Authors: Jodi Thomas
The shots near the farmhouse last night told Gabe something important about the man who took Tori. He was getting impatient, something a hunter should never be. He may have had some kind of special training, but he was reckless, sloppy.
Despite all the noise Gabe had made at dawn, the hunter hadn't noticed him, which told Gabe that the hunter was tired or ill or simply pissed off that it had taken him so long to find his mark.
Gabe was out of sight by the time Yancy probably knocked on Parker's door. Let them run around panicking. He had no doubt they'd call the law. That's what honest people did. But he would find Tori faster without Fifth looking over his shoulder.
CHAPTER FORTY
Y
ANCY
THOUGHT
HIS
brain would explode when he found out Tori wasn't at the farmhouse. He'd been setting all the tulips on the porch while Parker went upstairs to get her. Parker hit the door a few minutes later in a panic. “She's not in the attic. Her room hasn't been slept in. She's not here!”
Parker's words were like shots to Yancy's heart. “She left my place two hours ago, at least.”
Parker paced back and forth while Yancy just tried to breathe. “Clint left early, maybe half an hour after dawn. He was meeting the deputy who'd stopped by last night. They were going to fly over his land, checking gates for signs of the trespasser who had been firing shots off last night.”
“Where is he now?” Yancy asked.
“I don't know. Home, I guess. He called to say they didn't find anything but a broken lock and a few tracks. He would have said something if he'd seen Tori walking.”
Yancy tried to think. “I heard the side door open about first light. I thought of running after her, but she'd slipped out without waking me before. She likes the walk between my place and here when the world's changing.” He fought the urge to join Parker in her pacing. “I didn't want to order her to stay. I was afraid of holding too tight. Afraid she'd bolt if I did.”
“Is there anywhere she would have gone besides your place or here?”
“The old house we're working on, maybe. She likes to walk the land, but I think she limits it to your farm.” Yancy shook his head. “She wouldn't be anywhere else in daylight. She'd be worried about someone noticing her.”
“I've never heard her mention any place she goes but to see you.” Parker grabbed her coat. “Let's check your house first. Then we'll retrace her path from your place to here.”
Yancy nodded. It didn't seem like much of a plan, but it was better than doing nothing.
Thirty minutes later, they'd checked both his house and the barn. Nothing. They'd walked the path back and forth.
Clint pulled up, having noticed them in the windbreak of trees. Without asking too many questions, he joined them in the search.
Yancy did little but listen to his heart pound and Parker thinking aloud as she kept coming up with ideas of where else Tori would be. None of them seemed logical. Tori was too shy, too afraid. Too happy here to run.
When they found her yellow boot in the tall grass by the trees, all theories stopped. They looked at each other and knew the truth. Their greatest fear had come true: someone had taken Tori.
Clint spoke first. “We're calling in the sheriff. He's already overdue to be out here. Who knowsâthe tracks he's coming to look at and the broken lock on the gate may have nothing to do with the shots last night and everything to do with Tori. If I'd only been in the air thirty minutes earlier.”
Yancy chimed in. “If I'd insisted on taking her home, she wouldn't have been walking. She...”
Parker broke in. “And if I hadn't been born, I wouldn't have bought this place and Tori would not have been here to be kidnapped.”
Circling her shoulders with his arm, Clint added, “You win. It's all your fault.” He pulled her close and hugged her.
Parker hesitated, then accepted the cowboy's hug.
Yancy knew Parker must feel as though her effort to help Tori was a terrible failure.
He felt sorry for Parker. All Tori had wanted was peace and the lady had tried to offer that. But Tori's parents had put a reward for information out there. They'd blown the whole thing up, probably to get Tori's name in the news. It wouldn't have been so bad if the police thought she was missing, but with money offered, a quarter million, it had put her life in danger.
“When we call the sheriff, ask them to keep it quiet,” Parker said. “We don't want reporters here.”
“Wrong,” Yancy whispered, his eyes closed as if in pain. “Bring them all in. It's time they know the truth.”
“I agree,” Clint said. “If we broadcast it everywhere maybe someone somewhere will help us find her.”
Clint punched in Fifth Weathers's cell number. Fifth must have picked up the phone on the first ring because Clint started talking. “Get here fast. We've got a kidnapping on our hands.” A moment later, he handed the phone to Parker. “The deputy is driving. Sheriff's firing questions. You talk faster than I do.”
