Page 90 of Winter Vows

“I’ve moved on to the next counties,” the dispatcher told him, her own frustration evident.

“Where can he be staying? Surely he wouldn’t take that boy to some cheap, fleabag place. Do you think he’s left the area? If he’s gone to Dallas or Fort Worth or any other big city, there are too many hotels and motels for me to check between handling other calls. We’d have to have more help.”

Dylan didn’t even want to consider that just yet, but it was a real possibility he couldn’t ignore. A father traveling with his son wouldn’t stand out in a metropolitan area the way he would in some small town where people were attuned to the comings and goings of strangers.

Worse, despite what he’d said to Kelsey in this morning’s call, by now Paul could have left Texas entirely. He could have hopped a plane and fled the country, for that matter. That’s what Dylan would have done, if he’d gotten a notion to take Shane. He would have gone as far away from Texas as he possibly could to stay out of the law’s reach.

Of course, as far as he knew, the two situations were entirely different. He’d voluntarily given up custody of Shane for his son’s own good. He’d made a solemn vow—not just to Kit, but to himself—that he wouldn’t intrude in the boy’s life again.

For the most part, he’d stuck to that promise. Except for one person, no one knew about the lapses and he prayed to God no one else ever would.

He’d made three trips to see Shane, only from a distance, of course. Just to reassure himself that the boy was getting along okay. He believed with all his heart that he’d done the right thing in giving up custody, but he’d needed to see the evidence of it with his own eyes.

It hadn’t been hard to track Kit and her new husband down. They were living in a fancy suburb of Houston on the opposite side of town from Dylan’s own place. It wasn’t like they’d made a secret of it. He hadn’t had to go digging through confidential records to find them. They were in the phone book for anyone to find. That was how much Kit had trusted him to keep his word.

And he had—more or less. He’d just driven through the neighborhood a couple of times during the first few months after she’d remarried. Okay, once he’d lingered down the block from the house, waited until he’d seen Shane playing in the yard with his new brothers.

Even now his throat tightened as he recalled how happy the boy had seemed. Shane had dogged the footsteps of his new big brothers, trying to keep up with them, and they had been oh-so-patient with a toddler tagging after them. Watching them with a mix of amusement, nostalgia and sorrow, he knew he hadn’t been half that patient with his own kid brothers. In the end, he had driven away reassured. It had been over a year before he’d paid another visit. He’d realized one day in October that Shane would probably be in preschool. The fact that he’d missed his boy’s first day of school had overwhelmed him. Another cursory check of the phone book had led him to the school closest to Kit’s. He’d parked a block away from the playground, then kept his eyes peeled for some sign of his dark-haired son. He’d spotted Kit first, waiting on the sidewalk as Shane ran out, a red lunch box in one hand and a brightly colored finger painting in the other. He’d been chattering a mile a minute even before he reached his mother. Dylan had longed to hear the sound of his voice, but he’d been too far away. Thankfully, Kit hadn’t seen him...or so he’d thought at the time.

A week later the finger painting had turned up in his mail. The picture had been a childish rendering of a mother, a father and three boys. Even though no note had been attached, the message was unmistakable—this was Shane’s family now.

That picture and a few photos that he’d taken from Shane’s baby album were all he had of his son. He kept them tucked away in a dresser drawer, so no one else would know that he hadn’t completely forgotten the little boy he’d given up.

He needed his family to believe he was okay with his decision, that he never looked back. He couldn’t take having to defend the choice over and over again. Though his father and brothers avoided the topic, it was always there, albeit unspoken, especially around holidays.

Only Trish and his mother dared to broach the subject aloud—Trish out of love and concern, his mother for her own selfish reasons. In fact, his mother never let up with her pestering. She had complained bitterly about giving up all rights to see her first grandchild, at least until Trish had had Laura. Now the grumbling had died down, but there were still enough barbs directed his way that Dylan knew she hadn’t entirely forgiven him. He suspected his father also resented his decision to give up the first male heir to the Delacourt oil dynasty, but after Dylan’s rebellious defection from the family business, Bryce Delacourt had learned his lesson. He knew better than to bring it up.

So they all lived with Dylan’s decision in relative silence. Dylan couldn’t help wondering if Paul James had made the same kind of commitment to Kelsey for all the right reasons, then spent months of hell second-guessing himself before finally breaking and following her to Texas. Dylan wanted to believe he was a better man because he’d never put Kit through the kind of pain Kelsey was enduring now, but who knew how close he’d come to breaking his vow without realizing it? Those surreptitious visits had certainly crossed the line, albeit not as dramatically as what Paul had done.

Then came another nagging doubt. What if Kelsey deserved what was happening? What if he’d completely misread the kind of person she was? What if she had forced Paul into relinquishing custody? Had she been holding something over his head? Was that the secret she was guarding so tenaciously? Maybe she’d even blackmailed him into giving up his son.

Sweet heaven, he was losing it. He’d been around Kelsey enough in the past forty-eight hours to know better. That wasn’t the kind of woman she was. His gut instincts about people were rarely wrong. He hadn’t even been wrong about Kit. She was a good woman, just all wrong for marriage to a man like him. As much as he’d wanted to blame her, even hate her, for the way things had turned out, he’d known the fault for their failed marriage was as much his as hers. Reason just wasn’t always enough to counteract bitterness.

He glanced up and realized he’d been staring blankly at Becky’s report for some time. The dispatcher was regarding him with blatant curiosity.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I’d be a whole lot better if we could pick up a trail. Where’s Justin? Has he called in?”

“Right before you got here. He’ll be back in five minutes. He wants you to wait.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Dylan said and poured himself another cup of coffee before sitting down to go over Becky’s list of motels one more time.

Justin came in moments later, looking frazzled and frustrated. “Nothing,” he muttered with disgust. “I’ve had men questioning everybody in the whole town and nobody saw anything yesterday. I’ve checked the flights from Miami coming into Dallas-Fort Worth yesterday. If Paul James was on one of them, he was using a pseudonym and paid cash. The rental-car people weren’t any help, either. He would have had to use his driver’s license to get a car and he didn’t.”

“Phony papers?” Dylan suggested. “Or he drove from Miami.”

“On the off chance you’re right, let’s call the DMV in Florida and get his car registration,” Dylan said. “It’ll give us something to look for. I have a man in Tallahassee I’ve used before. I can call him. Then we can get Miami P.D. to take a look around Paul’s place there to see if the car’s still in the vicinity. You call the police and make the request official.”

Justin nodded, his expression brightening. “I’d give just about anything for an honest-to-God lead about now. Lizzy says Kelsey’s holding up okay, but the longer this drags on the more likely I’m going to have Grandpa Harlan down here busting my chops for not getting it resolved. Believe me, I do not need my grandfather getting a notion in his head to play cop.”

Dylan grinned. He could totally understand Justin’s concern. A powerful, strong-willed man like Harlan Adams, who wasn’t used to sitting on the sidelines and waiting, could make a policeman’s or a private investigator’s life miserable. It would be worse if they were related.

“Then let’s make those calls,” Dylan said, already reaching for the phone. While he waited for his contact to call back, he and Justin went over Becky’s list one more time to see if there was anything about any of the hotels and the guests they’d acknowledged that bore further checking.

A few minutes later, Dylan’s man in Tallahassee called back with the car description and tag number. Dylan passed the information to Justin, who called Miami police and requested assistance.

Dylan paced while they awaited a return call. It took a whole helluva lot longer than he would have liked, but when the news came back, it was good. There was no sign of Paul James’s car at his home or in the lot by his office. The police promised to check the airport lots within the next few hours and get back to them about that.

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