Taken in Texas

by Susan Sleeman

  “We should head to the ER,” she suggested. “Then if Granddad still needs help, and Lucas feels up to it, he can come back down here.”

  “Lucas isn’t coming down here until I can be sure he won’t get hurt again.” Cord’s voice rose and so did he.

  Lucas gaped at him. “But I—”

  “No buts. That’s the way it’s going to be.” Cord stormed out the door.

  “I’ll talk to him.” Jed rushed after him.

  “He ruins everything.” Lucas hung his head.

  Kendall crossed over to the boy and rested her arm on his shoulders. “Things have a way of working themselves out.”

  His head shot up. “Like they worked out for my parents or grandparents? Like that, you mean?”

  He shrugged off her arm and took off outside. Kendall watched him go, sadness seeping into her very bones.

  “Those two are seriously hurting,” her mother said, joining her. “I honestly don’t know how they do it. With Isabel so sick, I...” She paused and sniffed in a breath. “No. No, I’m not going to think about that now.”

  Kendall hugged her mother as tears threatened, but she swallowed hard. Her mother didn’t need Kendall to cry. She needed her to be strong for her when her sister-in-law was so sick.

  On the way up to the house, Kendall prayed for Isabel’s healing and for Cord and Lucas to be able to heal, too. That she would find Eve quickly and these two amazing guys wouldn’t have their lives once again destroyed by loss.

  NINE

  Kendall sat back at her parents’ dining table and stretched. Three hours had passed since Cord had taken off with Lucas to the ER. She’d wanted to go with them, but Cord didn’t want to expose her to unnecessary danger. Lucas seemed like he wanted her to be there, but after seeing Cord’s reaction to Lucas’s injury, she didn’t have the heart to make him worry more.

  Man, he was in a bad place. A very bad place, and she didn’t know how he would find his way out of it without having to live every moment of every day worried about Lucas and Eve. That is, if they located Eve alive.

  Kendall heard a vehicle pull up outside. She went to the window and saw Cord’s truck come to a stop. Lucas hopped out, then marched down to the cabin area. Cord stood, hand perched above his eyes, watching the boy go. She wanted to step outside and slip her hand into his and tell him everything would be okay, but she couldn’t make that promise—not yet.

  Cord turned and trudged up to the house. She waited for him and plastered a smile on her face. Her father and Matt, who’d been waiting for Cord to return, joined her in the dining room.

  “How’s Lucas?” she asked.

  “Fine. Ten stitches.”

  “He must be in pain.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m so sorry this happened, Cord,” her father said.

  Cord looked at her father as if he didn’t believe his statement. “It was no one’s fault. Just happened. And I was wrong to tell Lucas he couldn’t help Jed. I told Lucas as much on the way back here.”

  “I know God has a plan in all of this.” Matt’s tone was heartfelt.

  “Does He?” Cord asked, shaking his head. “I’m not sure these days. I sure can’t understand the purpose in Eve going missing.”

  Her father gestured at her paperwork on the table. “Let’s all sit down and see how we can improve our search for her.”

  Cord gave a firm nod and sat.

  Kendall appreciated her dad’s straightforward approach to helping Cord move ahead.

  Winnie pushed through the kitchen door, holding a stack of plates. “Almost suppertime.”

  Kendall glanced at her watch. “Leave the plates, and I can set the table when we’re done.”

  “Don’t get caught up and run late. You know Betty likes dinner on the table right at six.”

  “We’ll be done in plenty of time,” her father said.

  Kendall waited for her mother to step out of the room, then pulled out the bag with the noose from under a stack of papers and handed it to her father. “When we came out of the bank, this was hanging on my rearview mirror.”

  He snatched it up and his eyes spit angry fire. “Any message?”

  “Isn’t it clear enough?” Kendall asked.

  “Perfectly.” He slammed the bag down and looked at it with disgust. “Question is, what do we do about it?”

  “I’m worried that if Kendall’s attacker is willing to come out in public like this, he’s escalating,” Cord said.

  Kendall shot him a look. “My car was by the dumpster, and the risk of being seen was slim.”

  Cord gave her a look that said he expected her to argue with him. “But he didn’t know you would park by the dumpster.”

  “Then maybe if I’d found a more exposed space, he wouldn’t have placed the noose in my car.”

  “Even more important is how he knew where you were,” Matt said, drawing their attention.

  Kendall didn’t have a good answer for that. “We weren’t followed. I made sure of that.”

  “And I confirmed it,” Cord added.

  “He’s got to be tracking you,” Matt said.

  Tracking her? “I might think he’d gotten to my phone when I was unconscious last night, but there’s no way he could’ve cracked my passcode while I was out, so that’s not it.”

  “What about a GPS device on your car?” Matt suggested and Kendall remembered that when a stalker was tracking Nicole, he’d used one.

  “He could’ve snuck out here at night and added the tracker.” Anger rose in Cord’s eyes. “I’ll go check.”

  “Wait, I’ll go—”

  He interrupted Kendall by charging for the door. The three of them sat there in stunned silence at Cord’s abrupt departure, at his quick escalation to anger.

