Kidnapping in Kendall County (8 page)

Obviously, she’d noticed this had hit him like a heavyweight’s punch. So many emotions, including sheer relief, all coming at him at once. He’d done what he had promised his sister—he’d found Nathan.

Austin shook his head. “No, I can do this.” He didn’t want them out in the open any longer. “I can call my sister once we’re in Sweetwater Springs.”

Then, he could also start the process of having the baby tested so they’d have definitive proof.

Still, Austin felt the proof in his gut.

This was his missing nephew.

He got the truck moving again, trying not to hurry, but that’s exactly what he wanted to do.

“Sweetwater Springs?” Vickie questioned. “We can’t go there. I can’t trust the sheriff.”

Rosalie pulled back her shoulders. “You mean Cooper McKinnon?”

Vickie frantically nodded again. “He’s the son of the people involved in this. I looked him up on the internet, and I know he’s their son.”

The color drained from Rosalie’s face. “What are you talking about?”

“It was their name on the agency paperwork,” Vickie insisted. “Roy and Jewell McKinnon. They’re the ones who arranged to adopt this baby.”

Oh, no. Austin definitely didn’t like the sound of that.

“That can’t be right,” Rosalie insisted, and she kept repeating it.

Austin wanted to reach over and try to reassure her that this could all be some kind of misunderstanding, that there was no way her parents or brother could be involved in this, but he saw the blur of motion just ahead.

A large SUV pulled directly out in front of them.

And it stopped right in the middle of the road.

Austin had to slam on his brakes. Not good since the roads were slick, and he went into a skid. He did a quick check of his rearview mirror to make sure Hernandez was still following them. He was. But the cop appeared to be fighting to keep control of his patrol car, too.

“Hold on,” Austin warned them, praying that they didn’t have a collision. The baby wasn’t even in a car seat and could be hurt in just a fender bender.

Pumping the brakes and steering into the skid, Austin managed to stop the truck. Barely in time. But he didn’t have time to do anything else.

Because two men jumped from the SUV.

They were armed, wearing ski masks, and both men aimed guns right at them.

“Get down!” But Austin didn’t wait for Rosalie and Vickie to do that. He pushed them down on the seat and got ready to return fire.

“Oh, God,” Rosalie whispered. “I think it’s the guards from the second baby farm.”

Yeah. But it didn’t matter who they were. There was no way Austin would let them get their hands on Rosalie or his nephew.

Hernandez managed to stop just inches behind the truck. Austin opened his door, still using it for cover, got out and trained his own gun on the men. Hernandez did the same.

“All we want is the nanny,” one of the masked guys snarled. His voice sounded firm enough, but he was volleying nervous glances between Austin and the detective. So was his partner. They probably hadn’t expected to encounter two lawmen.

“Don’t let them take me,” Vickie begged.

Austin had no intention of letting that happen, but what he didn’t want was a gunfight with Rosalie and the baby caught in the middle.

“Put down your guns,” Austin warned the men.

Again, the pair gave each other uneasy looks, and that upped Austin’s own concern. He hoped like the devil that he could trust the lawman behind him. If not, Rosalie, Vickie and he were in a lot of trouble.

“If you don’t give us the nanny,” one of the men said, “we start shooting.”

The nanny. But not the baby. “Why do they want only you?” Austin asked Vickie.

“I don’t know. Maybe because I learned about the fake adoption agency.”

Maybe. Or maybe this was all a ploy to make Vickie look innocent.

Either way, Austin prayed those men didn’t pull their triggers, but just in case they did, he readied himself for the worst. One of the men backed up as if he might jump into the SUV and leave. Not the best solution, but it could be the only way to stop a gunfight.

But that didn’t happen.

The idiot pulled the trigger, the shot blasting through the air and landing in the front bumper of the truck.

Austin cursed and did what he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to do—he returned fire. So did Detective Hernandez, and Austin heard him calling for backup. He also heard the baby’s cries. The gunshot had woken him up.

