Читать книгу Her Christmas Guardian - Shirlee McCoy - Страница 11

TWO

Get out! Get out, get out!

The words raced through Scout’s mind as she crawled over the bucket seat and unbuckled Lucy’s car seat. Black smoke filled the car, filled her lungs. She grabbed the seat, relieved that Lucy was babbling away, more excited, it seemed, than frightened by the crash, the smoke, the crackling fire.

Get out!

She reached for the door handle, coughing, gagging on blood that rolled from a cut on her forehead to the corner of her mouth.

The door flew open, and hands reached in, dragged her out, Lucy in the car seat, singing in that baby language that only a mother ever really understood.

Scout jerked away, the car seat slamming against her legs as she ran. Straight toward the black car that had been following her. She veered to the left, saw him. Just standing there. Sport coat and slacks, hands in his pockets. He could have been anyone, but she knew he was death coming to call.

“Who are you?” she rasped, backing toward the tree her car had run into when the tire was shot out.

“It really doesn’t matter,” he responded, pulling a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it. The cold calculation in his eyes made her blood freeze in her veins. She wanted to scream and scream and scream, but there was no one around to hear. Nothing that she could do but try to find a way out, pray that the police came quickly. Keep Lucy safe.

Please, God. Help me keep her safe.

“I called the police,” she said, her heart pounding in her throat, her eyes burning from smoke and fear. Every nightmare she’d ever had was coming true. All the fear she’d lived with since she’d left San Jose congealed in the pit of her stomach, filled her with stark hard-edged terror.

She needed to think, to run, to do something to save her daughter.

That was all she knew. All she cared about.

She lifted the car seat higher, pulling it to her chest, the heavy ungainly plastic filled with the only thing she cared about. “They’ll be here any minute,” she continued, because he was staring at her, the cigarette dangling from his mouth. He must think he had all the time in the world, must believe that there was no way help could come in time.

God, please! She begged silently, easing toward the line of trees that had stopped the wagon from careening down an embankment.

She just had to make it into the trees, find someplace to hide.

The faint sound of sirens drifted on the cold November air. Her heart jumped; hope surged. She could do this. Had to do this. She ran into the trees, blood still sliding down her face, Lucy giggling as the car seat bounced. She had no idea. None.

Scout’s feet slipped on slick leaves, and she went down hard, her hip knocking an overturned tree. She bounced back up, the car seat locked in her arms, Lucy now crying in fear, sirens growing louder.

“Sorry, but this just isn’t your night.” The words whispered from behind her, the cold chill of them shooting up her spine.

And suddenly, she wasn’t alone with the man and his cigarette. Two dark shadows moved in, and she was fighting off hands that were trying to rip Lucy away from her.

She screamed as something slammed into her cheek. Heard Lucy’s desperate cries and the sirens endlessly blaring. Heard her own frantic breathing and hoarse shouts.

A car door slammed and someone called a warning. To her? To the men who were attacking her? The car seat was ripped from her arms and something smashed into her temple. Darkness edged in, sprinkled with a million glittering stars.

She fought it, fought the hands that were suddenly on her throat. Lucy! She tried to cry, but she had no air for the words, no air at all.

She twisted, kneeing her attacker in the thigh.

Something flashed in the air near her head.

A gun?

She had only a moment to realize it, and then the world exploded, all the stars fading until there was nothing but endless night and the sound of her daughter’s cries.

* * *

“Go after the car!” Boone shouted as he jumped from Jackson’s car. “I’ll check to see if there are any injuries.”

Too late.

Those were the words that were running through his head over and over again.

Too late. Just as he’d been the day he’d arrived home from Iraq, ready to confront Lana about her prescription-drug problem, willing to work on their marriage so that they could make a good life for their child.

Too late.

He heard Jackson’s tires screech, knew he’d taken off, following the car they’d seen speeding away. Dark-colored. A Honda, maybe. Jackson knew more about cars than he did, and he’d know the model and make.

Good information for the police, but none of it would matter if the woman and her daughter were hurt. Or worse.

He ran to the station wagon, ignoring the flames that were lapping out from beneath the hood. The back door was open, and he glanced in. No car seat. No child. No woman.

He checked the third-row bucket seat, then peered into the front. A purse lay on the passenger seat, and he snagged it, backing away from the burning vehicle. He doubted it would explode, but getting himself blown up wasn’t going to help the woman, her kid or him.

He broke every rule his boss, Chance Miller, had written in the fifty-page HEART team handbook and opened the purse, pulling out the ID and calling Jackson with information on the woman. Scout Cramer. Twenty-seven. Five foot two inches. One hundred pounds. Organ donor. Blond hair. Blue eyes.

