“She’s doing just about as well as you’d expect,” Eloise said. “If something’s happened...”
“Don’t go there, Mom,” Waylon said, his voice firm with resolve. “She’s going to be okay.”
Christina doubted what he said was true, but she nodded. They needed to be the backbone of the family; they needed to stay strong so everyone around them could as well.
“What did Gwen say? Did she see the woman who took Winnie or anything?” Christina asked.
“She’s having a hard time processing everything. She said she didn’t see anything—one minute Winnie was in her house at the edge of Dunrovin with her, playing with her toys, and the next minute she was gone. Wyatt said there weren’t even any tire marks in the gravel or signs someone had driven up to their trailer. He’s thinking that either the person responsible is still somewhere on the ranch or there may have been more than one person involved.”
The thought made Christina stop. “How many are involved?”
Eloise shrugged. “At this point we don’t know.”
Christina looked over at Waylon. His lips were puckered and the lines of his frown seemed deeper than ever before. “What if Alli wasn’t even the one driving her car? Think about it. She may have never even left this town.”
“Or she could have gone south. She could have hitchhiked to Mexico by now.”
“Or she could be...dead.” Eloise covered her mouth. “I’m so sorry, Christina. I shouldn’t have said it.”
“No,” Christina whispered, stunned. “Alli isn’t dead. She can’t be dead. She’s probably with Winnie right now. Wyatt’s probably right. Maybe Alli had someone working with her, someone she convinced to drive her car. And take Winnie.” Even as she spoke, she knew how far-fetched the whole thing sounded.
Alli wasn’t the kind who normally kept a throng of female friends. If she had one named Sharon, Christina would have thought she would have heard about the woman at least in passing from her sister before she had disappeared. Then again, maybe she wouldn’t have. Her life was nothing if not a jumbled mess of dangerous secrets.
* * *
IT WASN’T HIS first search party, but it was the first one in which Waylon thought there was hope they’d find the victim alive. That hope might be misplaced, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe anything else.
No matter how hard he tried to compartmentalize his feelings, there was no escaping the emotional reality that it was his daughter’s life at stake.
As his team moved through the pasture, their motion made some of the dry, light snowflakes rise in the air. It was almost as if the snow was floating upward, disobeying the laws of nature and following only its own desire to get back to the safety of the sky. If only it was that simple to escape the constant beating life wrought.
One of the police officers Wyatt had sent with them flagged him down. “Mr. Fitzgerald, does this belong to your daughter?” The man lifted up a pink hooded sweatshirt with Dora the Explorer on the back. Its sleeve was stretched a bit, like it had been pulled over the girl’s Ace bandage.
Waylon didn’t want to admit that he didn’t know his child well enough to know what kind of clothing she wore, or even if she liked Dora or not, so he looked to Christina. She gave him a small, almost imperceptible nod instead of calling him out in front of the group of rescuers.
“Yeah,” Waylon said, rushing over to the deputy.
A sense of relief flooded him. Finally, they had a clue to Winnie’s whereabouts—and proof that she might still be on the ranch. Now it was just a matter of finding her in the nearly thousand acres of the place.
The sweatshirt was partially frozen where it had been lying on the ground and covered by a thin layer of snow, and as the deputy turned it around, on the left breast, Waylon noticed a brown dot of dried blood. He looked over his shoulder to Christina. The pink in her cheeks disappeared, and her mouth fell open as her gaze moved over the shirt in the deputy’s hands.
“It’s probably not hers,” Waylon said, stepping between Christina and the sweatshirt. “If she’s anything like me, maybe she bit her attacker. My girl would fight.”
Christina just stared at him like she could still see the sweatshirt through his body. “We have to find her, Waylon. We have to find her right now.”
She started to move again, pacing around the area, searching the ground. It didn’t make him feel any better that she was no longer looking up; instead, everyone was now looking for more blood on the ground.
He tried to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach. Winnie wasn’t hurt. She couldn’t be hurt. He would save her. He had to save her, or he could never go on. He could never face a world that would take his daughter away from him the same week that she’d come into his life.
Christina slipped her hand into his, and he realized that he had been standing there in silence as everyone else had started to move again, except the deputy who’d found the sweatshirt, who was documenting the scene and taking pictures.
“Let’s go,” Christina said, her voice soft but resolute and strong. “She needs you. You can’t stop now. We have to hurry.”
He followed her into the pasture, and they started moving again. Ahead of them was a small embankment. They slowly picked their way up the hill. Some of the dry grass had been trampled down where cows had moved through the area to the stock pond on the other side of the hill. He scanned the area, but aside from the cows’ tracks, there was nothing to tell them that any other humans had been in the area recently.
Yet he knew she had to be close. He could almost feel her. It was strange to think that this little girl could now have such a pull on his heart. As he thought about Winnie, Christina and his family, he realized how alone he had been when he’d been away from the ranch. Part of him had been missing—the love of his family, a love as big as the sky over Montana.