Both masked men hurried behind their SUV. Both shooting into the truck. Austin wanted nothing more than to take them out, but he couldn’t stay where he was. He had no choice but to jump back into his truck so he wouldn’t be gunned down. Staying alive was the only way he could protect Rosalie and the others.

“I don’t want them to hurt the baby,” Vickie said. “I’ll go with them.”

Even though the adrenaline was spiking through him and he was concentrating on the attack, that set off alarms inside Austin’s head. Maybe Vickie was just being protective of the baby, but he had to wonder if she wanted to go with them because she was part of their operation.

But if so, then why had she called Austin?

Again, it could have been to throw suspicion off herself. Maybe she knew that Yancy had brought up her name and that it made her a person of interest. Sonny could have even told her about Yancy’s allegation.

“You’ll stay put,” Austin insisted, and he put the truck in gear and tried to maneuver around the SUV.

Hard to do with the SUV taking up most of the road.

It also didn’t help that the cruiser was right behind him. That didn’t give Austin much room to move. He threw the truck into Reverse, backing up as much as he could so he could drive onto the shoulder.

Rosalie levered herself up, placing her body in front of the baby. Protecting his nephew. He hated that she was forced to do that, but there wasn’t an alternative. They had to protect the little boy. Those bullets could come through the engine and into the cab of the truck. And as an adult, she stood a better chance of surviving an injury like that.

The shoulder of the road was nothing more than gravel and ice, and the truck tires on the passenger’s side wobbled, threatening to send them straight into the ditch. That couldn’t happen because then they’d be sitting ducks.

The gunmen were still behind cover of their SUV. Still shooting. But they were aiming for the tires now. At least they weren’t shooting at them, but it was still a dangerous situation. Plus, the gunmen were moving, adjusting their positions so that they could get a better shot at stopping them.

Austin cursed. He hadn’t come this far to rescue his nephew only to have the gunmen snatch him away again. And despite their insistence that they only wanted Vickie, Austin figured the plan was to get both her and the baby back while they eliminated Rosalie, him and the cop.

Behind him, Hernandez jumped into his cruiser, backing up just enough to give Austin some room to maneuver. Still, the tires shimmied over the slick surface, and he couldn’t get enough traction.

The bullets kept coming, and he felt one slam into the front tire on the driver’s side. That’s when Austin knew he couldn’t wait any longer.

“Hold on,” he warned Rosalie and Vickie, and he hit the button to disable the air bags. He couldn’t risk having them deploy and hurting the baby. A split second later, he floored the accelerator.

The front end of the truck bashed into the SUV and sent it crashing into the gunmen. It knocked them both to the ground. But only temporarily. They came up ready to fire.

Austin pressed hard on the gas again. The truck fishtailed, and the partially deflated front tire didn’t help matters. He had to wrestle with the steering wheel to keep the vehicle on the road.

Behind him, he saw the detective doing the same. Trying to get the heck out of there. Maybe it wouldn’t be long before backup arrived, and the gunmen could be arrested.

But not by Austin.

He couldn’t risk the lives of the people inside his truck. However, this was definitely a score he intended to settle later.

Austin cleared the SUV, pushed hard on the accelerator and drove away, the bullets still coming at them.

Chapter Nine

“You should go home and let me handle this,” Rosalie’s brother Seth insisted—again.

He was using that overly protective brother tone that Rosalie both loved and hated.

At the moment, she felt more of the latter.

Rosalie totally understood his concern. After all, it had been only a few hours since Austin and she had been caught in that gunfight, but attacks like that wouldn’t stop unless she found answers about who those men were behind the masks.

“I want to hear what Mom has to say,” Rosalie insisted right back—again.

If her mother knew anything about the baby farms or Austin’s nephew, then Rosalie wanted to hear it from Jewell’s own lips.

And find out why her mother hadn’t volunteered it to her sooner.

