Kidnapping in Kendall County. Delores Fossen

Hard to have a sound mind with her baby kidnapped. “I don’t expect you to understand why I did what I did.”

      “Oh, I understand it all right. I want to find my niece as much as you do, but I don’t want my sister dead in the process. Put Austin back on the phone,” he ordered, sounding very much like the hardheaded brother that he was.

      “How the hell did she manage to get inside an undercover operation, and exactly how close did she come to dying?” Again her brother’s voice was so loud that Rosalie didn’t need the speaker function to hear him.

      Austin’s gaze met hers, and she silently pleaded with him not to tell the truth. It was best if she broke the details to Seth after he calmed down. Whenever the heck that might be.

      “Rosalie’s okay. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Austin said, but he shot her a glare. No doubt because he wasn’t happy about the lie or her involvement in any of this.

      “From what I’m hearing, you were both at the wrong place. You do know your boss is ticked off about this?”

      “Yeah, I heard,” Austin mumbled. “Can’t be helped.”

      “We got a lead on the missing babies,” Rosalie volunteered since she doubted Austin wanted to continue to listen to this scolding any more than she did.

      She moved closer to the phone, and in doing so, her cheek brushed against Austin’s. The slight contact stunned her, as if it’d been more than just an accidental touch, and she eased away from him.

      Austin’s gaze stayed on her, and he cleared his throat. Obviously, he wasn’t any more comfortable touching her than she was touching him.

      Except it hadn’t been just discomfort on her part.

      Rosalie felt that trickle of heat. The kind of man-to-woman heat that she couldn’t possibly feel when it came to Austin, so she quickly shoved it aside and hoped it didn’t come back.

      “Trevor Yancy’s name came up in connection with the baby farms,” Austin told Seth.

      “Hell,” Seth mumbled.

      And that was Rosalie’s reaction, too.

      Well, it was after she managed to force that trickle to take a hike. It was easier to do now that Yancy was in the forefront of her thoughts.

      Yancy and his hired gun could be the people responsible for the attack that had left Eli dead, and she wanted the man to have no further connection to her and her family. However, Yancy might have the ultimate connection if he’d been the one to kidnap Sadie.

      “I’ll deal with Yancy,” Austin continued. “And I’ll drive Rosalie home as soon as someone arrives to take over for me here at the hospital.”

      “Don’t take her home yet.” Seth cursed, groaned, cursed again. “I’m tied up with a case here in El Paso, so I’m asking you to do me a favor. Protect her. Make sure these goons don’t come after her. And, Rosalie, don’t you dare say you can take care of yourself.”

      Since that’s exactly what she’d been about to say, Rosalie just stayed quiet and aimed her own glare at the phone. She loved Seth, and he’d been more of a real brother to her than her own three blood-kin ones had been, but she couldn’t stop looking for her precious baby.

      No amount of warnings from anyone, including Seth or Austin, would stop her.

      “Sawyer said these goons killed a woman,” Seth went on, talking to Austin now. “And if so, they could come after Rosalie.”

      That made her feel a little light-headed. She’d considered that, of course, but what she hadn’t realized was that if Austin took her to her family’s ranch, that she could put all of them in danger, too. Her pregnant sister, Rayanne, was there. Her father, as well, along with her oldest brother’s wife and toddler son. She didn’t want them caught up in the middle of this dangerous situation.

      “I’ll get Rosalie to a safe house,” Austin assured him, and before either one could give her a say in the matter, they ended the call.

      She had to make Austin understand that she wasn’t going into hiding. “I don’t want to go to a safe house. I want to find Sadie.”

      But she was talking to the air because Austin’s attention was no longer on her. It was on the lanky dark-haired man who came through the E.R. doors. Rosalie immediately spotted the silver badge clipped to his belt and figured he was carrying a weapon beneath his buckskin coat.

      “Agent Duran?” he said, heading their way. “I’m Deputy Gage Ryland. I’m here to guard the man you brought in.”

      “Ryland,” Austin repeated. “You’re Sawyer’s cousin?”

      The deputy nodded, the corner of his mouth lifting a little. “Around here, just about every Ryland has got a badge.” The half smile quickly faded. “Tell me about this guy I’ll be guarding.”

      Austin showed the deputy the photo that Sawyer had sent him on his phone. “His name is Sonny Buckland, a P.I. I found him near a baby farm that I’m investigating.”

      His mouth tightened. “You think he killed the woman with the babies?”

      “No.” But then Austin huffed and shrugged. “He was with us when that particular shooting happened, but I can’t rule out that he’s not part of it in some way. In fact, he could have been the one to give the order to have her shot.”

      The deputy nodded. “Then, I won’t let him out of my sight. We need to catch the SOB who put a bullet in the woman and endangered those babies.”

      Rosalie couldn’t agree more. “How are the babies? Where are they?”

      He tipped his head toward a hall off the E.R. “We brought them in through a side entrance. Two other deputies are with them and will escort them to Child Protective Services when the social workers arrive.”

      That made her breathe a little easier, but her heart was still slamming against her chest.

      “My brother’s the sheriff,” Deputy Ryland continued, “and he’s on his way to what’s left of the baby farm sites. We’ll have a CSI team out there, and the FBI’s been called in.”

      With all that, they might find something.

      Correction: they had to find something.

      “What exactly happened to Janice? How did she die?” she asked. Part of Rosalie didn’t want to know the details, especially since she felt responsible, but the other part of her had to know.

      “She was shot,” the deputy explained. “It appears the bullet went in through the back window of the truck she was driving, and it struck her in the side of the neck. It’s a miracle she managed to get away from her attacker. A miracle, too, that the babies weren’t hurt.”

      Just hearing that spelled out caused her knees to buckle, and if Austin hadn’t caught her, Rosalie was afraid she would have fallen. It wasn’t just these babies who caused her reaction. Though they were the immediate concern. But if the monster behind this had put these two babies at such horrible risk, then her daughter was in the same danger.

      Mercy, it hurt too much to think about that. And she’d tried to keep the bad thought aside. Impossible to do that now that she’d dealt with those guards face-to-face. Rosalie knew what they were capable of and how far they’d go to keep their operation under wraps.

      Deputy Ryland must have noticed the alarm on her face and probably in every inch of her body because he grumbled something about checking on Sonny, and he stepped away, no doubt so Austin could tend to her.

      “Come on,” Austin said, taking her by the arm. “I’ll get you to that safe house.”

      Rosalie wanted to stay put, to learn as much as she could from whatever else Sonny might tell them. However, even she couldn’t deny that she was shaken to the core