He deepened the kiss, took hold of her shoulder and dragged her against him. Great. Now they were body to body with the kiss raging on and on until finally he had to stop just so they could catch their breaths.
She looked at him again, silently questioning whether this was a good idea. It wasn’t. But that didn’t stop Lucas from going back for a second kiss. It didn’t help, of course. But this time he stopped not because of air. If he didn’t stop, he was going to drag her upstairs. There was an apartment up there. With a bed.
Definitely not good.
Kissing had already added too many complications to this mix, and sex would spin those complications out of control.
He was about to apologize to her, but Grayson opened the door to the break room. Hell. One look at his face and Lucas knew something was wrong.
“The FBI isn’t taking Hailey,” Lucas jumped to say.
Grayson shook his head. “Not yet, anyway. No, this is about Colleen.”
Hailey slowly got to her feet. “What happened?”
“There’s something you need to see.” Grayson motioned for them to follow him, and he led them to his office.
Thankfully, Minton wasn’t there. He was still across the hall in the squad room, pacing, and judging from his expression, he was riled about something other than not getting his way about taking Hailey.
“If that’s something that pertains to the FBI’s investigation,” Minton called out, “then I want to see it.”
“It’s not about the investigation,” Grayson assured him. “This is a family matter.” Once Hailey, Lucas and he were inside the office, Grayson locked the door, no doubt to stop the agent from barging in.
Josh was no longer in the room listening to those recordings. Or rather, the copies of the recordings. Grayson had no doubt put him in one of the interview rooms.
“What’s going on?” Lucas asked, but he was almost afraid to hear the answer.
Grayson tipped his head to his desk. There was a padded envelope, opened, along with several papers. “This just arrived by courier,” he explained. “There’s no name on it, but I’ve already called the courier’s office and asked them to tell me who sent it.”
Lucas went closer, Hailey following right behind him, and he saw the first piece of paper. It appeared to be test results.
“DNA,” Grayson supplied. “According to the person who sent it, this proves that Isabel is Colleen’s baby.”
“Does the test really prove it?” Hailey immediately asked.
Grayson lifted his shoulder. “This sort of thing can be faked, but it looks real. It has both the baby’s DNA and a sample apparently retrieved from Colleen. Josh is calling the lab to verify.” He wore a plastic glove when he moved aside the test results to show them what was beneath.
A photo.
Of a baby girl.
Hailey leaned in even closer, her gaze combing over the picture. She nodded. “The baby definitely resembles Colleen.”
Of course, they’d known Colleen had a child, but Lucas figured all of this was leading to something bad.
It was.
“This was the final thing in the envelope,” Grayson said, showing them another piece of paper. “It’s a ransom demand—for a quarter of a million. But there’s another demand. The kidnappers say if Hailey doesn’t personally turn over everything she has on the DeSalvo investigation, then Colleen will never see the child again.”
Chapter Twelve
Hailey heard every word of what Grayson said. Saw it, too, written in the ransom demand. But it still took a moment to sink in.
Mercy.
If this was real, then her niece could be in grave danger. It didn’t matter that she’d never seen the child. Hailey still loved her and wanted to protect her.
“No,” Lucas said before Hailey could speak. “You’re not going to do this.”
Since she was about to tell him that she would indeed do it, he’d obviously known what she was thinking. “I have the money in savings. It’s from my father’s life insurance. I’ve never spent any of it, and it’s in a bank in San Antonio.”
“The money’s not the problem,” Lucas argued.
Yes, she knew what he meant. It was the personally part of the demand. Someone wanted her dead, and this could be a trap to lure her out into the open.
“But we can’t just let them disappear with the baby,” she snapped. What she felt was pure frustration because Lucas and she were both right. She couldn’t go out to deliver anything, but she also couldn’t just give up on getting back the baby.
“Just sit,” Grayson suggested to her. “We’ll work this out somehow.”
His phone buzzed, and he lifted his finger in a wait-a-second gesture. Since the caller had gotten Grayson’s full attention, Hailey figured it had to be about the kidnapping.
“Eric or Minton could have taken the baby,” Hailey tossed out there.
Lucas nodded. “Or this could be something Colleen concocted. We don’t know what her real motives are.”
True, but it sickened her to think that her sister might be using her own child to do whatever it was she was trying to do. Plain and simple, maybe this was about the money.
“Even though my mother adopted Colleen, she didn’t leave Colleen any money from her life insurance,” Hailey told Lucas. “She and my mother were on the outs at the time of her death, and she left it solely to me. I offered to share it with Colleen, but she was so angry at being cut out of the will that she refused.”
“Was Colleen angry enough to do something like pretending to kidnap her own daughter?”
Hailey had to shrug. “Colleen was always angry about a lot of things. Still...this doesn’t feel like something she’d do.”
Of course, she’d been wrong about Colleen before. She hadn’t thought her sister would delete those files she’d stashed away about Eric. Which was a reminder that she didn’t have a key part of what the kidnappers were demanding.