Parker gave details as all three walked back to the road. They were waiting a few minutes later when the cruiser pulled up.
Time seemed to be moving in slow motion as they drove back to the farmhouse to make calls and plans. Sheriff Brigman knew what to do. How to call in help. Where to get experts checking the corner pasture, which was now referred to as the crime scene.
Yancy sat on the steps of the porch, letting all the panic whirl around him. He wanted to help, but couldn't see how. With all their talk, no one seemed to know what to do.
Only Yancy knew what he should have done. He should have held on tighter. For once in his life he shouldn't have let go so easily. He thought about all the people he'd known in his life. He'd let go; he'd walked away; he'd never cared enough to stay and fight.
But he cared enough now. He should have told Tori to wait so he could have driven her home or walked with her. He could have protected her until she was back at the farmhouse. Then he could have walked back to town. No one was looking for
him
. No one would kidnap
him
.
He kicked one of the tulip pots off the porch just for the hell of it. Suddenly, something hit him like a slap. The professor had lied. He'd said he met Tori for ice cream sometimes in the afternoon. That couldn't be true. For one thing, Tori never came near town until dark, and even then, it was only to his house; and two, she'd said she hated ice cream. She'd claimed it froze her brain when she ate it fast and froze her tongue when she ate it slow.
He knocked another pot over as he stood and ran into the house. Fifth not only listened to every word, he took notes. The others gathered around as Yancy explained how Gabe Santorno had met Tori. About how he'd dropped by, wanting to know where she lived, so he could take gifts. About how he asked all kind of questions.
“Anyone else know about the professor?” the sheriff asked.
Fifth raised his hand like a kid in school. “I've been watching him. As far as I know, the man's done nothing wrong around here, but he's not what he seems. I do have one fact that might help. To my knowledge the professor did not sleep at the bed-and-breakfast last night.”
“So,” Yancy noted as if he were part of the investigating team, “he could have been out in the dawn light, waiting for Tori.”
“But why?” Clint asked. “If he wanted to kidnap her, he could have done it that night in the rain.”
No one had the answer.
Fifth added one more fact. “If Gabe's out there and he has Tori, he's armed. He's exâarmy ranger, so if he's our kidnapper, he won't be easy to capture.”
The sheriff stood. “Call in backup. Order roadblocks on all four major highways. Notify every law-enforcement agency. We've got a full-scale kidnapping on our hands and our only hope is finding them before they have time to get out of the county.”
Yancy backed away from the others. Nothing made sense. If the professor was the kidnapper, that meant he already had Tori when he'd shown up at the retirement center with all the flowers in his car. Why would he want them delivered to someone who he knew wasn't at the farm?
Unless he wanted everyone who cared about Tori in one place. Or, more important, out of his way.
Yancy swore his brain was about to explode. He couldn't tell the others his theory. Hell, it didn't make any sense even to him. If he told them and they reconsidered the professor as a suspect, and he was guilty, Yancy might have cost them valuable time.
It occurred to him that everyone in the room had a job to do but him.
If the professor was trying to distract them or get them all in one place, maybe the best thing for Yancy to do was be somewhere else.
If the professor had nothing to do with the kidnapping, maybe he could help. Tori had liked him. Maybe the best thing Yancy could do right now was find the professor.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
F
IFTH
FLEW
INTO
action like a quarterback in the last two minutes of the Super Bowl. Within an hour he had everything about Gabe Santorno mass-emailed to every law-enforcement office in the state. He'd printed maps and passed them out to a dozen teams from other sheriff's offices. The highway patrol had set up roadblocks. Alerts were being posted.
Since Yancy still had Gabe's car, the suspect would have had to steal a vehicle to get out of the county. That would take time, especially if he was weighted down with a woman. With luck, he was still in the county.
Fifth could hear Parker in the other room, talking to her office and the press. By noon every station for a hundred miles around would have the details about Victoria Vilanie. She'd come to Texas to paint, but her parents panicked and offered a reward to have her back. Someone kidnapped her for the money. No, she wasn't on drugs. No, she wasn't suicidal. In fact, she'd been living quietly, being the most creative ever.
Parker knew how to spin the story to make everyone care and hopefully make everyone want to help.
