by Elle James
Matt pressed the phone to his ear. “This is Matt Hennessey. Who am I talking to?”
“Deputy Jones,” a female voice responded.
“I found Ms. Blanchard on the highway,” Matt said. “I’m not sure exactly where, but I can meet you at the house she lives in on Maple Street in ten minutes.”
“I’ll notify the sheriff and we’ll be there as soon as possible,” Jones said. “Be careful. The men who attacked Ms. Blanchard could still be around.”
As Matt ended the call, the baby’s whimpers turned into a wail.
“Aubrey, I’m Rosalynn Travis. You’ve met Matt, my stepson.” Rosalynn turned to Trace and Lily. “This is my son, Trace, and his fiancée, Lily.” She held out her arms. “Here, let me have the baby. It’s probably hungry, wet and scared.”
“Marianna, I think that’s what her mother called her,” Aubrey said, as she handed over the crying baby. “The other child’s name was Isabella. Her mother called her name several times before the little girl cried out.” Aubrey looked up at Matt. “We have to go back. That little girl must be terrified. She could be lost out there.” She touched his arm. “What if those men took her, or...killed her?” Her gaze went to baby Marianna. “We have to go back.”
Matt caught Trace’s glance.
“We’ll go,” Matt said.
Trace nodded. “I’ll get Irish. We can offer our assistance to the sheriff in the search for the mother and the other child.”
“I’ll go,” Lily said.
“I’m going too,” Aubrey said.
Matt shook his head. “Those men were playing for keeps. You two are better off staying here and helping Rosalynn with the baby.”
Lily’s eyes narrowed. “I know how to handle a gun. You might need more firepower.”
Aubrey lifted her chin. “I might not know how to use a gun, but I have to go. I know where this all began. I can lead you to where she found the baby and to where she fell to the ground. I’m your best chance of finding her quickly.” She stared up at him, her brow furrowed. “I have to go. We have to go. Now.”
“She has a point,” Trace said.
“But she won’t be safe. If those ATV riders are still out there, they might consider her a threat.”
“I only left because I had to get the baby to safety,” Aubrey said.
“I’ll take care of the baby,” Rosalynn said. “You guys get out there and find her mother.”
“I thought I heard voices.” Irish appeared at the door and entered. “What’s going on?”
“We need to go,” Trace said. “Grab your rifle and a handgun and meet me at my truck. I’ll fill you in on the way.” He turned to Aubrey. “You can ride with us.”
She looked from Matt to Trace and back. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to ride with him.” Aubrey tipped her head toward Matt.
He liked the idea more than he cared to admit. “I have an extra helmet in my room. I’ll be right back.” Matt climbed the stairs, two at a time, hurrying to the room he’d moved some of his things into. He grabbed the extra helmet from a shelf in the closet and the handgun he kept in the nightstand, slipping the pistol into the pocket of his leather jacket. He was back by her side in less than two minutes.
“Ready?” he said.
She nodded, her brow furrowed. “We need to hurry.”
“We will.” He looked around for Trace and Irish.
Rosalynn called out from the living room. “The boys and Lily are on their way to the cottage where Aubrey lives. They figure you’d catch up with them pretty quickly.”
Matt hooked Aubrey’s arm and escorted her out of the house.
She looked over her shoulder as she left.
Rosalynn waved a hand. “Don’t worry about us. I have experience raising babies.”
“That’s more than I can say,” Aubrey murmured. “I only raised one.”
Outside, in the light from the porch, Matt stopped next to his motorcycle. “Here, you need to wear this.” He slipped the helmet over her head and tightened the strap beneath her chin. Then he climbed on and tipped his head. “Hop on and hold on tight.”
She did as he indicated, slipping her leg over the seat. She scooted close and wrapped both arms around his waist.
Matt started the engine and took off down the drive toward the gate. Thankfully, Trace had left it open. He drove right through and opened the throttle.
The woman behind him held tightly to him, her arms cinched around his middle, her legs clamped around his thighs. He liked the way she felt, coupled with the rumble of the engine between his legs. If they weren’t in a hurry to save the lives of a woman and a child, he would have made the drive last longer.
A mile before they reached town, he caught up with Trace in his pickup, passed him and sped on to the cottage on Maple Street. It was the same house he’d grown up in. The house he’d shared with his mother until he’d left Whiskey Gulch to join the Marine Corps. It was the house he’d come back to when he’d learned of his mother’s murder.
Two law enforcement SUVs were parked at the curb. Sheriff Richards and Deputy Dallas Jones were getting out of their vehicles when Matt pulled into the driveway, stopping behind a gray Jeep Wrangler.
Trace drove his pickup beside him, cut the engine and got out with Irish and Lily doing the same, joining the group.
When Aubrey started toward the house, the sheriff said, “Wait. Let us go first.” He and Deputy Jones had pulled their weapons and started toward the door.
“The front door is locked,” Aubrey said. “I left through the back.”
Sheriff Richards tipped his head to the right. “I’ll go right.”
The deputy rounded the house to the left. A quick minute later, they exited through the front door.
“Clear,” Deputy Jones reported.