  Her father frowned. “I don’t much like that your attacker could’ve been creeping around the place last night. Don’t like it at all.”

  Kendall was both frustrated with Cord and worried about herself and didn’t know how to respond, so she didn’t and simply sat there, waiting for Cord to return.

  His footsteps soon pounded up the steps, and he came in holding a bag with a small black tracking device. “Found it in the rear wheel well of her car. I wanted to grind it into the ground, but I couldn’t destroy potential evidence, so I grabbed an evidence bag from my truck.”

  “We should put it back,” Matt said. “Set up a trap for him.”

  “I doubt he’ll fall for it,” her father said. “He’s got to know after finding the noose that we’ll ask how he found Kendall and locate the tracker.”

  “It’s worth a try, though,” Cord said. “But there’s no way I’ll allow Kendall to participate.”

  “Oh, we’re agreed on that.” Her father shifted his gaze to her, and she prepared herself for him to try to ground her, bringing up all of her frustrations with how he still treated her like a helpless child at times.

  “I’ll have one of my deputies take your car out tonight,” he continued. “But as Cord said, if the guy bites, you won’t be there. And I agree with Cord on another thing. It appears as if your attacker is escalating. We need to be mindful of that, and I want you to stay on the ranch at all times.”

  “This is exactly what I was afraid of.” Kendall crossed her arms. “I know what you’re thinking but locking me up here isn’t the answer. I’ll be even more careful, and Cord is with me all the time. We’ll scan our vehicle for trackers before we go anywhere, and Cord can up his surveillance. We’ll even do a risk assessment before I leave the ranch.”

  “I don’t know,” her dad said, but he looked like he was caving.

  “C’mon, Dad.” Kendall firmed her jaw. “What would you do if this involved Matt?”

  He clamped a hand on the back of his neck. She thought he’d hold the line, but he suddenly lowered his hand
to the table and said, “Point taken.”

  “Then we’re good here? You’re not going to pull me from the investigation.”

  He nodded.

  Kendall picked up the bag and tucked it under her papers again. “Not a word of this at dinner. I don’t want to worry Lucas or Mom and Nana.”

  “But I will tell your mother after dinner. We don’t keep secrets, and I’m not risking a night in the doghouse.”

  “She sounds a lot like Kendall,” Cord muttered.

  “You have no idea.” Her dad laughed. “No idea.”

  Kendall didn’t much like the turn of the conversation. Was it a signal that Cord still wanted to call all the shots? That he still had to be in charge all the time? If so, no matter the feelings she was experiencing, she would never even think about a relationship with him. Something she shouldn’t be thinking of, anyway.

  She switched her focus and brought Matt and her dad up to speed on their visit to the bank. “I already completed the warrant requests for the bank’s video files and submitted them to the judge.”

  “You need me to try to expedite it?” Matt asked.

  “Not yet,” she replied and felt a prickle of irritation that he might think she needed his help. “I followed up with a phone call to the judge’s clerk to make sure they knew we were dealing with a missing-person investigation. Sounded like the judge is tied up for the rest of the day, but the clerk hoped he could review the requests before he goes home.”

  Cord’s phone rang, and he grabbed it.

  “Not a number I recognize but it’s local.” He answered with a quick hello and listened. His mouth dropped open. “Let me put you on speakerphone, Mr. Jepson, so the rest of my investigative team can hear this.”

  Finn. What could he want?

  Kendall leaned closer to Cord. “Hello, Finn. What’s going on?”

  “You’re never going to believe this.” Finn’s excited voice came through the speaker. “Guess who I just got off the phone with?”

  Kendall hated playing guessing games when the stakes were so high, but humoring him would provide the fastest result. “Who?”

  “Eve Smalley.”

  “Eve called you?” Kendall shot a look at Cord, who seemed stunned. “Why? What did she want?”

  “She asked about liquidating those long-term investment accounts. She said she urgently needed the money and wanted it wired to another account.”

  “You’re sure it was Eve?” Kendall asked.

  “Positive. I know her voice, and I also asked her a question I knew only she could answer before I gave her any advice.”

  Kendall could hardly believe the news. “And what did you tell her?”

  “That I can liquidate the accounts, but she’ll incur penalties, and it will take me a few days to do so. Also, she’ll have to sign an electronic document to authorize it.”

  “Did she still want to continue?”

  “Yes. She said she was out of town and would call me back tomorrow for an update. I asked if she was okay and told her you were worried about her. She said she was off on a romantic adventure.”

  “And I assume you got a telephone number from her,” Cord said from between clenched teeth.

  “I asked, but she wouldn’t give me one. Still, it was on my caller ID, and I jotted it down before I hung up.”

  “Give me that number now.” Cord grabbed paper and a pen, and Finn rattled it off.

  “I need you to stall in liquidating the account,” Kendall said. “So when she calls tomorrow, the funds won’t be available yet.” Kendall was hoping to buy some time to find Eve before a potential kidnapper got his money and didn’t need her anymore.

  “I won’t have to stall,” Finn replied. “I can’t liquidate them that fast.”

