She looked down at the baby and made a silly face.
Ethan smiled, but not a real smile, just a tilt of one corner of his mouth. It was a start, though. And without the baby holding on to him, she noticed something else. “What’s that over your shoulder?”
He looked. “Forgot I picked it up. I guess it’s a diaper bag.”
“Do we need to wait for someone to look at it?” The toddler primped her mouth like she might cry, so Kelsey reached into the never-ending purse again and pulled out a bag of Goldfish crackers.
“Executive decision.” Ethan unzipped the bag, his hands never faltering. He was so serious. So different from her. She bet he never wore flip-flops in the off-season.
He tilted up the side. “It has ‘Jane’ written in marker in the side of the bag. No birth date. Do you think that’s her name?”
“We have to call you something, don’t we, pumpkin?” Kelsey ruffled the little girl’s curls. “Is your name Jane?”
The toddler grinned at her with a row of pearly baby teeth.
“Okay, then. We’ll go with Janie.” Kelsey handed her a cracker and popped one in her own mouth. “Did you just see an empty boat floating in the middle of the ocean with her in it?”
Ethan pulled out diapers and an extra outfit, very well-worn. Then he pulled out a card with a small handprint on it. He laid it on the table and stared at it.
“Ethan?”
“Ah … no. I didn’t just find her. Someone sent me to the boat.”
His hands shook now as he turned over the photograph—a picture of an infant around six months old. It wasn’t the one Kelsey held in her lap.
“Ethan, who is that?” Her voice grew gentler. It was obvious the picture meant something to him.
He shook his head, his eyes on the photo.
Kelsey put her free hand over his, blocking his view. “Ethan, look at me. Who is the baby in the picture?”
He swallowed hard, his eyes dark with pain. “That baby is my son, Charlie. It was taken right before he died.”
Ethan shot to his feet. He couldn’t figure out how this tiny blonde toddler figured into what happened to Charlie. What was going on? Why would someone use her to get to him? Why would they have him find her?
None of it made a bit of sense.
Kelsey pressed a drink into his hand. “Drink this. You need some sugar.”
He looked down at her. “I’m fine. Just trying to figure out if I’ve missed something.”
She hitched the little girl she’d been calling Janie higher on her hip. “Something tells me if we can figure out who this munchkin is we’ll have another piece of the puzzle.”
“You’re right. It’s been a while, but I should be able to get some information. I have some resources in law enforcement.”
“When it comes to children, I have more. We’ll find out what’s going on.” Her pretty brown eyes were unadorned with makeup, but they were determined.
Ethan believed her. He took a deep breath for the first time since he’d seen that photograph. Someone was messing with his head, enjoying yanking his chain. And he would get to the bottom of it.
His phone buzzed. He reached for it and felt Kelsey’s soft hand on his arm. It felt like a lifeline.
He opened the phone to read the message.
Your son is alive.
TWO
Kelsey gripped Ethan’s arm tighter as he swayed. “Ethan?”
He stared at the phone. She eased it from his cramped fingers and looked at the message. Your son is alive.
What in the world was going on? “Ethan, why don’t we sit and you can tell me what happened to your son?”
He allowed Kelsey to lead him to the table. As he sat, the baby in her arms reached for him. With only a brief hesitation and something like deep pain settling in lines on his face, he took her. As Janie squirmed, he shifted her until she could lay her head on his shoulder.
Kelsey pushed the Coke toward him. “Okay, talk.”
He met her eyes and to her surprise, she saw a hint of a smile there. “I think you’re the only person who would have the nerve to ask me that. My family won’t. I think they’re afraid I’ll go off the deep end.”
“Is there danger of that?”
He rubbed a slow circle on the baby’s back while he seemed to be considering the question, and Kelsey’s heart did a lazy flip in her chest.
“I don’t think so.” A rueful smile, then.
She smiled back at him, even though she wanted to cry, because there was courage, and then there was courage. He had the real thing. “Why don’t you tell me about Charlie?”
Kelsey watched emotions—anger, fear, grief—travel across his face as he struggled to find the right words.
“I was undercover with the FBI. We were closing the deal with … some really bad people. All we needed was for the money to exchange hands and we could arrest them.” He closed his eyes, almost as if he shut them tight enough he could shut out the memory of that night. “They shouldn’t have been there. They shouldn’t have known the place even existed. I wasn’t anywhere near our hometown.”
“Wait—your wife and son were at the place where the sting was set to happen?”
“Yes.” The pain in that one word was enough to take her breath away.
“She walked across the street, right in front of me, and the restaurant where I was supposed to meet the people I’d been working to bring down … it just blew up. Amy and Charlie were killed in the explosion.” He licked dry lips and took a sip of the Coke she’d opened for him.
“How did she get there?”
“No one was ever able to figure it out. There were some unexplained phone calls on the call log of her cell phone, but the numbers traced back to burn phones. I left the FBI, but if there were new leads, I’m sure they would have let me know.” The toddler whimpered and roused. Ethan passed her to Kelsey, who lowered her into the crook of her arm and shushed her gently to sleep.
“You must feel like you’ve been living a nightmare that you can’t wake up from.”
His eyes took on a distant stare. The toll the last couple of years had taken on him had definitely been harsh. “You have no idea.”
She did have an idea—not what it was like to lose a wife and child, but she had a very good idea what it was like to lose people you love. Family.
Living nightmares? That she had experienced.
“Ethan, how can you know if the message you got is for real? Is it possible that your son could’ve survived without you knowing?”
It wasn’t possible. He’d watched as the explosion took his wife and child. And the small sliver of hope this message birthed in him only made the pain worse.
“No.” He glanced at her, her question reminding him of her presence. “And I think I might know a way to prove it.”
Ethan strode out the door of the marina shop with the photo in hand, Kelsey trailing behind with the toddler in her arms. The month before Amy and Charlie died, Ethan had been in Mobile for the weekend. A prearranged “business trip,” which really meant a visit home