“Follow me.” Aubrey took off around the house and through the backyard, crossing to the fence bordering the rancher’s field beyond. The stars above provided sufficient light for them to see without flashlights.
Aubrey didn’t stop there. She ducked to slide between two strands of barbed wire.
Matt pulled the strands wider to keep them from snagging her shirt or skin. When she was through, he braced his hand on the post and vaulted over the fence. The others followed.
Aubrey started running toward a stand of trees on the other side of the field.
“Wait,” he said, hurrying to catch her. “If they’re still out there, they could pick you off in a field as wide-open as this one.”
“But we have to get there. Marianna’s mother could still be alive. If we don’t hurry, she could bleed out.” Aubrey tried to shake free of his hand.
“Let us go ahead. We’re trained in combat—you aren’t.”
“I’ll stay with her,” Lily said. The two women dropped to their haunches and waited.
“I’ll signal with two blinks of my flashlight when you can join us,” Matt said.
The men and Deputy Jones moved ahead swiftly, their weapons drawn, hunkering low to avoid being shot, should the perpetrators be aiming in their direction.
When they reached the shadows of the tree line, the sheriff pulled them together. “I know you guys are trained in combat but you’re civilians here. Let us take the lead.” He took the deputy and moved forward. Irish, Matt and Trace fanned out, searching the darkness beneath the canopy of foliage for men, ATVs or a woman and her child. When they found nothing, Matt aimed his flashlight back across the field and blinked it twice.
He covered the two women as they ran across the field. When they caught up, Aubrey’s head turned right, then left. “It was all a blur. I don’t know exactly where she’d hidden the baby...” She slid down into a creek bed and back up the other side and then walked to a pile of brush where a loose limb with leaves lay on the ground. “I think she’d hidden the baby in here.” Au
brey disappeared into the brush.
Matt’s pulse ratcheted up. He was about to go in after her when she emerged with a large, woven bag.
“This was where she’d left her baby and her other child. After she came out with Marianna, she called out for Isabella.” She looked around, her shoulders hunching. “That’s when they came out of the trees on four-wheelers.”
“Do you know how old Isabella might have been?” the sheriff asked.
She shook her head. “I can only assume she was a toddler or bigger, since the baby could only be a few months old.” Aubrey moved away from the brush in the opposite direction of the cottage, her steps quickening until she was almost running, moving around fallen logs and brush. When she emerged into a field, she gasped and tore out.
Matt caught up and sprinted with her to where she fell on her knees beside a dark lump on the ground.
“Oh, sweet heaven,” she cried, and reached toward the dark object.
Matt grabbed her hands before she could lay them on the body of a woman, lying in the dirt, facedown, a bullet hole in her back.
The sheriff was there beside them. He rolled the woman onto her back. The hole in her back was small compared to the damage the bullet had made on its exit. Her shirt was saturated in her blood, her face a waxy blue in the starlight.
Matt knew before the sheriff confirmed it what the verdict would be.
The sheriff did what he had to do, pressing his fingers to the base of the woman’s throat. For a long moment he remained still. Finally, he shook his head. “No pulse. I’m afraid she’s dead.”
Tears streamed down Aubrey’s face. “She was trying to save her children.” Her tears stopped and her eyes widened. “Isabella. We have to find Isabella.” She struggled to her feet and turned, her gaze searching for the missing child. “Isabella!” she called out.
“We need a search party,” the sheriff said. He got on his radio and notified dispatch.
“You don’t have enough people on your staff to man a search party,” Matt said.
“No, but we have a telephone tree of volunteers in case of fire,” the sheriff said. “They’ll help with a missing person. And I know someone with a search and rescue dog.”
Within the next hour, Sheriff Richards’s call garnered more than a hundred people. When the volunteers had heard a child was missing, they phoned their friends and their friends phoned their friends. They came out in droves to help in the search for the missing girl.
While they were waiting, the sheriff, deputy, Irish, Matt and Trace spread out looking for the ATVs and the shooters. The last thing they needed was for the volunteers to become the next victims.
By the time the volunteers had arrived, they’d determined the men on the ATVs had gone. In their search, they hadn’t found the little girl. Matt feared the child was lying in the brush dead. If she wasn’t dead, she might be frightened out of her mind and afraid to come out with all the strangers wandering around.
The SAR dog, a German shepherd, and his handler arrived with the others. While the volunteers were organized into a line stretching out for several hundred yards, the sheriff pulled from the satchel they’d found items of clothing too big for the baby and more suitable for a small girl of three or four years old. He held them in front of the German shepherd’s nose. The dog sniffed and went to work in the woods where the mother had hidden her children.
It wasn’t long before the dog lost the scent. He kept returning to the brush pile.
“The girl was here,” his handler said. “But she didn’t walk out on her own.”
Aubrey’s body shook. “They took her.”
Matt slipped an arm around Aubrey and pulled her close against him. The shock of all that had happened would be setting in. He was surprised she was still standing on her own.
“We have to find her,” Aubrey said.
“We will,” Matt promised. As he made the promise, he wondered how the hell he would keep it. They didn’t know who the men on the ATVs were, or why they would take a small child and kill her mother.