Victim.

He hated that word.

In a perfect world, there would be no victims. No losses. No hurting people praying desperately that their loved ones would return home.

Too bad it wasn’t a perfect world.

He stepped away from the station wagon as a police cruiser pulled off the road. An officer ran to the back of the cruiser and dragged a fire extinguisher from the trunk.

Seconds later, the fire was out, the cold air filled with the harsh scent of chemicals and burning wires. Smoke and steam wafted from the hood of the car, but the night had gone quiet, the rustling leaves of nearby trees the only sound.

The officer approached, offering a hand and a quick nod. “Officer Jet Lamar. River Valley Police Department. Did you see what happened here?”

“I got here after the crash. I did see the woman and child who were in the car. They left the Walmart about fifteen minutes ago.” And he didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time discussing it. Scout and her daughter had disappeared. The more time that passed before they were found, the less likely it was that they ever would be.

Something else he had learned the hard way.

Every second counted when it came to tracking someone down.

“So, we’ve got two people missing?”

“Yes,” Boone ground out. “And if we don’t start looking, they may be missing for good.”

“Other cars are responding. We have patrol cars heading in from the east. I just need to confirm that we’re looking for a new-model Honda Accord. Dark blue.”

Jackson must have provided that information, and Boone wasn’t going to argue with it. He knew his friend well enough to know that he’d have to have been 100 percent sure before offering information. “That’s right. It was pulling away as my friend and I arrived.”

“I don’t suppose you want to explain what you and your friend were doing on this road?” Officer Lamar looked up from a notepad he was scribbling in. The guy looked to be a few years older than Boone. Maybe closing in on forty. Haggard face. Dark eyes. Obviously suspicious.

“I followed the woman from Walmart. She looked like she might be in trouble.”

“So, you just stepped in and ran to the rescue? Didn’t think about calling the police?”

“I didn’t want to call in the police over an assumption.”

“Assumptions are just as often on target as they are off it. Next time,” he said calmly, “call.”

Boone didn’t bother responding, just waited while Officer Lamar jotted a few notes, his gaze settling on the purse Boone still held.

“That belong to the victim?”

“Yes.” Boone handed it over, shifting impatiently. “They could be across state lines by now.”

“Not likely. We’re about a hundred miles from the Penn state border. I’m going to take a look around. How about you wait in the cruiser?”

It wasn’t a suggestion, but Boone didn’t take orders from anyone but his boss or the team leader. He followed Lamar to the still-smoking station wagon, paced around the vehicle while Lamar looked in the front seat, turned on a flashlight and searched the ground near the car.

He didn’t speak, but Boone could clearly see footprints in the moist earth near the car. Two sets. A woman’s sneaker and a man’s boot. “Looks like she survived the initial impact,” Lamar murmured. He called something in on his radio, but Boone was focused on the prints—the deep imprint of the man’s feet. The more shallow print of the woman’s. There had to be more, and he was anxious to find them. For evidence, and for certainty that Scout and her child really were in the car that had driven away.

If not, they were somewhere else.

Somewhere closer.

He scanned the edge of the copse of trees that butted against the road. If he’d been scared for his life, he’d have run there, looked for a place to hide.

Protocol dictated that Boone back off, let the local P.D. do their job. It was what Chance would want him to do. It was what Boone probably would have done if he’d witnessed only the accident or even the kidnapping.

But Boone had spoken to Scout Cramer. He’d seen the fear in her eyes. He’d looked into her daughter’s face and been reminded of what he’d lost. What he could only pray that he would one day get back.

He couldn’t back off. Not yet.

A sound drifted through the quiet night. Soft. Like the mew of a kitten. Boone cocked his head to the side.

“Did you hear that?” he asked Lamar.

He knew the officer had. He’d stopped talking and was staring into the woods. “Could have been an animal,” he said, but Boone doubted he believed it.

“Or a baby,” Boone replied, heading for the trees.

“You think it’s the missing child? How old did you say she was?”

“Two? Maybe three.” Cute as a button. That was what his mother would have said. Probably what his dad would have said. They loved kids. Would have loved to know their first granddaughter.

Boone would have loved to know his only child.

In God’s time...

He’d heard the words so many times, from so many well-meaning people, that he almost never talked about his marriage, about his daughter, about anything that had to do with his life before HEART.

“It’s possible she was thrown from the car. I didn’t see a car seat.”

“She was in one.”

Lamar raised a dark brow and scowled. “I’m not going to ask why you know so much about this lady and her child. You’re sure the kid was in the car seat?”

“Positive.”

