All He Ever Wanted Read online

  “But—”

  “I’ve already told Todd Gilmore to go over to my place in case Erik shows,” he interrupted. “The Gilmores live next door to me.” Todd was the star center on the team. He was also one of the more reliable students at Thunder Canyon High School where Cam taught math and coached the men’s athletic teams—football, basketball and baseball, depending on the season.

  The information didn’t seem to please Faith Taylor any, though. She still looked at him with something not quite veiled in her expression.

  Judgment.

  Well, nobody could judge Cam more harshly than he judged himself and he wasn’t going to stand there—useless—on that cold sidewalk any longer. “I appreciate whatever help you can give.” He pushed out the words, meaning them. He just didn’t like having to mean them.

  Asking for—or accepting—help from others didn’t sit comfortably on his shoulders.

  But when it came to Erik, Cam would do whatever it took.

  Faith shoved her gloved hands in her pockets and watched Cameron Stevenson turn on his booted heel. In moments, his tall body seemed swallowed by the swirling, snowy shadows filling the darkened town square. There was no point in trying to call him back. Or to ask him to wait.

  The truth was, Erik Stevenson probably would be located quickly enough—right here in this old section of Thunder Canyon—now that folks knew to keep an eye out for the boy. It was a far more likely scenario than that the child had met with any foul play.

  Even though Thunder Canyon possessed a population of ten thousand, the crime rate was so low it was nearly nonexistent.

  She chewed the inside of her lip. Closed her eyes for a moment when she heard Cameron Stevenson’s deep voice calling his son’s name.

  If she were lucky enough to have a son, she wouldn’t be so careless as to lose sight of him.

  And that was a thought that wouldn’t lead anywhere but to depression. So she opened her eyes, dashing snowflakes away from her eyelashes, and headed back to her SUV, which she’d left double-parked in front of the brightly lit town hall.

  She climbed in and drove as quickly as the weather permitted back to her office at the fire station. She’d make yet another attempt at raising another member of the SAR team, but she had no plans to sit on her thumbs if she couldn’t. There were only six of them on the team, and they covered the entire county. It was only on rare occasions that they were all called in to one case at one time.

  Erik Stevenson probably would be located safe and sound somewhere nearby. And she’d be one of the people out looking for him, until he was home again with his father.

  And maybe next time, Cameron Stevenson would keep his thick-lashed brooding brown eyes more clearly focused on his innocent little boy.

  When she reached the public service building, a big brick complex that housed both the Thunder Canyon police and fire departments, she parked in her usual spot and hurried inside, grateful to get out of the bitter wind.

  She didn’t have an office assigned for her use in the portion of the building used by the fire department, but had a serviceable metal desk, a few filing cabinets and a computer, all situated off to one side of the open office area. She yanked off her coat and sat down at her desk, then dialed her co-workers’ numbers with one hand and punched up her computer with the other.

  A grainy image of young Erik Stevenson immediately came up and for a moment she sat there, looking into his impossibly young face.

  He looked like a miniature version of his dad, right down to the squarely cut jaw, dark auburn hair and deep brown eyes. For a moment, she wondered if Cameron would have the same cowlick that Erik possessed if his hair weren’t cut so conservatively short.

  “Hey there, Blondie.” Derek Winters, one of the members of Fire’s C Company and the husband of her best friend, Tanya, tugged at the end of her ponytail and sat on the corner of her desk. “Any news on the Stevenson kid?”

  “Not yet.”

  “He’s a cute one.” He jerked his chin toward the small television that sat atop one of the tall filing cabinets across the room. “His picture’s been all over the news for the past thirty minutes.”

  “Good.” She gave up on the phone and quickly typed out a report and posted it to the county system where the rest of her team could access the information. “The more exposure, the better.”

  “Well, talking about exposure—” Derek’s face looked serious “—the weather service has issued a severe weather alert for the next seven hours. They’re expecting road closures all the way to Bozeman.”

