Getting Hotter

“Very nice,” Seth agreed. “Did you see that, Soph? Your brother just—”

Sophie was gone.

Seth had to blink a couple of times to be sure. But no. She wasn’t there. Only the bag of cotton candy remained.

His heart stopped, then started pounding.

“Sophie!” Panic clawed up his throat. “Dylan, Sophie’s gone.”

The other man instantly went on the alert. “Are you f**king kidding me?”

“No, I’m not f**king kidding you,” he spat out.

As his pulse shrieked like a whistle in his head, he scooped Jason into his arms, ignoring the kid’s startled yelp.

Holding the boy tight, Seth scanned the crowd for Sophie. Miranda had dressed both kids in the brightest colors known to man—a neon pink tee for Sophie, a neon green one for Jason. She insisted that as dorky as they were, the T-shirts would ensure the kids stood out like billboards in a crowd.

“Look for a pink shirt,” Seth ordered, finding it difficult to hear himself speak over the pounding of his heart.

He searched the mob of people cluttering the carnival grounds. Blue shirts, white shirts, black, red, pink—nope, different kid. He continued scanning and dismissing, his panic intensifying each time he struck out.

Holy Mother of God. He’d lost Miranda’s daughter.

Sophie was gone.

Everything got very, very quiet. The chatter of the families around them. The bells and whistles and clangs and dings in the game area. The happy shrieks and whoops echoing from the rides area. It all faded into a dull, muffled hiss.

And every single person in the crowd turned into Jarvis Henderson.

“Seth. Yo, dude, it’s fine, we’ll find her.”

Dylan’s voice found a way into Seth’s nightmare. He blinked, saw the visible concern on the blond SEAL’s face.

“Sophie’s gone,” he mumbled.

“It’s okay. We’ll find her.” Dylan’s brother’s fiancée stepped into his line of vision, her voice gentle, her hand even gentler as she touched his arm.

Jason was clinging tight to his shoulders, his face streaked with tears as he looked at Seth. “Where’s Sophie?”

“I don’t know, buddy.” His voice cracked. The panic spiked. “But we’re going to look for her. Okay?”

He glanced at the other two adults. “We split up. Dylan, check rides. Claire, keep looking here. Jase and I will head to the food area and the pett—” He stopped abruptly.

The petting zoo.

Could she have wandered off in search of the ponies she’d so desperately wanted to see?

“I might know where she is,” he blurted out. “Keep your phones on. Call if you find her.”

Seth took off with Jason in his arms. Dodging people left and right, he muscled his way through the crowd, wishing everyone would just drop dead. Each frantic beat of his heart bruised his ribs, ravaged his chest.

He’d lost Sophie.

He’d turned away from her for thirty seconds and now she was gone.

Should’ve been you, man.

The guilt he’d harbored all these years came flooding to the surface. Goddammit. He should’ve been the one playing in the f**king yard when that sick f**k Jarvis Henderson drove up in his pickup. Adam should’ve been inside, watching TV. It should’ve been Seth’s beaten and mutilated body those hikers found in the f**king desert.

He kept his eyes open for the color pink, but Sophie was nowhere to be found as he raced through the carnival. In the distance he saw the big wooden sign advertising the petting zoo.

Please let her be here. Please let her be here.

He wasn’t a religious man, but he was praying to God as he neared the enclosure that housed the ponies. Praying that he didn’t have to call Miranda and tell her that her daughter was gone.

“There she is!” Jason’s delighted voice broke through his terrifying thoughts.

Seth nearly keeled over when he spotted that neon-pink T-shirt by the wooden fence closing off the petting zoo. Sophie was standing on her tiptoes, her brown ponytail swishing back and forth as she tried to get a better look at the two black-maned horses.

A wave of relief slammed into him. “Sophie!”

She turned around and happily waved him over. “Sef! Come see the pony!”

Lingering adrenaline coursed through his blood, making his hands shake and his vision waver. He managed to pull out his cell phone to call Dylan, telling him and Claire to meet them here.

Sophie must have noticed the wild look in his eyes, because the joy in her eyes faded into guilt. “Uh-oh,” she said.

He sucked in an unsteady breath. “Uh-oh is right.”

“Your friend looked…wrecked.” Claire dropped her purse on the floor in the front hall and bent down to unlace her black Adidas.

“Sophie taking off like that really shook him up. Shook me up too,” Dylan confessed.

“Yeah, me too.” For the first time all evening, that antagonistic glint left her golden brown eyes, and suddenly she looked very young and very pretty. “I keep thinking about what would’ve happened if we hadn’t found her…” Claire shuddered. “Oh God. Imagine losing a child.”

Silence settled between them, not quite comfortable, but not quite hostile either.

Finally she cleared her throat. “Anyway, I’m going to bed.”

“At nine o’clock? Gee, dear, did all the excitement get to you?”

Her lips tightened. “And he’s back.”