Little White Lies

I believe that. In the meantime, we have to trust everyone who’s working on the case, and we have to take care of each other. We need you.”

“But-”

“I need you, too. I’m hurting just like you, but we can’t stop living, eating and breathing. Chase and Sophie would want us to keep hunting, not sit idle.”

“You don’t know how I’m hurting.” Lily’s tone bled with pain and suffering.

“I’ve tried to tell you you’re wrong, but I know that’s subjective.” Charley hugged the photos to her chest and took a deep breath. “So far, though, you’ve harbored the belief that Chase must be in the same position as you once were. We didn’t abandon him, Lil. This is totally different.”

“It hurts too much.” Lily turned back into her blankets, snuggled low and pulled them up to her face.

“I know, sweetie, but today is not an option. Be ready in an hour.”

Charley left Lily to her thoughts and returned to her own room, one last photo of Chase in her hand. She moved to her balcony, mug in hand, and leaned over the rail. She’d taken the photo from the spot where she stood at that moment. Chase and James had waved to her from the ground two stories below as they worked to build a fire, and they’d eaten s’mores until they’d all thought they’d hurl.

She chuckled at the memory as tears formed again.

Instead of Chase and James in her line of vision, squirrels ran up and down trees, jumping from one branch to another in play. Birds landed on leaf-tipped extensions and sang their springtime tunes. Lily’s door to the outside world had been closed; she would blame herself whether she had anything to do with Chase’s kidnapping or not.

Charley needed hers open to keep herself sane. She stared at Chase’s smiling face. “I will find you if it’s the last thing I do, baby.”

She fisted her hand around her mug, bumped the edge of the rail. If any of them had been home, it wouldn’t have happened. If they’d added double security or locks or had a dog. If other countries didn’t vie for her as an operative for them.

Her tears dried up as anger burned within.

If they hadn’t gone to Montreal to break up a child laundering ring. She shivered at the thought of Chase as a target.

“‘If onlys’ don’t get you anywhere,” Charley said into the breeze tickling the hair against her neck.

A bird sang in harmony with a second and a third. The sounds grew until she almost missed the doorbell.

It chimed three more times before she made it to the landing of the stairs. Charley sucked in air as if she’d held her breath throughout the entire walk, and she thought through who of the press might want another question answered, which group of gawkers would wait for her flustered response to questions, or her ‘no comment’. ‘The Kidnapping of Turner Point’ headlines gave her family far too much time in the spotlight over the last forty-eight hours.

Charley steeled herself as she gripped the doorknob. “Smile and say thank you,” she said to herself. She pulled open the front door.

Sophie’s body laying across the stoop.

Charley rushed to her. “Sophie!”

Sophie’s head lolled from one side to the other as Charley checked her pulse and tried to wake her. Sophie stirred, mumbled something incoherent in a drug-induced slur.

A call to James followed the call to 9-1-1. “Come home, quick! Someone left Sophie on the front porch!”

He relayed the information to Cael at nearly the same pace. “We’ll be home in fifteen. Go with her. I’ll call Detective Bland.”

“Okay.”

Charley checked over Sophie’s torn clothes, through her pockets and over her body for obvious problems but found none. As Charley’s hands ran over Sophie’s shoulders again, it slid across paper peeking out from within her shirt pocket. Charley tucked it in her own, let herself fall to the porch floor, and placed Sophie’s head in her lap as the sounds of sirens burst through the crisp clean air and thoughts of her missing boy haunted her.

***

Two more days and countless tests later, with assurance by everyone in her family, Sophie’s doctor’s released her into Charley’s care. Sophie admitted to nothing, remembered little, and had no recollection of Chase being with her.

After repeated questions, she continued to insist the kidnappers had taken only her, but with the concussion, and Chase still unaccounted for, Charley discounted every one of Sophie’s statements. Detective Bland had questioned her until she’d fallen asleep in the middle of the activity and her doctors kicked him out.

Charley sighed as she waited in the early evening sun for Sophie and her wheelchair. The weight of the entire situation-all their anxiety, hopes and worries-rested on Charley’s shoulders again. She paced the length of the car, back and forth, and dug her hands in her pockets.

The note Sophie’d had in her shirt crumpled under Charley’s hand. She slid the pink paper from the depths of her pocket, flipped it over and back.

What if it’s about Chase?

Charley’s curiosity overrode the value she placed on privacy. She unfolded the paper in a rush, held it up so the writing came through clear. Sophie’s own handwriting scrawled across the page as if she’d tried to write while drunk.

Through a series of up-and-down letters placed at jagged intervals on the paper, Charley made out the words: ‘Charley Randall’ followed by a phone number.

They want me.

She stuffed the note back in her pocket as James wheeled Sophie out to the car. She gave him one furtive glance which he acknowledged with a nod. As she regained her composure, she pulled her phone out and left James to help Sophie into the car. The line rang three times before it reached its destination.

“Hello?” A happy voice answered.

“This is Charley.”

“Oh no. No, no, no, no. I am not getting in the middle.”

“Please. I need your help.” She tried to keep her voice light.

“You need to make a different call.”

“It’s not about him. Someone took Chase. Sophie’s back, but they want me. I need your help. I need you.”

He sighed. “Dammit. Where are you?”

“I’ll be home in about twenty minutes. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“I got a stop to make first,” he said. “No phone calls, activities or-whatever-without me.”

“See you soon, Stuart.”

15

Eight hours after he’d begun the day, Wyatt found himself face to face with his computer screen in yet another search for information on Charley. Despite his intentions otherwise, he’d made a few calls and run through a number of red-taped requests that yielded no new information on the missing kid, though he learned the nanny, one Sophie Condes, had been found.

Two hours and what seemed like a hundred phone calls later, Sheila interrupted him. “Wyatt?”

“Yes?” He seethed through clenched teeth, lost in ten levels of security-clearance requests that got him nowhere.

Why do I care about this one case? Ah, yes. Mom. He ran a hand through his hair.

“You have a visit-”

“Oh for the love of god!” Wyatt’s bellow accompanied a pound on his desk. Why do people keep