He moved ahead of Christina and to the top of the hill. Cattails and weeds surrounded the stock pond, and some of the weeds were at least a few feet tall. Animals coming in for a drink had pushed some of the vegetation down, and bits of the detritus floated in the water. The trail that led down from where he stood had once been mud, but it was now frozen solid by the harsh, cold winds of winter.
It was odd to think that Christmas was only just around the corner. Winnie had been talking about it almost incessantly every time they had been alone. According to her, she wanted nothing more than a puppy.
He smiled at the thought of his mother’s reaction if he showed up at their door on Christmas Eve carrying a puppy, complete with a big red bow. His mother would undoubtedly be mad, furious even, that he had brought another animal to the ranch, but she could never resist an animal in need—especially an animal that wagged its tail and promised licks.
It broke his heart as he looked out at the pond and was met with the rattle of dry grass and the lonely whisper of a long winter. Winnie needed the Christmas of her dreams. She deserved to be loved and cared for. To get everything she ever wanted. If only they could find her. They had to find her. She had to be safe.
“Waylon,” Christina said, her voice choked. “Look.” She motioned toward the far side of the pond, where a patch of weeds leaned over the water. She took off running in that direction. He took a few steps after her before he saw the blue fabric bobbing in the water near the bank.
From the distance, he couldn’t tell exactly what the fabric was, or what it was covering.
He sprinted after Christina.
It couldn’t be Winnie. It couldn’t be. No.
She hadn’t been gone that long. Only about an hour. No one would want to kill the girl.
He didn’t want to believe anyone would be crazy enough to hurt a child, but he knew all too well what people were capable of. He could only hope his gut was wrong—and his daughter was just fine and probably hiding in the weeds somewhere on the
ranch, somewhere far away from the horror in front of him.
He rushed past Christina. She couldn’t get there first. He had to shield her from whatever they were about to find.
“Go call the rest of the team,” he ordered, but she paid him no mind. In fact, she didn’t even slow down as she chased after him on the uneven path that led to the far side of the pond.
“Winnie!” she called, terror in her voice.
It wasn’t his daughter bobbing there in the water like one of the weeds. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be.
He rushed down the steep bank and ran straight into the water. It was cold and ice had collected on the edges of the bank, but he barely noticed the bite. He reached into the water. In one solid motion he flipped over the body. It was Winnie.
Her little eyes were closed, and her lips were blue. Her skin wasn’t mottled, and as he pressed his fingers against her neck, he could almost make out a sluggish pulse.
He pulled her from the water and carried her up onto the bank as he let his training take over. He started chest compressions.
“Come on, Winnie. Come on, baby.” He pressed down. One. Two. Three. Four. “Come on, baby. Daddy’s here. Breathe for me.”
He pressed five more times. The little girl didn’t move.
It was impossible to know how long she had been floating in the water, but if there was any higher power, they wouldn’t let her die. She was just a child. She didn’t deserve to pay the price for his mistakes. She had to live. She had to.
Christina fell to her knees beside the girl and held the fingers that stuck out from the end of the girl’s bandage. “Come on, Winnie girl. Come on. Breathe for us.”
He did another set of compressions on Winnie’s chest, hoping like he’d never hoped before that the action would be enough to pull her back to the land of the living—to a world where they could be together. All three of them.
“Please, baby, please. I need you,” he begged. “I love you. Please. Stay with Daddy.”
Winnie’s eyelashes fluttered, and water poured from her mouth. She coughed and gagged as she forced the fluid from her lungs. She moved to sit up, but her tiny body was so weak that she fell back to the ground.
He picked her up and pulled her into the safety of his arms. “I’m so sorry, Winnie. I’m so sorry, baby. Don’t worry. Daddy’s got you,” he cooed as she coughed and sputtered on his shoulder.
He stood up as he looked over at Christina. “She’s going to make it. We got her. We got her, honey.”
Tears streamed down Christina’s cheeks. “Now we just have to find the person responsible. They have to pay.”
Chapter Seventeen
Christina couldn’t stop watching Waylon and the way he hovered over Winnie as the emergency room nurse wrapped her in a warm blanket.
“Mr. Fitzgerald, you need to back up. I need to check her vitals,” the nurse ordered.
Waylon stared at the nurse, and shooting daggers didn’t even seem strong enough to describe the way he looked at the woman.
“Okay,” the nurse said, not waiting for him to speak. “It’s okay if you stay with the girl, but—”
“She’s not just any girl. This is my daughter,” he argued. “And I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving her again. Not until I know she’s safe.”
“She’s safe in this hospital, sir,” the nurse said, clearly not getting the message.
Christina moved closer to Waylon and took his hand as she glanced toward the nurse. “No one except hospital staff is allowed anywhere near the girl, do you understand?”
The nurse raised an eyebrow, almost as if she were surprised to be taken on by both Christina and Waylon, but instead of arguing, this time she answered with a nod. “I will have security come over and stand guard beside the door. No one will be allowed to come or go. I promise. But for right now, I need you both out of this room. You’ve done a great job in getting this girl to this point, but now she needs the help only this hospital and I can provide.”
