State of Preservation

(First Family Series, Book 10)

Chapter One

Ethan is missing. Her sister Tracy’s words echoed through Sam’s mind as her heart slowed to a crawl. Her nephew was eleven, no longer a baby, but not old enough to be in any kind of trouble.

“Sam! What do I do?”

Tracy’s frantic question jarred Sam out of the spiral of unsettling thoughts. “I’ll be right there.”

Sam snapped her phone shut and forced herself to refocus on what she’d been doing before the call. She and Nick had come to their former Ninth Street home to finish cleaning out their personal belongings so her colleague and friend Tommy Gonzales could move his family in.

“What’s wrong?” Nick asked from his place on the floor in front of the fire where they’d made a camp to re-create an earlier night in the first home they’d shared as a couple. He was on his side, naked as the day he was born, holding his head up on an upturned hand.

Sam crossed the room, picking up articles of clothing they’d discarded in their haste. “Ethan is missing.”

Nick sat up. “What? For how long?”

“Tracy didn’t say, but I’ve got to get over there.”

He reached for his boxers and pulled them on. “I’m coming with you.”

She paused in her frantic effort to get dressed. “Um, I hate to point out the obvious, but…”

“I’ll tell Brant to make it happen.”

As the president, any time he went anywhere, a three-ring circus was required. She hesitated to bring their level of chaos to an already-fraught situation at her sister’s home. However, she wanted him with her badly enough to let him go tell his lead Secret Service agent, John Brantly Jr., to get them to Tracy’s as fast as possible. Luckily, her sister’s family lived only a few blocks from Ninth Street.

Nick shut off the gas fireplace and left the room to arrange things.

Sam pulled on the leggings she’d worn with a new silk top for their “date night” to clean out their former home. Nick had surprised her by having the work done by their devoted White House staff so they could enjoy a romantic last evening in their former home before they turned it over to their friends.

She hadn’t thought to bring a brush, so she ran her fingers through her hair and twisted it up in the clip she always had with her, hoping she was somewhat presentable. She was anxious to get to her sister and figure out what was going on with Ethan.

Tracy had recently come to Sam for advice on dealing with her son, who’d become quiet and secretive, especially after he’d gotten a cell phone for his eleventh birthday. Sam had connected her sister with the daughter of her colleague Dr. Anthony Trulo. Dr. Trulo’s daughter, Christi, specialized in family therapy and had recently begun to work with Ethan.

Sam had so many questions. Where was Ethan supposed to be, and who was he with? When was the last time Tracy or Mike had spoken to or heard from their son? Were they able to track his phone? What did they know about his friends? She raced down the stairs to find Nick surrounded by his detail as they conferred on a plan.

“We have to go,” Sam said. “Or at least I have to. You guys can catch up?”

“We need five minutes, ma’am,” Brant said. “I promise we’ll be quick.”

“Thank you.”

Nick put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry for even a five-minute delay.”

She rested her head against his chest. “It’s worth it to have you with me.”

“I’m sure he’s fine. Probably just doing stupid kid shit and not thinking about how worried his parents must be.”

“I really hope that’s all it is.”

Her stomach churned with dread. After everything Tracy had shared about Ethan’s recent behavior, Sam no longer knew what to think.

When they’d been loaded into the presidential limousine known as The Beast for the short ride to Tracy’s, Sam called her friend and boss at the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, Captain Jake Malone, to tell him her nephew was missing. “I’m out of my realm on this.” She understood the moves in Homicide. Missing Persons was a whole other procedure. “What’s our first move?”

“We’ll need the family out of the house so Crime Scene can do a full search of the premises, and we’ll get IT on the devices.”

“Tracy will want to know why Crime Scene is involved when there’s no crime that we know of.”

“They’ll collect evidence that may or may not become relevant to the investigation. Is there somewhere you can move Tracy’s family to while we search the house?”

Sam was rattled by the idea of a CSU search of her sister’s home. “I’ll move them to Celia’s house.”

“Good idea. They can’t take anything with them. No phones, no devices. All that has to stay there for the investigators, with the codes and passwords written down.”

“Right.”

“Sam.”

“Yeah?”

“You can’t be the lead on this. Tell me you know that.”

“I do, but I have to help, or I’ll go mad. Please don’t say I can’t help.”

