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“We’ve searched the creek,” Gabe said.
“Won’t hurt to look again.” As he did every day at the mine, Tim quietly organized the others and then jumped into his truck. “Me and the boys know this area like the back of our hands. We’ll find him, Boss.”
Gabe couldn’t bring himself to repeat the sheriff’s concern that A.J. wasn’t lost. He was stolen. He had to believe his son had simply toddled after a butterfly or a stray pup and gotten lost. The thought that someone might do harm to his child nearly broke him.
Dust swirled as trucks and cars and four-wheelers exited the driveway, each searcher going different directions.
Gabe tried not to think about the myriad dangers of this rugged country, dangers that had nothing to do with disgruntled humans. Within a mile radius, besides the deadly creek that had already claimed a small life, woods and mountains, old mining vents, abandoned railroad cars and wild animals waited to steal his child.
Across the yard, Brooke sat on her front porch step, head tilted to speak with the sheriff. She was crying again. Had she ever stopped? Pity and the need to protect rose up in Gabe’s chest. He wanted to go to her so badly, to hold and comfort and kiss away the tears. But after the harsh things he’d said, he couldn’t. His brain was too full. His emotions too raw. He needed everything he had not to lose control and shatter into a million pieces.
An hour passed. A long, agonizing hour while he paced the yard, the house, the neighborhood. He searched and then re-searched under beds and inside closets, behind the couch, in Brooke’s car, in her garage. People swarmed in and out with nothing to report.
“Sorry, Gabe,” they’d say, shamefaced as if they’d failed. They hadn’t failed him, but someone had.
Brooke isn’t to blame, his conscience said. She loves A.J. She’d give her life for his. You know she would.
He didn’t know what to think, what to do. A.J.’s mother had nearly killed him with her negligence. Now this.
He closed his eyes. Too distraught for rational prayer, he could only chant, “Bring him home, Lord. Bring him home.”
“Gabe.” At the touch of a soft hand, he looked up. Brooke.
“Gabe!” someone else shouted.
Spinning away from Brooke’s tragic expression, he spotted the sheriff coming toward him in a lope. Linden Diggers was smiling.
“Found him.”
“Oh, thank God.” Brooke slung her arms around Gabe. “They found him. They found him. Gabe, they found him.”
His knees threatened to buckle. A mass of emotion, afraid he’d fall apart, he stood like a rock. “Where? Is he all right?”
“Sounds to be. Kylie Jones found him over at her fiancé’s place. Little fella wandered up in the backyard.”
Brooke spun toward the sheriff. “He walked a quarter of a mile to Vincent’s house? I don’t believe it.”
Gabe didn’t take time to think. He ran to his vehicle.
Heart sinking, Brooke watched Gabe drive away. She understood his fear. She’d felt it, too, but he’d gone cold as ice, distancing himself as though he couldn’t bear to look at her. He blamed her; that much was clear. She blamed herself. She should never have left the child alone, even to answer the door.
Needing to see with her own eyes that A.J. was all right, she jumped in her car and roared down Bluebird Lane toward her cousin’s home. When she arrived, Gabe was there, long strides eating up the ground as he hurried toward Vincent’s porch. The sheriff cruised in right behind Brooke.
Kylie Jones came out of the house, carrying A.J. He was eating a red popsicle.
Brooke’s heart leaped with joy. He looked okay. He was safe. She hadn’t lost him forever, not like she’d lost Lucy.
“Thank you, Jesus,” she whispered as Gabe grabbed his son and hugged him close.
She ran to them, threw her arms around the pair and breathed in the living warmth of the child she’d come to love as her own and the man who held her world in the palm of his hand.
Gabe stiffened. A little piece of Brooke’s heart broke, but right now, the thrill of A.J.’s safe return overshadowed everything else.
“I love you, A.J. Brooke is sorry you got lost.”
