A Stranger's Touch Read online

A sob climbed up her throat. She rammed it back down, camouflaging the sound with a cough, and battled the need to search the schoolyard. Again.

  She’d spent hours walking every inch of it that afternoon, convinced that if she looked hard enough she’d find her baby. Another go at it, in the dark, would accomplish nothing. Logically, she knew that. But it didn’t ease the tight knot in her stomach.

  Clenching the steering wheel, Maggie played back her earlier journey – the blast of music from the radio, her impatience at the driver ahead, the sight of the dashboard clock counting off the minutes.

  If only she’d been earlier, Davie would be safe.

  A stab of guilt tore into her heart. Then another, as she spotted the yellow tape trembling in the wind. The police had cordoned off a large section of the yard. They always started with a big area, closing in gradually. The reverse – starting small and moving out – was an exercise in foolhardiness. Precious evidence might be lost forever.

  Maggie had the sinking feeling it already was. By the pale light of the streetlamps, she could see the result of that afternoon’s wind. Garbage, branches, even a cushion from someone’s patio chair, hung from the fence that surrounded the school. Unsuspecting prey trapped in a web of chain link. If there had been any clues involving her son’s disappearance, they’d blown halfway to Winnipeg by now.

  She tried to swallow but fear dried her throat and burned a trail down to her gut. She hacked into the sleeve of her uniform then cranked the wheel, pulling in behind a police van. The Canine Division.

  She got out of her vehicle, her legs shaking. She sagged against the door for a moment to steady herself, wishing she could inject some of that hard, cold steel into her veins. Instantly, her companion appeared at her side, his gloved hand cradling her elbow.

  Stafford.

  That’s what Owens called him. Maggie had never heard the name before. Was it his first? His last? To her ears, it sounded unusual, old fashioned – the name of a knight at King Arthur’s court.

  He would have fit into that time perfectly with his strapping build and old-world gallantry. He held her arm, giving her support as effortlessly as if she were a raindrop. Weren’t psychics supposed to be middle-aged women? Or anemic men?

  “I can do this on my own,” he told her, his voice a gentle rumble. “Why don’t you wait in the car?”

  How easy it would have been to take him up on his offer, to have a moment alone, to give into the crying jag she’d fought since she’d discovered Davie’s crumpled knapsack.

  Maggie straightened and slipped away from his comforting touch. “Not a chance.”

  She forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, her limbs heavy, as though she were walking through quicksand. She struggled forward, pushing her way toward the officers who were packing it in for the night.

  Detective Millar, an attractive guy in his early forties, whose bushy mustache might have looked better on a pirate, glanced up as she approached.

  “Holmes,” he said, acknowledging her presence. “Sorry about your boy. We’ll do our best to get him back.”

  The simple condolence made her eyes water. She blinked away the tears. “Find anything?”

  “Not much. The yard’s littered with garbage. The dogs picked out a few items. We’ll take them to the lab and see what we’ve got.”

  On cue, the animals in the van barked. Maggie yelled over their yelps. “Can I have a look?”

  Millar took a deep breath and shook his head. “Owens warned us you might come around–”

  Behind her, a deep-toned voice interjected. “I wouldn’t mind seeing what you have.”

  “Mr. Webb?” Millar lowered his clipboard. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were on the case. I need to keep the items in their evidence bags. Is that going to work for you?”

  Did everyone know about this Stafford guy but her? Detective Millar went from controlling to accommodating without so much as a twitch of the hairs on his upper lip.

  How had she missed seeing Stafford before now? True, she was new to the force, but when it came to men, he was definitely the unforgettable type. What kinds of cases had he helped with in the past? High profile ones, she guessed. Murders and missing persons – typical FBI fare. Not traffic accidents or teenage vandalism. No wonder their paths hadn’t crossed.

  Stafford followed Millar to the passenger side of the van, with Maggie falling in behind. She held her breath as the detective reached into the vehicle and pulled out three evidence bags. The first held a cigarette butt; the second, a wrinkled potato chip bag; the third, a brown shoestring.

  Stafford leaned into Maggie. “Getting a reading through plastic is tricky but I’ll do my best.”

  He removed his gloves and stuffed them into his pockets, like a safecracker preparing to work. Stafford had told her that he tuned into objects through his sense of touch. Maggie figured he used the gloves for protection. Or affectation.

  He leaned back against the van. After several deep breaths, the tension seemed to evaporate from his body. For a moment, his face became serene, almost incandescent, like an injured man soothed with a shot of morphine. He took each piece of evidence in turn, held it in his hands for a moment, and moved on to the next.

  As Stafford touched the shoestring, a flicker of expression passed over his features, a dark recognition.