That’s why Rosalie had insisted on coming to the jail to have this chat with her mother.

Of course, Vickie could be and likely was lying about her parents’ involvement. Or worse. Vickie could be the culprit behind the baby farms, and the attack could have been orchestrated to make her seem innocent. That’s why the FBI was questioning her.

Not Austin, though.

His boss had refused to let him have any part of that when they’d shown up at the FBI building shortly after the latest attack. Probably a good thing, too, since he had a much happier task of reuniting his sister with her son. The reunion wouldn’t be an official one until the DNA test results were back, but Rosalie knew with all her heart that the child was indeed back where he belonged.

It was bittersweet for her.

On the one hand it gave her hope that she’d be reunited with her own baby, but the waiting was crushing her like deadweight.

Seth checked the latest text that popped onto his phone screen, glanced around, no doubt wondering what was taking so long. Rosalie and he hadn’t had an appointment for this jail visit, and according to the warden, their mother was tied up with some kind of statement with her lawyer. Rosalie didn’t care how long the wait would be. She wasn’t budging.

“Anything on the investigation?” she asked when Seth’s attention went back to the text. “Have they found those gunmen who got away?”

Seth shook his head to both questions, and even though he didn’t make a sound, she could feel his frustration. Mixed with her own, the visiting room at the county jail was heavy with it and all the other emotions coursing through her.

“Vickie refused protective custody,” Seth added a moment later.

“Why?” After the attack, Rosalie couldn’t imagine the woman doing that. Unless Vickie truly had nothing to fear from the gunmen, that is. But if Vickie had been the person in control of the baby farms, she should have at least accepted protective custody so she wouldn’t appear guilty.

“Vickie says she doesn’t trust cops,” Seth explained. “But I also get the feeling that she plans to do some investigating of her own. Maybe you can tell her what a really dumb idea that’d be.”

She gave him an obligatory smirk.

Seth gave her one in return, and he was better at smirking than she was. “After you talk to Mom, you’ll go back to the ranch.”

Rosalie didn’t look at him because he would see in her eyes that she had no intention of doing that. Or of giving up on the search for her baby. She just kept her attention on the glass where she hoped her mother would soon appear.

“Are you ever going to tell me how you got involved in this mess?” Seth asked.

“I would, but you won’t like it, and right now, we both have enough to deal with.”

That earned her a glare that she could see in the reflection of the glass. It earned her some profanity, too. “Did you do anything illegal?”

Rosalie lifted her shoulder. “I used your home computer to find the criminal informant who helped me get the job at the baby farm.”

“
My
computer,” he flatly repeated. “The one I didn’t password protect because I didn’t think my sister would go snooping on it?”

“Yes, that computer,” Rosalie mumbled. The one he kept in the ranch guesthouse that they shared.

Oh, that made his glare even worse. “And let me guess—the reason you asked me to give you shooting lessons about two months ago was because of this?”

Since it was true, Rosalie settled for another shoulder lift. “I needed two things to start my plan to find Sadie. A way into the baby farm operation and a way to defend myself if something went wrong.”

And things had indeed gone wrong.

Seth would have no doubt given her another scowling reminder about that, followed by another lecture, if his phone hadn’t buzzed. When he glanced at the name on the screen, it instantly brought him to his feet.

“I have to take this, and it might be a long conversation,” he said, shielding the phone screen from her before he stepped outside the room.

She hadn’t seen the caller’s name, but maybe because Seth was about to learn yet something else that she wouldn’t want to hear. This way, he could try to shelter her, something he’d been doing since this nightmare had started eleven months ago. But sheltering wasn’t going to help. Only finding Sadie and the truth would do that.

Rosalie stared at the glass, trying to tamp down the wild thoughts that kept zinging through her head. And she kept going back to one huge question. If her parents had had some part in this, why hadn’t they told her?

Certainly not because they were behind the baby farms.

