“My first job is to protect you.”
“Then you can do that by taking me with you to look for Carlo. Now come on. We’re wasting time talking about it. We need to go after them.”
She tried to push past him, but he stopped her, one hand on her shoulder. “You can’t go out with wet hair. You’ll freeze.”
She pulled the towel from her head. “I don’t care about my hair. It can dry in the car.”
“You won’t be any good to Carlo, or to me, if you catch pneumonia.”
“Fine.” She turned and grabbed the hair dryer that hung by the sink. “But as soon as my hair is dry, we leave.”
She expected him to leave her to the task, but he remained in the doorway, reflected in the mirror, his gaze fixed on her. She tried to ignore him, but that was impossible; even if the mirror hadn’t been there, she could feel his eyes on her, sense his big, brooding presence just over her shoulder. Why had he said that, about her not being any good to him if she got sick? Did he really think she was such as important witness in his mysterious “investigation”? He certainly didn’t need her any other way.
Except maybe in the way men always seemed to need women,
a traitorous voice in her head whispered. She shifted against an uncomfortable tightness in her lower abdomen, an awareness of herself not as mother, wife or daughter, but as a young, desirable woman. She’d buried that side of herself when she married Sammy Giardino—that it should resurface now astounded her. She’d heard of people who reacted to stress in inappropriate ways, for instance, by laughing at funerals. Was her response to tragedy and peril going to be this odd state of semiarousal? She couldn’t think of anything less appropriate, especially if she was getting turned on by some big brute of a cop.
She switched off the hair dryer and whirled to face him. “What are you staring at?” she asked.
She expected him to say something about her looks—to tell her she was pretty or sexy or a similar come-on. It was the sort of thing men always said, especially when they wanted to talk you into their bed. Instead, he straightened and uncrossed his arms. “I was thinking how wrong the Giardinos were to take you for granted,” he said, then, not waiting for an answer, he turned away.
She stared after him, confusion and pleasure warring in her. What some cop thought of her shouldn’t matter, but she wasn’t used to compliments—if, indeed, he’d meant the comment to be flattering. The fact that he saw past her physical presence to something in her character left her feeling off balance. She was used to people taking her for granted—not mattering to others was a kind of camouflage. It kept you safe. For this man to really see who she was past her skin felt daring and dangerous.
“Are you coming?” he called.
“Yes!” She grabbed up her coat and purse and followed him across the parking lot to his car—a black SUV that looked like something a rich tourist would drive, not a federal agent. If Carlo’s kidnappers saw this vehicle behind them, they wouldn’t be suspicious.
“Don’t get your hopes up that this is going to work,” he said as she buckled her seat belt. “If these guys are pros, they’ve already switched cars and headed out of town.”
“But maybe they didn’t,” she said. “There isn’t much traffic this time of night. Maybe we’ll see them. They don’t expect anyone to come after them, so maybe they’ll be careless.”
“That’s a lot of maybes.” He started the engine and put the vehicle in gear. “But criminals have done dumber things.”
They turned onto the dark, deserted street and headed toward the highway. Streetlights shone on dirty snowbanks pushed up on the side of the road. They passed few cars; Stacy studied each one closely, but none contained anyone who looked like the man who had attacked her and taken Carlo.
They drove to the edge of town, then turned back and headed in the opposite direction. Patrick turned into a motel parking lot. “Look for a black sedan with mud on the plates,” he said. “It’s a long shot, but they may have holed up somewhere close.”
Scarcely daring to breathe, she leaned close to the window and studied each vehicle they passed: old trucks, new SUVs, brightly colored sports cars. But no black sedan.
They checked four more motels with the same results. Patrick cruised through a silent shopping center. “I think they’ve left town,” he said.
Profound weariness dragged at her. If she closed her eyes, she might fall asleep sitting up. Yet how could she sleep when Carlo was out there, frightened, held captive by strangers? “What do we do now?” she asked.
“We need a plan.” He turned the car back toward their motel. “And we need more clues.”
She took out her phone and stared at it, willing it to ring. “If they’d just call and tell us what they want,” she said.
“Maybe all they wanted was Carlo.”
Carlo was all she wanted, too. He was all she had in this world. She couldn’t accept that he’d disappear from her life this way. “He has to be out there somewhere,” she said.
Patrick didn’t answer. In the blue-white light of street lamps he looked grim and forbidding, shadows beneath his eyes and the golden glint of beard across his jaw. He looked like a man who wouldn’t give up. She held on to that hope like a lifeline in a pitch-black sea.
