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“Where are my children?”

“I don’t know,” the airport clerk repeated, and Kirsten Laurence fought back a flare of panic. “All I know is, they’re not on this flight. If they were, we’d have the Un-accompanied Minor paperwork.”

But what if Brad had forgotten to fill it out? Or the airline had lost it someplace? Maybe she was grasping at straws, but the possibility of not seeing Lindsay, Adam and Eric as soon as the plane arrived was making her stomach twist with horror.

“Unless they look older than their ages,” the clerk offered, evidently seeing her stricken expression. “Once in a while, we’ll get a teenager who can pass for—”

“My daughter is seven,” Kirsten interrupted, clenching her fists in the folds of her flowered shirt—Lindsay’s favorite, which was why she’d worn it today. “And the twins are five. They’ve been visiting their dad for two weeks, and I’m picking them up this morning!”

“Well, we have another Seattle-to-Tucson flight coming in at three-fifteen, and the first one landed two hours ago….”

Dear God, could she possibly have missed them? It was impossible, but she couldn’t find any better explanation.

Worse ones, yes. Like Brad forgetting the date. Or losing track of time, except that surely by now he would have called her. Maybe a car accident on the way to the airport. A trip to the emergency room. Brad knocked unconscious, her children not knowing the phone number of their brand-new house….

No, she was being silly. Overprotective. It was probably something simple, like a flat tire. Or Brad deciding right before they boarded that another airline had better first-class seats. She could easily imagine him buying new tickets on the spot, discarding the original ones without a thought for the cost.

That had to be it, Kirsten told herself, trying to steady her breathing while she headed toward the cluster of pay phones to call Seattle. That would be typical of her ex-husband.

All she needed to do was phone and ask him which plane to meet.

She couldn’t stop her fingers from shaking, though, while she punched in her calling-card number. There had to be someone on hand to answer. Her daughter and sons were somewhere out there, and she had no idea where—there had to be an answer.

There was. As soon as she heard the phone being picked up, Kirsten felt a wave of relief crest over the apprehension rising inside her. Then, when Brad’s recorded message began, the fear circled higher.

“Hey, sorry I missed you,” came his cheerful voice. He sounded as carefree and friendly as ever, confirming her long-held belief that Brad Laurence was a terrific person as long as you weren’t married to him. “You know the routine, right? Leave your name, I’ll call your machine, you call mine again, and one of these days we’ll get it together. Okay?” Then a beep.

“Brad,” she choked. “Listen, I need to know where the kids are! Because the airline says they’re not on this flight, and—”

“Hello?” another voice interrupted. “Mrs. Laurence? This is Rena, the cleaning lady. I just heard you on the machine, so I thought I’d pick up.”

“Oh, thank you.” The cleaning lady would be fine as long as she knew where to reach him. “I’m so glad you’re there. Brad is sending the children home this morning, and I need to know what plane they’re on.”

There was a pause. Then Rena cleared her throat.

“Uh, Mrs. Laurence? I think maybe there was a mistake. Because last I heard, they were taking off on vacation.”

On vacation? No.

“They’re coming home today,” Kirsten protested, but already her chest felt tight. As if she needed to brace her entire body against a jolt. Which the cleaning lady delivered.

“Mr. Laurence said yesterday he was keeping the kids. He said you needed a break.”

A break? After two weeks without Lindsay and Adam and Eric? “He said what?”

“Well, that’s what the boys told me. That you were moving? Anyway, he asked me to get the house closed up today.”

Kirsten felt a clutch of panic flaring higher inside her. Brad must have planned this in advance, but why hadn’t he called her if he wanted more time with the children? And how could he have told them she wanted a break from them? “Rena, did he say where they were going?”

“Colorado, maybe? I’m not sure.”

His condo in Telluride. That had to be it. He’d taken the kids there for Christmas six months ago, and they had described a penthouse atop a luxurious resort, which sounded like Brad’s kind of place. “If he calls again,” she asked shakily, “would you have him get hold of me? And tell him to use the new number I gave him, because the forwarding system is messed up. Thanks.”

All she needed to do was phone Telluride, but for some reason it was hard to make her fingers punch in the calling-card number again. There was nothing to worry about, Kirsten assured herself, gazing blindly around the airport’s bustling concourse as she waited to be connected with the resort concierge. But the reassurance was wearing thin…and when she learned that Mr. Laurence hadn’t used his suite since Christmas, she felt a chilling wave of disbelief mingled with stark, raw terror.

Her children were gone.

