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Chapter Three

Nate heard the screech of his brakes as the asphalt ripped away at the tires. There was nothing he could do.

Nothing.

Except pray and try to brace himself for the impact.

He didn’t have to wait long.

The car slammed into the van, tossing Darcy and him around like rag dolls. The air bags deployed, slapping into them and sending a cloud of the powdery dust all through the car’s interior.

It was all over in a split second. The whiplashing impact. The sounds of metal colliding with metal.

Nate was aware of the pain in his body from having his muscles wrenched around. The mix of talc and cornstarch powder from the air bag robbed him of what little breath he had. But now that he realized he had survived the crash, he had one goal.

To get to the children.

Nate prayed they hadn’t been hurt.

He lifted his head, trying to listen. He didn’t hear anyone crying or anyone moaning in pain. That could be good.

Or very bad.

Next to him, Darcy began to punch at the air bag that had pinned her to the seat. He glanced at her, just to make sure she wasn’t seriously injured. She had a few nicks on her face from the air bag, and her shoulder-length dark brown hair was now frosted with the talc mixture, but she was fighting as hard as he was to get out of the vehicle. No doubt to check on her son.

“When we get out, stay behind me and let me do the talking,” Nate warned her.

Though he doubted his warning would do any good. If the kidnappers hadn’t been injured or, better yet, incapacitated, then this was going to get ugly fast.

Nate got a better grip on his gun and opened his door. Or rather, that’s what he tried to do. The door was jammed, and he had to throw his weight against it to force it open. He got out, his boots sinking into the soggy shoulder of the road, and got a good look at the damage. The front end of his car was a mangled heap, and it had crumpled the side of the van, creating a deep V in the exterior.

Still no sounds of crying. In fact, there were no sounds at all coming from the van.

“I’m Lieutenant Nate Ryland,” he called out. “Release the hostages now!”

He waited, praying that his demand wouldn’t be answered with a hail of bullets. Anything he did right now was a risk and could make it more dangerous for the children, but he couldn’t just stand there. He had to try something to get Kimmie and Noah away from their kidnappers.

In the distance he could hear a siren from one of the sheriff department’s cruisers. The sound was coming from the opposite direction so that meant Grayson or one of the other deputies would soon be there. But Nate didn’t intend to wait for backup to arrive. His daughter could be hurt inside that van, and he had to check on her.

Darcy finally managed to fight her way out of the wrecked car, and she hit the ground running. Or rather, limping. However, the limping didn’t stop her. She went straight for the van. Nate would have preferred for her to wait until he’d had time to assess things, but he knew there was no stopping her, not with her son inside.

“Noah?” she shouted.

Still no answer.

That didn’t stop Darcy, either, and she would have thrown open the back doors of the van if Nate hadn’t stepped in front of her and muscled her aside. This could be an ambush with the kidnappers waiting inside to gun them down, but these SOBs obviously wanted Darcy and him for something. Maybe that something meant they would keep them alive.

“Kimmie?” Nate called out, and he cautiously opened the van doors while he kept his gun aimed and ready.

It took him a moment to pick through the debris and the caved-in side, but what he saw had him cursing.

No one was there. Not in the seats, not in the back cargo area. Not even behind the wheel.

A sob tore from Darcy’s mouth, and if Nate hadn’t caught her, she likely would have collapsed onto the ground.

“Where are they?” she begged. And she just kept repeating it.

Nate glanced all around them. There were thick woods on one side of the road and an open meadow on the other. The grass didn’t look beaten down on the meadow side so that left the woods. He shoved his hand over Darcy’s mouth so he could hear any sounds. After all, two gunmen and three hostages should be making lots of sounds.

But he heard nothing other than Darcy’s frantic mumbles and the approaching siren.

“They were here,” Nate said more to himself than Darcy, but she stopped and listened. He took the hand from her mouth. “That’s Kimmie’s diaper bag.” It was lying right against the point of impact.

“And that’s Noah’s bear,” Darcy said, reaching for the toy.

Nate pulled her back. Yes, the children had likely been here, but so had the kidnappers. The diaper bag and the toy bear might have to be analyzed. Unless Nate found the children and kidnappers first.