  Finished, he handed the last evidence bag back to the officer and offered a vague statement of defeat. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  Maggie looked at him with anticipation but he said nothing more. He simply turned and walked back toward her car.

  As the motor of the police van roared to life, she caught up to Stafford. “Anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “Your face changed when you held the shoelace.”

  “Nothing to do with this case. Some teenager used it as a tourniquet to shoot drugs.”

  The taste of iron filled Maggie’s mouth as a fresh wave of nausea hit her. She wrapped her arms over her belly, holding herself together, as what little hope she clung to disintegrated.

  She felt as if she’d been treading water for hours, clawing her way to shore. Now there was nothing to grab on to, nothing to keep her afloat.

  Why was this happening to her? To Davie? In spite of the odds, she’d prayed that something would turn up at the crime scene – anything that would have pointed toward her son. Suddenly, the adrenaline she’d been running on for the past eight hours rushed from her body. Barely able to stand, she rested against her car as she reached into her jacket pocket for the keys.

  Stafford kept on walking, beyond the vehicle, toward the hedge. Maggie watched as he approached the yellow tape, dipped beneath it, and emerged on the other side.

  She ran to the barrier’s edge on rubbery legs. “You’re not supposed to do that.”

  He shrugged. “It’s the only way I’m going to get a reading.” Stafford closed his eyes. His face went blank. His skin glowed, lit from within.

  Even though Maggie didn’t completely buy the psychic stuff, she knew she was witnessing something strange, outside her experience. She rubbed her hands together to keep them from trembling. “Are you going to pass out on me again?”

  Even in the dimness, she could see his cheeks color. “I didn’t actually lose consciousness.”

  “You came damn close.”

  “When I’m in contact with a subject, I feel their emotions. I touch their soul.”

  Maggie tried to hide her disbelief. Was this guy for real? Or an escapee? One of those nutcases who claimed to be a second cousin of the Messiah? “You mean, when you held Davie’s knapsack...”

  “I became Davie.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand. If that’s true, why did you pass out on the stairs?”

  “I didn’t lose con–”

  “Okay, okay. Then why did you act so weird?”

  “There’s a big difference between touching an inanimate object and being thrust into physical contact with another person.
And you...” He looked at her, a wry smile tugging at his lips. “You’re a very powerful woman. The strength of your spirit ... it packed a hell of a wallop.”

  Maggie stiffened. Had he been able to read her thoughts? Her heart? When she’d ambushed him outside the police station, she’d lost all control. She’d never felt so enraged, or so exposed. Sides of herself she’d never revealed to anyone.

  Had Stafford seen it? Felt it? Along with her?

  She tried to distance herself from the intimacy, to erase it from her memory. She slapped at the shivers crawling across her shoulders and turned back toward the car. “I’ll get you a flashlight.”

  “Not necessary.”

  She stopped and swiveled on her heel. “You don’t need to see?”

  “Not for this.” He raised his head and moved his arms away from his body, his bare hands open at his sides. He looked like a ship’s bow, offering himself to the elements.

  “I thought you had to touch objects to get an impression.”

  “I am,” he answered, his eyes, again, closed. “My body is touching the air, the soles of my shoes are touching the earth. I’m trying to pick up on anything that’s imprinted here.”

  “You mean you don’t have to–”

  “Shhhhh.”

  Maggie shut her mouth, pursing her lips to keep from asking the questions whirling inside her. She watched Stafford move beyond the lampposts, outside the murky light they offered. The grass he walked on was a black void. What could he find in the dark that Detective Millar and his dogs hadn’t?

  “I sense fear.”

  The hairs at the back of Maggie’s neck stood at attention. Who had her son? Were they hurting him? Abusing him? Maggie clutched her shaking hands together and pressed them between her breasts.

  “And there’s something else...”

  She waited, hoping for and dreading his next words.

  “I sense ... love.”

  Maggie stared at him in disbelief. “Love? You sense love?” Her stomach lurched. “It’s a sick kind of love when a man abducts a little boy.”

  She pasted her hands over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say it, wished she could take back the words. Saying it out loud made her worst fear real – the fear that her son was in the hands of a child molester.

  A serial killer.

  She felt her body convulse, shake in uncontrollable spasms. She kept her hands on her mouth, smothering the escaping cries, until her knees gave way.

  Strong arms wrapped around her, guided her down to the curb, and held her as silent screams quaked through her body.

  * * *

  Stafford kept quiet. What could he possibly say? That he knew how she felt? She wouldn’t believe him anyway.

  He’d been through it before. Twice. In spite of the mental shield he’d constructed around himself, holding Maggie brought back the anguish. And damned if it didn’t bring a hint of pleasure. It had been a while since he’d held a woman in his arms.

  In another time, under other circumstances...