Back at the hotel, she sank onto the edge of the bed. Her head throbbed and her eyes were scratchy from crying, but the physical discomfort was nothing compared with the pain of missing Carlo and feeling so helpless to do anything to protect him. “I’m going to look next door,” Patrick said. “See if I can spot any clues. I’ll need your key.”
She fished the card from her purse, but didn’t release her hold on it when he reached for it. “Give me your key,” she said. “I’m going to the lobby for a soda. There’s a vending machine there.” The drink might settle her stomach and help her feel more alert.
They exchanged keys and she followed him out the door and walked past her room to the lobby. She kept out of view of the desk clerk, not wanting to explain the gash on her head, and found the vending machines in a back hallway. A handful of quarters later, she held a can of diet cola and a regular cola. Patrick didn’t strike her as the diet type, but he’d probably appreciate the caffeine as much as she did.
Outside once more, she shivered in the cold that seemed to sink into her bones, despite the ski parka she hugged around herself. The parking lot was quiet and profoundly silent. Her footsteps on the concrete echoed in the stillness. The rooms she passed were dark and silent, as well. She and Patrick might have been the only ones here.
She hunched her shoulders and increased her pace. The sooner she was back with Patrick, the better she’d feel. And maybe he’d found something in her room that would lead them to Carlo.
She turned the corner of the building and strong arms grabbed her from behind. A man’s thick fingers clamped over her mouth and a sharp blade pricked at her throat. “Make a sound and you’re dead.”
Chapter Five
The scent of Stacy’s perfume—something expensive and floral—lingered in her hotel room. Patrick stood in the doorway and surveyed the scene, searching for anything that might provide a clue as to the identity of Carlo’s kidnappers. The double bed still bore the indentations where mother and son had slept, and a single strand of white-blond hair glinted on the pillow. Patrick studied the hair and thought of the woman who had left it behind—such a compelling mix of strength and frailty, reserve and openness. She refused to cooperate in letting him protect her, and that only served to make him more determined to keep her from harm.
He turned away from the bed and examined the dull-brown carpeting, which was worn and matted, especially in front of the door. But a fresh smear of mud caught his eye. He knelt and with the tip of a pen, pried up a quarter-size fragment of the still-pliable clay. He sniffed it and caught the definite odor of manure—from horses? Cows?
He found an envelope in the desk drawer and slid the mud sample inside. He could have someone analyze it to narrow down the probable source, but dirt alone wouldn’t be enough to find a man who didn’t want to be found.
He searched the rest of the room and the bathroom and closet and came up empty-handed. Stacy had come here with nothing but the clothes on her back. What had she planned to do? Where would she have gone from here?
He would ask her, but he doubted she’d tell him. She definitely kept things to herself.
I know how to keep quiet and stay out of the way,
she’d said. Is that how she’d survived in the Giardino household—by being invisible? He’d known women like that, who suppressed every opinion and action and feeling in order to survive living with an abuser. In the end, they almost always ended up hurt anyway. Anger flared at the thought that Stacy had been forced to live that way.
He left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. He was turning toward his own room when a muffled sound made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He waited and the sound came again, very faint, from up the walkway and around the corner.
The rough brick of the building scraped against his jacket as he flattened himself against it, his gun drawn and held upright against his chest. He moved sideways, one silent step at a time, toward the corner. A quick glance down this side of the motel revealed nothing incriminating. Then he spotted the darkened niche that held trash cans and a fire extinguisher. Nothing moved within that shadowed space, yet his heart raced in warning. He cocked his weapon, then slid a mini Maglite from his pocket and directed the beam into the darkest recesses of the alcove.
And into the terrified eyes of Stacy.
“Drop the gun or she’s dead!” barked a man’s voice.
Patrick carefully uncocked the weapon and let it fall to the sidewalk. “Who are you?” he asked. “What do you want?”
A man, middle-aged and bulky with muscle and layers of clothing, moved out of the niche, dragging Stacy with him. Her gray eyes were wide with fright, all color drained from her face. But the bright red blood that beaded where the blade of her captor’s knife met her neck stood out against her pale skin. The wound made Patrick see red of a different kind, and he sucked in a deep breath, forcing himself to maintain calm.
“Stay there,” the bulky man ordered. “My friend will be along in a minute to take care of you.”
Patrick ignored the threat. Whether it was real or not, he needed to focus on the man in front of him and learn all he could about him in order to know how to defeat him. This guy didn’t look like the one who’d taken Carlo; he was shorter and stockier. He wore dark slacks and a black overcoat and a stocking cap, but no mask.