  Dismay settled cold and heavy inside her. “The father said Erik has his parka and gloves with him.” Which would be sufficient under normal circumstances. She propped her elbows on her desk and pressed her chin to her linked fingers, sternly marshalling her thoughts. “I’ve heard that a lot of people think this boy is pretty mischievous.” She looked up at Derek. “What was Toby like when he was seven?” Her honorary nephew was now twelve.

  Derek’s lips curled. “Hell on wheels one minute. Too angelic for belief the next.” He shook his head. “If I were in Cam Stevenson’s position right now, I’d be ready to rip apart the whole world until I knew my kid was safe.”

  Which pretty much described Faith’s impression of Cameron Stevenson’s state of mind.

  She rose and grabbed her coat again. She had spare gloves and scarves in her truck. She checked the batteries in her flashlight and took a freshly charged radio from the row of them on the rear counter. “Cam spent half the evening at the reception tonight surrounded by women.” She wasn’t sure what made her admit the observation. It wasn’t as if she’d sat at the table alongside Tanya watching the man the entire while.

  Derek was grinning. “Poor guy. We can’t all be beautiful like me. And it doesn’t mean that he wasn’t watching his kid properly,” he added more seriously.

  Faith couldn’t make a call on that particular point, no matter which way she instinctively leaned. All she knew was that the few times she’d seen Cameron Stevenson since she’d returned to Thunder Canyon last year, he’d almost always had a bevy of females flocking around him. Didn’t matter if it was at a town council meeting, where he often posed incredibly pointed questions to the council members, or at The Hitching Post for hamburgers and shakes following a Friday night high school ball game.

  She could understand why the man wouldn’t take a child to a council meeting. But she hadn’t yet seen Erik in The Hitching Post following one of the games.

  Maybe Cameron Stevenson did watch his son properly.

  And maybe he didn’t.

  She’d barely seen the boy amid the mad crush attending Katie and Justin’s wedding.

  “I’m going out. The rest of the search is concentrated around Old Town. It’s unlikely that he would have gone so far, but I told Romano that I’d check out White Water Drive and the houses down that way. Then I’ll work my way around the edge of town and up Thunder Canyon Road.”

  “You think he could have headed out to the ice rink?”

  She shook her head. “A unit already checked it out. He wasn’t there. And he hasn’t been seen on Lazy-D property, either.” The ranch owned by the prosperous Douglas family bordered the entire western side of town.

  She waved the radio in her hand and headed out the door. The snow was steady. Her SUV was already coated in white. She swiped her arm across the windshield as far as she could reach and then climbed inside. The heater blasted warm and comforting almost immediately as she backed out of her space and drove slowly through the town where she’d been born and raised. She hoped to heaven that Erik was somewhere warm.

  As she drove, she could see the steady track of Thunder Canyon police vehicles moving carefully up and down the streets.

  Wherever Erik Stevenson had gotten to, they would find him.

  She refused to even consider the alternative.

  She drove back up Main Street, past the town square and The Hall. When she reached White Water Drive, she turned
south. Drove past the hospital, where her brother Chris was probably still on duty in the E.R.

  The farther out she went, the heavier the snow seemed to fall, until her SUV was virtually crawling. She’d flipped on both her spotlights, but the powerful beams went only so far through the wall of white. When she reached the last of the houses, a little past the Lone Pine Medical Building, she got out and started door-to-door, working her way back up toward the hospital. When she reached it, she took a few precious minutes to grab a hot coffee from the cafeteria. She also radioed in to the station.

  Still no news.

  And now, it was nearly midnight.

  There was a steady chatter coming from the police scanner in her SUV. Officers reporting in. The search grids of the town being slowly and steadily ticked off, yielding no sign of Erik.

  She continued her way back toward the center of Old Town—driving a few feet, knocking on doors, waking people up, tramping around their houses, their yards, calling Erik’s name, only to drive a few more feet and repeat the process. It was freezing, tedious work, but she never once gave a thought to stopping.

