Page 17 of Hide My Heart
Nate
It’s mid-afternoon by thetime I get back home. The police took forever, and then there was the shopping I had to do for Beck, including buying him a proper car seat and warm clothes for the winter.
“Where the hell have you been?” Mom opens the door as soon as she hears my boots on the porch. The smell of stale bacon and cold coffee stirs the nausea I keep trying to swallow.
“Where’s Sharon?” she asks after looking around behind my back.
“Sharon had to go, remember?” I unzip my coat where I tucked Beck for the short walk from the car. I hope he isn’t too hungry, but I did feed him at the convenience store while waiting for the police to finish their investigation. Thank God, the clerk had ducked and was alive. He gave the officers the video feed and got a better description of the suspect.
Big, burly guy with wild eyes and a reddish-brown beard. The police said he’s probably a transient. I wish I’d gotten a better description of him. They promised to call me with news, but so far, nothing. I can’t think of anything but Amber. I should have done something. Should have left Beck in the car and tackled the guy.
I’m standing stiff when my mother practically peels the sleeping baby from inside my coat.
“That’s my grandson?” she coos. “He’s adorable. What did you say his name is?”
I stomp the snow off my boots in the mudroom and hang up my coat. “Beck. Beck Wil… Williams.”
“She gave him her last name?”
As if now is the time to argue about a baby’s last name.
“Looks like it.” I leave my boots and slip into the parlor, blowing my hands to warm them as I rush to the TV and switch it on.
“I’m talking to you, Nate Riley.” Mom grabs the remote and switches it off.
“I need to watch the news.” I switch it back on.
“Why?”
“The war. Sharon’s going to the Middle East.” The lie slips easily out of my mouth.
“Oh, Sharon. Couldn’t she get out of it because she has a baby?”
“Doesn’t work that way. She got a certain amount of time for the baby, and her maternity leave is over.” I’m lying out of my teeth right now and hoping I’ve covered all my tracks. Mom seems to buy it because she goes to the kitchen with Beck.
I flip through the channels. It’s just after nine in the morning, and they have those Sunday political talk shows. No local news. Darn.
Meanwhile, Mom’s talking to Beck. “I bet you need a diaper change, don’t you? Are you hungry? I bought four brands of formula. Let me heat some up.”
While she does that, I go through Amber’s backpack in my room. I separate her clothes and toiletries from Beck’s and bundle the baby’s supplies into another pack to hand to my mother.
She’s singing in the kitchen and feeding Beck from a bottle. “You’re so adorable, aren’t you, sweetie pie? You look just like Nate.”
Yeah, right. He’s got blue eyes and fine, blond hair and I’m brown-eyed with dark-brown hair. Some resemblance. But they say all babies have blue eyes. Maybe his will darken later.
I go back to my room and dump the rest of Amber’s stuff onto my bed. I need clues. Something to let me know if the guy who took her knew her from before. If he is Beck’s father, then stalking us and finding us at the Drop-In Stop wasn’t pure chance. He might have followed us from Divine, which means he knows where Mom and I live.
Hopefully, he wasn’t lurking around the Redbird Motel.
I’m going crazy thinking Amber is out there with a maniac, but the police told me they were onto it. They’re going through the convenience store’s security footage and have an APB out for the two of them.
Amber has all sorts of receipts, candy wrappers, and pieces of paper where she jotted notes to herself. She doesn’t have a cell phone, so there is no way to track her that way, but the notes can help me put together a paper trail on her.
There’s a letter addressed to her, care of Brewed Force Coffee Shop in Berkeley. In it, her grandmother urges her to come home and gives her news on family births: her brother Josh’s new son, and twin daughters for her other brother Steve. She also asks after Amber’s studies and what it’s like training to be a teacher.
Sounds like Amber’s been telling tales. There’s a fake ID for Sharon Williams and a few photographs of Amber with her coworkers at the coffee shop.
My fingers freeze on a picture of Amber standing next to a grizzly bear of a man. I didn’t get a good look at the crazed robber, but he was big, too. In the picture, the man is clean-shaven, but it doesn’t take long to grow a beard.