No, she was sure of that.

Until recently, Rosalie and her father, Roy, had been estranged for over twenty years—since her mother had left the ranch under a cloud of suspicion about an affair and rumors of murdering her lover. A murder accusation that had put Jewell behind bars while she waited for a murder trial. But her mother was innocent of the crime. Innocent of the baby farms, too.

Still, Rosalie couldn’t get Vickie’s accusation to quit eating away at her.

The visiting room door eased open, and Rosalie braced herself for Seth’s return with more bad news. But it wasn’t her brother who stepped in.

It was Austin.

Her heart went straight to her throat. “Did something go wrong?” And just like that, so many bad possibilities came to mind. “Did someone kidnap your nephew again? Did they find the men who attacked us?”

“No to all of it.” He shook his head, seemed a little surprised by her questions. “My nephew’s fine and with my sister at our family’s ranch.” Austin showed her the photo on his phone. A woman smiling through her happy tears as she clutched her baby in her arms.

The relief came as quickly as the dread and fear, and before she even realized she was going to do it, Rosalie threw her arms around him. That obviously surprised him, too, judging from the way his muscles tensed.

Then quickly relaxed.

That caused Rosalie to tense, as well, because they shouldn’t feel this comfortable in each other’s arms. Even if she did. And worse, not just comfortable.

But safe.

Austin kept his hand on her waist even after she came to her senses and eased away from him.

“Sorry,” she said. “But when I saw you, I thought the worst.”

Austin flexed his eyebrows, and the corner of his mouth lifted. “That’s not usually the reaction I’m aiming for.” But he quickly shook his head. “I can understand it in your case, though.”

That half smile sent another trickle of heat through her, but Rosalie decided to blame it on the fact that he hadn’t come to deliver bad news. It’d been a while since she’d heard anything good, and a baby reunited with his mother definitely qualified as good.

“What about Detective Hernandez?” she pressed. “Is he all right?”

“Fine. A little shaken up, of course. SAPD is out looking for the men who shot at us. The plates on their SUV were fake, though, so that’s a dead end.”

Rosalie had already expected that. The men had come there to attack them. Maybe to kidnap Vickie and the baby, too. Unless they were idiots, they wouldn’t have used a vehicle that could be traced back to them. That was also the reason they’d worn masks—to conceal their identities.

“But why did you come?” she asked.

No more half smile, but he did give another flex of his eyebrows. “To help you find your daughter.”

The old wounds and bad blood instantly made her suspicious. “I’ve already told you that you don’t owe me anything.”

Now his gaze came to hers.

Oh, no.

She saw it then. That same blasted trickle of heat that she felt in her own body. Rosalie muttered some profanity.

“It’s not just
that,
” Austin corrected. Thankfully, he didn’t clarify what he meant. “Well, not totally that, anyway. I’m already familiar with the investigation. And I have some time on my hands since I’m on a thirty-day suspension.” He took her by the shoulders when she looked away. “I
need
to help you.”

No doubt to relieve the guilt over Eli’s death. But that wasn’t the only source of guilt in the room. This unwanted attraction made her feel as if she were cheating on Eli even though he’d been dead well over a year and a half. Being around Austin wasn’t likely to ease the heat or the guilt, either.

And that’s why it was best if they parted ways.

She heard the footsteps. Again, not Seth. These came from the other side of the building, and a moment later, Rosalie spotted the guard ushering her mother into the visiting area.

“Rosalie, I’m sorry I kept you waiting,” Jewell said, her voice as thin and weak as she appeared. The orange prison jumpsuit swallowed her and washed out her color even more than it already was. “My lawyer had some good news. A witness has come forward who might be able to clear my name. I don’t know all the details yet, but we should know more soon.”

It was news Rosalie hadn’t expected, but it was indeed welcome. She was about to press for the identity of the witness, but Jewell spoke before she could.

“Something’s wrong,” she said, looking first at Rosalie and then at Austin.

