“Go after them!” Addison begged.
He did. He barreled down the stairs and toward the door. But he was already too late.
Reed barely managed to ready his gun before the SUV sped away.
Chapter Two
Everything inside Addison was spinning out of control. She wanted to keep screaming, to force those men to bring back Emily, but more than that, she just wanted to stop the SUV and put an end to this nightmare.
“Give me back my baby!” Addison yelled, but she had no idea if they could even hear her.
She was still dizzy, her head was pounding, but she took hold of the railing as she ran down the steps. Reed was right there at the bottom to catch her again, but she didn’t want him to hold her back. Addison darted onto the porch, looking for any sign of Emily or those men.
And her heart dropped to her knees.
There was the wall of dust that the tires had kicked up as the SUV sped out of her driveway.
They’d gotten away.
God, no.
This couldn’t be happening.
“No license plates,” Colt shouted out to them, “but I’m calling in a description of the vehicle.”
Maybe that meant every cop in the area would respond so they could stop the kidnappers, but Addison couldn’t just stand by and wait for it to happen. She had to do something. Anything. Even if it meant risking her life.
Even if it meant risking Reed’s and Colt’s.
The only thing that mattered now was saving Emily.
“We have to go after them,” she told Reed. She was willing to beg if necessary. One way or another, she was leaving to follow the SUV.
Reed glanced at her, as if trying to decide what to do, and then ran toward his truck by the mailbox that the SUV had skirted around. He jumped inside.
“You need to stay here with Colt,” he grumbled to her.
But again, he didn’t stop her when she threw open the passenger door and dropped down onto the seat beside him. Addison still had her gun, and even though she wasn’t sure she could see straight enough to aim, she’d do whatever it took to get her baby back.
The memory of Emily’s cries echoed through her head, but she tried to shut them out. Tried to hold herself together. Hard to do with everything crashing down on her.
“I can’t lose her,” she heard herself say.
She also heard the hoarse sob that followed. And worse, felt the tears burn her eyes. Addison couldn’t stop them, but tears and sobs wouldn’t help now. Her little girl needed her to stay strong.
“You won’t lose her,” Reed promised.
Of course, it was a promise he couldn’t really give her, but Addison didn’t care. She would take anything she could get right now. She only wanted them to catch up with the SUV so she could have Emily back in her arms where she belonged. Too bad she didn’t know how to do that, but she was certain if she could just see Emily, she’d figure out a way.
“Put on your seat belt,” Reed reminded her as he sped away from her house.
Somehow, despite her shaking hands, Addison managed to get the seat belt on, and she grabbed on to the dash when Reed peeled out onto the road. To the left was a dead end. The main road was to the right, and that was the way he went. It was almost certainly the path the SUV had taken, too, and she prayed the kidnappers stayed on the road so that Reed and she could find them.
“I don’t see them,” Addison said, and she cursed the sharp curves in this part of the road.
There were too many blind spots. Plus, there were old ranch trails that a vehicle could pull into and hide on. Reed and she couldn’t lose them, and heaven knew where they’d take Emily. She might never see her baby again, and that felt like a crushing vise around her heart.
“Who are these men?” Reed asked.
She had to shake her head. “I don’t know.”
And she didn’t. Addison had gotten glimpses of their faces, and she was certain she’d never seen them before.
“Think,” Reed insisted. “Tell me everything you remember about what happened.”
Not easy to remember anything with her thoughts flying around like an F-5 tornado, but Addison drew in several hard breaths, forced herself to clear her head as much as she could.
“I came down to get a cup of coffee, and I saw them on the porch. There were two of them, but I think there was another one. I got a glimpse of something or someone behind me before I was bashed on the head.”
Reed said something she didn’t catch. “There must have been a third one. I saw two men running from your office window. The third must have taken the baby while the other two were rummaging around in there.”
Just the thought of it tore her into a million little pieces.
Some stranger grabbing her baby while she was taped up downstairs. Addison couldn’t bear it if they hurt her.
But who would hurt a precious little baby?
Emily was only two months old. No one could possibly want to do anything bad to someone so young and innocent. Did that mean this was some kind of kidnapping for ransom? If so, she didn’t have much, but she’d give them everything she had, everything she could get her hands on.
“What do you think they wanted?” Reed asked.
Addison was about to go with the ransom idea, but then she froze, the thought flashing through her mind. It couldn’t be that.
Could it?
“What?” Reed pressed when she didn’t answer.
It took her a moment to get it out. “I hired a P.I. to make sure everything was okay with the...adoption.”
Reed glanced at her, and even though she hadn’t thought it possible, there was even more concern on his face. Probably because there’d been a lot in the news lately about a black-market baby ring that’d been uncovered in the area.
“I didn’t do anything illegal to get Emily,” Addison quickly added. “But...”
And that was when her explanation ground to a halt.
How much should she tell him?
Not the whole truth, that was for sure. Not now anyway with everything else going on. Maybe not ever.