“You can provide peripheral support, but we have to play this by the book so we don’t fuck up a potential prosecution, if it comes to that, which I hope to God it won’t. But you know the drill.”

“Yes, okay. I’ll stay in the background, but I have to be able to support my sister and her family.”

“I have no objection to that as long as you cede to the Missing Persons detectives and let them do their jobs with no territorial shit, you got me?”

“Yes, sir. Who’s their commander again?”

“They fall under Captain Ruiz.”

Fuck. She’d had a previous encounter with the captain that hadn’t gone well, at least as far as Sam was concerned.

“I’ll call Missing Persons right now and send them and CSU to Tracy’s.”

“Thank you.”

“Keep me posted if you hear anything.”

“I will.”

Tracy was frantic with worry. Ethan had been difficult lately, full of attitude and secrecy about his friends and what they were up to when they were out together. Ethan had pleaded with them to let him go with his friends by Metro to the mall, the skate park, the arcade and to get food. She’d thought he was too young to run around the city without adult supervision.

She and her husband, Mike, had argued about it.

“He’ll be with his friends,” Mike had said. “He’ll be fine.”

“He’s too young to be set loose,” Tracy had replied. “I’m not at all comfortable with this.”

“Trace, his friends have already been doing it for a while now. If we hold him back from doing things his friends are allowed to do, he’ll resent us.”

“He’s eleven. Not fifteen. It’s too soon.”

“He’ll have his phone, and we can track him. We’ll make that nonnegotiable.”

“What will you say when Abby wants to be running the streets at eleven? Will that be okay, too?”

For a second, Mike had seemed uncertain. Abby was his angel, his little girl and best pal. “That’s different. She’s a girl.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

“Let’s face it. A lot worse things can happen to her than could ever happen to him.”

Tracy had stared at him incredulously. “Is that what you think? Have you watched the news lately? No one is safe in this world, let alone kids.”

“Ethan has a good head on his shoulders. He’s bright, strong and sensible. We raised him to have street smarts and to be aware of his surroundings. I say he’ll be fine to go out with his friends.”

Tracy had realized that if Mike was on Ethan’s side, she was fighting a losing battle, so she’d reluctantly gone along with giving Ethan some freedom—with conditions. He had to have his phone with him at all times with location services on, and he needed to check in regularly about where he was and who he was with. She’d also asked for his closest friends’ phone numbers so she could contact them if needed.

He hadn’t liked that request, but he’d traded the numbers for the freedom he craved. And now she couldn’t reach him or any of his friends. His phone was going right to voicemail, and the location wasn’t available, which her older daughter, Brooke, had told her meant the phone was probably turned off or was in airplane mode.

“Do you want me to come home?” Brooke, who was in college at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, had asked when Tracy called her in a panic.

“I don’t think that’s necessary, but thank you for offering.”

“Nate’s here this weekend. We could be there in a couple of hours. Let me know.”

Brooke was seeing the lead Secret Service agent on the detail of Sam and Nick’s “bonus” son, Elijah Armstrong. He was stationed in Princeton, New Jersey, where Eli was a junior.

“I’ll keep you posted.”

“Please do,” Brooke had said. “This is so scary. It’s not like Ethan to do something like this.”

Tracy had wanted to say that it was just like him lately, but she hadn’t told her eldest about the issues they’d been having with her brother because she hadn’t wanted to burden Brooke with their concerns. She had enough on her plate with her schoolwork and her relationship with Nate, which had gotten serious in recent months. Brooke was planning to transfer to Princeton next year so she could be with Nate.

Tracy checked her phone to see if there was an update from Sam on when she would arrive.

On the way from 9th, Sam had written five minutes ago.

“Anything?” Mike asked when he came in from driving around to check some of Ethan’s usual haunts.

Tracy shook her head. She didn’t bother asking the same question, because Ethan wasn’t with him.

“Did you call Sam?”

“She’ll be here in a minute. She was at Ninth, so close by.”

“That’s good.”

Tracy wanted to scream at him that it wasn’t good, nothing about this was good, and it was all his fault. If only he’d listened to her when she’d said Ethan was too young for the kind of freedom Mike wanted to give him. If only… She bit back the vitriol that burned the tip of her tongue. Saying the words would only make everything worse.