“Maybe,” Rosalie settled for saying. She tipped her head to Austin. “Do you remember Agent Duran?”

“Of course. Eli’s former partner. How are you, Austin?” If there was any hint that her mother blamed Austin for Eli’s death, it certainly wasn’t in her voice. She was warm and welcoming, as if greeting him at her home rather than the county jail.

“I’m fine. Thank you.”

“Good.” Jewell gave them both another looking over. “I suspect I owe you a thanks for taking care of my daughter. I don’t know the details, but judging from your expressions and the fact that the guard said Seth is here, too, you’ve had a
difficult
morning.” She paused. “And you think I can help in some way?”

“I was, uh, doing some investigating,” Rosalie started. “I ran into Austin, and we met a woman. Vickie Cravens.”

The name hung in the air for several moments, and Jewell shook her head. “You think I know her?”

“She said you did.” Rosalie had to clear her throat to continue. “She’s a nanny and claimed Roy and you were going to adopt a baby that she was keeping.”

“Oh.” Jewell pulled in a quick breath.

Sweet heaven. Her mother certainly wasn’t denying it.

“The baby was my nephew,” Austin added. “Were you aware of that?”

“No, absolutely not.” Jewell pressed her hand to her throat as if to steady herself. “But Roy and I have been working together to find Sadie since she was first kidnapped.”

“What do you mean?” This was the first Rosalie was hearing about that. “Working together?”

Jewell nodded. “You were heartbroken, crushed, and I knew I had to do something to get Sadie back. Roy has contacts in law enforcement, so I called him. After that, we met a few times to discuss what to do.”

“You okay?” Austin whispered to her, and it took Rosalie a moment to realize she had gone board-stiff. Austin slipped his hand over hers, and this time Rosalie didn’t move away from him.

“There’s a lot of bad blood between my parents,” she mumbled. So much, in fact, that she figured Roy was the last man on earth who’d help her mother.

“Roy and I split up twenty-three years ago,” Jewell explained. “It’s a long story.”

Not really. Rosalie could summarize it in just one sentence. “Roy believed my mother had an affair, and amid rumors that she’d murdered her lover, Roy kicked her, me and my sister off the family ranch.”

Even now, that was still an open wound for her, and it was the reason she still hadn’t been able to call Roy her father. Painful baggage indeed, though she was trying to get past it. Only because she had more immediate matters to handle—finding her baby and stopping her mother from being wrongfully convicted of murder.

“After the rumors of the murder, Roy and I decided to divorce,” Jewell corrected. “And I took my twin daughters with me. Rosalie and her sister were young, barely six years old. But our boys were older and could speak for themselves. They wanted to stay with their father, so Roy raised them.”

Unlike Rosalie, there was no bitterness in Jewell’s tone or body language, but Rosalie figured it had to be there somewhere under all that calm composure. Despite the rose-colored spin her mother had just put on things, Rosalie believed that Roy had demanded that she leave.

“Five months or so after Sadie was taken,” Jewell continued, “Roy and I were worried when the cops and FBI weren’t finding anything. So, we put out the word through some shady sources that we were looking to buy a baby. One that we hoped to use to help heal Rosalie’s heart.”

“That wouldn’t have happened,” Rosalie jumped to say.

“I know,” her mother assured her. “But we thought saying that might convince the person behind the black market adoptions. And it did, I guess. Weeks later, someone finally called Roy using a voice scrambler, and whoever it was used a prepaid cell that couldn’t be traced. The person said someone would contact Roy when they had a baby for us.”

Rosalie hadn’t suspected any of this. Of course, she’d been so involved with her own search and her own pain that she wasn’t looking for clues that her mother had been doing the same thing.

With Roy’s help, no less.

Rosalie remembered something else and shook her head. “But Vickie knew your names. She said you were to adopt Austin’s nephew. Why did you ask for a boy if you were looking for Sadie?”