“You trust this P.I. you hired?” Reed asked. He didn’t slow down. Didn’t glance at her again. He just kept driving at breakneck speed around the curvy road.
“I thought I did. He had excellent references, and he contacted me to say he’d been doing other background checks for families with recently adopted babies. The P.I.’s name is Blake Rooney.”
And once she had her baby safely back in her arms, then she’d make sure Rooney hadn’t had any part of this.
Whatever this was.
If the P.I. had done something wrong, then Addison would make sure he paid, and paid hard. But for now, she had to battle herself. The tears came again. The fear, too. It felt as if it were choking the life right out of her.
“Focus,” Reed insisted. Probably because he sensed that she was about to lose it. “Did this P.I. find out anything suspicious about the adoption?”
It took her a moment to get her mouth working. “I don’t think so. He was supposed to email me a report this morning.”
Reed cursed. “Those men were going through papers in your office. And they took your laptop. They were clearly looking for something.”
Oh, God. Had it been the P.I.’s report they were after?
If so, Addison wasn’t even sure she’d received it yet. She had planned to check her email after she’d had coffee if Emily hadn’t wakened yet. However, she hadn’t gotten the chance to do that, because the kidnappers had shown up.
“What exactly was the P.I. looking for?” Reed asked.
Again, she had to fight through the panic so she could answer. Where the heck was that SUV?
“I just asked Rooney to do background checks
on the lawyers and the woman who gave birth to Emily,” she answered.
And maybe Rooney had found something. But what? What could he have found that would have sent a team of kidnappers after her baby?
“You’re bleeding,” Reed let her know. And he grabbed a handful of tissues from a box between the seats and pressed it against her head.
She didn’t feel the blood. Didn’t feel any pain at all and was about to push the tissues away when Reed rounded the next curve.
There. Just ahead.
The SUV.
Not driving away from them.
It had stopped right in the middle of the road.
Reed cursed, slammed on his brakes, and tried to push her down onto the seat. Addison batted him away because there was no chance she would stay out of this. Not after what she saw in front of them.
There was a man dressed all in black holding Emily.
At least she was pretty sure it was her baby. Addison couldn’t see any part of the baby’s face, but she recognized the blanket. It was the pink one that’d been in Emily’s crib.
“Wait!” Reed shouted when Addison bolted from the truck.
She didn’t listen. Addison hurried out and faced the man head-on. He had a gun in his right hand, the baby cradled in his left arm, but he didn’t take aim at her.
Addison soon realized why.
There were two other gunmen inside the SUV, and both of them had weapons trained on Reed and her. One of them was slumped forward, bleeding, but that might not affect his aim.
Reed got out and pointed his gun at the driver.
“Give me the baby,” Addison insisted.
Even though she still had hold of her gun, she also didn’t aim it at the men. She didn’t want to give them any reason to start shooting again.
Addison glanced around to make sure another vehicle wasn’t coming. This wasn’t a busy road, but that didn’t mean the deputy, Colt, or someone else couldn’t come around the corner and crash into them. It was early, and there was still some slick moisture on the road surface. Not the best place for an impromptu meeting, but at least she had her baby in front of her.
“We’ll trade the kid for you,” the man said, tipping his head to Addison. He was big. Well over six feet tall and had bulky shoulders. It was the same man she’d seen on her porch before she was hit.
“No,” Reed answered. “Hand her the baby and drop your weapon. You, too,” he added to the others. “I want those guns on the ground now.”
Reed sounded like the cowboy cop that he was. A man with a badge and in charge. However, she hadn’t expected the kidnappers just to do as he’d ordered.
And they didn’t.
The man holding Emily stared at Addison. “You want to save her? Then get in the SUV with us now.”
Addison wanted to do just that if it would get Emily safely out of there. But she had just enough sanity left to know this was almost certainly a trick. If she got into the vehicle, there was nothing to stop them from killing Reed and driving away with both Emily and her.
Still, she’d be with her baby.
“Don’t,” Reed warned her when Addison took a step toward the man.
“It’s the only way,” the man insisted. “We have to know what you learned and who you told.”
That stopped Addison in her tracks, and she shook her head. “I didn’t learn anything.”
“Time’s up,” the driver said, ignoring her denial. He pointed his gun right at her. “We need to get out of here now.”
She braced herself for an attack. But it didn’t happen. The man holding Emily charged forward, and he thrust the baby toward Reed. Addison got a glimpse of what was inside the blanket then.
Emily!
The relief was instant. Thank God. And her baby appeared to be unharmed. She was awake and flailing her arms around as if she was about to start crying.
“Take her!” Addison shouted to Reed.
Reed did. He moved fast, and he scooped the baby from the man’s arms. In the same motion, the gunman reached out for Addison, and he probably would have managed to latch on to her arm if the sound hadn’t distracted him. The kidnapper glanced up when the vehicle came around the corner.
It was Colt.
