Emily Locke 01 - Final Approach

bygones. Instead, I followed him toward the boarding line and glanced out the windows. It was bleak as ever and still snowing. We’d be lucky if our plane didn’t fall out of the sky like a hundred-and-fifty-thousand pound Popsicle with wings. The line inched forward, and Richard and I obediently blended into the herd.
    I remembered my last trip to Texas, when we’d first met. Little Mattie Shelton was missing then.
Please let this trip have a better ending for the family involved
.

Chapter Three
    Our flight was full, and the cabin too warm. We’d barely received the safety spiel and located the nearest exits when Richard set his briefcase on his lap, popped its locks, and pulled out a folder.
    “Eric Lyons is my clients’ son,” he said without looking at me. “He and his wife divorced after Christmas.”
    So much for small talk, I thought.
    “They shared custody of their boy, Casey. Eleven months old.” He passed me a thin stack of photos. Casey was a cherub sprouting dark curls, adorable dimples, and a wide smile with four budding teeth.
    “The arrangement was amicable until last week,” he continued. “Karen, the ex, took a job in Louisiana. Told police that when she asked Eric to go back to court to change the custody order, he got upset—afraid he’d never see the boy.”
    “Change the order?”
    Richard nodded. “Otherwise she couldn’t relocate more than a hundred and fifty miles away. Then Friday night, Casey disappeared from his mom’s home. No forced entry.”
    I shot him a quizzical glance, but he wouldn’t look at me. He paged through his folder and dumped more facts, like an information waterfall.
    “In her police report, Karen noted she didn’t change the pass code for her security system when Eric left. And, since Casey’s disappearance, Eric hasn’t returned to his apartment. Naturally, police suspect a parental abduction. But my clients are sure they’re wrong.”
    We accelerated down the runway. Richard swallowed, then brushed his nose nervously, and I suspected his verbal deluge had more to do with self-distraction than with filling me in.
    “You okay?” I asked.
    “Fine.”
    “Not a fan of planes?”
    He didn’t speak or look at me, just shook his head.
    I begrudged his intrusion into my life, and couldn’t resist twisting the knife a little.
    “I love planes.”
    He didn’t bite. If I’d known ahead of time that he was afraid to fly, I’d have figured a way to stick him with my window seat.
    Our wheels touched off and we ascended through spotty clouds. I peered through the window at the snowy landscape below.
    “On jump runs, we go to fourteen thousand feet,” I said. “Much higher, we’d need oxygen masks. Much lower, we’ll complain we’re not getting enough altitude for our money.”
    I turned from the window back to Richard. “What’s our cruising altitude today? Thirty, thirty-five thousand? That’d be about two minutes of freefall, Richard.”
    He swallowed again and nodded. When he stole a glance at the puke bag in the pouch in front of him, I decided against taking this much further.
    I switched gears. “Do you believe the parents?”
    His eyebrows twitched. “I never met Eric. I’m taking their word.”
    A baby in the front of the cabin cried out, and I ached for it.
    Richard continued, “If Eric didn’t take the boy, police are wasting valuable time.”
    I heard his words, but my attention had shifted to the crying in the front of the plane. Most passengers worry the fussing will be everlasting. My take is that there isn’t much about young kids that’s everlasting. If I could hear my daughter’s noises again—any of them, good or bad—you can bet I’d listen up in a heartbeat.
    Richard was still talking. “If somebody else has Casey, the sooner that trail is picked up, the better. So it doesn’t really matter who I believe. I’m one more person looking for this kid, and that’s enough for me.”
    I wondered whether his devotion could be some sort of penance. Was he making up for the mess he’d made of the Shelton case? Or was he trying to gain back my trust so I’d give him my full effort?
    “What do you know about Karen Lyons?”
    “Only what’s in her report. She woke up late on Saturday morning and knew right away something was wrong. It was 7:45 and Casey hadn’t woken her up yet. When she checked his room, he wasn’t in the crib.”
    I flashed on a similar event in my own past, and my chest felt like it was being