  He shut out the thought and the emptiness that crushed his chest. His circumstances weren’t going to change. He was different from other men. He wasn’t part of the world. He was an outsider, walking through it.

  And right now, so was Maggie. Maybe that’s why he felt such a bond.

  He held her until the tears ebbed and her steel guard snapped back into place. She sniffed, reached into her pocket and drew out a tissue.

  “Sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize.”

  She wiped her eyes, her nose. “Thank you.”

  The coolness of the evening penetrated Stafford’s jacket. Or was it the way she’d pulled back from him that left the air between them chilled? He let his hands rest on his knees and looked away, giving her some privacy. His gaze moved upwards, toward the night sky.

  The moon peered out from behind a dark cloud that drifted across it. He remembered something his sister once said. That it didn’t matter if they were miles apart, they could still look up at the same moon and be instantly connected.

  For a moment, he could feel Bree’s warmth, as if she were sitting by his side. His sister’s love surrounded him like a bath of hot cocoa. Her scent, strawberry lip gloss and spearmint gum, perfumed the air, making him smile.

  Then she disappeared. Or rather, the sensations did. Because Bree hadn’t really been there. Only Maggie. And that big satellite in the sky.

  He glanced up at it again and wondered about all the lost and missing kids in the world. Whether they were looking at that same moon or if a killer had shut their eyes forever.

  Beside him, Maggie bent forward. She picked up something in the dirt and dusted it off on her pant leg. “Lucky penny,” she said, her voice sounding anything but optimistic. She dropped the coin into his bare palm.

  An American penny. Nothing unusual about that. An American by birth, Stafford had learned that Canadians didn’t differentiate between the coin of their own country and that of their neighbors to the south. Everyone in Canada had US coins – given and accepted freely at any checkout counter.

  The penny showed the Lincoln Memorial on one side and the good man himself on the other, with the words In God We Trust embossed over his head. Nothing odd in that, either. The strange part was the heat radiating in Stafford’s palm.

  “I’ll drive you home now,” Maggie said. She stood and walked toward her car.

  He closed his eyes and saw the tan vehicle again, this time, from the inside. He heard the sounds of the road – a long trip through rugged terrain, a woman’s voice...

  “Stafford?” Maggie’s footsteps returned, echoing in his ears as though she were at the other end of a long tunnel. “Did you find something?”

  He shook off the images and focused on the real person before him, her face in partial shadow, her mouth a thin, tight line. “It’s not a man. It’s a woman.”

  “What? How do you know that?”

  “The penny. It’s hers. She lost it, struggling with Davie.”

  Maggie stared at him, her dark eyes blazing. “Get in the car.”

  * * *

  She reached for her cell phone as she ran to her vehicle. Energy coursed through her – leg muscles burning, hope filling her heart. Finally, Maggie had a direction. Something to focus on. If it turned out she was grasping at straws...

  No. She wouldn’t believe that. She had to keep going. Move forward. Follow any lead. No matter the source.

  Forget about reality. It had stopped late that afternoon. At this point, she was willing to try anything, go anywhere, trust anyone. As long as she got her little boy back.

  By the time she started the car’s engine, she had Owens on the line. “Stafford thinks it’s a woman. But why would a female abduct a child? Where would she take him?”

  “Out of the country, if she can,” Owens told her. “There’s a network of criminals who steal kids. They smuggle them through the States to countries all over the world.”

  Maggie remembered hearing about the crime ring several months earlier, when a young boy vanished from a playground in Vancouver. Officers had speculated about a connection to child pornography and the sex trade industry. At the time, the thought had sickened her. She felt far worse now.

  “We’ll step up patrols at the border,” Owens promised, “and get David’s photo out to the airports. Good work. But go home now, Mags. Let us do the rest.”

  “I’ll be on my cell phone. If you hear anything–”

  “I’ll call.”

  Maggie pushed the End button seconds after Owens hung up, and slipped her phone into one of the vehicle’s empty cup holders as she pulled out into traffic. She drove on for miles, lost in her fears.

  “Turn right up here at the lights.”

  Stafford had been so quiet during the drive she might have forgotten he was beside her until he spoke. Might have. But with Stafford, that was impossible.

  She could feel him, even from the opposite side of the car. The space
between them sizzled, the same feeling she’d experienced when he’d held her in his arms. With him, she felt safe and reassured, anxious and perplexed, all at the same time.

  She glanced over at him. Who was this man, this stranger who could touch her soul? An FBI agent turned carpenter? An odd switch to a biblical profession. Maybe he was a second cousin of the Messiah, after all.

  Maggie reached the intersection and, ignoring the prospect of divine intervention, kept driving. She moved into the passing lane.

  “You missed my turn.” His voice sounded calm. His hands, once again encased in black leather, rested quietly on his knees.