And that’s exactly what he intended to do.

“Wait here,” he told Darcy. “I need to figure out where they went.” He tried not to think of his terrified baby being hauled through the woods by armed kidnappers, but he knew it was possible.

By God when he caught up to these men, they were going to pay, and pay hard.

“Look!” Darcy shouted.

Nate followed the direction of her pointing index finger and spotted the name tag. It was identical to the ones he’d seen Tara and the other woman wearing in the preschool. This one had the name Marlene Lambert, a woman he’d known his whole life. Her father’s ranch was just one property over from his family’s.

“The name tag looks as if it was ripped off her,” Darcy mumbled.

Maybe. It wasn’t just damaged—one of the four crayons had been removed. He glanced around the name tag and spotted the missing yellow crayon. It was right at the base of the rear doors.

“She wrote something.” Darcy pointed to the left door at the same moment Nate’s attention landed on it.

There was a single word, three letters, scrawled on the metal, but Nate couldn’t make out what it said. Later, he would try to figure it out, but for now he raced away from the van and to the edge of the road that fronted the woods.

Nate didn’t see any footprints or any signs of activity so he began to run, looking for anything that would give them a clue where the children had been taken. Darcy soon began to do the same and went in the opposite direction.

He glanced up when Dade’s truck squealed to a stop. His brother had put the portable siren on top of his truck, but thankfully now he turned it off. Unlike Darcy and Nate, Dade was coming from a straight part of the road and had no doubt seen the collision in time. That was why Nate hadn’t bothered to go back to his car and try to retrieve his cell phone so he could alert whoever would be coming from that direction.

“They’re not inside,” Nate relayed to his brother, and he kept looking.

Dade cursed. “There’s a helicopter on the way,” he let Nate know. “And I’ll call the Rangers and get a tracker out here. Mason, too,” Dade added the same moment that Nate said their brother’s name.

Mason was an expert horseman, and he was their best bet at finding the children in these thick woods. First, though, Nate needed to find the point at which they’d left the road. That would get him started in the right direction.

And he finally found it.

Footprints in the soft shoulder of the road.

“Here!” he called out to his brother. But Nate didn’t wait for Dade to reach him. Nor did he follow directly in the footsteps. He hurried to the side in case the prints were needed for evidence, and there were certainly a lot of them if castings were needed.

But something was wrong.

Hell.

“There’s only one set of footprints,” Nate relayed to Dade.

Dade cursed too and fanned out to Nate’s left, probably looking for more prints. There should be at least three sets since the adults would be carrying the babies.

“The person who made this set of prints could be a diversion,” Nate concluded, and he hurried to the other side of the road, hoping to find the real trail there.

Darcy quickly joined him. She was still limping, and blood was trickling down the side of her head. He hoped like the devil she wasn’t in need of immediate medical attention or on the verge of a panic attack. He needed her help, her eyes, because these first few minutes were critical.

“Go that way,” Nate instructed, pointing in the opposite direction where he intended to look.

He ran, checking each section of the pasture for any sign that anyone had been there. He knew the kidnappers weren’t on the road itself because Darcy and he had come from one end and Dade the other. If two kidnappers and three hostages had been anywhere near the road, they would have seen them.

Nate made it about a hundred yards from the collision site when he heard Dade’s cell ring. He didn’t stop looking, but he tried to listen, hoping that his brother was about to get good news. Judging from the profanity Dade used, he hadn’t.

“This van’s a decoy,” Dade shouted.

Nate stopped and whirled around. Darcy did the same and began to run back toward Dade. “What do you mean?”

“I mean two other eyewitnesses spotted black vans identical to this one.”

Darcy made it to Dade, and she latched on to his arm. “But there’s proof the children were inside. Noah’s bear and Kimmie’s diaper bag. Marlene’s name tag is there, too.”

Dade looked at Nate when he answered. “This was probably the van initially used in the kidnapping, but the children and Marlene were transferred to another vehicle. Maybe they were even split up since at least two other vans were seen around town.”

Nate had already come to that conclusion, and it made him sick to his stomach. He couldn’t choke back the groan. Nor could he fight back the overwhelming sense of fear.

