Tres Leches Cupcakes (35 page)

“What about Ethan’s responsibilities to the ranch? I understand his art has taken most of his focus, and Edward has had to divide his time between the ranch and Lacey. Maybe that’s created some discord between them.” She felt like she was grasping at straws. Her knowledge of the Standage family dynamics was so limited that she had little basis for any of her assumptions.

“Last I heard, he
is
taking over the ranch,” Rex said, casting a glance toward her. “There was an article in the paper about it a few days ago. I think Ed’s been hoping his son would step up for a few years now. Guess he finally is.”

Sadie leaned back against the seat and looked at the pipe again. “If we can figure out who wants to ruin Ethan, we’ll be that much closer to solving this.”

“Those men who took you to the desert seem to want that pipe pretty bad.”

“Right,” Sadie said with a nod. “And they were connected to Langley, who dealt in artifacts. Maybe he was going to help them sell this. But did they want profit or to destroy Ethan Standage?”

“Maybe both,” Rex said.

Sadie nodded.

They passed a sign that read Albuquerque—21 miles. Fiesta Park was located a few miles outside of Albuquerque, which meant they were about fifteen minutes away from the last place they knew Caro had been.

Sadie’s thoughts cycled quickly, and then stopped at her next avenue of thought. “Why would
Margo
have this?” And how would she have gotten it? For that matter, how would anyone have gotten it? Ethan spent months finding the relics he photographed, and he claimed to keep his locations secret. If he didn’t bring it out of the wilderness himself, how was this pipe here at all?

But that piece clicked into place almost as soon as she considered the question: the missing assistants. They were the only other people who knew where the artifacts came from. She mentally sorted through all the prints that she could remember from the exhibit Wednesday night. Of all the artifacts featured, only one seemed to be sturdy enough and small enough to be easily smuggled away from wherever Ethan had found it.

She imagined the pipe wrapped up and hidden within the supplies packed in and out of the wild. Ethan had said his assistants were good men, but they were also in need of money for their families. Maybe they were made an offer they couldn’t refuse. But they were both dead, and Ethan had only hired one assistant at a time. Why kill them both?

“Ethan’s assistants are the men buried out at the site,” Sadie said out loud in hopes it would help her process her thoughts faster. “They disappeared a few months apart, one right before Ethan’s expedition last fall and one right after the spring one.” She wriggled in her seat and turned toward Rex. “What if the first one—Teodor—was asked to help bring Ethan down and was killed because he refused? Ethan said he hired Raphael quickly, so he wouldn’t have known him as well. If Raphael smuggled this out, and then turned it over to whoever wanted it, the Cowboy and Horace could have killed him to ensure his silence. They obviously have no qualms about getting rid of complications. Except that Horace lied about my falling off a cliff and—”

Rex smacked the steering wheel. “Will you stop thinking about everyone else and think about Caro for just one full minute!”

Rage exploded within her, and she responded quickly enough to startle Rex with her knee-jerk reaction. “Will you open your mind to the fact that whatever is going on with Caro has to do with everyone else who is wrapped up in this mess? It’s a puzzle, Rex, and Caro is the most important piece. But the way the other pieces fit together is the surest way for us to know how to proceed from here on out.” Suddenly, Pete’s face flashed into her mind. Pete! If anyone could help her put the pieces together, it would be him. He could help her explain all of this to Marcus too. She’d been un-kidnapped for over an hour and hadn’t yet told the authorities.

“Can I use your phone?” Sadie asked Rex, who was still stewing over her last comment. Headlights from the other direction of traffic lit up his face intermittently. The phone was sitting in the middle console, and she reached for it, expecting he’d say yes. Before she got it, he grabbed it and put it in the pocket of his jacket.

“I need your phone,” Sadie said, confused and wary.

“What for?”

“I need to talk to Pete about all of this and ask his advice.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Sadie bristled. “Why not?”

“I don’t want to tie up the line. Caro might call me back.”

