Читать книгу Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover - Catherine Mann, Merline Lovelace - Страница 29

Chapter 19

Five sheriff’s cars filled the tree-lined street. Gage and Micah were there, along with her other friends. Other cars were already out on the streets and ranging the countryside, searching. Every one of them had Leo’s arrest photo.

Connie had pulled on her own uniform and gun, ready to get going. But Gage wouldn’t let her, not just yet.

“The doors were locked,” she kept saying.

Gage looked at Ethan. “You’d have heard her.”

“If she’d come downstairs, yes,” he said. “I know myself well enough that even when I sleep, I’m still alert if I need to be. And those stairs creak.”

“So that leaves...” Gage’s scarred face frowned at the dormer of Sophie’s room.

“Exactly,” Ethan said. “It wouldn’t have been hard for her to get down.”

“Or someone to get in,” Connie said.

Ethan shook his head. “A normal-size man would have made too much noise. This room’s right over the living room.”

She turned on him. “Are you saying Sophie left on her own?”

He didn’t answer, but his dark eyes said everything.

“Why would she do that, Ethan? Why?”

“She said she saw him on Friday. Maybe she talked to him. If it’s Leo...”

Connie bit her lip. “You think he could have talked her into meeting him?”

“Remember her questions?”

Connie nodded slowly. It was all starting to make sense, and she hated the sense it was making. She looked from Gage to Ethan. Her voice came out as little more than a terrified whisper. “He won’t hurt her. Will he?”

Nobody could truthfully answer.

“Why the hell couldn’t he just knock on the door like an ordinary person?” she demanded.

Gage pulled no punches. “I know you’re upset, Connie. Hell, I’m upset, too. But if he’d knocked on the door, would you have let him meet Sophie?”

Despair swamped her. “No.”

“That’s probably why, then.”

“But what if he takes her away? What if he kidnapped her?”

That was the ugly possibility. The one they all feared.

“We’re working on it,” Gage assured her. “I’m assuming she didn’t leave until the storm let up, so she’s only got a few hours lead on us. Everyone’s looking, Connie, and I’ve notified the neighboring counties. He won’t get past us.”

Given the wide-open spaces that made up so much of this part of the state, Connie had her doubts. Doubts she didn’t want to think about right now.

“Okay,” Gage said. “We’re all fanning out. Julia, you stay here to wait for Sophie. She might just come skipping home. Micah, see that Julia has a radio, so she can call us directly.”

Micah nodded and went to get a spare from his car.

Gage turned to Ethan and Connie. “You two stay together. I know I can’t keep you from looking, Connie. But don’t do something you’ll live to regret. Something Sophie will live to regret.”

She knew exactly what he meant, because right now, in the midst of her terror, she could have killed Leo without a second thought.

“She won’t,” Ethan said, speaking for her. Taking responsibility for her. “She won’t.”

Gage clasped Connie’s shoulder. “Word’s getting out, Connie. At the church, at Maude’s. Everyone in town is going to be looking very soon.”

She nodded, trying to take heart from that, but she couldn’t. What if someone angered Leo or scared him into doing something awful? But she knew as well as anyone that when this county went on alert, there was no way anyone could keep her neighbors from taking a hand. That was the way they’d always lived. Today they would beat the bushes, and if they found any kind of information about where Sophie had gone, they would gather and form a search party faster than you could say lickety-split.

Cars began to peel away as directions were given, but Connie and Ethan remained. He kept looking at the dormer and the cottonwood that nearly brushed the roof.

Connie spoke. “You think she climbed down that tree.”

“That or one of the others. Weird, but the first time I walked around the house, I saw those trees as a security risk. I had to remind myself I wasn’t in Afghanistan.”

“You’d have cut them down?”

“Back there, yeah.”

She nodded, trying to focus on the problem in the now, not on her fears. Fear could only inhibit clear thinking, and she needed her mind as clear as it had ever been.

Okay, she told herself. It was probably Leo. The only reason she could think of for him to develop this interest in Sophie was to get at her. The terrifying question, of course, was what kind of punishment did he want to inflict on her?

But another possibility existed, a slim one. Maybe during his years in prison he’d learned something. Maybe...

No, she couldn’t allow herself to think he might be a changed man. Without proof, that could only be a vain hope.

Ethan started toward the side of the house, to the tree nearest the dormer. Connie’s heart rose to her throat at the thought of Sophie crawling across the wet roof to grab on to that tree and climb down. Had her daughter lost her mind?

No, of course she hadn’t. Sophie wanted something she felt her mother had denied her. Talk about a knife in the heart.

Near the base of the tree, Ethan paused and pointed. “There? You see?”

She did indeed see. Someone had walked on the wet grass, although with all the rain they’d had, the grass had bent, not broken.

“Small footprints.”

Connie nodded. It was then that Micah joined them. “Julia has a radio,” he said. “Am I seeing what I think?”

Ethan looked at him. “I think she went toward the park.”

“That general direction.” Father and son locked eyes. Micah spoke. “I’ll follow in the car.”

Ethan nodded. “Connie, why don’t you ride with Micah?”

“Ethan...”

“I can track better if I’m not disturbed.”

Feeling almost as if she’d been slapped, she finally gave a short nod and went to join Micah in the car.

“It’s nothing personal,” Micah said to her as he began to ease down the street behind Ethan. “A tracker can’t afford to be disturbed.”