This wasn’t Brad’s typical carelessness. This was deliberate, and she had no idea how to react. Leave word with everyone he might contact? Alert the police that her ex-husband had failed to return the children? Call the FBI? While he deserved the worst kind of punishment and then some, she hated the idea of Lindsay and the boys seeing Brad arrested for kidnapping…because her children needed to think well of their father.

But he couldn’t keep them. He couldn’t! Not with Adam and Eric starting kindergarten next month, not when Lindsay had already gone two weeks without her bedtime story. Not when he’d never wanted the children for any length of time before.

This didn’t make sense, Kirsten thought again as she headed out to the short-term parking garage where she’d left her car. Brad had never enjoyed the routine of parenthood, the everyday pleasures of being a father. After his parents had died in a plane crash last December, he’d shown a little more enthusiasm than usual for pampering the children—but nothing that indicated he wanted them beyond the usual week around the holidays and two weeks in June or July. Why was he suddenly holding onto them?

And what was she supposed to do about it? Call the police? Her parents? But they had left only yesterday for their thirtieth-anniversary cruise….

She drove home with shivers chilling her body, which under any other circumstances would have been a welcome relief from the heat of a Tucson summer. Yet now she wished the cold numbness would recede faster, wished she could think faster, wished that by the time she reached the new house she could have a plan of action completely formed in her mind.

The logical first step was calling the police, but that proved to be no help at all. “Custody violation by itself isn’t a criminal offense,” an officer explained, “so we can’t do anything right now. If they’re not back in three weeks, call again.”

Three weeks? Three more weeks without Lindsay, without Adam, without Eric? Without the only treasures in her life?

Brad had to be somewhere, she thought, hanging up the phone and pacing the Saltillo-tile floor of her newly furnished kitchen. He might have only been joking with the cleaning lady, might have decided to return the children to Tucson himself—but even if he hadn’t, someone must know where he was. He had friends, surely, people he kept in touch with. Someone had to know where to find the chairman of the Laurence Foundation, even if he rarely set foot in the place.

Who would Brad talk to, anyway? Maybe Steve and Amy in their hometown of Tubac, or John Harris, or Mike and Ellen. Or J.D. Ryder—

No, not J.D. There were plenty of other people she could ask.

She wasn’t calling J.D. Ryder.

But after half an hour of phoning everyone she could think of, only to receive useless reassurances that “Brad must’ve just decided to show the kids an extra good time this summer,” Kirsten found herself frantically scrambling through the battered phone list she’d started during the early days of their marriage. The names, even then, were mostly in his handwriting—Brad had always made friends easily, effortlessly—and seven years later, there were still dozens of people he must have stayed in touch with.

J.D. was listed near the end, but there had to be other names she could try. Brad’s favorite mechanic. His tennis coach. The woman who embroidered his exquisite holiday gifts to patrons of the Laurence Foundation. She tried them all, and learned that none of them had talked to Brad recently. Not since their sympathy calls last winter, when his parents had been killed in the Bahamas and left him the largest hacienda in southern Arizona.

Maybe he’d gone back there, Kirsten realized with a flash of hope. Maybe he’d found himself missing his parents, wanting to show his children the importance of family by visiting his hometown. There weren’t many names left from Tubac…Brad had left for college with blithe promises to keep in touch with all his friends, but within a few years they had dwindled down to a very small collection. Mike and Ellen, who had stayed in Tubac. J.D. Ryder, who had—

You’re not calling J.D.

It would be easy enough to find him, she admitted as she fumbled through her desk for the number of the Laurence estate caretaker. Brad had routinely kept her up to date on their best friend from high school, the third member of “Tubac’s Terrific Trio.” And after rising so rapidly through the ranks of the Phoenix Police Department, it wasn’t likely that J.D. would have vanished into thin air.

The way he’d done eight years ago, when—

You’re not calling J.D. Ryder!

But after an apologetic denial from the caretaker and with every other name in the directory exhausted, she found herself battling a long-buried sense of uneasiness. It would be a simple call, Kirsten told herself desperately. It would be nothing more than the same questions she’d asked three dozen other people. “Have you talked to Brad lately? Did he mention anything about taking the kids on vacation?”

She could do it. She could call him.

All she needed to do was concentrate on finding her children. Ask J.D. a few simple questions. Listen to him with the same focused detachment she’d listened to all those other voices during the past forty minutes, and forget that his voice had ever been more than a simple source of information.

She could do it.

Swallowing a hard, salty knot in the back of her throat, Kirsten reached for the phone.

“Ryder, you just missed a call.”

Jonesy sounded smug about it, J.D. noticed. The guy was probably hoping it would attract notice from upstairs…Ryder’s been out all morning, losing focus ever since he gave notice. Put me in instead.