“If we can work out a deal with the kidnappers so I don’t personally have to deliver their demands, I’ll need to put together some fake files to give them.”
Lucas didn’t give her his opinion on that because Grayson finished his call and turned to them. “That was the agency for the courier who delivered the package. The person paid in cash, and according to his driver’s license, his name is Eldon Silverton. It’s fake,” Grayson quickly added.
Hailey didn’t even bother to groan because it had been such a long shot, anyway. She seriously doubted that the kidnappers would have used someone who could be identified and therefore linked back to them. Or rather, linked back to the person who’d orchestrated all of this.
“What about security cameras?” Lucas asked. “Does the courier agency have them?”
Grayson shook his head. “I think we’ve struck out with the courier. With the lab, too, because it was Darrin Sandmire who ordered the lab results.”
Darrin was the man who’d tried to kill her the night she’d been put in a coma. According to Colleen, he’d been behind the attack shortly after Hailey left the hospital.
Darrin was also dead.
So, yes, that meant they had indeed struck out since they couldn’t question Darrin about it. But something about that didn’t make sense.
“Why would the person behind the kidnapping use Darrin for this?” she asked. “Why not just use someone with a fake ID?”
“It was to convince us that this is real,” Lucas answered, and it prompted Grayson to nod. Thankfully, Lucas continued with his explanation, because Hailey wasn’t following this. “We know Darrin’s a thug. Was a thug. The kidnappers wanted us to understand that a thug like this was involved. That way, we could be sure the baby was truly in danger.”
All of that made sense, but it also tightened the knot in her st
omach. Because if a snake like Darrin had been involved, there was no telling who had the baby now.
“Let me take care of Minton,” Grayson said. “And then we’ll try to contact Colleen again. From now on, any conversation with her needs to be recorded.”
And Hailey knew why. Her sister might be involved in this crime in some way, and anything Colleen said might lead them to the truth.
When Grayson unlocked the door and threw it open, Minton was standing right there. It was possible he’d heard some or even all of what they’d said, and he clearly wasn’t happy about being excluded.
“You need to leave,” Grayson ordered him before Minton could get out a word. Lucas went to his cousin’s side. “Until you have papers putting Hailey in FBI custody, you have no right to be here,” Grayson added.
Minton had never been a happy-looking person, and Grayson’s words only made it worse. “I’m an FBI agent.”
“Which gives you no right to be here. This is the sheriff’s office, and last I checked, I’m the sheriff. You’re leaving, and that’s not a request. You can come back when and only when you have something to convince me to turn over Hailey to you.”
Minton still didn’t budge. He threw glances at all of them, his glare lingering on Hailey for a few long moments.
“You’ll regret this,” Minton said, and it sounded like a threat. He turned and stormed out.
Grayson and Lucas stood in the doorway and watched the man leave, and they didn’t move until Hailey heard the front door slam.
“Make sure he doesn’t come back,” Grayson told one of the deputies.
He returned to his desk, handed Hailey the phone and put the recorder right next to it. Hailey pressed in the number, and it rang. And rang.
Her heart dropped when it went to voice mail.
“Colleen, I need to talk to you right away,” Hailey said once she was able to leave a message. “We got a ransom demand from the kidnappers of your baby. Please call me back ASAP.”
She was about to put the phone away, but it rang before she could do it. Hailey answered it as soon as Grayson hit the record button again, and she immediately heard her sister’s voice.
“The kidnappers got in touch with you?” Colleen asked. “How? When?” She certainly sounded like a mother who’d had her child taken.
“A package was delivered to the Silver Creek Sheriff’s Office,” Lucas answered. “There’s a demand for a quarter of a million and any info Hailey has on the DeSalvo family. They want her to deliver everything to them herself. Now, who’s behind the kidnapping?”
“I don’t know. I swear, I don’t. But I’ll pay them whatever it takes to get back my baby. Where and when do they want Hailey to make the drop?”
Colleen made this sound as if it were a done deal, that Hailey would indeed be involved in the exchange, but Hailey figured no way would Lucas let that happen.
“We’ll go over all the details with you,” Lucas said. “But only if you come here to the sheriff’s office. I have some questions for you.”
Hailey guessed that Colleen would come up with an excuse as to why that couldn’t happen. After all, she’d stonewalled them practically from the start of this nightmare. And her sister did hesitate for a couple of seconds.
“All right,” Colleen answered. “I’m just up the street and can be there in a few minutes. But please come out and watch for me. Draw your gun, too. Because when I come out in the open, they’ll try to kill me.”
* * *
“WHO’S TRYING TO kill you and why?” Lucas snapped. But he was talking to himself, because Colleen had already hung up.
Hell. It didn’t make sense that someone was trying to kill Colleen. Especially not the kidnappers. They’d probably want her alive so she would push Hailey to pay the ransom.
Maybe.
And maybe the idea was to kill Hailey when she delivered the money and files. Then, also murder Colleen so that anything the sisters had learned about the DeSalvo family would die with them. Of course, that theory worked only if Colleen was innocent. The jury was out on that. Still, Lucas couldn’t risk her being gunned down if she was truly out to rescue her child.
