“Even if it gets Holly Jo killed?” Stuart saw the slight slump of the man’s shoulders.
“I have no choice.”
He didn’t ask what would happen if the kidnapper showed up without Holly Jo. He already knew the answer. Holden had already said he would kill the man.
“What’s to keep the kidnapper from shooting you and taking the money? You’ll have no backup. At least let me hide in the back of your SUV.”
“Not happening.” The rancher looked over at him. “Don’t try to stop me. Once we get Holly Jo back, I’ll tell you everything. But right now, there is nothing more you can do. He wants me. He’ll be able to see me coming—and if he sees anyone else...”
“I just hope that by then it won’t be too late,” Stuart said as a vehicle came racing up the road. “At least tell me the kidnapper’s name.” Even as he said it, he didn’t expect an answer.
“His name is Darius Reed. I honestly didn’t know until he said the ransom drop would be Suicide Pass. But his name won’t help you. There is only one way to stop him.”
“Why would this man take Holly Jo?”
“Too long a story to tell.” The rancher stepped off the porch to head toward the SUV as it came to a dust-boiling stop in front of the house.
Stuart watched as a man handed out two large briefcases to Holden from an open window before driving away. Then he pulled out his phone. Darius Reed had a rap sheet longer than the sheriff’s arm. He’d been given a temporary release to attend his sister Constance’s funeral a few weeks ago. After the funeral, he’d assaulted an officer and gotten away. There was a BOLO already out on him.
HOLLY JO COULDN’T believe how long she’d been scratching the rust off the window latch. Her arms ached. Her fingers were numb from gripping the plastic juice bottle. Worse, she didn’t feel as if she was getting anywhere and was ready to quit in tears, when she tried the latch again.
To her shock and joy, the latch turned just a little. She wanted to shout, she was so happy. She could already see herself prying off the boards nailed over the window and getting away. She hurriedly dropped the empty juice bottle and used both hands. The latch opened. Feeling jubilant, she lifted the window.
To her despair, it would only move a few inches—not nearly wide enough for her to escape. Her joy and excitement fell like a punctured balloon. She wanted to sit down and cry. Refusing to give up, she pushed harder on the window. The result was the same, though. It was stuck. She wasn’t getting out.
Fighting tears of frustration, she thought about what Pickett would do. Cooper and Duffy always said that the ranch hand could fix anything. Pickett had figured things out in unusual ways that actually worked. He once fixed a water pump when Cooper and Duffy had been ready to buy a new one. She remembered Pickett’s grin when he said, “Told you I could fix it.” The memory brought tears to her eyes. She might not see him again.
She brushed the tears away as she considered what she could do to get the window to open high enough that she could get out. Wouldn’t make any difference if she couldn’t get the boards over the window off, she reminded herself. She reached in the opening she’d made and pushed on one of the boards. It didn’t budge. She pushed again as hard as she could on the lowest board and was about to give up when the board moved just a fraction of an inch.
She laughed and suddenly had an idea. They’d studied levers in school. If she could get the board off, she could pry the window open higher. She could escape.
At a sound beyond the room, she froze. Someone was coming! Hurriedly, she tried to push the window closed as quietly as she could. But it wouldn’t go all the way down. She tried again. It wouldn’t move no matter how hard she pushed. She heard the key in the lock. Any moment the door would open. Would he notice?
Having no choice but to leave the window like it was, she snatched up her ruined juice bottle and rushed to her mat. She’d just sat down when the door swung open. It wasn’t until that moment that she realized the footfalls she’d heard hadn’t been the man’s distinct limp.
The woman hesitated at the door for a moment as if listening before she came a little farther into the room. She looked nervous, scared. Had she come back to cut off more of Holly Jo’s hair?
“Do you think you can walk?”
It was an odd question until Holly Jo remembered that the woman probably thought she was drugged from the juice. Since they’d come in to cut her hair and take her photo, the man had brought by two more juices. She’d dumped one down the drain and poured the other in the bucket so it looked like she’d peed.
She would have loved a drink of water, but she could see that the woman hadn’t brought anything. “I think I can walk,” she said, wondering what was going on.
“We’re going to have to hurry before he comes back.”
Holly Jo rose, pretending to be a little unsteady on her feet. Was the woman helping her get away? Or was this a trick? If it meant getting out of this room, she didn’t care. She moved toward the door, realizing she didn’t know what was beyond it since she had no idea where she was.
The woman led the way out of the room and down a hallway. It appeared to be a narrow barn. Holly Jo wrinkled her nose as she caught the scent of sour milk. A milking barn?
She squinted as the woman pushed open a door. Twilight poured in, half blinding her for a moment. She breathed in the fresh air as she saw a pickup camper—but no pickup attached to it. Nor did she see any other buildings other than the one they’d just exited. “Where are we going?”
“He took the truck, so we have to walk. We have to hurry. Can you do that? I don’t know how quickly he’s coming back.”
Hearing the woman’s fear as they headed down a narrow dirt road, Holly Jo nodded. She walked fast to keep up. As she did, she looked around for something familiar about the landscape. She didn’t recognize anything. As they topped a rise, she could see nothing for a long way but river bottom, the tops of the cottonwoods and the rough outline of the mountains dotted with scrub brush and rocky outcroppings.
What stilled her heart and stole her breath was the sound of a vehicle engine revving up and heading their way.
WHATISITabout this woman? Birdie just didn’t give up. She was determined that Holly Jo was out here. To Brand, it felt like looking for a needle in a haystack. Too much country, too many roads that didn’t go far. What was he doing here with her?
He caught his reflection in the side mirror and didn’t even recognize himself. The old Brand, the one who kept his head down, never caused trouble, followed all the rules and didn’t complain, that cowboy would never have climbed into a rig with this woman. The old Brand wouldn’t be riding shotgun with this impulsive, reckless, impetuous, brash, stubbornly determined woman.
One impulsive action, sending away his DNA sample for the results, and look what had happened. He was now throwing caution to the wind, risking not just his heart but his life. And the scary part? As he looked over at Birdie, he had to smile. He’d never felt more alive, more like his true self, whoever that was.
Birdie slowed to turn down another dirt road. It had been hours since they’d followed Melanie Baker. “I just have a feeling,” she said now. It was the same thing she’d been saying for hours.
He’d already made the argument that it was too easy to disappear back in the rocky terrain and scrub brush of what felt like endless country.
“Okay, maybe she did realize she was being followed and turned off Cache Creek Road as a decoy,” Birdie conceded. “But I think she was headed to the place where she was keeping Holly Jo. Haven’t you ever just gotten a feeling that was so strong you had to run it down?”
“Yeah, recently, actually, when I decided to have my DNA tested, and look how that turned out.”
“Point taken,” she said. “Is that the first impulsive thing you’ve ever done?”
“But not the last, apparently,” he said, looking over at her.
She grinned. “I knew you had it in you. I guess you just needed me to come along and draw more of that spontaneity out of you.”
He chuckled and looked at the twisting, narrow, rocky road ahead. “Even if it kills me,” he said under his breath. They hadn’t gone far when Birdie slowed. He recognized the expression on her face and shook his head. “Here we go,” he said as she followed an obvious hunch and turned.