“Where are you taking me?” Stacy asked, her voice quavering.
“Shut up!” the man said, and a fresh trickle of blood leaked from beneath the blade of the knife.
Stacy’s eyes widened, but she kept talking. “Are you taking me to Carlo?” she asked. “If you’re taking me to my son, I’ll go willingly.”
“My boss wants to see you.” Like too many people, Stacy’s captor apparently couldn’t follow his own advice about keeping quiet.
“Who is your boss?” Patrick asked.
“One more word out of you and I cut her throat.” He jerked Stacy more tightly against him and she gasped. Her eyes widened again, but not in pain this time. Patrick whirled around in time to see a second, thinner man move toward him. His knees slammed into the concrete walkway as he dropped to the ground and air reverberated with the sound of the shots that sailed over his head.
Stacy screamed and fought wildly against the man who held her. Patrick was torn between trying to save her and dealing with the second man, who had lowered his weapon to fire again. Stacy distracted them both as her heel connected hard with the stocky man’s kneecap and sent him reeling. Patrick dived for his gun, rolled and came up firing as the second man let loose another volley of shots. The man fell back, shot in the chest, and Patrick leaped to his feet and pointed his weapon at the stocky man.
But Stacy’s attacker was already running away across the parking lot. Patrick took off after him, pounding across the pavement, but the stocky man’s bulk was deceiving; he quickly outpaced the marshal and was swallowed up in darkness.
Breathing hard from the exertion and the altitude, Patrick returned to Stacy. She stood with one hand to her throat, staring down at the wounded man, who lay inert, blood seeping from the chest wound. “Are you all right?” Patrick touched her shoulder and looked into her eyes. Some of the terror had receded, replaced by the weariness of someone who had seen too much to process.
“I’m okay.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know about him, though.” She indicated the man on the ground.
Patrick knelt beside him. “Who sent you?” he asked.
The man gave no answer; he appeared unconscious.
“I’ve called 911.” The desk clerk, wide-eyed and breathless, raced up to them. “I heard the shots.” He gaped at the man on the ground. “Who is he? Is he dead?”
Patrick searched the man’s pockets and found a wallet and a driver’s license. “This says his name is Nathan Forest.”
“What happened?” The clerk turned to Stacy. “You’re bleeding! I should have asked for an ambulance.”
Patrick replaced Forest’s wallet and stood. “This man and his companion tried to mug Ms. Jackson.” He took Stacy’s arm. “We’d better go.”
She nodded, and didn’t try to pull away when he turned her toward his room.
“Shouldn’t you wait for the police?” the clerk asked.
“You can tell them everything they need to know.” Patrick hurried with Stacy down the walkway and into his room, where he shut and locked the door. Then he led her into the brightly lit bathroom. “Tip your head back and let me have a look,” he said, one finger under her chin.
She winced with the effort, but lifted her chin and let him examine the wound. “I imagine it hurts, but it’s not very deep,” he said. He grabbed a hand towel from a stack by the sink and handed it to her. “Put that around your neck to stop the bleeding, and then we’ve got to get out of here before the police show up. They’ll ask a lot of questions we don’t want to answer right now.”
She pressed the towel to her neck. “Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For not involving the police.”
“I’ll have someone from my office contact them to see if they learn anything about Forest and his companion, but for now I don’t want to waste any time with them. Get your things and let’s go.”
They passed the police cruiser and the ambulance on their way out of the parking lot. Stacy, the bloody towel in her lap, watched over her shoulder until the motel was out of sight, then faced forward once more. “Neither one of those men looked like the man who took Carlo,” she said.
“I didn’t think so, either,” he said.
“So who were they? What did they want?”
He checked the mirror. So far, so good. They weren’t being followed. “Two possibilities come to mind,” he said. “Carlo was too much to handle, so whoever orchestrated the first kidnapping sent those two to get you.”
“Then I would have gone with them. I could have helped Carlo.”
“The other possibility is that the first two guys screwed up. They weren’t supposed to leave you behind as a witness, so these two were supposed to finish the job.”
She sucked in her breath and touched the cut on her neck. “What are we going to do now?”
“We need to find another place to stay. We need sleep and a shower and you need to take care of your wounds.”
“I can’t sleep, not when I could be out looking for Carlo.”
“You can’t help him if you’re half-dead on your feet. And we aren’t going to find anything wandering around in the dark. Tomorrow morning we’ll start fresh. I’m going to call my office and arrange to get another car. The desk clerk will tell the local police about this one and they’ll probably be looking for it, to talk to us about Nathan Forest.”
