LITMIR.BIZ

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small fingers, a hand, the arm of the girl. He continued positioning himself until he came face-to-face with her.

      Little eyes, wide with terror, met his.

      Her lips were blue.

      She was alive, quaking with shock.

      She appeared to be five or six years old.

      Graham got closer, got his arm around her and peeled her from the rock. She was bleeding from a head wound. Graham worked their position around the rock to where he had more control, struggling to steady the girl and himself against the rock, praying it was not in vain.

      As he held her, her eyes locked on to his.

      He moved his mouth to her ear to offer her comfort.

      “You’re going to be all right,” he said. “I’m going to help you. Hang on. Just hang on.”

      She stared at him and her mouth began to move.

      He pressed his ear closer, straining to hear above the river’s roar, but he was uncertain what she was saying.

      “Don’t…daddy…don’t…please…”

      3

       Blue Rose Creek, California

      At that moment, some eighteen hundred miles south of the Faust River, Maggie Conlin stood before a newspaper building, reflecting on the five months since Jake had vanished with Logan.

      The day after it happened, the county had dispatched a deputy to check Maggie’s house for foul play before sending Maggie to Vic Thompson, a grumpy, overworked detective. He said Jake had ten days from the date of Maggie’s complaint to give the D. A. an address, a phone number and to begin custody proceedings. If that didn’t happen, the county would issue a warrant for Jake’s arrest for parental abduction. Maggie gave Thompson all their bank, credit card, phone, computer, school and medical records.

      He told her to get an attorney.

      Trisha Helm, the cheapest available lawyer Maggie could find, “first visit is free,” advised her to start divorce action and claim custody.

      “I don’t want a divorce. I need to find Jake and talk to him.”

      In that case, Trisha suggested Maggie hire a private detective and steered her to Lyle Billings, a P.I. at Farrow Investigations.

      Maggie gave Billings copies of all their personal records and a check for several hundred dollars. Two weeks later, he told her that Jake had not renewed his license in any U.S. state, Canadian province or territory, nor was Logan registered in any school system.

      “Assume he changed their names,” Billings said. “Creating a new identity is easier than most people think. It looks like your husband went underground.”

      The agency needed more money to continue searching.

      Maggie couldn’t afford it.

      There was just enough left in their savings for her to keep things going with the house for another three, maybe four months. Then she’d have to sell. She’d been cutting corners. She still had her bookstore job, but things were getting desperate.

      So Maggie held off paying the agency more money. She searched on her own, spending most nights on her computer. She contacted truckers’ groups and missing kids organizations, pleaded her case to newsletters and blogs. She scoured news sites for crashes involving rigs and boys Logan’s age.

      With each new tragedy Maggie’s stomach knotted.

      Maggie attended support groups. They told her to get the press interested in her struggle to find Jake and Logan. Every few days, then every week, she worked her list: the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register, the Riverside Press-Enterprise and nearly every TV and radio station in the southland.

      “Oh, yeah, we looked into it,” one apple-crunching producer told Maggie after she’d left three messages. “Our sources say that while it’s classified as a parental abduction, it’s more of a civil domestic thing. Sorry.”

      Every newsperson had stopped taking her calls, except Stacy Kurtz, the Star-Journal’s crime reporter.

      “I don’t think we’ve got a story yet, but please keep me posted,” she said each time Maggie called.

      At least Stacy would listen. Maggie had never met her but sometimes her picture ran with her articles. Stacy wore dark-framed glasses, hoop earrings and a smile that her job was slowly hardening. Daily reporting of the latest shooting, fire, drowning, car crash or variant urban tragedy was taking something from her. Some days, she looked older than she was.

      “I can’t guarantee we’ll do a story, but I’ll listen to your case as long as you promise to keep me posted on any developments.” Stacy’s to-the-point manner placed a premium on her time in a business ruled by deadlines.

      For Maggie, time was evaporating.

      What if she never found Logan? Never saw him again?

      Now, here she was standing before the Star-Journal, a paper that covered Blue Rose Creek from a forlorn one-story building on a four-lane boulevard.

      It sat between Sid’s Check Cashing and Fillipo’s Menswear, looking more like a 1960s strip-mall castaway than the kick-ass rag it once was. A palm tree drooped above the entrance. Weak breezes tried to stir a tattered U.S. flag atop the roof, where a rattling air conditioner bled rusty water down the building’s stucco walls.

      To locals, the Star-Journal was an eyesore in need of last rites.

      To Maggie, it was a last chance to find Logan, for, day by day, her hope faded like the flag over the Star-Journal. But she’d come here this morning, all the same, with nothing but a prayer.

      “May I help you?” a big woman in a print dress asked from her desk, which was the one closest to the counter. The other desks were nearby, situated in the classic newsroom layout. About a dozen cluttered desks crammed together. Most were unoccupied. At others, grim-faced people concentrated on their computer screens, or telephone conversations.

      The off-white walls were papered with maps, front pages, news photos and an assortment of headlines. A police scanner was squawking from one corner where three TVs were locked on news channels. At the far end, in a glass-walled office, a balding man with his tie loosened was arguing with a younger man who had a camera slung over his shoulder.

      “I’m here to see Stacy Kurtz,” said Maggie.

      “Do you have an appointment?”

      “No, but—”

      “Name?”

      “My name is Maggie Conlin.”

      “Maggie Conlin?” the big woman repeated before shooting a glance at the woman nearby with a phone wedged between her ear and shoulder.

      “No, that is absolutely wrong,” the woman said into the phone as she typed, glancing at Maggie at the counter. She held up her index finger, going back into her phone call. “No, it is absolutely not what your press guy told me at the scene. Good. Tell Detective Wychesski to call me on my cell. That’s right. Stacy Kurtz at the Star-Journal. If he doesn’t call, I’ll consider his silence as confirmation.”

      After typing for another moment Stacy Kurtz, who looked little like her picture, approached the counter.

      “Stace, this is Maggie Conlin,” the big woman said. “She doesn’t have an appointment but she wants to talk to you.”

      Stacy Kurtz extended her hand. “I’m sorry, your name’s familiar.”

      “My husband disappeared with my son several months ago.”

      “Right. A weird parental abduction, wasn’t it? Is there a development?”

      “No. My husband—” Maggie twisted the

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