Page 29 of The Fix

Cami pressed both hands over her mouth to hold back the moan of despair and surprise and a hundred other emotions that were lodged in her throat. Rex looked at her, his expression similarly conflicted.

He’d grabbed a pen and a pad from her counter as they’d watched and listened to the exchange, and now that the boy was alone again, investigating the contents of the greasy paper bag the man had left, Rex lowered the volume on the computer.

“Foster care,” he said, meeting her wide eyes. “His parents died.”

Cami lowered her hands and then squeezed them together to contain the shaking.

Then she closed her eyes and simply breathed, letting the anger and sadness stab at her until she could bear it.

When she opened her eyes and placed her hands on the table, she noticed him lift his hand slightly, as if moving to touch her.

It stayed in the air for a heartbeat before he lowered it again.

“Do you think Elora Maxwell relocating to the Virgin Islands and the lawsuits against her adoption agency has a connection to this?” she asked.

“Maybe. I can’t see how this child’s adoptive parents’ death would be her fault, but it’s possible. If they died of something drug related because she didn’t vet them properly or something like that ...”

She nodded slowly.

“I think that’s something to be investigated later,” he said. “The why and the how he ended up in foster care. But if this is your son, now we don’t have to spin our wheels wondering where his parents are.”

“Even so, why haven’t his foster parents reported him missing?”

“Maybe, like I said, they haven’t noticed yet. Maybe he was supposed to be somewhere overnight. We’ll keep an eye on that.”

“Or maybe, like he mentioned, they don’t give a shit.”

Rex only thinned his lips, his eyes filled with concern. “He sounds like a fighter,” he said. “He didn’t shy away from that guy. Most kids would have been cowering.”

Cami nodded shakily. “He does, doesn’t he?

” Even she heard the pride in her voice.

She’d tried to keep her personal connection removed.

There was a chance the boy wasn’t the baby she’d given birth to, but with each word he’d spoken, his little chin raised defiantly—something that reminded her so much of Elle when she’d dug her heels in—her heart had claimed him a little more. “So now what?”

“That exchange gave us more than we had before.” He looked down at the pad of paper.

“He is somewhere in the wilderness; we can see that out the window. And if that man can be believed, they’re twenty miles outside a town.

” He tapped his pen on the pad for a moment as Cami took in a long, slow breath.

“There’s also a sound ...” He pulled the computer toward him again and upped the volume.

“It’s loud, but it seems natural. Could it be the ocean? ”

She tilted her head slightly and listened and then nodded. “Yes. Definitely. Which again, would make sense if he’s in California.”

“It narrows it down even more than that, though. He’s near the edge of the ocean in California in wilderness that’s twenty miles from a town with a restaurant that offers to-go food and a store that sells comics.”

“That still must be hundreds of possibilities.”

He tapped his pen on the pad again. “It’s more than we had before.”

She could see the wheels turning in his head, and the deep intelligence in his eyes.

She’d seen the concern for the scared child in the locked room, and for a moment she felt so grateful to have him there with her, it almost made her cry.

And so fearful that he’d leave. “You keep saying we ,” she said, the emotion making her voice crack.

He looked over at her, appearing to weigh his response. “Listen, Cami, regardless of what happened with us in the past, or anything else, there’s a kid in a shit ton of trouble here, and I can’t walk away from that.”

“Thank you,” she breathed. Their eyes held for a moment before he looked away, back to the boy on the screen.

“I wish there was some way to communicate with him,” he said. “Or the person who contacted you.”

“I tried both numbers back and neither one worked.” She thought for a moment. “The man who came in the room said that there’s no electricity in the place. So how is there a camera?”

“Every security system offers battery-operated cameras. It might be so small the kid would never spot it. The light must be battery-operated too.”

“What do you think the point of the camera is?”

“Just a means to observe him without being in the room constantly. Which makes me think there’s just that one man there. When he goes to town for food, for instance, he uses the camera to monitor the kid.”

“So how are we seeing it?”

He tapped again for a minute, appearing troubled. “I don’t know.” He paused. “Can I see the picture you took with your phone?”

“Sure.” She picked up her phone and scrolled to the three photos she’d taken, the boy in different locations of the room in each one. He zoomed in on one, and when she leaned toward him, she saw that he was looking at an enlarged view of the window.

“What are you looking for?” It was completely dark. The only things visible were the stars that could be seen through the bars. She lifted her head. “Oh my gosh, the stars. Can we use the stars to figure out his location?”

“Maybe. Celestial navigation isn’t my expertise, but I know someone who could help. And he just happens to be available because he’s laid up.”

“Is he . . .”

“Trustworthy? Absolutely.”

“It has to be someone who doesn’t ask for more information than you give.”

“Those are the only types I know.”

She bit at her lip. The voice on the phone had only said she couldn’t contact the police.

There had been no instructions about asking for help from others.

Rex was most likely talking about friends in the military, but as long as he didn’t divulge the reasons for his questions . .. “Okay. Yes, okay.”