“If they split up, then there are probably more than two of them,” Nate mumbled.

That meant things had gone from bad to worse. The kidnappers could have an entire team of people helping them, and heaven knows what kind of vehicle they had used to transfer the children.

Nate was betting it wasn’t a black van.

It could have been any kind of vehicle. Darcy and he could have driven right past the damn thing and wouldn’t have even noticed it.

“We have people out on the roads,” Dade reminded them. “More are coming in. And there’s an Amber Alert and an APB out on the van. SAPD and all other law-enforcement officers in the area will stop any van matching the description. We’ll find them, Nate. I swear, we’ll find them.”

Nate checked his watch. About twenty minutes had passed. That was a lifetime in a situation like this. The kidnappers could already have reached the interstate.

“I’ll take you back to the sheriff’s office,” Dade insisted. He glanced down at Darcy. In addition to the nicks on her face, her jacket was torn, and there were signs of a bruise on her knee. “You need to see a medic.”

“No!” she practically shouted. “I need to find my baby.”

But the emotional outburst apparently drained her because the tears came, and Nate hooked his arm around her waist. He didn’t feel much like comforting her, or anyone else, for that matter, but the sad truth was there was only one person who knew exactly how he felt.

And that was Darcy.

She sagged against him and dropped her head on his shoulder. “We have to keep looking,” she begged.

“We will.” Nate looked at his brother. “We need another vehicle. And I need to call the San Antonio crime lab so they can come out and collect this van.” Silver Creek didn’t have the CSI capabilities that SAPD did, and Nate wanted as many people on this as possible.

Nate adjusted Darcy’s position so he could get her moving to Dade’s truck, but he stopped when he took another look at the scrawled letters written in yellow crayon. He eased away from Darcy and walked closer.

“You think Marlene wrote that?” Dade asked.

Nate nodded. “She might have tried to leave us a message.” He studied those three letters. “L-A-R,” he read aloud.

“Lar?” Dade shook his head, obviously trying to figure it out, too.

“Maybe it’s someone’s initials,” Darcy suggested. She moved between Dade and Nate, and leaned in. “Maybe she’s trying to tell us the identity of the person who took her.”

It was possible. Of course, that would mean it wasn’t Wesley Dent, and it would also mean Marlene had known her kidnapper. That possibility tightened the knot in Nate’s stomach. But there was something more here.

Something familiar.

Dade rattled off names of people who might fit those initials. He only managed two—an elderly couple with the last name of Reeves. Nate figured neither was capable of this. But his own surname began with an R.

Did that mean anything?

“A street name, then,” Darcy pressed.

Dade lifted his phone and snapped a picture. “Come on. Let’s go. We’ll try to work it out on the drive back to the sheriff’s office.”

It was a good plan, but Nate couldn’t take his attention off those three letters. They were familiar, something right on the tip of his tongue.

“Let’s go,” Darcy urged. She tugged on Nate’s arm to get him moving.

They only made it a few steps before Nate heard a phone ring. Not Dade’s. The sound was coming from his wrecked car, and it was his phone. He hurried toward it, but it stopped ringing just as he got there. He located his cell in the rubble and saw the missed call.

The number and caller’s identity had been blocked.

Hell. It had probably been the kidnappers. “It could have been the ransom call.”

“Try to call them back,” Darcy insisted. But the words had hardly left her mouth when another phone rang. “That’s my cell.” She frantically tore through the debris to locate her purse. She jerked out the phone and jabbed the button to answer it.

She pressed the phone to her ear, obviously listening, but she didn’t say a word. When the color drained from her face, Nate moved closer.

“But—” That was all she managed to say.

Nate wanted the call on speaker so he could hear, but he couldn’t risk trying to press any buttons on her phone. He darn sure didn’t want to disconnect the call. All he could do was wait.

“I want my son. Give me back my son!” she shouted. The tears welled up in her eyes and quickly began to spill down her cheeks. Several seconds later, Darcy’s hand went limp, the phone dropping away from her ear.

Nate snatched the phone from her, but the call had already ended.

“Who was it and what did they say?” Nate demanded. He caught her by the shoulders and positioned her so that it forced eye contact.

