Kade pivoted toward the house. “Might as well get out of the wind. Want to come in?”
“No, I should go. I—” She pushed aside a blowing curve of hair, only to let it blow right back across her face.
“Come in. Finish your coffee.” He wasn’t ready for her to leave. They shared a common concern and a common ache. Sophie was a nice woman, the kind a man didn’t blow off and leave standing in his driveway.
She didn’t argue but fell in step beside him. Her height was average, as was his, but his stride was longer. She picked up her pace. “I hadn’t read the book. I promised to read his book.”
He’d told her not to make promises. Promises got broken. He pushed open Ida June’s front door, a bright red enameled rectangle festooned with a smelly cedar wreath the size of an inner tube. “He’ll be okay.”
“The Cunninghams are good people. They live on a farm.”
Sheba met them at the door, body language asking about Davey.
Sophie stroked the golden ears. “She didn’t want him to leave, either.”
“No.”
“I’ll call Cybil Cunningham tonight and check on him. She won’t mind.”
“Good.” He went to the kitchen, stuck their coffee mugs in the microwave to heat. “This doesn’t end here.”
The words came out unexpectedly but he meant them. The microwave beeped and he popped the door open to hand Sophie her heated coffee.
She took the mug with both hands and sipped, gray gaze watching him above the rim. “You’re going to search for his family?”
“I’m searching for answers. It’s what I do. And I’ll find them.” The stir in his blood was far more potent than the acid in his belly. Finding answers for Davey gave him focus, a mission, something to do besides relive failure.
“The police will do that, won’t they?” She set the mug on the metal table and drew out a chair.
Kade shrugged. A lot she knew about law enforcement. “They’ll try. For a while. But if the trail grows cold, Davey will go on the back burner.”
“And be stuck in the social system.”
“Right.” Restless, he didn’t join her at the table, but he liked seeing her there, calm to his anxious. How did she do that? How did she shift into serene gear after what had just happened? He knew she’d been emotional when Davey left. He’d watched her struggle, saw her pull a smile out of her aching heart for Davey’s sake. Now she drew on some inner reserve as though she trusted everything would work out for the best. “I talked to Jesse Rainmaker an hour ago. Nothing. Nothing on the databases, either.”
“I don’t understand that. If your child was missing, wouldn’t you call the police?”
She was as naive as a baby, a cookie-baking optimist. The thought tickled the corners of his eyes. “Maybe, maybe not.”
Her cup clinked against the metal top. “I don’t know much about this kind of thing, Kade, but I want to do something to help Davey find his family. Please tell me what you’re thinking.”
He was positive she didn’t want to hear it all. “I can think of a couple of scenarios. One, his family doesn’t know he’s missing.”
“That’s unlikely, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes parents are out of the house, at work, partying. They come home a day or two later and find their kid gone. By tomorrow, someone should raise a shout if they’re going to.”
“What else?”
“His parents don’t want him.” He saw by her reaction how hard that was for her to comprehend. “It happens, Sophie.”
“I know. Still …” Some of the Christmas cheer leached from her eyes.
“Davey is mute. A family might not be able to deal with that. Or worse, his parents may not be in the picture. Or he could have been missing for so long they aren’t actively looking anymore.”
A frown wrinkled the smooth place between her fascinating eyebrows. A face like hers shouldn’t have to frown.
“Are you saying he might be a kidnap victim?”
“He’s a little young to be a runaway. I searched the data base of the Center for Missing and Exploited Children and came up with nothing, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a victim. It only means no one has reported him missing.”
“Are you saying a parent would ignore the fact that their child is gone?”
“It happens. Kids are a commodity. You can buy them on the internet.”
Sophie lifted a weak hand in surrender. “Don’t.”
Ignoring the problem didn’t make it go away, but he bit back the obvious comment. Sophie was small-town sweet and innocent. She hadn’t seen the dark side. She hadn’t lived in the back alleys of the underworld.
Kade poured another cup of coffee, then shoved the mug aside to take milk from the fridge. Something cool and bland might soothe the lava burning his guts.
“Kade?”
He swallowed half a glass of milk before answering. “Yeah?”
“You want to order some fifth-grade cookies to go with that milk?”
In spite of himself, he laughed. She was a piece of work, this cookie lady. “You’re going to hound me.”
“Gently. Merrily. It’s a Christmas project. So,” she said, with quiet glee, “how many dozen?”
“What am I going to do with a bunch of cookies?”
“Eat them, give them as gifts, have a Christmas party. The possibilities are limitless.”
“I don’t do the Christmas thing.”
She didn’t go there and he was grateful. He wasn’t up to explaining all the reasons he couldn’t muster any Christmas spirit. Or any kind of spirit for that matter. His faith hadn’t survived the dark corners of south Chicago.
“Everyone eats cookies.” Her smile tilted the corners of a very nice, unenhanced mouth. He wondered if she had a guy.
“A dozen. Now leave me alone.”
His gruff reply seemed to delight, rather than insult. “You old Scrooge. I’ll get you for more.”
Wouldn’t that be a stupid sight? Him with a bunch of Santas and stars and Christmas trees to eat all by himself. Or better yet, he’d stand on the street corner back home and hand them out. See how long before he got arrested.
“We were talking about the boy,” he said.
She shrugged, a minimal motion of shoulders and face. “Your stomach is bothering you. You needed a distraction.”
Kade narrowed his eyes at her. “The cookie lady is a mind reader?”
“People watcher.”
She had distracted him, although the cookie conversation was not as powerful as the woman herself. A less careful man could get lost in all that sugary sweetness.
He tilted his head toward the garage and the clatter of Ida June’s old truck engine chugging to a halt. Before he could say “She’s here,” his inimitable aunt sailed through the back entrance and slammed the door with enough force to make Sheba give one startled yip.
“I heard what happened.” Disapproval radiating from every pore, Ida June slapped a sunflower knitting bag the size of his gym bag onto the butcher-top counter. “I’ll give Howard Prichard a piece of my mind and he’ll know the reason why. Silliest thing I ever heard of. Jerk a terrified child from a perfectly fine