  “Good. I’m going to see about getting a warrant to tap your phone in case she calls again.” Kendall glanced at the others. “Anyone else have questions for Finn?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Thanks, Finn,” she said. “I’ll be in touch so make sure you’re around.”

  Cord hung up and sighed out a long breath. “At least we know Eve’s alive.”

  “And it’s possible we can track the phone she called from if it’s not a burner phone,” Kendall said, using the slang term for a prepaid wireless phone for which the carrier didn’t collect any identifying information.

  “Still, the phone company should be able to triangulate the cell transmission.” Cord gave a tight smile. “Those readings can be imprecise, but we’ll at least have a general area where the call originated.”

  “Let me look up the phone number, and then request the triangulation.”

  He nodded. “Since that will take some time, I’ll go check on Lucas.”

  “Wait,” she said. “What does everyone think we’re dealing with here?”

  “With the money request, it could be blackmail,” Matt said. “But then why is Eve missing?”

  “She really could be on that romantic getaway,” Kendall suggested. “But that doesn’t explain the blood in her house or the money in her trunk.”

  “If I had to guess,” Cord said, “as much as I don’t like it, I’m leaning toward someone kidnapping Eve. Why, I don’t know, but it feels like that to me.”

  “If that’s true, then this is good news,” Kendall said. “Real good news. If it’s a kidnapper, he wants more money, and he knows he needs to keep Eve alive long enough to get it.”

  Cord nodded, but his expression remained grim.

  “Even then, it could be possible to track the account where she wants the money to be sent, right, Kendall?” Matt asked.

  “Right,” she answered but couldn’t do anything else to improve Cord’s mood.

  What she could do was pray that they would find Eve before Finn had to wire the funds to the other account. Because if someone had Eve, once he got the money, he had no reason to keep her alive.

  TEN

  The next morning, Kendall hung up from her call with Matt and looked at the sunlight flooding in through the dining room window. She wished her mood was as sunshiny as the day. She still had a residual headache and hadn’t slept much last night. Her fault totally. She kept checking in with Seth, who had parked her car in strategic locations to lure out her attacker, but he arrived at dawn with her vehicle minus the GPS tracker, tired and frustrated from a night of zero action.

  She looked at Cord, who was peering outside, his expression pensive. He’d been distant like that since they learned the phone Eve called from was indeed a burner, and the call triangulated to a large park on the north side of the county. Both dead ends. She didn’t know if he was thinking about that or Lucas’s injury or about losing his family. Maybe all of the above.

  Kendall wanted to know, but she didn’t feel right asking. Still, she could let him know she was available to help. “We may not be together anymore, but you can always tell me what’s bothering you, and I’ll try to help.”

  He turned then, a vacant look in his eyes, before he whisked it away. “Not really much you can do.”

  “Sometimes just talking helps.”

  “Sometimes, but right now I need to find Eve more than talking.” He sat down next to her. “Did I hear Matt say he got the warrant for the bank phone wiretap, and he’ll have it up and running this morning?”

  She nodded. “He’ll babysit it personally.”

  “I can never begin to repay your family for everything. You have all been so great.”

  “If we were in your situation, you’d do the same thing for us.”

  He nodded and gestured at the table. “We should get going on the credit card bills.”

  Kendall scanned down the most recent statement and noticed a high number of recent visits to restaurants across the county. “Did Eve like to eat out a lot?”

  Cord shook his head
. “She always says there’s nothing better than home cooking, and she makes the best meals.”

  “Check out these charges.” Kendall handed the statement to Cord.

  “Odd.” His brow furrowed. “She dined out once, sometimes twice, a day for weeks, and the restaurants are spread all over the county.”

  “None of them are in Lost Creek. Maybe she was trying to hide that, too.”

  “Also, based on the dollar amounts, she didn’t eat alone but picked up the tab. Maybe she was taking out the money and giving it to whoever she ate with.”

  “Question is, who did she eat with?”

  “We should start with her church friends, though if she gave them fifty-thousand dollars, I’m sure Gladys or Pauline would’ve told us.”

  “I’ll call them.” Kendall took out her small notepad and flipped to the page with Gladys’s contact information. Kendall dialed and Gladys answered right away, but she had no idea that Eve was dining out, and she confirmed that such behavior was odd. So did Pauline when Kendall called her. Kendall then called the shelter and church to see if Eve donated a large sum of money to either of them, but struck out there, too.

  Tapping her finger on the table, she thought about their next move. “Seems to me our best option right now is to check out the restaurants to see if anyone remembers seeing Eve and can describe her dining companion or if they have video cameras.”

  “Agreed.”

  Kendall started gathering the papers together. “Let me tell Mom we’re leaving and ask her to keep an eye out for Lucas.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  She eyed him. “I think I can handle this on my own, Cord. No one is going to try to kill me in the kitchen.”

  “No, wait. I didn’t mean it like that. I wanted to thank your mother for her help with Lucas.”

  “Oh, right. Okay.” Embarrassed at her erroneous assumption, Kendall fled to the kitchen. Cord followed behind.

  She found her mother at the sink, washing dishes, and her nana at the counter, pounding down dough for what Kendall believed would be warm, yeasty dinner rolls or bread.