“Wait here,” Lucas warned Hailey.
She took hold of his arm. “It’s too risky for you to go out there.” The very thing she’d said to him when he was meeting Minton at the ranch.
That hadn’t turned out so well, but Hailey must have realized they didn’t have much of a choice about this, because her grip melted off him. “Just be careful,” she added.
There was plenty of emotion in her voice, and Lucas didn’t think all that emotion was related only to what was about to happen. No. That kiss was playing into this. It had deepened things between them. Had upped the stakes. And that wasn’t good, because they were both already distracted enough without adding higher stakes.
“I mean it,” Lucas warned her. “Stay put.”
He headed toward the front door with Grayson following right behind him. Both drew their weapons. However, they didn’t actually go outside. They stayed in the doorway, Lucas looking up one side of the street and Grayson the other. One of the deputies hurried to the window. All of them preparing for what might be another attack right on Main Street.
But there was no sound of shots. No sign of Colleen, either. Not at first, anyway, but then Lucas spotted someone on the sidewalk just two buildings up from the sheriff’s office. Not Colleen, though.
Eric.
Lucas didn’t like the timing of the man’s arrival, and apparently Eric didn’t like it much, either, when he spotted Grayson’s and Lucas’s weapons. He cursed as he got closer.
“Are the guns really necessary?” Eric asked.
“They’re not for you,” Lucas assured him. “There might be gunmen in the area.”
That put plenty of alarm on Eric’s face. Alarm that he could have been faking, but it still got him running toward them. Lucas considered not letting him in, but if Colleen was innocent and she saw Eric out front, that might send her back into hiding.
“Frisk him,” Lucas told the deputy when Eric went into the reception area.
Lucas barely spared Eric a glance. Instead he kept his attention on Main Street, and he finally saw more movement. It was in the same area where Eric had just been. But the person wasn’t on the sidewalk but rather peering around the corner of a shop.
Definitely Colleen.
Lucas motioned for her to come to them. She didn’t. Not right away. She kept looking around. Not just up and down the streets but also on the rooftops. Colleen definitely seemed concerned about being gunned down. Lucas was concerned about that, as well, but if she was in danger, then that alley wasn’t a safe place. Heck, nowhere out in the open was safe.
Colleen finally came out and raced toward them. She was limping, maybe an injury from her car accident, and judging from her expression, she wasn’t just afraid but also in pain. The moment she reached the door, Grayson pulled her inside.
“What’s he doing here?” she snarled, looking at Eric.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Eric countered.
“Take Eric to an interview room,” Grayson told the deputy who was still in the process of frisking the man.
“I don’t want to be put away in an interview room,” Eric protested. “I need to talk to Colleen.”
Lucas was about to tell him, “Tough.” But Colleen spoke first. “Did you kidnap my baby?”
Her voice was shaking. So was she. And that was no doubt what prompted Hailey to come out of Grayson’s office and go to her sister. Something Lucas definitely didn’t want her to do. Especially when Eric stepped in front of her. Eric wasn’t facing Hailey, though, but rather Colleen.
“You really had a baby?” he demanded.
“Yes,” Colleen snapped, “and someone
took her. Was it you?”
Eric stared at her as if trying to sort all of this out. Of course, maybe he already had it sorted out if he’d been the one to kidnap the child.
“No. I didn’t. Is there DNA proof?” Eric pressed. “Real DNA proof that hasn’t been faked by you?”
“There is proof,” Grayson verified. “Now, let’s all move away from the windows.” He pointed to Eric. “You either leave or go in the interview room.”
Eric’s chin came up. “I’m not leaving until I see solid evidence that I have a half sibling.”
“Arrest him,” Grayson told the deputy without hesitation. “He’s obstructing justice.”
Eric howled out a protest, moved out of the deputy’s grip. He glared at all of them before he stormed out of the sheriff’s office. Good. One less pain to deal with.
“What did the kidnappers send you?” Colleen asked the moment Eric was gone.
But Lucas didn’t get a chance to show her. That’s because his phone rang, and he saw Unknown Caller on the screen.
Usually not a good sign.
“Record it,” Grayson said, and Josh hurried to get a recorder from his desk so that Lucas could do that.
Grayson’s phone rang, too, and he stepped into the hall to take it. He motioned for Lucas to go ahead and answer his call. Lucas did, and he put it on speaker.
“Are you ready to talk?” the caller immediately said.
It was a man, but Lucas didn’t recognize the voice. “About what?”
“The kids, of course. You want to get them back, right?”
Every muscle in Lucas’s body tightened. “Kids?”
“Yeah. Colleen’s girl and your boy. We have them both.”
Chapter Thirteen
The panic slammed through Hailey so fast that she couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. But she could feel, and what she was feeling was the sheer terror after learning that someone had taken her son.
Lucas didn’t respond to the caller. He looked at Grayson, and Hailey could tell from his expression that something had gone wrong.
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