The deputy had obviously taken the turn too fast and was in a full skid. His dark blue truck flew past them just as Reed got the baby inside his own vehicle.
Addison ran there, too, racing toward Emily. However, she’d barely made it a step when Colt’s truck crashed right into the side of the SUV. The air was suddenly filled with the sounds of metal scraping against metal.
The gunman shouted something but got out of the way in time. He was just a blur of motion from the corner of Addison’s eye, and she didn’t wait to see where he’d land or what would happen next.
She hurried as fast as she could back toward Reed’s truck, jumped inside and scooped the baby up into her arms.
Emily didn’t cry. The baby only looked up at Addison as if trying to figure out what was going on.
“Get down!” Reed yelled.
This time, Addison did exactly as he said. She dropped to the floor, sheltering Emily’s body with hers.
She heard the squeal of the tires on the asphalt.
Followed by a shot.
Addison looked up in time to see the bashed-in SUV coming right toward them. Obviously the crash hadn’t disabled the engine.
There was no time for Reed to get his truck out of the way. He could only brace himself for a collision, and Addison tried to do the same. The SUV was damaged, banged up on the side where Colt’s truck had hit it, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t have a hard enough impact to hurt the baby.
Reed managed to get off a shot to try to stop the driver, but the bullet skipped off the roof of the SUV just as it darted around his truck.
And the kidnappers sped away.
Chapter Three
Reed finished his call with the sheriff and watched as the medic put the bandage on Addison’s head. She didn’t even react. She had her attention solely on the baby cradled in her arms. The little girl seemed to be sleeping peacefully now, but Emily still occasionally sucked the bottle that the nurse had made for her.
The medic had cleaned away the blood from Addison’s forehead, but there was a dark blue bruise already forming. The same color as her troubled eyes.
“Any sign of the kidnappers?” Addison asked the moment Reed put his phone away. She was still ash pale except for that bruise, and along with the relief of being safe at the hospital, he could also see the fear etched on her face.
Reed had to shake his head. “Not yet. But everyone’s out looking for them. Plus, there’s a CSI team headed out to your place. They might find some prints or DNA to tell us who they were.”
After all, Reed had shot one of them, so there’d be blood in the backyard. If the guy was in the system, then they could get a match, and in Reed’s experience, once they had a name, they could start figuring out what had gone on. People generally didn’t commit assorted felonies, including attempted kidnapping and murder, for no reason.
“Thank you,” Addison told Reed when the medic walked away. “You saved our lives.”
True, but only because they’d gotten lucky by being in the right place at the right time. Reed hated it’d taken something as fragile as luck to make that happen.
Luck might not be on their side again.
After the SUV sped away, his lawman’s instincts had been for him to turn his truck around and go in pursuit, but it would have been too big a risk. Those gunmen could have started shooting again. Reed wanted to catch the dirtbags, but he hadn’t wanted to do that by putting Addison, the baby and even Colt in further danger.
Even though the adrenaline was still pumping through him, Reed forc
ed himself to sit down next to Addison in the E.R. examining stall. Over the past year he’d completely avoided any contact with his ex, and she’d done the same with him. But this wasn’t personal now.
He repeated that to himself.
Funny, but it always felt personal with Addison, and that wasn’t personal in a good way. Too many old, bad memories were in the mix, too.
Before the split, they’d been married for nearly three years, had dated five years before that, but their long relationship had soured big-time when Addison pressed and pressed him to have kids.
And they’d tried despite his reservations about fatherhood and the strain that pregnancy would put on her body.
However, her infertility had only added to their differences. One failed in vitro procedure after another, and they’d finally pulled the plug a year ago on both the baby plans and the marriage, and he had filed for a divorce. Addison had moved to San Antonio, and Reed had thought he might never see her again.
Clearly, he’d been wrong about that, because here she was and apparently in a boatload of trouble.
“I was only going to be here a few weeks,” Addison volunteered. “Just enough time to get the place ready to sell. If they’d come after me while I was at my apartment in San Antonio, they might have succeeded in taking her.”
It was true, but Reed didn’t bother confirming it. Addison was already shaken up enough. “Did the P.I., Blake Rooney, visit you at your apartment?”
She nodded. “He came earlier this week.”
Reed didn’t like the timing of that. “Did you tell him you were coming to your late aunt’s place here in Sweetwater Springs?”
Addison shook her head, at first, but then the alarm went through her eyes. “He saw my suitcases and baby things and asked if I was going on a trip. I told him I’d inherited a house and was going to sell it. You think Rooney had something to do with those kidnappers?”
“Maybe. Colt’s trying to contact him now,” Reed explained. “We’ll make sure he’s okay and bring him in for questioning.”
It was possible Rooney had indeed suspected something illegal about Emily’s adoption or had even been a part of it. That was Reed’s top theory now. But it must have been many steps past being bad for someone to send three armed men to steal whatever the P.I. had discovered.
Reining in Justice Page 2