“I know how to answer a call if it comes through,” Sadie said. It was all she could do not to roll her eyes. He was infuriating. “And I really need to call Pete.”

Rex hesitated, then retrieved his phone from his pocket. Instead of giving it to Sadie, however, he pressed a button again—speed dial—and the speakers in the truck started ringing.

“Who are you calling now?” she asked, annoyed.

“Maybe she’ll answer this time.”

Sadie lifted her eyebrows and gave him an incredulous look. “Caro? She hasn’t answered the other times. We need to take advantage of all our options, and Pete can—”

“Rex?” The shaky voice playing on the speakers of Rex’s truck silenced Sadie in an instant.

“Caro!” Rex said, leaning forward in his seat, gripping the steering wheel with both hands. “Where are you? Are you all right?”

“I’m okay, but Sadie’s in trouble, and I need your help.”

Chapter 35

Rex cast a confused look at Sadie. “What are you talking about, Caro? What do you mean Sadie’s in trouble?”

“I can’t explain everything right now,” Caro said, her voice shaking. “But Sadie has something that doesn’t belong to her, and if you and I don’t get it to these men, they’re going to kill her, Rex.”

It was the same story the Cowboy had told Sadie—that if she went with them, they wouldn’t kill Margo. She grabbed a pen from the truck console and wrote on the notebook,
I’m not here.
Rex read it and nodded.

“Who’s going to kill her?”

“These me—” The line went quiet. Rex and Sadie both froze. Of course the men were listening, but they were also orchestrating.

“Caro!” Rex yelled.

“I need you to find this thing Sadie took,” Caro said, coming back on the line and talking fast. “It’s got to be in one of the boxes she packed up on Thursday. The ones stacked in the apartment. We’ve looked everywhere else.”

Sadie wrote
looked through my hotel and car
on the paper and showed it to Rex while Caro continued. The Cowboy had Sadie’s purse, which had her hotel key. And Horace had found Sadie’s car key when he’d searched her.

“I need you to go through the boxes and find this item. It’s an artifact of some kind. Valuable,” Caro said.

Sadie wrote
Don’t say you have it
and showed it to Rex, who frowned. She held her breath until he spoke again.

“You’re sure it’s there?” Rex asked. His knuckles were white against the steering wheel.

“It has to be,” Caro said, and the desperation in her tone convinced Sadie that she believed her life, and Sadie’s too, might be forfeit if this artifact wasn’t found. “We already checked her ho—” The line went mute again. Sadie circled the word
hotel
that she’d written earlier.

Rex pressed down on the gas pedal, and the truck sped up. He knew Caro was in Albuquerque and wanted to get there as quickly as possible. Sadie estimated they were still a good fifteen minutes from her hotel.

“I’ll find it!” Rex shouted. A moment later the background fuzz from Caro’s phone sounded through the speakers again. Rex relaxed the smallest bit. “I’ll find it,” he said again. “Then these people will let you go, right?”

“Yes,” Caro said. “They’ll let Sadie and me both go.”

Rex was silent for a moment. “Where is Sadie?”

“I don’t know where she is, Rex. But these same people took her. They’re holding her somewhere, but she won’t help them find this artifact. She said she’d rather die, and so . . . so they came for me,” Caro said, almost in a whisper. “You have to find it fast, Rex. Where are you? You didn’t answer at the house.”

“I, uh, had to go to the store for some antacids,” Rex said, looking at Sadie for help. She nodded that it was a good answer. “I’m almost back home. What do I do when I find this, uh, thing they’re looking for?”

“Um . . .” Hushed voices on Caro’s end of the call caused Sadie to lean forward, hoping she could make out a word or recognize a voice, but the sound was too distorted. “I’ll call you back in half an hour,” Caro said after a few seconds. “And—”

There were muffled voices in the background, and suddenly a man’s voice filled the cab of the truck: the Cowboy. “You call the cops, I’ll know about it, and she’s dead. You got that?” He didn’t give Rex a chance to answer as the connection broke.

