At the event, the cops were fingerprinting and photographing kids, making identification kits. He had one made for Charlie. Amy had teased him about it, an ID kit for a six-month-old.
He’d put it away in a drawer and said they would never need it.
Ethan turned down the pier that led to his boat slip. He’d tried renting a house when he first moved back to Sea Breeze, but after everything that had happened, a house was too normal. And he needed the water. He bought his boat three months later.
Climbing on board, he held out a hand. She passed him the diaper bag and then, taking his hand, made the easy jump onto the stern of the boat. In the cabin, he had stowed a small wooden box that held the only pieces of his old life that he’d kept close.
He ran his fingers over the smooth wood. So many nights he took his box out of its storage space and held it. He didn’t have to. He didn’t need mementos to remember his son or his wife. They were engraved on his heart.
It was harder than he’d expected to open it.
“Do you want me to …” Kelsey’s voice trailed off as she caught his expression.
“No, I can do it. It’s just—”
“I get it. You don’t have to explain.” She laid the baby on the berth and pushed a pillow under the mattress so Janie couldn’t roll off.
He pulled the box closer and lifted the lid. Without allowing himself to think about it, he pulled out a silver baby rattle and the tiny T-shirt that Charlie wore on his first day of life. A pressed flower that his wife had kept from their first date. Other precious bits and pieces of a life gone by. And the fingerprint card and picture he’d made on the last outing he’d had with Charlie.
Laying the handprint beside the fingerprint card, he compared the two. Neither was very precise, considering they’d been done on a six-month-old. But he could see the swirls and arches. His heart began to pound.
They looked like a match, the newer one only slightly larger.
Kelsey pushed him out of the way and pulled the cards where she could see them. “Oh my—Ethan. They match.”
He pushed away from the table and paced the dozen steps to the door of the cabin before turning back. “We need to get it verified.”
“SBPD can do that. But I think the place for us to start is with her.” She gestured to the little angel sleeping on Ethan’s bunk. Janie’s diaper-clad booty was hitched up in the air, and her chest rose and fell in even breaths. “If we find out who she is and who led her to you, just maybe that information leads to more information about your son.”
Hope and desperation mixed inside him—the need to believe that it could be true, the desperate wish for something so improbable. He turned to pace the length of the boat again, but in the small space he quickly ran into Kelsey as she paced the other way.
He leaned against the wall, his stomach in knots. “I don’t know what to think. We can try to trace her using the missing persons database, but something tells me she’s not going to be there.”
“I’ve got to get back to the office.” Kelsey slung the diaper bag over one shoulder and picked the baby up, easily settling her on her shoulder without waking her. With one hand, she dug her cell phone out of the back pocket of her capris. “Put your information in my phone. If I find something I’ll call you. With both of us working on this, something is bound to turn up.”
After finishing out his workday—which was thankfully spent doing mundane work like stopping boats to check for onboard safety equipment—Ethan spent the entire night searching the internet for information. He’d turned the problem around in his head every way he could possibly think of, and still he came up with nothing. From grief to hope to frustration, he’d pretty much run the gamut.
And now, running on little sleep, he wanted to take someone down.
Someone like the criminals who had set this whole thing in motion in the first place. Who stole someone’s child? Someone with no conscience. Someone who bought and sold people as commodities.
He slammed the brush on the surface of his boat and scrubbed. One thing about living on a boat—something always needed to be cleaned. Maybe it would help him work through some of his anger issues.
“Permission to come aboard, sir?” Kelsey’s voice drifted out from the pier.
“Permission granted, but be prepared to swab the deck.” Ethan reached for the T-shirt behind him on the rail and pulled it over his head.
“Nuh-uh. I’ve lived in Sea Breeze long enough to know better than to get between a man and his boat.”
Despite himself, he laughed, turning to greet her. She was dressed in a simple khaki skirt and a T-shirt, but she had on several long necklaces of brightly colored beads, and Janie had her hands twisted up in them. “I thought she would be in foster care by now.”
“It’s always the goal to get kids placed as quickly as possible.” Kelsey passed Ethan the baby and lightly stepped on board. “Unfortunately, all of our emergency foster care placements were full. We’re on our way to the pediatrician for a checkup.”
Janie grabbed his face and grinned, a half-dozen teeth on the top and bottom shining in her mouth. “She looks pretty happy.”
“I think she’s doing fine. I came by because, as I was looking through her diaper bag this morning, I found this.” She handed him an SD card, the kind that would go in a digital camera. “I don’t know what’s on it, but I thought it might be more evidence. It was sewn into the lining of her bag.”
Ethan stuffed the card into one of the pockets of his cargo shorts, one of the pockets that wasn’t wet from scrubbing the deck. Janie bounced on his free arm, but as she bounced, her foot got caught in his pocket.
She bounced again, but her foot didn’t come loose. Her face mashed up into a red-faced scowl. A wail came out of her mouth that rivaled the air horn he carried on his boat for emergencies. He hadn’t known she could do that. He looked at Kelsey. “A little help here?”
Kelsey loosened Janie’s foot, but stepped away, leaving him to deal. She dug in the diaper bag. He patted the baby on the back and shushed and—what was that other thing he’d read in the baby book you were supposed to do with crying kids?
His natural calm disappeared as she wailed. It was forever ago that he’d done baby stuff. Think, Clark. You’ve got this.
He started rocking back and forth. Yeah, that was it, motion.
It didn’t work, not even for a second.
Janie didn’t stop crying, but she did hiccup and gasp as she cried. Screaming kids made all kinds of crazy noises, but she didn’t sound right. He laid her back on his arm to look at her. Her lips were blue. “Kels—”
Kelsey came up with a sippy cup and a scrap of a blanket from the diaper bag.
“I don’t think that’s it. There’s something wrong with her. She’s blue—look at her hands.” His voice had risen, and he felt something close to panic.
“What?” Kelsey dropped the bag onto the deck. “Let me see.”
Janie hadn’t stopped crying, and her breathing was fast and shallow—not wheezing, like asthma, but as if she was trying to get more oxygen.
“Call 911.” Ethan might be calm on the outside, but inside he was freaking out. Oh, Jesus, please protect this little baby.
“Wait just a minute.” Kelsey took Janie from Ethan and held her close, letting her have the blanket, which didn’t really work. She didn’t even notice it. But then she tucked Janie’s legs up, almost against her own little armpits and held her close against her chest, rocking and singing to her—in Russian, he guessed.