“I’ll bet that’s not his real name.”
She was smart enough to figure that out, at least. “Nathan Bedford Forest was a Confederate general during the Civil War,” he said. “Maybe this guy’s mother or father was a history buff.”
“Or maybe he made it up.”
“Probably he made it up.”
“And after we get a new car?”
“I think we’d better go see your Uncle Abel and find out if he knows anything about what’s going on.”
“Uncle Abel? Do you think he’s behind this?”
“He’s the closest living relative to Sam Giardino—the one Sam threatened to put in charge of the family business. And didn’t you say he has a ranch somewhere around here?”
“Crested Butte. Do you think he has Carlo? Or knows who does?”
“The man who took Carlo had mud on his shoes—mud mixed with manure. The kind of thing you’d find on a ranch.”
“But that could be anywhere—it doesn’t have to be Abel’s ranch.”
“You’re right. But it’s the only clue we have right now. Talking to Abel seems a good place to start. If he doesn’t know anything, maybe he can tell us who would be interested in the boy. You said Sam threatened to pass the family business on to Abel?”
“I don’t think he was serious. Everyone always said the two brothers weren’t on good terms.”
“They might have patched up their differences and been in touch recently. Maybe that’s why Sam decided to vacation in Colorado.”
“Maybe.” She sounded doubtful. “What if Abel doesn’t know anything?”
“We’ll worry about that when the time comes.”
* * *
S
TACY
WAS
WORN
out with worry by the time Patrick located a motel he thought suitable for their purposes. Set back from the road on a side street, the collection of 1950s-era cabins strung together in a row offered rooms for rent by the week and free local phone calls. “There’s a light in the office, so we should be able to get a room,” Patrick said as he cruised past the place. “I’ll park the car a few blocks away and we’ll walk back.”
“Why do we have to do that?” she protested. The thought of walking even a few hundred yards in the dark and cold made her want to sink down into the seat and refuse to move.
“If the police spot the car, I don’t want to make it easy for them to find us.”
In the end, she made the walk leaning on Patrick. When he’d offered his support her first instinct had been to refuse, but she was so tired she was almost dizzy, and his arm around her was the only thing that felt safe and solid in the world.
Their room was cold and musty, with two double beds covered with green chenille spreads, and the kind of maple furniture Stacy remembered from visits to her grandmother’s house when she was a little girl. She stretched out on the bed farthest from the door while Patrick made phone calls.
Though she would have sworn she was too worried to sleep, she was unconscious within seconds, despite the glare of the overhead light and the low murmur of Patrick’s voice across the room. She woke some time later to darkness, and the sensation of someone slipping her boots from her feet, then tucking a blanket around her. She opened her eyes and stared up at Patrick. “I didn’t want to wake you,” he said, and settled the blanket around her shoulders.
She struggled back to consciousness. “What did your office say? Do they know anything about Nathan Forest?”
“Nothing yet. They’re going to send someone with a new car for us. In the meantime, go back to sleep.”
“You won’t leave, will you?” Where had that question come from? She’d never wanted this lawman in her life, but now, with Carlo missing and after being attacked twice in one night by strangers, the thought of being left alone terrified her.
“No, I won’t leave.” He patted her shoulder. “I’m going to lie down in the other bed and try to get some sleep. You do the same.”
“All right.” But welcome oblivion didn’t return easily. She lay in the darkness, listening to the hum and tick of the heater, and the creak of bedsprings as Patrick shifted on his own mattress. He definitely wasn’t like any lawman she’d ever encountered—not that she’d known many. Along with the rest of the family, she’d attended Sam Giardino’s trial a year and a half ago and seen the officers who surrounded him—cool, expressionless men and women in uniform who never glanced her way. She’d never bothered to differentiate one from the other. They were all simply “the law.” The enemies of the Giardino family, and thus her enemies, too.
Patrick had that same erect bearing and devotion to duty. He’d regarded her with suspicion from the moment he found her hiding in the basement, and he’d followed her to Durango because he suspected her of some wrongdoing, she was sure.
But he’d also risked his own life to protect her, and he’d ignored at least some of the law to help search for Carlo without involving the local police. She was a stranger to him, yet he acted like he cared. Did he think she was such a valuable witness for his mysterious case, or was something else at work here?
Sleep finally overtook her, though she slept fitfully, haunted by dreams of shadowy figures who pursued her and glimpses of Carlo reaching for her, calling for her, his little face streaked with tears.