“One of us has to monitor this constantly.” They both looked at the screen.

The little boy was sitting on the bed against the wall again, and though he was obviously fighting sleep, he was losing the battle.

His eyes closed and his head tilted to the side before he jerked it up again, his lashes fluttering.

He had to be exhausted. He’d been up all night.

I’ll stay awake for you, she told him silently in her head.

I’ll keep watch. It wouldn’t do much good, she knew.

Even if she spotted danger, there was nothing she could do. But it felt like it mattered anyway.

Rex stood. “I’m going to reach out to a few people who might have some ideas I’m not thinking of, including the buddy I mentioned. I’ll be back so you can take a nap.”

She took his hand and tilted her head to look up at him, and he gave an almost imperceptible startle at the skin-to-skin contact.

“Thank you again.” He nodded and she let go of him, instantly feeling the loss of his large, callused hand in hers.

“I wrote my number right there,” he said, indicating the pad of paper.

“Call me if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll be back in a few hours.

” He started to turn, but then paused. “Forward me the stills of that room if you would too.”

“Okay, sure.” She walked Rex to the door and said a quick goodbye, then returned to the kitchen, where she used his number to text him what he’d asked her to and programmed him into her phone.

Laptop in hand, she headed to the living room, where she sat against the pillows with the computer on her lap.

The child had given in to sleep and was now snoring softly.

Her heart constricted, and she picked up her phone from the coffee table and took a photo of the video and then used it to zoom in on his face.

She stared at his features, more certain by the moment that he was hers.

And Hollis’s. She saw herself, mostly, but she also saw Hollis as he’d looked as a little boy.

She recalled the gallery of photos in his home that she’d stared at fondly once upon a time and was certain this boy partially resembled his father as a child.

Her emotions were in turmoil, the longing she’d carried like a quiet whisper since the day she’d handed him over rising up as a clanging of bells inside her.

This boy was hers. And he needed her. And she vowed not to let him down this time.

A do-over.

Something nagged her about the phrase. The sound of it ...

But she couldn’t figure out what bothered her, at least not with the fear of failure a quiet buzz in the background of her mind.

She’d turned the sound in the video down to mid-volume, and when something caught her attention, she put her phone down and turned the volume up on the video on her laptop.

Was that ... a bird or ... crickets?

No. She leaned in and listened to the sound just outside the window, slightly muffled but loud enough that she could hear it distinctly.

She took another picture of the window and then used her phone again to zoom in.

“A frog,” she whispered. There was a small green frog sitting on the windowsill.

She zoomed in on it and took a picture and then opened the browser on her computer and did a search.

God, there were a lot of small green frogs in America.

She went through them one by one as the child slept, sliding down the wall and crumpling onto the mattress, where he brought his hands into the prayer position and tucked them under his cheek.

She cross-checked the frogs that looked like the one in her picture by listening to the recorded sounds of each one. Some were confusing, and some she was able to reject immediately.

After an hour, Cami got up and took the computer to the kitchen to make herself a strong pot of coffee.

Yawning, she returned to her position on the couch and kept searching.

It took her another hour to narrow her search down to the Pacific tree frog.

“Gotcha,” she whispered, the feeling of victory temporarily overriding her exhaustion.

She recognized the same black stripe outlined in yellow across its eyes, and when she played its sound, the chorus was identical to that coming from outside the window where her little boy slept behind bars.

She picked up her phone and texted Rex’s number and attached the picture of the tree frog.

The Pacific tree frog has a range spanning the PNW, N. Cali, Oregon, and Washington.

If they were assuming California, then that beautiful little frog had just narrowed their search down to the northern part of the state.

A few minutes later, her phone dinged with a text from Rex:

Nice work. See you in an hour.

Cami breathed out a smile as she set her phone down. It’d been less than twenty-four hours, and, with Rex’s help, she now knew her child was in Northern California, near the ocean. It was still a vast area geographically, but it was closer than she’d been the night before.

And she had a partner. One she’d never in a million years have expected, but a partner all the same.

The thought sent her spinning. She’d been in a terrifying, precarious position before, a threat hanging over her head where she’d been sectioned off from her mother and sister.

Alone. To have someone there—even if in this case the threat was not to her directly—was a relief so all-encompassing she almost wept with gratitude.

Movement at the window broke her from her muddled thoughts, and she turned in that direction.

A bird had landed on a nearby branch, and before it could lift off, Cami took a photo of it and zoomed in.

It had a small head and bill with a topknot of feathers that made her think it was some type of quail.

She opened her browser again and did the same type of search she’d just done for the frog, going back and forth between quails on her laptop and the one on her phone.

She finally stopped scrolling at one that looked almost identical and found that it was a California quail, which lived all over California, but primarily in foothill forests.

The bird didn’t narrow things down a lot, but she was now convinced that the cabin they were watching was somewhere in Northern California.

She sat back again and continued to watch the boy sleep, safe for the moment, lost in his dreams. Or, more likely, nightmares.