LITMIR.BIZ

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“Even if I’m making your favorite treat?”

      “Are you putting caramel and pecans in them?” he bargained.

      “I might be convinced to do that, but you have to let me pick on you.”

      He’d rolled his eyes theatrically. “Oh, all right. But there’d better be lots of caramel.”

      “There will be. If you’d remember to give me your list when I go shopping, you wouldn’t have to pick up your own treats. China’s been here only two weeks and she remembers to tell me what she needs.”

      “I know. She’s obviously smarter than I am. I’m just laying in a few personal supplies. Brian and I are working on one of his boats tonight, and even though he has that little store now, he has mostly survival stuff for tourists and none of my favorites.”

      “Ha!” she teased. “Applaud him for his good taste.”

      Brian Girard, a newly discovered half brother, the progeny of Sawyer and Killian’s perfidious mother and the next-door neighbor, had upped the Abbott-sibling count to five. Sawyer, Killian and Campbell—their other half brother and full sibling of Abigail—had been doing their best to make him feel welcome. Brian had refused Killian’s invitation to move into Shepherd’s Knoll, choosing instead to live in an old house his paternal grandmother had left him. He’d recently bought an old general store and boat rental at the edge of Losthampton on Long Island, and was learning about life as a merchant after having spent most of his adulthood in the corporate world with Corbin Girard, his natural father.

      The fact that Corbin had hated and competed with the Abbotts and the Abbott Mills Corporation all his life was ignored by the brothers as they determined to make their own way in this new relationship.

      And since Brian had literally saved Sawyer’s life when one of Sawyer’s stunts for charity had gone wrong, Sawyer felt obliged to make even more of an effort than the others. Actually, Brian was hardworking and witty, and liking him didn’t require much effort. His father had disowned him for helping the Abbotts, and without the old man’s predatory presence among them, they were getting along very well.

      Sawyer suddenly remembered something he’d forgotten to put on the list but had thought about on the drive to town—the current Wall Street Journal. He’d promised Killian he’d keep an eye on their stock while he was gone.

      Sawyer pushed his cart through the narrow aisles of the quaint little store that hadn’t changed much in one hundred and fifty years because its nineteenth-century-charm appealed to the tourists. He stopped at the book and magazine rack in back. Someone had apparently just rummaged through the newspapers on the bottom, so the usually orderly stacks were all jumbled. Sawyer squatted behind the rack to look for the Journal.

      “Mister!” A high, urgent whisper made him look up into the dark eyes of a boy about eight. He was scrawny and flushed and appeared frightened. With him was a little girl slightly younger, who had the same dark eyes and tumbled dark hair. She, too, looked scared. Their hands and faces were dirty.

      “What is it?” Sawyer asked, putting a hand to the boy’s shoulder.

      “Can you help us?” the boy asked, his big eyes pleading.

      Sawyer noted the boy’s anxious glance around the book rack.

      “With what? What’s the matter?”

      “We’ve been kidnapped!” the boy said, ducking. “We need you to help us!”

      Sawyer stared at him. “What? Kidnapped by whom?”

      The little girl nodded and pointed around the rack to a woman pushing a cart through the produce section. The woman wore a white shirt and denim pedal pushers and her dark hair was caught in a ponytail. She stopped to thump a watermelon.

      Sawyer stepped back behind the rack and turned to the little girl, whose lip was trembling. “She took us from our mom in Florida!” she said.

      “When?” he asked. That was an irrelevant question under the circumstances, he realized, but he was having trouble believing this was happening to him.

      “Three days ago,” the boy replied. “We haven’t had much to eat. And she hid us in the back of the car under a blanket all the way from Florida.”

      Sawyer peered out again and saw that the woman, though quite pretty, did seem drawn and tired, as though she had been driving for days. Suddenly, she looked up and around her, and the impatience and annoyance on her face were clear. “Eddie!” she called. “Emma!”

      Sawyer leaned out of sight again, took the cell phone out of his pocket and dialed 911. A glance around the rack while he waited for a response told him the woman was headed this way. He caught the little girl by the hand and gestured for the boy to follow.

      Emergency picked up and Sawyer explained the situation as he hustled the children across the market to the deli. He put the children behind the meat case and planted himself in the narrow opening between it and a case filled with salads while he finished his call. He told the dispatcher where they were, gave her a physical description of the woman, and rattled off his name and cell phone number. She promised officers would be there within minutes.

      He turned off his phone and pocketed it, hearing the woman calling the children. She sounded as though she was going up one aisle and down the other. By the time she reached the deli, she was looking pretty desperate. He wasn’t surprised. She was being deprived of potential ransom money or the fulfillment of some sick need to mother children, anyone’s children.

      Kidnap was not just an ugly headline to him but a stark reality, an event that had changed his life forever, and he hated to think of another family enduring such a horrible thing. Well, at least this time the children would be returned and the family wouldn’t be left to wonder for their entire lifetimes if the child was alive or dead, if she was suffering or terrified.

      “Hey!” the boy asked softly from behind the case. “You’re that guy that does the stunts, aren’t ya?”

      Sawyer nodded and put a finger to his lips.

      “Have you got kids?” the little girl whispered loudly.

      As Sawyer turned to quiet her, he heard the boy answer, “Of course he doesn’t, stupid! He isn’t even married!”

      “Mom’s not married and she’s got us!” the girl replied in a “so there!” tone.

      “Shh!” Sawyer hushed them as he saw the woman come down the aisle, still calling their names.

      He felt belligerent as the woman pointed her cart toward him. To tell her what he thought of her would have been satisfying, but that might make her run before the police arrived. And he wanted her put behind bars before she did this to someone else’s children.

      “Excuse me,” the woman said courteously, apologetically. “Have you seen two little children—a boy and a girl, around this height?” She held a hand, palm down, about waist high, then a little higher. “Big dark eyes, lots of hair, look a lot like me?”

      He was silently applauding her performance as the worried mother when he noticed that the children did look a lot like her. Her eyes were also large and dark, and though her hair was more auburn than brown, it was thick like theirs. The boy had a dimple in his right cheek and so did she.

      A horrible possibility began to form in his mind.

      But natural mothers were always stealing their children from court-appointed guardians, he reminded himself. Still, the children would know she was their mother. Or would they?

      “I don’t understand it,” she said anxiously. Mild concern was turning to serious fear. “It isn’t like them to—”

      Before she could finish that sentence, Sawyer saw two policemen coming down the aisle, and he beckoned to them.

      She hesitated, turning to see whom he was signaling. Her eyes widened at the sight of the policemen, then she turned back to him in confused surprise.

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