Well, maybe they would. It was hard to imagine someone as spit-shined as Jonesy taking over the contacts J.D. had spent three years coaxing from the alleys of south Phoenix, but the brass upstairs seldom saw things the way he did. One more reason he’d be glad to get started in Chicago.

“Thanks,” he said, taking the message slip from the junior officer and heading for his desk. The past month of fourteen-hour days had at last reduced the mountain of paperwork to a very short stack, which he hoped his replacement would appreciate. He added this morning’s reports to the pile, checked the vacation-refusal box on the resignation “Freedom Form” someone had finally delivered, then glanced at Jonesy’s message slip and felt a jolt of heat down his spine.

Kirsten Laurence?

It startled him how quickly the sight of her name could still make his skin tighten. Eight years should have put her safely in the realm of old memories, the kind that roused only a vague nostalgia. High-school friends, good old days, Tubac’s Terrific Trio, nothing more than that.

Kirsten…

It was nothing to get excited about, J.D. told himself, initialing his resignation form and dropping it in the battered Out tray. She was probably planning a class reunion, a surprise party for her ex-husband, something like that. Something that required a courtesy call, some message she couldn’t send via Brad…the way she used to send Christmas or birthday greetings whenever he and his old buddy got together for a beer or a Super Bowl game.

Although those greetings had dwindled to a halt even before the divorce two years ago. He had wondered whether he should phone Kirsten with condolences when Brad described the new love of his life—a former Miss Scottsdale whose attraction had faded so quickly that she’d never been mentioned again. But he had decided against it.

There wasn’t much he could say beyond, “I never expected that.” Nobody would’ve expected that if they’d known her and Brad back in high school…the way he had, during those years when the three of them shared a long bus ride each day. They’d become a trio of best friends, which had amazed J.D. even as it warmed him—but still, that long-ago friendship was no justification for getting in touch with Kirsten. She’d probably put him out of her mind a long time ago, and he didn’t need her taking up any more space in his awareness.

The way she would if he let himself hear her voice again.

But this phone message was something he couldn’t ignore. She’d asked for him specifically, which meant it couldn’t be a simple coincidence of her needing some police officer. Not that a Tucson homemaker would likely need a Phoenix narcotics detective in any case, especially one with only two weeks left on the job.

She’d left a new phone number, J.D. noticed, looking at the message slip and steeling himself against the impact of seeing her name again. This wasn’t the number he remembered using for Brad on those rare occasions he’d called his friend in Tucson. But it made sense that Kirsten would’ve found a new place…she probably wouldn’t have wanted to stay in the same house she’d shared with her ex-husband.

An ex-husband J.D. would have pummeled for walking out on her, old friendship or not, if only she hadn’t wound up happier without him.

Brad hadn’t said that, of course. But he had said that after trying to talk Kirsten into a reconciliation and being flatly refused, the only conclusion he could come to was that she preferred someone who’d take more of an interest in the kids.

Which Brad, in spite of his comfortable heritage, apparently never had done. Except at their last meeting in January, J.D. recalled, when his friend had waxed eloquent about the glories of family. “I never realized how great my parents were until that plane crash, and now all I’ve got are the kids. But once the boys and Lindsay come visit this summer, I could keep them with me. Show ’em a great time…Las Vegas, skiing at Telluride, sailing off Catalina Island…”

The list of sites sounded almost like an itinerary, J.D. had thought at the time, but after the Super Bowl broadcast he had dismissed it as “bar talk.” While Brad might conceivably be planning to abscond with his kids, the possibility wasn’t worth mentioning to Kirsten. There was no reason, J.D. had managed to convince himself, for phoning a woman he hadn’t seen in eight years.

A decision he’d come to, he admitted, mainly because of the same uneasiness he was feeling right now.

J.D. flattened the message slip against the front of his desk. Drew it across the curved edge to smooth out its surface. Propped it against the phone and gazed at it, trying to imagine how Kirsten looked—as quietly stunning as ever, probably, with those incredible blond tresses and the perfect skin to match—and how she might sound when he called. Did her voice still have that faint lilt, that occasional edge of huskiness when—

Forget it, Ryder.

It was a phone call, nothing more. No reason to sit here gaping at a piece of paper as if it contained all the promise of a desert rainfall. Torn between annoyance at himself—he was a combat veteran, for God’s sake, and acting like a teenager!—and a grim awareness that he couldn’t quite seem to draw a full breath, J.D. punched the number into his phone.

One ring.

Gazing blankly across the cluttered squadroom, he forced himself to breathe in as much air as he could. If he wound up talking to her answering machine, he should at least sound reasonably in control of his own voice.