She groaned and shook her head. “The person had a mechanical voice, like he was speaking through some kind of machine, but I think it was a man. He said he had the children and Marlene and that if we wanted them back, he would soon be in touch. Then he hung up.”

“That’s it? That’s all he said?” Nate tried to calm down but couldn’t. “He didn’t say if the kids were safe?”

“No,” she insisted.

Nate took her phone. He tried the return-call function on his cell first. It didn’t go through. Instead he got a recording about the number no longer being in service. The same thing happened when he tried to retrieve the call from Darcy’s phone.

A dead end.

But maybe it was just a temporary one.

Dade gathered both cells. “I’ll see if we can get anything about the caller from these. Darcy, you need to write down everything you can remember from that conversation because each word could be important.”

She nodded and smeared the tears from her cheeks. “Let’s get that other vehicle so we can look for them.”

Nate agreed, but he stopped and stared at the three letters written on the door of the van.

LAR.

“I already have a picture of it,” Dade reminded him. “You can study it later.”

Nate cursed. “I don’t need to study it.” He started to run toward Nate’s truck. “I know what Marlene is trying to tell us. I know where we can find the children.”

Chapter Four

“LAR,” Darcy said under her breath.

Lost Appaloosa Ranch.

Well, maybe that’s what the initials meant. Of course, Nate could be wrong, and it could turn out to be a wild-goose chase. A chase that could cost them critical time because it tied up manpower that could be directed somewhere other than the remote abandoned ranch. According to Nate, the owner had died nearly a year ago, and his mortgage lender was still trying to contact his next of kin.

“Hurry,” Darcy told the medic again. And yes, she glared at him. She’d spent nearly fifteen minutes in the Silver Creek sheriff’s office, and that was fifteen minutes too long.

Darcy didn’t want to be here. She wanted to be out looking for Noah, but instead here she was, sitting at the sheriff’s desk while a medic stitched her up. God knows how she’d gotten the cut right on her hairline, and she didn’t care.

She didn’t care about anything but her son.

“I’m trying to hurry,” the medic assured her.

She knew from his name tag that he was Tommy Watters, and while she hated being rude to him, she couldn’t stop herself. She had to do something. Anything.

Like Nate and his four brothers were doing.

Just a few yards away from her, Nate was on the phone, his tone and motions frantic, while he talked with the helicopter pilot, who was trying to narrow down the search zone.

“No,” Nate instructed. “Don’t do a direct fly over the Lost Appaloosa. I already have someone en route, and if the kidnappers are there, I don’t want to alert them. I want you to focus on the roads that lead to the interstate.”

Nate had a map spread out on the desk, and every line on the desk phone was blinking. Next door, Deputy Melissa Garza was barking out orders to a citizens’ patrol group that was apparently being formed to assist in the hunt for the kidnappers and the babies. The dispatcher was helping her.

Grayson, Dade and Mason were all out searching various parts of Silver Creek, interviewing witnesses and running down leads on the other black vans that had been spotted. The other deputy, Luis Lopez, was at the day care in case the kidnappers returned.

Darcy was the only one not doing anything to save Noah and Kimmie.

“I can’t just sit here.” The panic was starting to whirl around inside her, and despite the AC spilling over her, sweat popped out on her face. She would scream if she couldn’t get out of there and find Noah.

Darcy pushed aside the medic and would have run out of the room if Nate hadn’t caught her shoulder.

He got right in her face, and his glare told her this wasn’t going to be a pep talk. “You have to keep yourself together. Because I don’t have time to babysit you. Got that?”

She flinched. That stung worse than the fresh stitches. But Darcy still shook her head. “Noah is my life.” Which, of course, went without saying. Kimmie was no doubt Nate’s life, too.

Nate nodded, and eased up on the bruising grip he had on her shoulder. The breath he blew out was long and weary. He looked up at the medic as he put Darcy back in the chair. “Finish the stitches now,” he ordered.

Actual fear went through the medic’s eyes, and he clipped off the thread. “It’ll hold for now, but she should see a doctor because she might have a concussion.”

Before the last word left the medic’s mouth, Darcy was out of the chair. “Let’s go,” she insisted.

