LITMIR.BIZ

      Two

      Claire felt those pale eyes boring into her like twin laser beams. When she had come to Houston, she hadn’t been sure Ben Slocum would help her. But then she saw his face as he looked at his son for the very first time, and she had believed nothing would stop him from finding the boy.

      “What other information can you give me?” Ben asked, shifting restlessly in his chair.

      “I left my briefcase in the car. I have copies of Laura’s file. She wouldn’t want me to show it to you, but’”

      “I don’t give a fuck what Laura would want. She kept my son from me. She should have come to me years ago. Now her silence has put him in danger. I need to know every damn thing the woman did since the day Sam was born.”

      Claire’s fingers tightened around the coffee mug. She wasn’t afraid of him’well, not exactly’but she didn’t doubt he was a dangerous man.

      “I don’t know everything. Just what’s gone on since she filed for financial assistance and I was assigned her case three years ago. And what I know as her friend.”

      “What about Bridger?”

      “I was able to get a copy of the police report. They looked into finding him. Came up with nothing.”

      “Why not?”

      “The police think the name Troy Bridger is an alias.”

      Ben leaned back in his chair. “You’re kidding me, right? You’re telling me the cops don’t have a damned thing on the guy who may have abducted my son?”

      “They don’t know who he really is, and they don’t know where he’s gone. They know his address before he left town because Laura knew where he moved after they broke up. I was able to give them the information. Laura also told me he worked as a crane operator for a big construction company, but the police talked to his supervisor and he said Troy quit a couple of weeks ago.”

      “What about fingerprints? There had to be some in his apartment.”

      “They didn’t find a match. I’m sorry. I wish I knew more, but I don’t.”

      “Why are you so sure Bridger has Sam?”

      “Troy drove a beat-up Chevy pickup. Sam’s foster parents said he came to the house to see Sam a couple of times. I talked to the neighbors. One of them saw his truck in the area the day Sam went missing.”

      “You got a plate number?”

      “No.”

      “Have the cops got a BOLO out on the guy?”

      “Yes. They’re looking for him as a person of interest, but so far they haven’t found any trace or him or Sam.”

      Tension rippled across those wide shoulders. “So there’s nothing under Bridger’s name, no driver’s license, no registration, no plate number. Nothing.”

      “The police say his driver’s license was a forgery. There’s no real proof Troy Bridger ever existed.”

      Ben raked a hand through his thick black hair. His now-cold coffee sat nearly untouched in front of him. “You think this guy Bridger took him, but the police and Sam’s foster parents think he ran away. Why would he do that?”

      She wished she didn’t have to tell him. She wished it weren’t true. “Sam was wildly unhappy in the Roberson house. I promised him he wouldn’t have to stay there forever. I tried very hard to get custody myself, but the judge thought Sam would be better off with a couple. I told Sam I was going to keep trying. If that didn’t work, I’d make sure he got moved to a family he liked.”

      “But Sam didn’t want to wait,” Ben guessed.

      “That’s right.” Just thinking about the betrayal she had seen in Sam’s eyes made her heart hurt. “He threatened to run away a couple of times, but I don’t think he really would have. He was just so impatient. You know how kids can be’or maybe you don’t remember.”

      He cast her a glance. “You don’t think I can remember that far back?”

      She smiled. “I know you’re only thirty-three. I just meant some people kind of block out their childhood.”

      “Well, I remember mine way too well.”

      She mulled that over, knew from Laura that he’d had a tough, lonely childhood. “Sam was unhappy. I think that’s the reason he left with Troy. Troy had known his mother. That was the connection. And Troy has this dog. Pepper. A black Labrador retriever. Sam’s crazy about that dog.”

      “I want to see those files, but we need to get on the road. In a missing-child case, time is crucial. You should have called me the day he disappeared. Hell, you should have called me two years ago when Laura told you my name.”

      Her chin inched up. She didn’t know Ben Slocum, only what Laura had told her about him and what she’d been able to dig up on the internet. “Maybe I should have. I guess that remains to be seen.”

      His jaw went hard. He looked as though he was fighting to stay in control. He released a slow breath. “I keep a bag packed. Old habit. I’ll grab it and we’re out of here. It’ll take a little longer to get through airport security, since I’m traveling with a weapon.”

      “A weapon? You’re taking a gun?”

      “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here. I’m not going empty-handed.”

      She didn’t know how she felt about that. He was ex-military, though. If anyone ought to know how to use a weapon, she supposed it would be Ben.

      He wasn’t gone five minutes, returning with a black canvas duffel slung over a heavily muscled shoulder. Ben put out a new batch of dry food for the cat, who had his own high-tech security cat door into the backyard, checked the auto-watering bowl, then went outside and drove his Denali into the garage. Then they headed out to her rental car for the trip to the airport.

      “You drive. On the way, I’ll go through the files.”

      She didn’t argue. She didn’t like his high-handedness, but she liked his take-action attitude. So far the police had come up with nothing. They believed the Robersons, believed Sam had run away.

      Claire didn’t believe it for a minute.

      As she drove toward the airport, Ben sat in the passenger seat poring over the files she had brought in the hope that if he decided to help her the information might be useful.

      “Laura Maryann Thompson,” he read. “Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, December fourteenth, nineteen eighty. It lists the schools she attended. Pittsburgh Community College is where we met.”

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