Two rings.

Kirsten might not even be there. She spent every summer taking the kids to art classes, swimming, gymnastics, the kind of thing “every mom does,” according to Brad. J.D. knew that wasn’t true of every mom, but he’d never argued the point. Even though he now had plenty of casework to cite, he’d spent the past decade letting his friends believe that their all-American lifestyle was the normal one.

Three rings.

“Hello?”

It was Kirsten. Sounding exactly the way he remembered. J.D. gripped the phone tighter and closed his eyes.

“Kirs, it’s J.D. How’re you doing?”

He could have said something smoother than that, he realized with a twinge of embarrassment as soon as he heard himself. But she hadn’t called to evaluate his social skills. All he needed to do was listen to her reunion invitation, explain he was taking off for Chicago in another few weeks, and put her out of his mind.

Again.

“Oh, I’m glad you called!” The warmth in her voice startled him, it sounded so close to what he’d fantasized about during those nights in basic training. But why would she be so excited about hearing from him now? “I’ve been trying to find anyone who might have talked to Brad lately.”

Well, that answered that. “Ah,” J.D. said, crumpling the message slip and aiming it at the wastebasket behind his desk. “Yeah.”

“I know this is going to sound really strange, but…did he by any chance mention any plans with the children? Because they were supposed to be home today, only his cleaning lady said he was taking them on vacation—and I don’t know where they are.”

J.D. closed his eyes, feeling as if he’d just been sucker-punched. So Brad hadn’t just been shooting off his mouth.

And here you didn’t want to call and warn her….

“Oh, God,” he muttered. “I’m sorry, Kirs.”

“Well, so, I was just hoping—I mean, nobody’s heard anything, and—” With every phrase her voice sounded shakier. “The police said they can’t do anything about a custody violation, and I’ve been asking everyone, only it’s like they—they’re just gone—I mean, it’s probably okay, because when I got the mail there was a…a…what, a postcard, only—”

“Kirsten,” he interrupted. “Take a breath.”

There was a momentary silence, then he heard a quick, shuddering gasp. All right, she was listening to him.

“Good,” J.D. said. “Another breath, okay? A big one.” He couldn’t make up for what he’d failed to do, but he could at least keep her from passing out.

A longer breath. “Okay,” she said, sounding slightly more composed. But then he heard the panic slipping back into her voice. “They’re just gone—and I don’t know what to do!”

Neither did he, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “It’s okay,” he said in his best soothe-the-assault-victim tone. “We’ll get it handled.” Kirsten was right about the police not pursuing civil cases—which always shocked parents who viewed custody violations as a crime—but he’d make damn sure she got whatever assistance he could line up. “You say you got a postcard?”

“From the Space Needle,” she confirmed. “Brad always takes them there when they first get to Seattle, and they always send me one of those big postcards. Except this time, Lindsay and the boys wrote their names and drew pictures like they always do, and Brad added a note—”

“Can you read it to me?” This was the kind of thing a private investigator should handle, J.D. knew, but he couldn’t think of anyone to recommend in Tucson or Seattle. His only other contacts were cops, who couldn’t offer the kind of help she needed—and yet it was his fault she needed help in the first place. If only he’d phoned her in January….

“Let me get it. Just a second.” It took only a little longer than that before she cleared her throat and read, “Never realized till I lost my folks how great it is, having family around. Call if it’s a problem, but I want to give these kids a really fun summer—show them all the places we’ve never been. Don’t worry, I’ll have ’em home for school. Love you, Brad.”

He could hear his buddy’s breezy, carefree tone even through the tremor in Kirsten’s voice. That sounded like Brad, all right—blithely assuming she wouldn’t mind giving up her kids on the one hand, and signing off with “love you” on the other.

That son of a—

But he couldn’t trash the father of Kirsten’s kids, no matter how upset she sounded right now.

“I never would’ve agreed to let them spend the rest of the summer with him!” she cried. “Two weeks, all right, they can eat candy every morning for two weeks, and it’s important for them to spend time with their dad. But the whole summer—when he’s never been all that responsible in the first place—”

“Right,” J.D. acknowledged, forcibly channeling the heated anger into the cold concentration he employed virtually every day of his life. “You’ve already tried calling him?”

“When they weren’t on the plane, I talked to the cleaning lady—only it was too late by then. Brad probably thought it was fine to take them, since I hadn’t said no, but the postcard only came today. And I’d never, ever let him keep Lindsay and Adam and Eric that long!”

At best the Seattle P.D. might send someone over to the house, leave a message, check back a few times…. Kirsten needed more than that. “Let me get someone on this, okay?”