Chapter Three
Aubrey leaned into Matt Hennessey, whose arm rested firmly around her waist. So much had happened that night. Tremors still shook her, making it hard for her to stand on her own. Somewhere out there a little girl was missing her mother. Aubrey’s heart ached for the girl. “I need to help in the search.”
“No, you don’t. There are enough people out here. If the girl is in the field or in the woods, they’ll find her,” Matt said.
“How can they find what the dog wasn’t able to locate?” Aubrey whispered. “She’s gone.” Her chest tightened. “Now that I think about it, they might have had her before we got to the baby.” She looked up at the man keeping her from falling to her knees. “Why? Why would they take a small child and shoot her mother?”
He didn’t respond. He didn’t have to.
Aubrey knew why men stole children. Every day in the news there was something about human trafficking, young girls being sold into sex slavery, pedophiles preying on their young victims and the rape and murder of the helpless. A sob rose up her throat. She swallowed hard to keep from releasing it. She knew firsthand what happened to little girls. “We have to find her.” She pushed away from Matt and started toward the line of people combing the field and woods for a little girl they wouldn’t find. Not here. The men on the ATVs had taken her somewhere else. But where?
Matt hooked her arm, bringing her to a halt.
She stared up at him. “You don’t understand. The first forty-eight hours are the most crucial,” she said. “If we don’t find her by then, we may never find her, or...we’ll find her body in a ditch.”
Matt tipped her chin up. “You have to have faith that we’ll find her.”
“I know the odds. They aren’t good.” She stepped out of the man’s grip, her shoulders going back. “Searching this field is a waste of time. We have to find the men on the ATVs. We can’t wait. The longer we wait, the farther away they’ll take her.”
“We need to give them time to search the area. They might find some evidence of who the men were on the four-wheelers.”
Anger, fear and desperation bubbled up inside Aubrey. “You don’t understand. They’re wasting time. Those men took that little girl. Her life is in danger. The longer we stand around here the less likely she’ll make it to her next birthday.” A sob lodged in her throat. Her own little girl hadn’t made it to her fourth birthday. Taken from her front yard when Aubrey’s back was turned, her Katie had been stolen and taken away. Not only had her abductor stolen the child, he’d stolen her life, snuffing it out as soon as he’d used up her little body.
“Please,” Aubrey begged. “Help me find her.”
“Okay,” Matt said. “Let’s talk with the sheriff. Maybe he’s discovered her mother’s identity. That might lead us to who would have targeted her and her children.”
He guided her over to where the sheriff stood beside the body being loaded onto a stretcher.
“We’ll transport her to the local coroner for an autopsy, but it’s pretty clear she was shot, like Ms. Blanchard stated.”
“Did you find out who she was?” Matt asked.
The sheriff held up a bag. “All we could find that might give us a clue is a wallet we discovered in the big satchel. It contained some US money and some Mexican pesos. There was a photograph of what appeared to be our victim and a few other adults around the same age. Maybe family members. And there was a piece of paper with an address of someone in the small town of Hico. I scanned the photograph on my smart phone and sent it to my contact with the Texas State Police. I told them our victim could be an illegal immigrant. They’re sending someone in plain clothes to the address.”
Aubrey nodded. “Good. Apprehending illegal aliens isn’t what we need to be doing right now. We need to know who the woman was and why she would be targeted
. We have to find her killers. They have Isabella.”
“I’ve considered that. But I can’t call off the search here until we know for sure,” Sheriff Richards said. “If that little girl is out in the woods, she has more than a few ATV killers to worry about. Snakes, coyotes of the four-legged kind, and we’ve had some sightings of mountain lions in this area.” He held up his hand. “But don’t worry, we’re not just looking here. I have a couple of my deputies setting up roadblocks on the main highways and secondary feeders in and out of Whiskey Gulch, watching for vehicles passing through the area.”
Aubrey shook her head. “I just know...it’s too late. We have to figure out who would have done this. Finding one person responsible would be hard. Three attackers should make it easier. They couldn’t have gone far on their ATVs before they transferred to another, faster vehicle.” She focused all of her thoughts on saving the little girl as she paced in front of the sheriff. “Either they had to ditch the off-road vehicles somewhere, or they loaded them on trailers and shipped them out of here.”
“We thought of that,” the sheriff said. “We’re hampered by night. If we had daylight to work with, we could put a chopper in the air and look for a truck and trailer. Since there were three ATVs, the trailer had to be big enough for all three, maybe four if they had already snatched the child. Or they could have had a tractor trailer rig staged to load into on a highway nearby.”
The sheriff’s radio crackled. “Excuse me,” he said, and stepped away from Matt and Aubrey.
Aubrey strained to hear what the call was about and the sheriff’s response.
Matt stood beside her, his attention on the sheriff, as well.
“They did? And?”
Aubrey had trouble making out the words through the static of the radio. She caught every other word.
“...legal...immigrated...paid...coyote.”
Coyote.
She knew that term from news reports. Coyotes were the evil men who extorted money from desperate people to bring them across the Mexican-American border. Many times, they killed them, left them to starve or die of thirst or traded them to human traffickers.