“I get it.” But her voice came out tight from her huge number of warring emotions. The only things she didn’t feel right now were happiness and peace. All the rest of it was there, though. All the ugly, terrifying emotions people associated with their less civilized parts.

Ethan was walking along the sidewalk now, looking from side to side, apparently trying to see if footprints left the pavement at any point.

Finally they reached the park, and Ethan squatted.

“What’s he doing?” Connie asked.

“The rain we had is actually a help for this. When he gets down like that, he can see anywhere there’s been a disturbance in the moisture pattern.”

“But it could be anybody.”

“At this hour on a Sunday morning, it’s not likely to be.”

She couldn’t argue with that. Why should she? Besides, what other method did they honestly have, other than a wide search net?

“If anything happens to her...” Connie didn’t finish the thought. She couldn’t. Her hands clenched into fists so tight that her short nails bit into her palms. “Micah...”

“I know.” His tone was grim. “I know. I killed once to protect Faith from her ex. I’ve got kids of my own. Trust me, Connie, you won’t get to your gun fast enough.”

She believed him. One look at his face, and she believed him.

And there was Ethan, moving now along the edge of the park. His face looked every bit as grim and determined as his father’s. In her heart, she understood that these two men were as dedicated to finding Sophie safe and alive as she was. Gage, too, she thought, remembering his face. He’d lost his whole family to a car bomb many years ago. He knew what she was facing.

The support from those three was enough to light a flame of courage in her heart. They would get Sophie back. Soon.

* * *

Back at the sheriff’s office, a command post was building. Velma ran off copies of Leo’s photo and handed them out to the locals. Pretty soon every road in the county had a patrol on it, even the muddiest back roads, where ranchers and their hired hands patrolled with shotguns, looking behind every bush and tree. In town, residents combed every street, alleyway and backyard. With cell phones and CBs, contact was maintained. Airwaves crackled with calls as people reported nothing on one road and announced their intention to move to another. Others mounted their horses to go places vehicles couldn’t on the muddy ground.

Micah and Connie heard a great deal over the car’s radio. “That bastard is gonna need a hole in the ground,” Micah remarked.

They were now following Ethan down a quiet side street. He strode now, as if he knew exactly where he was going. Micah picked up the radio. “What’s going on, Ethan?”

“She was picked up by a car at the park. I can just about see the tire tracks heading this way.”

Micah looked at Connie. “He’s good. Trust him.”

“He’s all I can trust,” Connie said.

“I meant something else, but I guess now’s not the time. You can trust all your neighbors, Connie. That’s one thing I’ve learned living here. When the chips are down, these folks get together.”

“I know. God, I wonder...” She trailed off.

“Wonder what?”

“Oh, last night we played some poker. Julia thought it would be a good lesson for Sophie in risk-taking and calculating risks versus benefits.”

“And you’re wondering if that had something to do with Sophie’s decision to climb out her window.”

“Yes. What if I helped her to take this risk?”

Micah fell silent for a bit as they followed Ethan. They were getting closer and closer to one of the least-used county roads, one that had no destination other than the mountains. Then he spoke. “You can’t blame yourself. I doubt she made up her mind based on a poker game.”

“She’s seven. Anything could have been enough to influence her.”

“Exactly. That’s the point, Connie. She’s seven. She must have been thinking about doing this since Friday, when she saw him. It was probably planned then. I don’t think a card game had anything to do with it, any more than playing Candyland would have. Regardless of what your mother might have said, Sophie’s very young. I doubt she was extrapolating the lessons of poker to life.”

“Except for what my mother said.”

“Julia was talking over Sophie’s head. Maybe in time she could have learned something valuable from the game, but from playing for an hour or two? Too abstract.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I’ve been raising my own. At that age, they’re pretty damn literal.”

She nodded, shoving down another wave of guilt and fear that she had somehow pushed Sophie into this craziness.

She should have tried to establish a relationship between Sophie and Leo, she thought now. Maybe if her daughter had seen him in prison often enough, she wouldn’t now have the kind of curiosity and need that made her want to climb out a second-story window.

If it was Leo.

That thought terrified her. A total stranger scared her more than Leo. At least he was a known quantity. His violence, ugly as it was, hadn’t been directed at children in some sick way. So why would he want to kill Sophie? To punish Connie? Somehow that didn’t add up in her mind.

The problem was, nothing was adding up quite right. Fear and terror rode her shoulders, whispered in her ears and interfered with rational thinking.

They reached the county road. Ethan squatted, looking both ways, then came back to the car. He climbed in the backseat.

“Drive slow,” he said. “They headed west. What’s out there?”

“Nothing,” Micah said. “Mountains. He could have come back into town.”

“Drive up to the western edge, then I’ll check for turnoffs.”

Connie felt an absolute wave of certainty come over her. “He didn’t come back into town. He had to know everyone would be looking for him. He took her to the old mining camp.”

For several moments the car was filled with a silence interrupted only by the quiet hum of the engine and the whine of tires on wet pavement.

All of sudden Micah floored it. “You’re right,” he said grimly. “And that place is probably as dangerous as he is. Maybe more so.”

Connie nodded, feeling the blood drain from her face. Unstable ground, old shafts ready to cave in, buildings standing merely from the pressure of memory. Even without Leo, Sophie could get killed up there just by taking one wrong step. And Connie doubted Leo had any idea just how dangerous the place was.

“Hurry,” she said. “Oh, God, hurry!”