By noon Pearly stopped answering calls on the sheriff's phone. Fifth thought of yelling at her because if the sheriff's line didn't pick up, all calls were passed to his phone, but when she brought him coffee, he reconsidered.
“Thanks,” he said, surprised. In two years she'd never even offered to hand him a pack of sugar when she delivered the sheriff's coffee.
“Calm down, Deputy. It may be a long day. I've been around long enough to know that nothing happens for a long stretch then everything seems to happen at once.” She still didn't sound too friendly. “If you explode it'll make a terrible mess.”
“I should be in the field searching, not stuck here.”
“Right.” She stood at attention. “Me, too.”
Fifth almost choked on his coffee. The thought of Miss Pearly running around with a weapon in her hand was a nightmare.
She patted him on the back, as if that would help. “Don't worry. Any leads will come in here first. When the call we're waiting for comes in, I'll man the phones and you go get that son of a bitch who kidnapped our little artist.”
Fifth raised an eyebrow.
Now
Tori belonged to the town? When had that happened? Hell, he'd been here two years and no one had ever referred to him as “our little deputy.”
“Keep the coffee coming,” he said to Pearly. “I'll help you man the home front until we get a lead. Then I'll be on the road.”
She raised one hand. Every long nail was painted a different color. “I'm on guard.”
Fifth went back to work, feeling like the lone settler in the middle of a raging prairie fire with no one near but a squirrel.
A few minutes later when the press crews showed up, he was surprised at just how well the squirrel could handle herself.
Between Pearly and Parker, who appeared to have been born with a press-handling gene, the camera crews were all given packets and pictures of Tori in her plaid shirt and jeans. She was smiling from the porch of Parker's house.
“It's just a shot I took with my cell phone, but if we blast it out, there is a good chance someone, somewhere will remember that they've seen her.”
Fifth had never met Tori, but if she had friends like Yancy and Parker, she must be something.
“The team found blood in the field!” Pearly yelled. “The sheriff wants you there, Deputy Weathers.”
Fifth shot out of the office so fast he almost knocked a group of reporters down. He heard them yelling and complaining, but Pearly shouted over them all, “If you don't want to get plowed over, get out of our deputy's way!”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Madness
T
ORI
HAD
BEEN
in the trunk of the car for what felt like hours. Her face hurt. Blood still dripped from her lip. She was lying on something that was cutting painfully into her hip. She was thirsty and frightened and alone.
Finally, she heard someone unlocking the trunk.
Tori didn't move. She had no way of knowing if she'd been rescued or the man with the beefy fist was back. She hadn't seen his face, but she knew it would be one of a monster.
“You still alive in there, girl?” he yelled as he poked her hard in the chest with a couple of his thick fingers.
She jerked but didn't make a sound.
“Good. We're about to head out and I want to make a few things clear. I'm getting paid the same amount no matter what shape you're in. You cooperate and don't make a sound and I'll stop somewhere before dawn and let you have a drink, maybe go pee in the bushes. You cause me any trouble, you'll be sorry.” He laughed. “I guess you already learned that lesson.”
This time, as if just for a reminder, he hit her in the stomach so hard she feared he might have broken her bottom rib. “I'm not putting up with any crap, you understand?”
He patted her middle, where his fist had landed. “That oughta take some of the starch out of you. I find if I have a nice talk first it saves time later. And don't even think about running or I'll break one of your legs.”
She kicked at him, but only ended up hurting her foot on the side wall of the trunk.
The kidnapper laughed. “After you bump along on these back roads for a few hours you won't be so playful.” He slapped at her head, batting it back and forth inside the bag until she stopped struggling. “I like hitting you when you're all covered up. This way I don't have to see the blood.
“Now go to sleep, Victoria,” he said as he grabbed her ankle. “We've got a long ride and I don't want to hear a word out of you.” He twisted her leg as if it were a twig. “I could snap these bones without half trying, girl. You cause me any more trouble and you'll be limping the rest of your life.” He swore. “That is, if you don't bleed to death. Rumor is your folks don't much care if you come back alive or dead.”
“Yancy,” she whispered. “Yancy.”
“No one's coming to get you, girl.” The man shook her leg, as if making sure she had no more fight in her. Each jerk made her land on the sharp object below her hip. “You're going back where you belong. I ain't going to kill you unless you die easy.”
“Go to hell!” she shouted, a moment before his fist slammed into the side of her head, ending all thought.