“The police?” She sounded both hopeful and apprehensive. “Will that—I mean, as much as I hate him for doing this, I don’t want Brad to get arrested or anything. It’d be horrible for the children to think their father was— I just want them home.”

It wasn’t all that horrible, seeing your father arrested…although, J.D. reminded himself, Kirsten’s kids had grown up in the same comfortable, happy-ending world she’d always taken for granted. Maybe it would be horrible for people like that.

“I’ll get you a private investigator,” he told her, “someone who can start right away.” He would have to give the P.I. everything he could remember from that conversation during the Super Bowl, when Brad had boasted about all the great things he could do for his kids if Kirsten weren’t so fussy about school attendance. “Find a couple photos of them, okay? And write down everything you know about Brad—where he likes to stay, friends he might call, any credit-card numbers, that kind of thing.”

“I will,” Kirsten promised, sounding somewhat reassured. “J.D., really, I appreciate your help. I was hoping someone could…I mean, I can’t let them go all summer—”

“No, I know.” Brad had always been good company, but the same blithe irresponsibility that made him fun to spend time with was probably a major drawback when it came to looking after kids. “You’d just as soon they didn’t live on candy bars, right?”

“Well, that, and the kindergarten needs Adam and Eric in by August first. If they’re going to be in separate classrooms instead of together, I have to—” She broke off, sounding suddenly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, that’s mom stuff. And here I didn’t even ask…how have you been?”

The question startled him, coming over the phone on which no one had ever asked such a thing. “Uh, fine,” he said, gripping the receiver a little tighter as he scanned the list of private investigators he recommended to parents seeking children sucked into the world of drugs. “I’m moving to Chicago in a few weeks.”

“Chicago! What will you be doing there?”

“Narcotics task force. I got the call last month.” He’d been elated at getting into a department where the work would be more demanding, more challenging, more of a chance to make a difference. More opportunity to keep addicts and dealers from inflicting on anyone the kind of childhood he’d endured. “Same kind of thing I’m doing here, but a bigger city. With better pizza.”

He could almost hear her smile at that last comment. “You always wanted to travel,” she observed, surprising him with how much she remembered of the dreams he’d never shared until that one summer. “It’s wonderful you’re getting the chance.”

She sounded a lot happier for him than anyone else had. Not that he’d told many people—just the captain, a few of the guys he worked with and the manager at his apartment complex.

“Well, thanks.” It was typical of Kirsten, he recalled, to show such genuine pleasure in a friend’s good fortune. Although he couldn’t exactly call himself a friend, not after the way he’d failed to warn her about Brad’s bar talk. “I’ve still got two weeks here, but there’s not much left to do. So I’ll find you a P.I. right away.”

“I really appreciate it,” she said again. “What shall I do besides make that list? And should I—do you know how much they charge?”

He couldn’t let her pay for his mistake, J.D. knew. It was partly his fault that she’d lost her kids, although he couldn’t quite bring himself to confess it…especially when she was already hurting. Somehow he’d have to make things right for Kirsten without letting her know that both members of her old trio had let her down.

“Depends on who you get,” he began. “But the thing is…I mean, if that’s a problem—”

“No, of course not!” The indignation in her voice startled him—Brad had said she’d refused anything beyond a single large settlement in exchange for his promise to stay involved with the kids—but apparently money was of no importance when it came to her children. “I’ve still got my grandmother’s trust fund, and my parents can always help. It’s not a problem.”

Did her parents still think Brad Laurence was the best thing that could happen to their daughter? J.D. wondered. Not that it mattered—the whole issue had been settled a long time ago, and in fact he’d agreed with their opinion—but he couldn’t help feeling a twinge of curiosity.

“All right,” he said, deliberately squelching it and returning his gaze to the list of investigators. He owed her a lot more than a P.I.’s name, but what else could he offer without explaining how badly he’d failed her? And while he deserved her condemnation, she didn’t deserve to hear about yet another betrayal. “I’ll phone some people and get right back to you. It shouldn’t take long.”

“I’ll wait right by the phone,” she promised.

“No, I meant, it shouldn’t take long for someone to find them.” Especially with his list of all the places Brad had mentioned. He could handle the search himself, if only he had the freedom to—

The freedom…

He could do this for her. For the woman he had loved, the woman he’d vowed never to hurt. The woman he had failed to protect.

J.D. took the Freedom Form from its stack and stared at the vacation-refusal box he’d marked. “Tell you what, Kirs,” he said slowly, scratching out his initials and inking a heavier X in the opposite box. “I can be in Tucson in three hours. You get those photos ready…and I’ll find your kids myself.”