Authors: Ann Vaughn
Tag Bainbridge started and ended each
and every work day the exact same way: by going over any new leads, tips,
rumors, whatever, concerning his baby sister’s abduction nearly twenty-seven
years ago. Every morning and every evening, he carved out one to two
hours just to see if anything new popped up. He’d followed up on
countless tips of sightings of her all over the country and even in other
countries. Nothing ever came of them, though. For his mother’s
sake, he continued to look into every lead, but truth be told, he’d given up
hope of ever finding Baby Christine a long time ago. He tended to
believe, along with several others in the law enforcement community, that something
had happened to his baby sister, like accidentally being killed, that prompted
the kidnappers to abandon their ransom requests. Honestly, though, he
believed his baby sister was long dead and that they would never know what
happened to her.
The abduction of his baby sister in
1987 had changed his family dynamics and molded him into the man he was
today. Although he had yet to find the most important missing person in
his life, he was proud to say he had a hand in recovering a few thousand
children over the span of his nearly fifteen years of investigations. It
was a small percentage compared to the number of missing children that were
reported each year, but even if he’d only assisted in the return of one, it was
more than enough.
It was on a slow, late spring Sunday
afternoon that Tag received a phone call that would change everything.
His family was in Washington D.C., having attended a National Missing
Children’s Day rally the day before. He’d opted to stay home and follow
up on a few leads he had in current cases. Sitting in his home office,
he’d answered the phone when one of his FBI contacts called. The agent
hadn’t offered much, just asked if it would be all right if he and a couple of
colleagues stopped by with some information they’d rather share in person with
him. He’d of course agreed and so now he was pacing in the entryway,
waiting for the doorbell to ring.
His pulse raced when the
government-issue SUV pulled into his drive. His gut told him, since this
was a home visit, that this had to do with Baby Christine (in his mind, she
would always be Baby Christine, no matter how old she would be now if she were
alive). Anxious, he didn’t wait for them to come to the door; he opened
it and met them on his front porch.
Agent Phillip Andrews led an
extremely beautiful blonde woman and a salt and peppered older man up the steps
to where he stood. Tag knew enough about law enforcement types to
recognize the two as such.
“Tag,” Agent Andrews greeted him,
shaking his hand. “These are former colleagues of mine, Tessa McCanton
and Glen Gibson. Can we go inside? They have some information for
you.”
“Yeah, sure,” Tag said after shaking
their hands. “Come on inside. Can I get you anything?” he asked as
they followed him in.
“We’re good,” Tessa replied. He
led them into the living room, motioning for them all to sit. “Mr.
Bainbridge,” Tessa began, but he stopped her.
“Tag,” he corrected.
She gave him a small smile and
inclined her head in deference to him. “Tag,” she said, “I won’t draw
this out more than necessary. A former colleague of ours contacted me not
too long ago. The woman he is seeing lost her parents when she was
eighteen. She’d been adopted as an infant and our colleague, Colt, wanted
to find her birth family for her. He looked for her adoption records
himself but when he came up empty, he contacted me. Gib,” she said,
motioning to the salt and peppered man Agent Andrews had identified as Glen
Gibson, “and I also searched for her adoption records through our contacts in
the FBI. We came up empty as well. When Colt pressed his girlfriend
to search the records her adopted mother left for her, they found a letter that
alarmed them.”
She opened her briefcase and handed
him a copy of a handwritten letter, addressed to a woman named Sarah.
Tag’s heartbeat accelerated and his mouth ran dry as he read the letter.
Could it be?
He looked up at the woman, scanned
the two men, then returned his gaze to her steady green one.
“You think this woman, this Sarah, is
my sister?”
“We don’t think she is,” Tessa
said. “We know she is.”
Tag inhaled sharply, eyes darting to
Agent Andrews, whom he knew better.
“Phil?”
“When Tessa and Gib contacted me, I
had your family’s DNA files pulled. We ran a test on the young
woman. She was a perfect match to your parents,” Agent Andrews explained.
Tag felt like all the oxygen in the
room had been sucked out. He blinked rapidly to clear his vision, then
cleared his throat.
“Are you telling me that my baby
sister is alive?”
Tessa smiled and again reached into
her briefcase. She pulled out an eight-by-ten color picture of a young
woman who looked so much like a younger version of his mother that Tag knew
beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was looking at Baby Christine.
“Her name is Sarah Sauter. She
has been living in Waco, Texas for the last eighteen years at least,” Tessa told
him.
“Oh, God,” Tag whispered, tracing his
hand over Sarah’s picture.
“I know in your line of work, you’ve
heard and seen a lot of horror stories of what abducted children have gone
through,” the other man, Gib, spoke up. “But your sister was extremely
fortunate. As you read in that letter, Sarah was raised with love, as if
she were their own daughter. There was never any abuse, of any kind,
other than the lie that she was legally theirs. She is perfectly healthy,
perfectly happy…except for the fact that the only family she ever knew are both
deceased and she now knows that her entire life had been a lie.”
“And you’re sure? You’re
absolutely sure that she is Christine? I mean, I can see that she looks
like my mom, but…”
Tessa reached out and touched his
arm. “I understand…but yes, we are sure. We double checked the
results, then checked them once more. Sarah Sauter is Christine
Bainbridge.”
“Is she here? Did she come up
here with you?” he asked.
“No,” Tessa replied. “Sarah’s
adopted parents, for lack of a better phrase, had very little money.
