logan nodded but kept his eyes on Scout. If the dog lost the scent or picked up any conflicting smells, she knew Logan didn’t want to miss it.

  Because of that, Logan signaled to her when Scout paused at a clump of elderberry. They both crouched down to investigate. There was a small damp patch of soil at the base of a bush. Logan bent lower. “Urine,” he said. “I’m betting Dylan relieved himself here.”

  She looked around. “Yeah. Darwin and I stopped here, too. I missed the urine,” she said apologetically.

  “The important thing is that we’re on the right trail,” he assured her as he placed a marker by the spot. “Let’s keep going.”

  The next time they stopped was at the end of the service road where Shannon had abandoned the search. The dogs were about to bolt down the drive when Logan ordered them back.

  Shannon shook her head in frustration. “The boy couldn’t have walked there. He wasn’t wearing shoes. I don’t even know how he could’ve gotten this far, but he certainly didn’t walk across the gravel in bare feet.”