Thank God, Nate didn’t argue with her. “We’re headed to the Lost Appaloosa, Mel,” he shouted to Deputy Garza, and in the same motion Nate grabbed a set of keys from a hook on the wall.

Finally! They were getting out there and doing something. She hoped it was the right something.

“You have to keep yourself together,” Nate repeated. But this time, there was no razor edge to his tone. No glare. Just speed. He practically ran down the hall. “My brother Kade should arrive at the Lost Appaloosa in about ten minutes, and then we’ll have answers.”

“Answers if the babies are really there,” Darcy corrected.

Nate spared her a glance, threw open the back door and hurried into the parking lot. “Marlene probably risked her life to write those initials. They mean something, and if it turns out to be the Lost Appaloosa, then Kade will know how to approach the situation.”

“Because he’s FBI,” she said more to herself than Nate.

Darcy prayed Nate’s FBI brother truly knew what he was doing. It gave her some comfort to know that Kade would likely be willing to risk his life to save his niece. And maybe Noah, too.

Nate jumped into a dark blue SUV, started the engine and barely waited long enough for Darcy to get inside before he tore out of the parking lot.

“I need to know if you’re okay,” he said, tipping his head to her new stitches.

“Don’t worry about me,” Darcy said. “Focus on the kids.”

“I can’t have you keeling over or anything.” The muscles in his jaw stirred. Maybe because he didn’t like that he had to be concerned about her in any way.

“I’m fine,” she assured him, and even though it was a lie, it was the end of the discussion as far as Darcy was concerned. “How far is the Lost Appaloosa?”

“Thirty miles. It’s within the San Antonio city limits, but there’s not much else out there.” His phone buzzed, and he shoved it between his shoulder and ear when he answered it.

She listened but couldn’t tell anything from Nate’s monosyllabic responses. He certainly wasn’t whooping for joy because the babies had possibly been found.

Darcy leaned over to check the odometer so she would know when they were close to that thirty miles, and her hair accidently brushed against Nate’s arm. He glanced at it, at her, and Darcy quickly pulled away.

“Thirty miles,” she repeated, focusing on the drive and not on the driver. Nate put his attention back on the call.

That was too many miles between her and her baby, and the panic surged through her again. Nate was already going as fast as he could, but at this speed and because of the narrow country roads, it would take them at least twenty, maybe twenty-five, minutes to get there.

An eternity.

Nate cursed, causing her attention to snap back to him. She waited, breath held, until he slapped the phone shut. “Grayson just found another empty black van on a dirt road near the creek. Only one set of footprints was around the vehicle.”

So, not a call from Kade. Just news of another decoy van. Or else the team of kidnappers had split up. Did that mean they’d split up the children and Marlene, as well? Darcy hoped not.

“Shouldn’t you have heard from Kade by now?” she asked.

He scrubbed his hand over his face. “My brother will call when he can.”

Nate looked at her again, and his eyes were now a dangerous stormy-gray. “The person behind this has a big motive and a lot of money,” he tossed out there. He was all cop again. Here was the lieutenant she’d butted heads with in the past. And the present.

“You mean Wesley Dent,” she supplied.

Darcy didn’t even try to put on her lawyer face. Her head was pounding. Her breath, ragged. And her heart was beating so hard, she was afraid her ribs might crack. She didn’t have the energy for her usual power-attorney facade.

“Wesley Dent,” Nate verified, making her client’s name sound like profanity. “He’s a gold digger, and I believe he murdered his wife.”

Darcy shook her head and continued to keep watch in case she spotted another black van. She also glanced at the odometer, remembering to keep her hair away from Nate’s arm. Twenty-five miles to go.

“I won’t deny the gold-digging part,” she admitted, “but I’m not sure he killed his wife.”

Though it did look bad for Dent.

A starving artist, Dent had married Sandra Frasier, who wasn’t just a multimillionaire heiress but was twenty-five years his senior. And apparently she often resorted to public humiliation when it came to her boy-toy husband, who was still two years shy of his thirtieth birthday. Just days before what would have been their first wedding anniversary, Sandra had humiliated Dent in public at Dent’s art show.

A day after that, she had received a lethal dose of insulin.