They both sat in silence for several seconds, as if waiting for Caro’s voice to come back on the line. Rex sped up even more. They were going to get pulled over. “What hotel were you staying at?”

“The Hampton,” Sadie said as her fingers gripped the armrests. “By the airport. But she thinks you’re in Santa Fe.”

“I know. We’re going to cut them off at the hotel.”

“We’re at least ten minutes away,” Sadie said.

Rex wasn’t listening. “We’ll cut them off and get her back. The sooner the better. I’m not waiting half an hour while some mercenaries hold my wife for ransom. You’ve seen this van before. You know what we’re looking for.”

“They could be anywhere,” Sadie said, trying to make him see reason while trying to think of a better idea. “Get off the freeway,” she said a few seconds later.

Rex looked at her like she was nuts. “I’m going to the hotel.”

She sat up straight, scanning the section of road in front of them and looking for the next freeway exit. “They won’t be there waiting for you, but they think you’re in Santa Fe so they’re going to be heading your direction. If you get off the freeway and pull over on the on-ramp, we can watch for them. I know the van and when it passes, we’ll be on their tail.”

Rex considered that for a moment, still speeding down the freeway.

“And if you don’t slow down, you’re going to get pulled over. I saw on the news that nearly every cop in the city is working this weekend because of the Fiesta.”

A sign for exit 233 came into view—the exit for Fiesta Park, in fact—and Sadie let out a breath when Rex started slowing down. “You better be right about this,” he grumbled.

“I am,” Sadie said with confidence. “They were driving the speed limit when they had me, and they were worried about the police so I bet they’ll do that again. They weren’t driving when we talked to them on the phone just now. It was too quiet in the background for them to have been in a car, so they likely called from the hotel. They’re in a hurry to get this pipe back, so they’ll come your direction.” She paused, letting her thoughts catch up with her tongue. “Once we have a visual, we can call the police and set up a roadblock or something.”

“They said no cops. I’m not risking it.”

Oh, he was a stubborn man. “Well, we want to follow them anyway. Get off at the exit.”

Rex nodded, slowed, then pulled off the freeway. He turned left, then left again, and pulled to the side of the on-ramp, positioning himself so that they both had a clear view of the traffic.

Sadie stared at every vehicle that passed by. Finding the van would be cake, and the success of her plan so far dispelled some of the rising tension. “They’ll be driving in the slow lane,” she said, thinking of the many cars she’d heard passing on the left when they’d been driving her out to the desert. She wondered if they were planning to go to the same location where they’d taken her. She hoped not. It would be difficult to follow them there. “I bet they’ll be here within the next five or six minutes.”

Rex nodded, but his expression was severe. This was his wife these men were holding. Every time her frustration with him rose, she had to remind herself of that.

“Please let me call Pete now.”

“I’m not calling Pete,” Rex said as resolute as ever. “He’ll call the cops, and they said no cops.”

“They also said to wait for them to call after half an hour, and we’re not doing that.”

“We are waiting.”

He had a point.

She was working out a new argument as to why they had to call Pete when a white van sped past them.

“It’s them,” she said, hitting Rex in the arm. “Go, go, go!”

“You’re sure?” Rex asked as he merged onto the freeway. The taillights for the van were a mile or so ahead of them by the time he’d reached freeway speed.

“It’s a white van, I’m sure of that. See if you can get closer. If it’s the one we want, there should be a crack in the back window.”

“It better be the right van,” Rex said between clamped teeth.

“Seriously, Rex, I’m this close to slapping you. I’m doing the best I can here, okay?”

He muttered something she chose to ignore, but he sped up slow and steady. When they were within twenty feet of the van, Sadie leaned forward and felt a rush of relief when she identified the crack. Thank goodness. Rex would likely have kicked her out on the side of the road if she’d been wrong. “That’s it. Back off so they don’t get suspicious.”