  At twelve-thirty, the snow picked up even more, but it was hardly noticeable since the wind had also picked up, throwing whatever fell right back up again and swirling it around twice as hard. She ignored the command over the scanner that all searchers were to seek immediate shelter from the blizzard.

  And when those commands were directed squarely at her, she turned off the scanner and still continued. She didn’t take her orders from the police. She took them from the senior member of the search and rescue team, and he was over in Bozeman.

  Not that Jim Shepherd would be pleased with her when he found out, but she couldn’t get the image of Erik’s face out of her head.

  She’d grown up in this town. She’d learned to drive on its streets. And when it came to Old Town, she knew every corner like the back of her hand. So as long as she could still make her way from one house to the next, she was going to.

  Which was fine, until she nearly drove her crawling truck right over the figure hunched against the wind outside The Hitching Post.

  She sat there in her truck, her gloved hands curling tightly around the steering wheel as she stared at the person barely a foot from her front bumper.

  There was no question who it was.

  Erik’s father.

  The wind buffeted the SUV, and Cameron swayed.

  She shoved the truck into Park, grabbed the blanket from her back seat and raced around to him, her boots sliding on the ice. Reaching up, she yanked the blanket around his shoulders.

  “Are you crazy?” Her raised voice, muffled by her scarf and whipped away by the wind, was barely audible. The man was stiff with cold, his leather coat no match for the elements. “You’re not supposed to be out here still!”

  His head ducked toward hers. “You are!”

  Bitter wind shot needles of cold into her, nearly shoving her off her feet. She grabbed his waist, as much to keep herself steady as him. “Get in the truck,” she yelled.

  He was already moving, and she wasn’t sure if she pushed him or if he pulled her. He went to the passenger door. Dragged it open, and nearly lifted her inside. He was close behind, the door slamming closed on them.

  The protection from that awful, bitter wind was immediate and she blew out a long breath.

  “Jesus,” he muttered, as the air howled and the SUV rocked. From the glow of the dashboard, his eyes looked ravaged. “You haven’t found him, either.”

  She wanted to look away from those eyes of his. Wanted to, but couldn’t.

  And she loathed the feeling that engulfed her.

  Failure.

  She wasn’t used to it in her professional life.

  Personal? That was a different story.

  So she stared up at him, unconsciously cataloging the creases—deeper now than they’d been hours earlier—that fanned out from his eyes.

  “No,” she said quietly. “Not yet.” She was half perched on the console between the seats, half perched on his thigh, and she awkwardly maneuvered herself into the driver’s seat, anxious to put some distance between them.

  She tried closing herself off from the desperation seeping from him and turned on the scanner again, only to hear her name being furiously called. She lifted the mike and reported in.

  Beside her, Cameron was still. He had to have been freezing, but he didn’t pull the blanket tighter around himself, or redirect the heater vents more in his direction.

  Sighing faintly, she leaned over again, pulling the blanket around him more fully, then simply reached even further to grab his safety belt and snap it in place.

  She squeezed his arm. “We’ll find him,” she whispered.

  His jaw worked and when his voice finally emerged, it was raw.

  “When?”

  Chapter Two

  When?

  Faith slowly sat back in her seat. “Soon,” she promised, her voice husky.

  The station was just as close as trying to get either one of them home. And at the station, there was still some hope that she’d be able to do some good where little Erik Stevenson was concerned.

  Closer or not, her nerves were strung tighter than a wire and her eyes ached by the time her tires slid to a wobbly stop outside the fire station. She felt as if she’d been driving for hours, but knew it had been a fraction of it.

  Outside her windshield, beyond the frenzied slap of the wipers, she could just make out the familiar brick wall of the public service building. “Can you make it inside?” She handed him her spare scarf.

  He didn’t answer. Merely wound it around his neck and face, and shoved himself out of the vehicle.

