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Chapter14
Felicity
It played out along the roadside like a horrible movie in a locked theater. No fast-forward button. No exits. Just long, lingering shots without dialogue or score, except the whistle of the Texas wind and the whoosh of other vehicles as they sped by.
Even though Denny was the only one driving, the officers took all our licenses.
With their hands resting on their guns, they asked us, politely but in no uncertain terms, to step out of the car.
They asked Denny most of the questions. Did he have a gun in the vehicle? Did any of us have weapons on us? No. What business did he have in Hogan County? Personal. We were each frisked, our palms against the side of the truck and our legs spread, but not cuffed or read our rights.
It was humiliating. Every rubbernecker and lookie-loo driving by must have thought we were felons and lawbreakers, though we’d done nothing wrong. Rylan started crying halfway through my own pat-down, but the female officer running her hands down my thigh wouldn’t let me go to him. The male officer warned Xander and Denny against trying to do the same.
Hearing his desperate, infant pleas and not being able to do anything about it broke my heart. Most frustratingly of all, the officers wouldn’t tell us why they’d pulled us over and refused to let me go to my son.
Luckily, Denny put up a good fight for us. He was as charming with cops as he was with hotel front desk clerks. Though there was no winking or flirtation, he knew how to make them laugh. Within ten minutes, it was as if he and officers were old school buddies at a reunion. He navigated dealing with law enforcement with such ease and good humor, it seemed almost… well, criminal. No law-abiding citizen was so accustomed to dealing with cops.
Not that I could complain. Under the spell of Denny’s charms, he convinced the officers to let me tend to Rylan. I held him to my chest, rubbing his back firmly to coax a few burps out of him while Xander clenched his jaw and Denny continued to work his magic.
The confusion, as far as I could tell, seemed to be surrounding Rylan. The cops admitted that they recognized us from the news. With their blessing, Denny reached into the diaper bag and produced Rylan’s birth certificate. Xander was allowed to show them pictures from his phone: the one of me and the boys the day I gave birth, and one of all four of us on a picnic blanket at Morrow Manor, with Gena and Kingston bookending us on either side. We looked so happy there that seeing it now almost felt like losing the boys all over again. Gena was hugging me around the waist. Kingston and Xander had their arms around each other. Kingston still had both his legs.
They checked our information on the Amber Alert system, cross-referenced Rylan’s birth certificate with the names on our licensees, corroborated with the few pictures I had of myself with the boys, and compared Rylan’s face to the picture attached to the missing-person report. In the end, it was enough to convince the cops that Rylan was, indeed, one of our own missing sons. It was a start.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the end.
“We’re real sorry about this, ma’am,” the male officer informed me as the woman placed her hand on the back of Xander’s head and got him into the backseat of the squad car. Denny was already inside. “We’ve got a woman down at the station who claims these two and their companions held her hostage.”
I said nothing. Technically, that part of Sarah’s accusation was true.
“What with everything she said about your boy being false, there’s a good chance that this is nothing as well. Hopefully, this is all just a big misunderstanding.” He gave me a tight smile beneath his stiff, gray mustache, and patted my arm. I drew back at his touch, and he looked genuinely remorseful for putting his hand on me. But not remorseful enough to let Denny and Xander go. “If you’ll just follow us down to the station, we’ll get this sorted out.”
I was forced to watch helplessly as the cops got back into their car, then drove away with Xander and Denny.
Thankfully, the truck was an automatic. Xander had tried admirably to teach me how to drive stick back in high school, but after I nearly ruined his engine in the process, we’d both agreed that I’d cause less damage with a vehicle that didn’t need me to shift gears.
With Rylan settled in his car seat, I followed the cops back down the interstate, through Sharpe City, then west to a larger town called Hogan, where I parked outside the county jail. By some grace of God—or more likely as a result of Denny’s smooth-talking—the cops hadn’t booked Xander or Denny.
“We’ve got him back in the interrogation room now,” the male officer informed me. My knuckles around the handle of Rylan’s carrier were white. “Sarah Harper is in the one next door. They’ve all, ah… positively IDed each other, you could say.”
I could only guess what that had looked like. Xander had stayed quiet during his initial arrest, letting Denny do most of the talking. I was pretty sure it had nearly killed him.
Seeing Sarah again, knowing that she’d sicced the cops on us first chance she got—I couldn’t imagine he’d kept his cool for long.
“You’re not much of a talker, are you?” The officer rubbed the back of his neck. “Probably for the best. We’re not a big operation down here, you know. Not much in the way of funding or resources. This kidnapping stuff, especially involving such a high-profile case, and with shifters, no less… it’s a first for us, I’ll admit. Normally, this would be pretty he-said-she-said. We’d let the courts handle it. But if you don’t mind my saying… This Sarah character, it doesn’t look like there’s a scratch on her, and after talking to your friends, seems to me that she was the one in possession of your missing son.” He sighed, searching my eyes like he wanted to find sympathy toward him there. He wouldn’t. “Clusterfuck, ain’t it?”
“When can I see Xander and Denny?” I asked. “We have a flight to catch.”
“I’d cancel it, if you can.” The officer shrugged. What can you do? “Wi-Fi password’s on the front desk, and there’s coffee in the waiting room if you’re partial to that kind of thing.” His gaze drifted down to my breasts, which were aching and full of milk. I wanted to slap him, but I didn’t want to add assaulting an officer to our list of problems today. “We’ve got decaf, too. Anyway, I gotta make some calls. Hopefully, we can have this figured out in an hour or two.”
An hour or two? While our other son was still out there somewhere, in the clutches of God only knew who?
I wanted to slap everyone, I realized. I wanted to scream.
Instead, I got the Wi-Fi password and settled into one of the less-stained chairs in the waiting room.
I put Rylan to my breast and started setting about canceling our flight.
* * *
