“Oh, sorry.” She blushed as she fell into step next to me. “What’s going on here?”
I ignored her and kept walking, heading for the main room where I could hear Black talking.
I found him in the middle of the bullpen holding a toddler on his hip, looking worried.
He had several FBI agents surrounding him, and all of them seemed to be talking at once.
“…on their way from Wyoming right now.”
“What are they doing that far away?” Agent Dempsey asked.
Black shrugged. “I didn’t ask.”
Dempsey hummed. “Interesting.”
Dempsey’s partner, Dunn, looked even more suspicious.
“What are we thinking?” I asked. “How’d he get there?”
“Cameras prove that he walked up off a side trail,” Black answered, not surprised to find me there. “Sadly, that trail leads to a ski-in ski-out area, and there are several neighborhoods where he could’ve come from.”
“As well as several hunting lodges,” Deputy Faith added. “My pop has a hunting lodge that he takes that same trail to get to the public land off the trailhead.”
“Can we get a dog out there to find a scent trail?”
“Maybe could have had it not snowed last night,” Black grumbled. “I have Mance out there knocking door to door, asking for access to their cameras. Maybe if we can find a direction he came from, we’d have a place to start.”
The kid didn’t look any worse for wear, which meant that someone was taking really good care of him.
“What’s with that look on his face?” I asked.
“He’s suspicious of women,” he said. “Dempsey’s too close.”
Dempsey took a huge step back.
“We thinking a woman abused him?” I asked.
Just as I asked that, the doors burst open and two terrified parents came rushing in the door.
The woman made a beeline for the kid, but I caught her before she could throw herself at Black.
“Wait,” I cautioned her. “Listen to me.”
Her face went murderous, seconds away from lashing out.
The husband opened his mouth to launch into me, but I held my hand up. “Just wait. Calm down. He’s scared.”
The two parents stilled.
“He’s terrified of women,” Black explained gently. “Cautious. I don’t know if you will scare him.”
The mom moved slowly toward her son as if she were approaching a wild animal and the boy turned away, screaming and burying his face into Black’s chest, body tight as a bowstring.
A devastated look crossed over the mother’s face. “Go to him, James.”
James did, slowly and cautiously, and the boy launched himself at his dad before saying, “Daddy!”
The dad looked horrified and relieved all at the same time.
