Texas Takedown. Barb Han

hands full. I better get back and help with the other horses.” She’d moved in with Brody after rekindling their romance, and they’d be announcing a wedding date any day now. Together they made a great team running his horse rehabilitation center, and the work looked to agree with her. Or maybe it was just the fact that she’d found someone who could make her happy.

      Dylan had more pressing matters to think about than the complications having another female in his life would bring. His three-foot-tall angel kept him on the brink of exhaustion.

      “I can take Maribel to school if you want. It’s on my way home,” she offered.

      Dylan figured that was Rebecca’s way of saying she hoped he’d get started looking for Samantha right away.

      Maribel was already jumping up and down, clapping her hands.

      He nodded to Rebecca, even though he’d miss being the one to take his little girl to school. His part-time nanny, Ms. Anderson, usually picked up Maribel in the afternoons. She cooked suppers and stayed as long as Dylan needed her around. Said she enjoyed keeping busy after being widowed at the young age of sixty. When he’d hired her, she’d volunteered to come in first thing in the mornings, too, but Dylan had refused. He couldn’t give up being the one to wake Maribel. His daughter might’ve come out of nowhere a year ago, but she was here to stay, in his home and in his heart. Dylan couldn’t imagine his life any other way.

      Between Ms. Anderson, Mrs. Applebee and Maribel, Dylan had plenty of estrogen in his life.

      Having his own business allowed him to work from home a lot of the time and set his own schedule for the most part. But there were occasions when he had to be away overnight. He appreciated Ms. Anderson’s flexibility.

      “I’ll call the headmaster and give up my volunteer spot on the field trip.”

      “I’d hate for you to do that,” Rebecca said.

      “I have a few other things to do today anyway. And I’m pretty sure Applebee could use a break from me. There’s a wait list for these trips. This’ll give another parent a shot.”

      Maribel frowned.

      “Hey, I worked the past two. It’s good to share with the other parents so they can spend the day with their kids.” He took a knee. “Give Daddy big hugs.”

      Maribel hesitated, then ran to him and he caught her as she tripped on her last step, scooping her into his arms, kissing her forehead.

      With any luck, he’d be done in time to tuck his precious little girl into bed. Losing her mother had not been easy on her last year, and part of the reason he desperately wanted to make his security consulting enterprise work was so that he could be around and she could grow up surrounded by people who loved her. Dylan couldn’t bring back her mother, but he’d vowed their Bel would always know she’d been wanted and loved. Unlike Dylan, whose parents had dumped him with his grandmother at six months old because the responsibility of caring for a baby had proved too much for the free-spirited hipsters. They’d split up a year later and had rarely visited. No birthday cards. No high school graduation appearance. No showing at his daughter’s christening.

      Dylan’s child would never know that brand of rejection.

      She turned toward Rebecca and launched herself again.

      “Hold on there.” He caught her under her arms and pulled her back toward him. He helped secure her backpack before another round of hugs came.

      Maribel stopped at the door and turned, smiling, one hand holding on to Auntie Becca’s, the other waving back at him. “Bye-bye, Da-da!”

      “Have a good day at school. Learn everything you can.”

      “So I can be smarter than you,” she squealed. Those adorable r’s rolling out like w’s. The pediatrician had assured him she’d sort it out in the next year or so. He knew he should work harder on pronunciation with her but it was so darn cute the way she said her words. Because he’d missed out on the first two years of her life, a selfish part of him didn’t want her growing up any faster than she had to.

      “That’s right.” Dylan watched Rebecca buckle Maribel into the spare car seat she’d pulled from her trunk. He stood at the window until the blue sedan disappeared down the drive.

      His laptop was already booted up, so he snagged another cup of coffee and seated himself at the breakfast bar. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Maribel needed a female influence in her life even if he couldn’t imagine having time to find one. Relationships were complicated. They required communication and commitment. The only thing Dylan was devoted to at the moment was finishing his cup of coffee.

      When he put his full attention to the case, it took about an hour of digging to find that Samantha had withdrawn five thousand dollars in cash from her bank four days ago. The withdrawal was timed perfectly to her disappearance. His trouble radar jumped up a few notches. She might’ve been forced to pull out the money, murdered and then dumped somewhere. No. Forget it. He couldn’t allow himself to believe she’d been killed and that he’d be looking for a body. There were other possibilities. Maybe she’d decided to pack up and take a vacation. Everyone was burned out from recent events.

      A quick call to her employer shot down that prospect. Samantha hadn’t been to work in a week.

      The probability foul play wasn’t involved shrank by the nanosecond.

      Dylan scanned online news outlets for crimes with unidentified females on the date she withdrew money.

      He came up short and sighed with relief.

      There were dozens of hospitals in Dallas, even more counting the suburbs. He narrowed his search down to a five-mile radius of where she lived and worked. The number shrank to five. He called each one looking for a Jane Doe, relieved when he didn’t find her.

      Next he reached out to the city morgue, which was not a call he wanted to make.

      Relief flooded him at receiving the word that no Jane Does had been received in the past week.

      Having exhausted obvious answers, he had to consider other possibilities. The first one that popped into his mind said she could be on the run. But from what?

      This was Samantha he was thinking about. Nothing in her background suggested she had criminal inclinations. He’d known her personally for more than half his life. Wouldn’t there have been signs along the way? Lies told here and there?

      Of course, the tight-knit group of twelve-year-olds had disbanded after Shane’s disappearance, but they’d all gone to the same high school, traveled in loosely the same circles. Didn’t he know her?

      She came from a large middle-class family, the youngest of four kids. Her dad had been in sales, so she’d moved around most of her young life. He’d cashed out their life savings and rented space on the town square to open a hardware store after her mother had died. Samantha had settled in Mason Ridge in fifth grade, just a year before the tragedy. She’d been a good student. She’d played volleyball at Mason Ridge High School well enough to earn a scholarship to a small university in Arkansas. And that had been when he’d lost touch with her.

      Her brothers had spread out, going to different colleges and then settling in separate cities. Last Dylan had heard, they had families of their own. The trouble came with her mom’s side. Several uncles had rap sheets longer than the menu at Chili’s. But Samantha never spoke about them, and Dylan figured the family had cut ties long ago.

      He tried her cell. The call went straight to voice mail.

      The idea one of her distant relatives could’ve gotten her into trouble didn’t sit well. No way would she get involved with them.

      Dylan made a phone call to a technical-guru friend he’d used from time to time to hack into databases and phones. If a device had a firewall, Jorge could sneak past it unseen and get out with the same ability. He was the freakin’ Houdini of hackers.

      Jorge