“Come on, sweetie. We need to go.” Katie draped her arm around Tyler’s shoulders when he stood back up and hurried him along beside her to the car. “Didn’t you eat your lunch?”
“Most of it. But I can always have a bowl of cereal when we get home, and Padre doesn’t have anybody to feed him.”
“Padre?” She swapped her phone for the keys in her coat pocket and unlocked the car.
Tyler opened the passenger door and climbed inside on his knees, tossing his book bag into the backseat. “Did you see the ring of white fur around his neck? It looks like the collar Pastor Bill wears, and everybody calls him Padre.”
Katie closed the door and hurried around the front of the car to get in behind the wheel. Naming a dog she knew he couldn’t have was probably a bad thing, but she was more worried about blackouts and intruders and not being able to find her son. She placed her bag in the backseat beside Tyler’s, locked the doors and quickly started the engine so she could crank up the heat. “Why didn’t you wait for me? Or come get me as soon as you’d changed? I’m sorry I got distracted, but I was sitting out in the auditorium. I would have come to feed the dog with you. You shouldn’t be out here by yourself, especially at night.”
Tyler turned around and plopped down into his seat. “I know. But I wanted to see Padre before one of the other kids got to him first. He likes me, Mom. He lets me pet him and doesn’t bite me or anything. Wyatt already has a dog, and Kayla’s family has two cats. So he should be mine.”
She grimaced at the sad envy for two of the other children in the play. “Tyler—”
“When everybody else started to leave, I tried to get back in, but the door was locked. So I stayed outside to play with Padre.”
“Is that the real story? I don’t mean the dog. Doug sending you outside? Getting locked out?” She pulled off her mitten and reached across the car to cup his cheek. Chilled, but healthy. She was the only one having heart palpitations tonight. “There wasn’t anyone left in the cast or crew to let you back in?”
“Maybe if I had my own cell phone, I could have called you.”
“Really?” She pushed his stocking cap up to the crown of his head and ruffled his wavy dark hair between her fingers. “I was scared to death that something had happened to you, and you’re playing that card?”
He fastened his seat belt. “I put a phone on my Christmas list.”
“We talked about this. Not until middle school.”
“Johnny Griffith has one.”
“I’m not Johnny Griffith’s mom.” Katie straightened in her seat to fasten her own seat belt. “You’re up past your bedtime. Let’s go home before your toes freeze.”
“Did Doug ask you out again?” Tyler asked. “Is that why he wanted to get rid of me?”
She glanced over at the far too wise expression on her son’s freckled face. “He did. I told him no again, too.”
Tyler tugged off his mittens and held his pink fingers up in front of the heating vent. “I thought maybe you were still in there talking to him. He’s a good director and all, but I don’t want him to be my dad.”
Katie reached for Tyler’s hands and pulled them between hers to rub some love and warmth into them. “He won’t be.” Not that he’d had a chance, anyway. But endangering her son certainly checked him off the list. “I can guarantee that.”
“Good.” When he’d had enough of a warming reassurance, Tyler pulled away and kicked his feet together, knocking snow off his shoes onto the floor mat. “Do you think Padre’s toes will freeze out there tonight? Dogs have toes, right?”
“They do. But he must have dug himself a snow cave or found someplace warm to sleep if he’s survived a whole week outdoors in the wintertime. I think he’ll be okay. I hope he will be.” Katie smiled wryly before turning on the windshield wipers and clearing away the wet snow. She shifted the car into gear, but paused with her foot on the brake to inspect the empty parking lot one more time. Maybe Tyler hadn’t been in any danger. Maybe she hadn’t really been, either. But why leave that message? And if the intruder had run along the pathway, had Tyler seen him either sneak into the building or run out of it? The man could easily have parked in another area of the campus so she wouldn’t be able to spot him. But could Tyler have gotten a description that might put him in some kind of future harm? Her grip tightened around the steering wheel. “Did anybody talk to you while you were out here by yourself?”
“Wyatt and Kayla said goodbye. Kayla’s dad asked me if you were still here. I told him as long as the car was, you were, too.”
She’d make a point to thank Mr. Hudnall for checking on her son tomorrow night. “I meant a stranger. Anybody you didn’t know? Was anyone watching you or following you?”
Tyler dropped his head back in dramatic groan. “I know about stranger danger. I would have shouted really loud or run really fast or gotten into the car with Kayla’s dad because I know him.”
“Okay, sweetie. Just checking.”
He sat up straight and turned in his seat. “But if I had a phone—”
“Maybe later.” She laughed and lifted her foot off the brake. “I need to talk it over with Aunt Maddie and Uncle Dwight first. We’re on their phone plan.”
And now the sulky lip went out. “Am I going to get anything that’s on my Christmas list?”
“There are already some presents under the tree.”
“None of them are big enough to be a dog. And none of them are small enough to be a phone. They’re probably socks and underwear.”
“I’m sure you’d be really good with a pet, sweetie, but you know we can’t have a dog in our apartment.” She pulled the car up next to the sidewalk at the corner of the theater building. “Hold on a second. I propped the door open in case I couldn’t find you out here. I need to go close it so we don’t get in trouble with the college. Sit tight. Lock yourself in until I get back.”
After pulling her lime-green mittens back on and tying her scarf more tightly around her neck, Katie climbed out, waited for Tyler to relock the doors and hurried back to the exit. She glanced through the woods and walkway for the stray dog or a more menacing figure, but saw no sign of movement among the trees and shadows. But she slowed her steps once she shifted her full attention to the door. It was already closed, sealed tight. Had she not wedged the broom in securely enough?
Pulling her phone from her pocket again, Katie checked the time before turning on the camera. She’d only been gone a few minutes, hardly enough time for the security guard to make his rounds. And if he’d been close by already, why wouldn’t he have answered her shouts of distress or turned on a light for her to see?
Who had closed this door? The same unseen person who’d flipped on the running lights and hidden in the dark theater?
The man who’d run off into the woods after knocking her off her feet?
No matter what the answers to any of those questions might be, Katie worked around enough cops to know that details mattered. So she moved past the door and angled her phone camera down to take a picture of the disturbing message.
Her breath rushed out in a warm white cloud in the air, and she couldn’t seem to breathe in again.
The message was gone.
The marks of her heeled boots were clear in the new layer of snow. But the rest of the footprints—boy-size tennis shoes, paw prints, the long,