“Sandra was diabetic,” Darcy continued, though she really didn’t want to have this conversation. Twenty-four miles to go. “So, it’s possible this was a suicide. Her husband even said she wrote about suicide in her diary.” But her death certainly hadn’t been accidental because the amount of insulin was quadruple what she would have normally taken.

“There was no suicide note,” Nate challenged. “No sign of this so-called diary, either.”

But that didn’t mean the diary didn’t exist. Dent had told her that his wife kept it under lock and key, so maybe she’d moved it so that no one would be able to read her intimate thoughts.

“The husband is often guilty in situations like this,” Nate went on. He had such a hard grip on the steering wheel that his knuckles were white. “And I think Dent could have orchestrated this kidnapping to force me to stop the investigation. I’m within days of arresting his sorry butt for murder.”

Darcy wished the pain in her head would ease up a little so she could think straighter. “There are other suspects,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, the dead woman’s ex-husband and her son, but neither has as strong a motive as Dent.”

“Maybe,” Darcy conceded. Another glance at the odometer. Twenty-three miles between the ranch and them. “But if Dent masterminded this kidnapping to stop the investigation, then why take Noah? I’m his lawyer, the one person who could possibly prevent him from being arrested.”

Nate shook his head, cursed again. “Maybe he thinks if he has your son that you’ll put pressure on me to cooperate.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but that kind of fight just wasn’t in her. Besides, there was a chance that Nate could be right.

In some ways it would be better if he was.

After all, if Dent took the children, then he would keep them safe because he would use them to make a deal. Darcy was good at deals. And she would bargain with the devil himself if it meant getting her son back.

Nate didn’t tack anything else on to his speculations about Dent, and the silence closed in around them. Except it wasn’t just an ordinary silence. It was the calm before the storm because Darcy knew what was coming next.

“Charles Brennan,” she tossed out there since she knew Nate had already thought of the man. Over a year ago Brennan had hired the triggerman who’d murdered Nate’s wife.

“Yeah,” Nate mumbled. “Any chance he’s behind this?”

Well, Brennan was dead, but she didn’t have to remind Nate of that. Because Nate had been the one to kill Brennan in a shoot-out after the man had taken a deputy hostage.

“Brennan made me executor of his estate,” Darcy volunteered. “I’ve gone through his files and financials, and there is no proof he left any postmortem instructions that had anything to do with you. Or me, for that matter.”

“You’re sure?” Nate pressed.

“Yes.” As sure as she could be, anyway, when it came to a monster like Brennan.

Nate made a sharp sound that clipped from his throat. It was the sound of pure disapproval. “Brennan was a cold-blooded killer, and you defended him.”

She had. And two months ago she would have argued that it was her duty to provide representation, but that was before her client had nearly killed a deputy sheriff, Nate and heaven knows how many others.

Darcy kept watch out the window. She didn’t want to look at Nate because she didn’t want him to see the hurt that was in her eyes. “There’s nothing you can say that will make me feel worse than I already do,” she let him know.

Silence again from Nate, and Darcy risked touching him so she could lean in and see the mileage. Just under twenty miles to go. Still an eternity.

Nate’s cell buzzed. “It’s Kade,” he said and flipped open the phone.

Just like that, both the dread and the hope grabbed her by the throat. She moved closer, until she was shoulder to shoulder with Nate. Darcy no longer cared about the touching risk. She had to know what Kade was saying.

“I’m on the side of the hill with a good binocular view of the Lost Appaloosa,” Kade explained. “And I have good news and bad.”

Oh, mercy. She wasn’t sure she could handle it if something had happened to the children. Nate’s deep breath let her know he felt the same.

“The good news—there’s a black van parked on the side of the main house,” Kade continued. “Something tells me this one isn’t a decoy.”

“How do you know?” Darcy asked before Nate could. She wanted to believe that was good news, but she wasn’t sure. “Do you see the children?”

“No sign of the children,” Kade told them. His voice was practically a whisper, but even the low volume couldn’t conceal his concern.

Kade paused. “Nate, call Grayson and the others and tell them to get out here right away. Because the bad news is—there are at least a half-dozen armed guards surrounding the place.”