“I’m sorry for yelling,” he whispered.
I just shrugged. Or, half-shrugged. It was difficult to pull off a full shrug with my body plastered so tight against Cade’s.
“None of this is your fault,” he continued. “Not right for me to take it out on you.”
His lips were in my hair, which felt deliciously good. It took all my strength to keep my posture rigid.
“Still, I can’t help wishing, that first night, I’d brought you somewhere besides The Sea Witch. Then you wouldn’t have met Georgia. You wouldn’t be tangled up in this nightmare.”
His logic was flawed, but I understood his intentions were pure. That made the last of my resolve melt away. I allowed my body to go pliant in his arms, then craned my neck to look up at him.
“Cade.”
His brows went up.
“You’re going to find him,” I told him, lifting up onto my tiptoes to meet his gaze head-on. He was so tall, we still weren’t quite face to face as I slid my arms around his neck. “I have faith in you, honey.”
A warm, beautiful light hit his eyes, but his voice was still solemn. “We’ve got every available officer out looking for him, canvasing the streets. If we can get some more specifics out of Declan, we can retrace their exact route.”
“Georgia is convinced Donny took him.”
Cade shook his head. “Donny is in lockup in the next county. He’ll be there a while. Turns out, he had an open warrant for failure to appear on a destruction of property charge.”
That was a relief. “Oh. That’s good news.”
Cade didn’t seem to agree. There was a dark furrow between his brows and that warm light vanished from his eyes.
“What?” I asked. “What is it?”
He hesitated a beat before he shared. “Most times, when kids go missing, it’s just what Georgia assumed. Custody issue. One parent goes off half-cocked, decides to take the kid without permission, chaos ensues. When it’s not the parent…” The furrow deepened. “Opens up a whole other realm of possibilities. We’re already sending uniforms to knock on the doors of known offenders, ensure a sexual predator didn’t snatch and grab.”
I swallowed hard.
“Tonight isn’t just any night,” Cade continued. “Halloween. Fuck, the freaks are out in force in every town across America. That’s especially true here in Salem. We’ve got just shy of a million visitors in the city this weekend. And they’ve come from all over the country. Some of them international. That means we aren’t just looking at a local pool of suspects. If someone from out of state shoved Rory into a car trunk, he could be anywhere by daybreak. Anywhere.”
Fear sluiced through me. “Oh my god.”
“Imogen, I’m telling you this.You. Not Georgia. You understand me?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Won’t do her any good to hear this shit.” He exhaled sharply. “She needs to focus on the things in her control. Let us do the rest.”
“How can I help her?”
His eyes scanned my face. “You’re not going to sit on the sidelines for this, are you? Even if I ask?”
“Not even if you beg, detective.”
He sighed. His hands slid down my back to rest just above the curve of my ass. “Aguilar is going over everything with Georgia now, gathering all the information we need. Mainly, what he was wearing tonight along with any distinguishing scars, birthmarks… People or places he might’ve gone to if he was lost and couldn’t get home. We already have a BOLO with his basic physical description out to every officer on the streets.”
“BOLO?”
“Be On The Lookout,” he clarified. “We’ll be sending out an AMBER Alert statewide in a few minutes so the general public can look for him as well. We’ll get a designated line set up, so people can call in with tips.”
“That’s good.”
“Standard protocol,” he said. “One stroke of luck is, we already have a shit ton of support staff from neighboring counties on deck this weekend. We knew we’d need them, with so many out-of-towners here. We’ll call in more if he’s not home by morning, plus local volunteers. Search parties take a hell of a lot of manpower. I’ve also got a call in to the Feds for additional support. We’ll need them if this crosses state lines.”