Cowboy Undercover

Chance’s brow furled as his imagination suggested all sorts of reasons for the child to have lost track of his mother. None of them were good. “Charlie? Your mom and you don’t live here anymore, remember? You guys left. Do you know where you went?”

Soft sobs filled Chance’s ear. “That’s okay,” he crooned. He could picture the boy’s blond hair and blue eyes, freckles scattered over tearstained cheeks. “I’m trying to help you. When did you see Mommy last?”

“Yesterday,” Charlie managed to choke out.

“Then what happened?”

“I went to school on the big bus.”

“That’s great. What’s the name of your school?”

“Miss Potter’s kindergarten.”

Chance doubted that was the actual name of a school. “Do you know where it is?”

“On the little hill.”

“Do you remember the name of the hill?”

“No.”

“Do you remember the name of the town you and your mom live in or maybe which state it is?”

“I forget. I want my mommy.”

“Okay, we’re working on it. What happened at school yesterday?”

“I made a picture.”

This was like pulling teeth. “Charlie, who are you with now?”

“Daddy.”

The phone in the kitchen was the old-fashioned rotary type. Chance’s grip on the receiver tightened. He didn’t know much about Charlie’s father, Jeremy Block, except that he’d done something severe enough in Lily’s eyes that she’d run from him with their child in tow and hid out here until Block sent someone to abduct and kill her a few months before so he could reclaim his son. The man had been adamant he was working for Jeremy Block.

The night that went down, Lily left Hastings Ridge Ranch, Charlie in tow. Chance didn’t know where Block lived and he didn’t know what had happened in the weeks following Lily’s departure.

He hadn’t wanted to know. He’d avoided the topic like the plague. “Where is your dad right now?”

“Asleep.”

“Has he hurt you?”

“No.”

“Okay, that’s good. Can you tell me anything about where he lives?”

“In a house.”

“What city?”

“Bossy.”

“Could it be Boise?”

“I guess.”

Another thought jumped to the foreground of Chance’s mind. Lily would never willingly let her son go unless she had no choice and that meant almost anything from abduction to murder.

“When did you go with your dad, Charlie?”

“Mommy wasn’t at the bus stop,” Charlie said, talking fast now, his voice wavering as he apparently turned his head and compromised the signal on a cell phone. “A man said he knew where she was. He drove the wrong way and I was scared. I told him to stop but he frowned at me. I fell asleep and it got dark and then we were at Daddy’s house but I want Mommy and he says I can’t see her and—”

“Charlie!” A masculine voice boomed from Charlie’s end of the line. “What are you doing, boy? Is that my phone? Who did you call?”

“I want Mommy,” Charlie squeaked.

The man spoke into the phone. “Lily? Do you really think you’re ever going to see him again?”

“This isn’t Lily,” Chance said.

“Then who—”

“I’m a friend of Charlie’s. Are you Jeremy Block?”

“What’s it to you?”

“The boy sounds upset. What’s going on?”

“Nothing that concerns you,” Block said, and severed the connection.

The ranch phone didn’t have a caller identification screen so Chance dialed the code to find out the number of the last call, jotted it down and dialed it. The call was answered by Block’s terse message to leave a number but now Chance knew that Charlie was in Boise or a nearby community with the same area code.

Chance called a Hastings family friend on the police force next, Detective Robert Hendricks, who had a knack for sounding alert and on the job no matter when you yanked him from slumber. Chance told him about the call. “Give me the number,” Hendricks said.

“You’ve got to rescue the boy,” Chance said.

Hendricks was quiet for a beat or two. “Gerard told me you didn’t want to know anything about Lily Kirk after she left the ranch. Was your brother mistaken?”

“No. I didn’t want to know anything. I still don’t. But it’s different now that Charlie is in jeopardy.”

“Charlie isn’t in jeopardy,” Hendricks said slowly.

Chance straightened his shoulders. “What? How can you say that? Are you forgetting Jodie Brown and what he did to Kinsey thinking she was Lily?”

“Stop for a minute, Chance. Jeremy Block is a respected district attorney in Ada County down in Boise. Lily ran out on him and took their child with her. She has a documented history of being unstable. He filed for and won temporary custody in her absence. It sounds as if he finally got his kid back. As a father, I can understand how good that must feel. The fact is Lily is the loose cannon, not him.”

“But Jodie—”