On the way to Tracy’s, Sam texted Freddie, Gonzo and Archie to let them know what was going on. Malone is calling in Missing Persons, who’ll take the lead on his orders, but I want to help, and there’s not much I can do being a relative. I’m so sorry to ask you to give up a Saturday evening, but there’ve been some concerns with him recently that have me truly worried. We’re going to relocate Tracy’s family to Celia’s so CSU can process Tracy’s house.

I’m on the way to Celia’s, they answered one after the other.

Thank you all so very much.

Anything for you, Freddie said.

The other two put exclamation marks on Freddie’s text.

“Freddie, Gonzo and Archie are coming to help,” she told Nick.

“That’s good of them.”

“Yeah, for sure.”

They knew there was nothing she wouldn’t do for them either. It was how they rolled. Her entire team had recently stood by her side when she was under attack from two colleagues who blamed her for everything that’d ever gone wrong in their lives. Thankfully, former Sergeant Ramsey and former Officer Offenbach were now locked up and facing charges that should keep them in prison for the rest of their lives.

Chief of Police Joe Farnsworth had put out a message informing his entire four-thousand-member department that there’d be zero tolerance for lawlessness going forward and that the union had agreed to work with him to weed out the bad apples. There were a lot of them, and Sam was relieved to see two of the rottenest ones gone for good from their ranks.

Not to mention the death of disgraced former Deputy Chief Paul Conklin, who’d taken his own life when he was implicated in yet another crime, the first being the shooting of Sam’s late father, a case that had gone unsolved for four long years while Conklin had known all along who’d shot Skip—and why. This time, they found out he’d tried to discredit Sam and Skip by feeding dirt on her to Offenbach and Ramsey, who’d paid him for it.

It’d been an exhausting few years for the Metropolitan Police Department, and Sam was still processing the fallout from the most recent situation in which Offenbach had sent armed drones toward the Easter Egg Roll at the White House, among other egregious crimes.

And now her young nephew was missing, her sister and brother-in-law were in a panic, and they’d be looking to her to find him and fix this for them. She’d do as much as she possibly could without crossing the lines Captain Malone had drawn. But she was as tired as she’d been in a long, long time.

Nick gave her hand a squeeze. “You know it’s okay to defer to others to handle this if you don’t have it in you right now.”

Of course he knew she was maxed out. He always knew. “Yes, I do.”

“You were looking forward to a little break after closing that nightmare of a case with Offenbach and Ramsey.”

“I have to help find Ethan. How could I do anything else while he’s missing? But I just have to wonder when the hell my family is going to catch a break.”

“It’s been a lot. No question.”

While still in high school, Brooke had been attacked and raped at a party in which other teens had been murdered. Sam’s dad had died in October, her brother-in-law Spencer in February and now her nephew was missing. Enough already.

She sent a message to Dr. Trulo, the department psychiatrist. My nephew Ethan, who recently began seeing your daughter for therapy, is missing. If she has any info that might be helpful, we’d appreciate hearing from her. I’m not sure what the ethics are on this when the patient is a minor. Anything you can do… Thank you.

Her phone rang a second later with a call from the doctor.

“Hey, I’m sending Christi a text as we speak. I’ll let you know what I hear. What else can I do?”

“That’s it for now. Thank you for jumping right on it.”

“Of course. Call if there’s anything else I can do.”

“I will. Thanks, Doc.”

“I’ll be praying for your nephew and family.”

“Appreciate it.”

Sam closed her flip phone. “Dr. Trulo’s daughter is a therapist and was seeing Ethan. He’s asking if she has any insight. He said he’d pray for Ethan and our family.”

“That’s nice of him.”

“What does it say about me that praying is the last thing I think to do when things go sideways?”

“Your first impulse is more about taking action yourself than asking the Almighty to handle things.”

“I almost envy people who have that kind of faith, how they can turn it all over to God, or whoever they worship, and know it’ll work out the way it’s meant to.”

“You’re too service-oriented to leave the details to anyone else.”

“Is that your way of saying I’m a heathen?”

“I never used that word.”

“I have a knot in my stomach, worrying about where Ethan is and what this’ll turn out to be about.”

“Let’s hope it’s all a big misunderstanding.”

Sam hoped against hope it was, but her gut was telling her something much bigger than that was going on, and she wouldn’t rest until she figured out what it was and helped to get her nephew home safely.