the moment was that somehow the killer would get to her, or take another of the young women in the town he considered his own.
It was almost five when Cole came into the room, and instantly Amberly’s heart lifted at the sight of him. When had it happened? When had the mere sight of him caused butterflies in her stomach to dance happily? When had the sound of his voice made her feel so safe despite any danger that might lurk nearby?
“Hi,” he said to both her and Roger, although the warmth of his eyes lingered on her. “How are we doing?”
“My list is pathetic,” Amberly confessed as she shoved the legal pad toward Cole.
He picked it up and looked at it. “You really don’t make many enemies, do you?”
“Granny Nightsong always told me that my moccasins should never leave footprints of anger behind me,” she replied. “And I’ve tried to live my life with that in mind.”
“It would be a hell of a lot easier on all of us if you had some real enemies,” Roger replied with a rueful grin.
At that moment, Amberly’s cell phone rang. With a frown, she dug it out of her purse. She’d had few calls in the past week, and when she saw John’s number on the caller identification, her heart gave a little lurch of anxiety.
“John?” she said.
A low, deep moan filled the line and panic stabbed through her. “John, is that you?” She jumped up from the table, her heart pounding so fast she felt like she might throw up.
There was another moan and then silence.
“John! John!” she yelled, but there was no response, just the ongoing silence, which chilled her to the bone. “Something’s happened at John’s house,” she said to Cole as she hung up her phone. “We’ve got to get there right away. It sounded like he was hurt.”
“Call it in to the Kansas City police,” he instructed Roger and quickly gave him John’s address. Then within seconds, he and Amberly were out the door and on the highway with sirens blaring and lights swirling.
Amberly’s heart continued to rap a rhythm that was near heart-attack pace as she tried over and over again to call John back, but her calls kept going to his voice mail.
“Why doesn’t he answer? What could be wrong?” She heard the hysteria in her voice but had no control over it. She couldn’t even mention the question that pounded in her head. Where was Max? He should be there with John. So, why hadn’t Max picked up his father’s phone?
If something terrible had happened to John, then where in the name of God was Max? Everything faded away except the cell phone buttons she continued to punch and the fear that exploded in every molecule of her being.
She turned to Cole and saw his lips moving, but she couldn’t hear him. She was trapped in a void of terror where no sound could get in, where nothing mattered except getting to John’s as quickly as possible.
The drive from Mystic Lake to Kansas City seemed to take forever. With each mile, every minute that passed, Amberly’s emotions rose to greater heights, threatening the loss of complete control.
As they pulled onto the street where John lived, her heart nearly stopped beating as she saw several police cars and an ambulance in the driveway.
She was out of the car before Cole’s vehicle had come to a full stop. The dying grass rasped beneath her shoes as she raced across it toward the front door of the house. “John? Max?”
A police officer stopped her at the door. Holding back a sob of apprehension, she fumbled to show him her credentials. “I’m his ex-wife. Where is my son?”
She looked past the officer and saw John seated on the sofa. A couple of paramedics were working on the back of his head, and he looked dazed and half-conscious.
She shoved past the officer and fell to her knees in front of her ex-husband. “John…what happened? Where’s Max?”
He stared at her as if he’d never seen her before. “I just answered the door. He hit me in the head with something.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. He had on a ski mask.” John wobbled, and his eyes drifted shut.
“John! Where’s Max?” she asked urgently.
“We’ve got to get this man to the hospital,” one of the paramedics said, and at the same time, an officer pulled Amberly to her feet and away from John.
She turned to him. “My son. Do you know where my son