She’s never been on an airplane. I think Colt was a little apprehensive
about suggesting she get on one now to meet her long lost family. She
resisted him looking into her birth family at first. The way she was
raised, never allowed to have her picture in the school yearbooks or to
participate in any activities that would draw attention to her, I think she
knew deep down that something wasn’t right about it all…but she loved her
parents. They were all she knew. And once she knew the truth, she
was afraid that contacting you would be, well, awkward, I guess. That’s
why Colt arranged to do all of this through our contacts with the FBI. So
that you would know this was real, and to prevent Sarah from being hurt any
further.”
Tag nodded. That was perfectly
understandable, he realized. He received so many tips that he may have
overlooked this one if it came through the usual filters. Going through
the FBI, contacting him this way, he would know it was legitimate.
“This Colt person sounds like he
knows what he’s doing…and that he cares for her.”
Tessa smiled. “He’s a former
Army Ranger and does contract work for Orion Securities now. Heard of
them?”
Tag nodded. “I have. Very
solid company. I’ve worked with Mike Casiano and Riley Stanton in the
past,” he said, referring to Orion’s founders.
“Tessa and I work for them now, too,”
Gib told him.
“Look…before this story blows
up…before I tell the rest of my family, I want to meet her. My
parents have been through hell over all of this. I just want to be able
to look my mother in the eye and tell her that I’ve verified all of this, and
that I’ve seen Chris…Sarah in person.”
Tessa smiled. “I certainly
think we can arrange that for you, Tag.”
Colt got off the phone with Tessa,
got in his truck, and headed straight for Sunday’s Gifts. He was really
beginning to hate that Sarah worked at that place. He felt that for nearly
eleven years of faithful work, she was severely under paid. The company
was taking advantage of her loyalty and he deeply resented them for it.
Fortunately, however, with all the recent developments in her life, he was
hoping that her days of working there were numbered.
When he pulled into the parking lot,
he saw that Sarah was sitting on the patio with a couple of the ladies he
recognized from the day they met. She waved to him and met him at his
truck when he parked.
“Hey, handsome,” she greeted him,
rocking up on her toes to give him a kiss when he stepped out of the
truck. “What brings you by?”
“I need you to take the rest of the
day off. Can you do that?” he asked.
His tone alerted her that this was
something serious. “Um, yeah, sure. Let me just go shut everything
down and tell Barbara.”
They started to head inside until
Bernice called out to her.
“Sarah! Aren’t you going to
introduce us?”
“Oh, boy,” Sarah mumbled, looking up
over her shoulder at Colt. “Do you mind? They’ve been dying to meet
you.”
He gave her an indulgent smile.
“Not at all.”
She gave his hand a squeeze and led
him over to the patio.
“Ladies, this is Colt. Colt,
this is Bernice and Terry.”
“Oh, honey, you look even better up
close,” Bernice told him, shaking his hand.
“Bernice!” Terry cried, “Don’t embarrass
Sarah! It’s nice to finally meet you, Colt,” Terry told him.
“Thanks for lunch that day, by the way.”
“It was my pleasure,” he told them.
“So, what brings you up here?”
Bernice pressed. “Tell me you’re going to whisk Sarah away.”
He laughed. “Actually, that is
exactly what I am here to do.”
“Woohoo!” Bernice hooted.
“Then, boy, don’t let us keep you. Sarah, tell Barbara I’ll finish keying
in whatever orders you’ve got. Just drop them on my desk on the way out.”
“Oh, OK. Are you sure?”
“Absolutely! Go! Get out
of here and go be free!”
“All right, thanks, Bernice,” Sarah
said, leading Colt inside. “Thank goodness you’re so good looking,” she
laughed at him. “Bernice is a sucker for a handsome man.” She led
him to Barbara’s office, introduced them, then got Barbara’s approval for her to
leave. Colt followed her to her cube and sat on the edge of her U-shaped
desk while she shut down her computer and tidied her workstation. He
smiled at the framed picture she had of him on her desk next to the computer,
the conservative one of him in a suit at a friend’s wedding. He decided
they needed to take a few of them together and resolved to start snapping
pictures as soon as he could.
“Ready to go?” she asked.
“Sure. We’re leaving your truck
here, though. We can come back for it or I can send Claire to get it.”
She stopped and looked up at
him. “Is everything OK?”
“Fine. I just want you with me
as much as possible.”
“OK. Let’s drop these on
Bernice’s desk and then we’re out of here.”
On the way up front to Bernice’s
office, they were stopped a few times for introductions. Sarah was polite
to everyone but made it clear they were in a hurry, so they were out and in his
truck in less than ten minutes since leaving her desk.
“What’s going on, Colt?” she asked
once they were on the road.
“Tessa and Gib are heading to Wyoming
to meet with your brother.”
She took a deep breath. “OK.”
He glanced at her. “Things are
about to start happening…fast.”
“Yes, they are,” she agreed.
“So, before things get really crazy,
I’m taking you on a little get away.”
He watched her eyes bug.
“Colt! I can’t just go, it’s Monday! I’ve got work and –“
He cut her off. “I’ve already
arranged it with your boss. Called her before I came to get you.
You’re off until next week.”
“I…but…”
“Hey,” he said, raising her hand to
his lips, kissing the back of it. “No buts. We’re getting away
before things get crazy. Claire packed for you. She and Coop are
taking care of Scout and Izzy. Our flight leaves in an hour.”
“Flight?”
“We’re taking a hopper from here to
DFW, then another to Denver.”
“Denver?”
He smiled at her. “Yep.
From there, we’re heading to Breckenridge. I’ve got a cabin on the
mountain that is calling our name.”
“You have a mountain cabin?”
“I do. And for the next
few days, it’s just going to be me and you and a whole lot of R&R.
Can you handle that?”
“I…”
she began then took a deep breath and relaxed back into her seat. “It
sounds like Heaven,” she said on a sigh.