“Thank you, Nurse. Thank you.” Christina pulled Waylon along by the arm. “Come on, honey. Come on. She’ll be okay.”
“I can’t... I can’t leave her,” he said. “She needs us.” He motioned toward Winnie.
His daughter’s chest was rising and falling with the sleep of the exhausted.
“Don’t worry, honey. She’s going to be okay. They have her. Security is on their way. Don’t forget, whoever is responsible for this—they’re still out there. We need to find them. We have to stop them before they have the chance to do anything this horrible again.”
Outside Winnie’s room, they were surrounded by a sea of brown and black uniforms. There were at least ten police officers, both highway patrol and sheriff’s deputies, milling around the unit. Near the entrance were Gwen and Wyatt, who rushed over as they noticed Waylon and Christina coming out of Winnie’s room.
“Is she going to be okay?” Gwen asked. Her eyes were red and her skin blotchy from what must have been hours of crying.
Christina nodded. “She’s alive. They are trying to get her warmed up and rested.”
“Did she say anything about who was behind this? About what she saw?” Wyatt asked, looking toward Waylon.
Waylon stared out into space and slowly shook his head. “She’s just lucky to be alive. We’re lucky we found her in time.”
“Our guys are still going over the scene,” Wyatt said. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone and opened a picture. He handed the phone to Christina. “But they managed to find the missing paperwork stuffed under a rock just inside the water’s edge.”
“What? Why would anyone do that?” she asked, staring at the picture of the papers under the water.
“I have no idea, but you think if they were after money, they would have simply sold the papers. Something like a passport can go for a lot of money on the black market,” Wyatt said. “Sometimes they even use things like that for transporting kids across the border illegally.”
Chills ran down her spine. Why were so many people determined to exploit kids? She must have lived in another world, because things like that didn’t even cross her mind—not in the middle of Montana.
Several nurses and a doctor rushed into Winnie’s room, and the people standing in the ER grew quiet. Another of the ER doctors, who had been standing at the nurses’ station, looked over at them and slowly made his way over.
“Are you the parents of Winnie Bell?” he asked, motioning to Waylon and Christina.
She didn’t really know how to respond. She wasn’t the girl’s mother, and now that Waylon had claimed his daughter, she wasn’t really even the guardian.
“We are,” Waylon said, squeezing her hand. “What can we do for you?”
The doctor gave them a weak but reassuring smile. “I heard about what happened. Don’t worry. Every year we get a child who falls through the ice. We’re practiced dealing with situations like this. The great thing about kids is that they are so resilient. From what I saw, you got to her just in time. If she’s a fighter, she’ll make it through this.”
“She’s a fighter,” Waylon said.
“I’m glad to hear it,” the doctor said with a thankful nod. “Now, about you both. How are you doing?”
“We’re fine. We aren’t the ones who were floating in the water,” Waylon said, glancing over at the room where his daughter lay.
The doctor lifted Waylon’s arm and pushed up the sleeve of his shirt. For the first time, Christina noticed red welts on his skin, covered in what looked like little pustules.
Waylon pulled his arm from the doctor’s grip. “Don’t worry, I’m fine.” He pushed down his sleeve.
“Where did you guys say you found the little girl?” the doctor asked.
Wyatt stepped forward. “Does it
matter?”
“Oh, no, don’t get me wrong,” the doctor said with a slight wave. “It’s just that a rash like that is uncommon this time of year. Though—”
“I’ve been stressed. It’s probably just hives or something,” Waylon interrupted.
“No. A rash like this...” he said, taking Waylon’s arm. The doctor touched the skin around the red welts. “These are from some kind of allergic reaction.” He leaned in closer to take a better look. “It looks like poison ivy.”
“We don’t have poison ivy here. We’re too far north.”
“No, I know. It’s probably something in the same family, maybe stinging nettles.” The doctor leaned back and frowned for a moment. “Actually, I had a case just like this a few days ago. A woman came in presenting the same symptoms.”
She had seen something like this before, on a ranch hand’s Labrador retriever. The dog had been playing near the stock pond and had gotten into some kind of stinging underbrush.
“Who was the woman who came in with the rash?” Christina asked, more than aware that HIPAA laws, the restrictions that required medical confidentiality, would prohibit the man from answering. Yet she had to try.
“You know I can’t answer that. I can’t give you names.”
A nurse walked out from Winnie’s room and made her way over toward them. “Dr. Nay?” she asked, motioning toward the doctor standing with them. “Dr. Rogers needs your help.”
The doctor looked back to Christina. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.”
“Don’t worry,” Wyatt said. “We’ll be back, warrant in hand. If there’s even a chance the woman you treated is the same woman responsible for Winnie’s attack, the judge will give me anything I want.”
“I look forward to helping,” the doctor said, turning away to go to the room. “For now, you’ll have to be satisfied that we are going to make sure Winnie’s well taken care of. And,” he said, motioning toward Waylon’s arm, “you might want to take some Benadryl and lather that up with calamine lotion. If you take care of it, your rash should be gone within a few days.”
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