“If the car seat was installed wrong, it still could have been thrown from the car. Wouldn’t have gone far, but a child that age could undo the harness and get out. She’s young to be out on a night like tonight, but I’d rather her be out in the woods than in a car with a monster.” Lamar sighed. “Wait here. I’ll go take a look around.”

Wasn’t going to happen.

Boone followed him into the thick copse of trees, his gaze on the beam of light that illuminated the leaf-strewn ground.

“Anyone out here?” Officer Lamar called.

No response. Just the quiet rustle of leaves and the muted sound of distant sirens.

“We should split up,” Boone suggested. “The more area we cover, the better.”

“I’ll call in our K-9 team. That will help. In the meantime, you need to go back to the car. There’s a ravine a couple of hundred feet from here. You fall into that and—”

“I’m a former army ranger, Officer Lamar. I think I can handle dark woods and a deep ravine.” He said it casually and walked away. They were wasting time arguing. Time he’d rather spend searching.

If the little girl had been thrown from the car on impact, the sooner they got her to the hospital, the better. But he didn’t think she’d been thrown. He’d seen Scout buckle her in. She’d been secure. Someone had taken her from the station wagon. That same person could have tossed her into the trees, thrown her down the embankment, disposed of her like so much trash.

He’d seen it before, in places where no child should ever be. He’d carried nearly dead little girls from hovels that had become their prisons.

Rage filled him, clawing at his gut and threatening to steal every bit of reason he had. He didn’t give in to it. He’d learned a lot from his father. Watching him deal with the foster kids his parents had taken in had taught Boone everything he needed to know about keeping cool, working with clear vision, not allowing his emotions to rule.

“Baby?!” he called, because he didn’t know the child’s name, and because a scared little girl might respond to a stranger’s voice.

Then again, she might not.

She might stay silent, waiting and hoping for her mother’s return.

Was that how it had been for Kendal? Had she been dropped off and left somewhere with strangers? Had she cried for her mother?

He shuddered.

That was another place he wouldn’t allow his mind to go. Ever.

“Hello?” he tried again, and this time he heard a faint response. Not a child’s cry. More like an adult’s groan.

He headed toward the sound, picking his way through narrow saplings and thick pine trees, the shadowy world swaying with the soft November wind.

He heard another groan. This one so close, he knew he could reach out and touch the injured person. He scanned the ground, saw what looked like a pile of cloth and leaves under a heavy-limbed oak and sprinted to it.

Scout lay on her stomach, pale braid dark with blood, her face pressed into leaves and dirt. For a moment, he thought she was dead, and his heart jerked with the thought and with the feeling that he was too late to make a difference. Again.

Then his training kicked in, and he knelt, brushing back the braid, feeling for a pulse. She shifted, moaning softly, jerking up as if she thought she could jump up and run.

“Don’t move,” he muttered, the amount of blood seeping into her hair, splattering the leaves, seeping into the earth alarming. He needed Stella. All her years of working as a navy nurse made her a crucial and important part of HEART. It wasn’t just that, though. She had a way of moving beyond emotion, filtering everything external and unnecessary and focusing on what needed to be done. He coveted that during their most difficult missions.

Scout either didn’t hear his demand or didn’t want to follow it. She twisted from his hand, the movement sluggish and slow, her face pale and streaked with so much blood, he thought they might lose her before an ambulance arrived.

He needed to find the source of the blood, but when he moved toward her, she jerked back, struggling to her knees and then her feet, swaying, her eyes wide and blank. “Lucy,” she said clearly, that one word, that name enunciated.

“Was she with you?” he asked, easing closer, afraid to move quickly and scare her again.

“She’s gone,” she whispered. “He took her.”

That was it. Just those words, and all the strength seemed to leave her body. She crumpled, and he just managed to catch her before she hit the ground.

Footsteps crashed behind him, sirens blaring loudly. An ambulance, but he was terrified that it was too late.

He ripped off his coat, pressed the sleeve to an oozing wound on her temple, the long furrowed gash so deep he could see bone. He knew a bullet wound when he saw one, knew exactly how close she’d come to dying.

His blood ran cold, every hair on the back of his neck standing on end. Someone had come very close to killing Scout, and that someone had Lucy.

“Is this the woman?” Officer Lamar panted up behind him, the beam of his flashlight splashing on leaves wet with blood.

He knelt beside Boone, touched Scout’s neck. “We need to get that ambulance in here. Now!” he shouted into his radio.

Voices carried on the night air, footsteps pounding on leaves and packed earth. Branches breaking, time ticking and a little girl was being carried farther and farther away from her mother, and if something didn’t change, a mother was being carried farther and farther away from her daughter.

He pressed harder, praying desperately that the flow of blood would be stanched before every bit of Scout’s life slipped away.