  She pulled her own scarf up higher around her nose and followed suit, heading straight for the wall that was made elusive by the undulating curtain of snowfall.

  When her gloved hands hit solid surface, she didn’t dawdle with relief, but ducked her head even more against the vicious wind and felt her way along the wall until she found the entrance. Cameron’s shoulder brushed hers all the while.

  The wind nearly picked them up and tossed them inside.

  Breathing hard, she sat down on the nearest object.

  The floor.

  Cameron folded his arms across the top of a tall filing cabinet. His head bowed wearily, and the blanket fell from his shoulders, unheeded. After a long moment, he shrugged out of his coat and placed it with inordinate care over the back of a desk chair.

  She sat there, still trying to catch her breath while sympathy shoved hard against the knot inside her that wanted to blame him for being careless with his child.

  She looked away from him, unwinding her heavy scarf. It crunched as chunks of snow and ice fell from it, only to melt when they rained onto the floor.

  She leaned her head back. Felt the unyielding metal of a desk drawer behind her. And wanted to rail at the weather gods for throwing the nastiest of curveballs their way.

  “Here.” Cam crouched down before her and began tugging off her thick gloves. He said nothing else.

  His expression was enough to let her know where his thoughts dwelled.

  She looked like the abominable snowman, and he wasn’t much better. And his son was still missing.

  Cameron Stevenson was a big man with shoulders that had undoubtedly filled a football uniform at some point in his past. Not brawny. But definitely muscular. Strong.

  She had the impossible urge to put her arms around him as if he were a harmless child nursing a hurt.

  She swallowed hard, until she got rid of the knot in her throat that would do nobody any good right now.

  “The weather will ease up,” she assured, her voice not quite as calm as she’d have preferred. “We’ll all go back out again.”

  His jaw was white. He rose and his movements were slow, as if moving caused him pain. He began to pace.

  Her iced-over pants had thawed sufficiently thanks to the warm interior of the building, and she p
ushed to her feet as well. She went back to the locker room and changed into the spare clothes she kept there. She wouldn’t win any fashion awards, but the olive-drab cargo pants and fleece sweatshirt were warm and dry.

  She returned to her desk, giving Cameron—whose expression was closed and unwelcoming—a wide berth. He’d exchanged the well-cut black suit he’d been wearing when she’d seen him at The Hall for a thick gray sweater and blue jeans. A dark shadow blurred his blunt jaw and his hair looked as if it had been raked by claws. His tension, however, was terribly familiar. Only now it was worse.

  She checked her computer, amazed to find the Internet connection still running.

  But there was no news about Erik there, either. No sightings. And no help from any other members of her team coming anytime soon, since the roads had officially been closed and they were dealing with their own local emergencies.

  Stifling a sigh, she crossed the hallway that divided the building and went over to the police station. There were a handful of officers sitting at their desks, looking busy. All except Bobby Romano, who was leaning back in his chair, his boots propped on the corner of his desk.

  The sight irritated her.

  She went over to him and shoved his feet off the desk.

  “Hey!” The cup of coffee he held splashed over his uniformed stomach. “What the hell?”

  “At least pretend to be on duty, Bobby.” Her voice was flat. She ignored the muffled snickers coming from the others and went past his desk to the dispatcher’s office.

  When she stuck her head in, she saw that Cheryl Lansky held the fort. “I’m here. You can call off the dogs.”

  “Taking chances, Faith.” Cheryl tsked and shook her head. “I’ll let the chief know you’ve come in, though.”

  “I nearly ran down Cameron Stevenson,” she admitted. “Any reports?”

  “Aside from the usual panics over a blizzard, only call we’ve gotten is the weekly from Emelda Ross.”

  Bobby came up behind Faith, sopping at his shirt with a paper towel. “Woman needs to be put in a home somewhere.”

  Cheryl looked disgusted.

  “Is she still doing the story hour at the library?” Faith asked.