The Colton Ransom. Marie Ferrarella

thickly.

      “The kid. My kid,” Trevor bit off with harsh emphasis. Dropping his arms from around Gabby as if he hadn’t just paused to give her comfort, he strode quickly over to the fancy, canopied crib. “Where’s my kid?” he demanded hotly.

      The crib was empty.

      Trevor swung around to glare at Gabby, waiting for her to offer some sort of an answer.

      “I thought you said that you put Avery down in this crib.” It came out sounding like an accusation, not a question.

      “I did,” she cried.

      Everything inside of her was shaking. Seeing Faye on the floor, bloodied and motionless, had blocked out everything else. She hadn’t even realized that the crib was empty or that the baby was missing.

      Oh, God, how could she have missed that?

      “I just came in to check on her when I saw Faye—when I saw Faye—”

      Gabby couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. A sob threatened to break free in her throat and it took everything she had to get herself under control and push it back down.

      Like a man trapped in a nightmare not of his own making, Trevor moved back to the crib again. This time he realized that although there was no baby in it, the crib wasn’t completely empty. One of the knitting needles he recognized as belonging to Faye was stabbed into an embroidered pillow.

      The knitting needle was anchoring down a note.

      His first impulse was to rip the note away from the pillow, but he forced himself to refrain. He knew that the chief of police would need the note untouched, the better to dust the surface for any fingerprints, partial or otherwise. The slightest piece of evidence could eventually lead them to Faye’s killer.

      And he wanted to slowly fillet whoever that turned out to be.

      Very carefully, making sure not to touch anything and consequently add to the fingerprints he knew had to already be on the paper, Trevor leaned in over the crib and read what was written in block letters on the note: WAIT FOR RANSOM INSTRUCTIONS. ONE MISSTEP, THE KID’S DEAD.

      It wasn’t until he stepped back that he realized Gabby was right behind him. He wound up backing right into her. The imprint of her body against his back registered without warning.

      Swallowing a curse, he turned to glare at her. “Be careful,” he snapped. “I could have knocked you down or at the very least, crushed your foot.”

      Gabby waved away his words. Neither occurrence would have been of any consequence to her. She’d just read the note left in the crib and her heart had all but turned to lead at the implication.

      It made no sense to her. But then, evil never really did.

      “Why would they want to kidnap your daughter?” she asked, bewildered.

      “They wouldn’t,” he bit off, his tone emotionless. “They think they’ve got your niece.”

      The shock his words created almost undid her. Gabby covered her mouth to keep back another distressed cry. Her eyes widened with horror. “Oh, my God. They made a mistake.”

      “Yeah,” he agreed grimly.

      And the consequences of that mistake echoed through his head, loud and clear. The moment the kidnappers realized that they’d made that mistake, Avery became worthless to them.

      Trevor refused to follow that train of thought to the end. It was far too awful to contemplate, even for a fleeting second.

      He needed to get Avery back.

      Suddenly, the child he hadn’t wanted less than an hour ago became very precious to him.

      Beside him, Gabby was struggling not to break down again. Hysteria wouldn’t help get Avery back. She drew in a long breath and then let it out slowly, repeating the process one more time.

      Somewhat more in control, she turned to Trevor. When she thought about it, she could see why the mistake had been made. “They’re the same age, the same coloring—”

      Was she making a case for the kidnapper’s mistake, or was she trying to convince him that the mistake wouldn’t come to light and then his daughter would stay safe indefinitely?

      “But not the same kid,” he all but ground out, pointing out the obvious.

      Not the same kid.

      And that was her fault. While she was grateful that Cheyenne was safely lying in the crib she had put into her own bedroom, Gabby felt beyond guilty that Trevor’s daughter had been mistakenly kidnapped in Cheyenne’s place.

      “What are we going to do?” she asked him breathlessly.

      We.

      As if they were in this thing together, Trevor thought with contempt. But they weren’t in this together. That was his daughter who had been kidnapped and the woman who had raised him who had been killed. It was in no way the same thing.

      Yes, Faye had taken care of Gabby and her sisters, but she’d been paid to do that. No one had paid her to take care of him. She’d done that out of the goodness of her heart, without expecting any sort of compensation from anyone—and getting none.

      He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d thanked Faye for anything—her, the woman to whom he’d owed so much.

      Anger—at the world and at himself—all but choked off his windpipe.

      It took Trevor a few moments to get himself under control again. When he did, he pulled his cell phone out of his rear pocket.

      “We’re going to call the police chief,” he told her, deliberately emphasizing the word we in a mocking tone—bravado and anger were all he had left right now, “and tell him what happened. He can take it from there once he gets here.”

      Gabby didn’t know which way to turn, what to do with herself.

      She didn’t want to just do nothing, didn’t want to just stand back and let someone else take over. This was her fault. She was the one who had left Avery in this room. It was all on her. There had to be something—some small contribution to the whole—that she could be doing right now.

      To do absolutely nothing felt as if she were just compounding her sin, making her feel more guilty for what had happened.

      She couldn’t handle it.

      Gabby looked at him, her expression bordering on frantic. “Isn’t there anything we—?”

      “No!” he snapped before she could finish. “There isn’t anything we can do right now except what I’m doing.” He punched the chief’s number on his keyboard.

      Nodding, numbed and at a loss, Gabby fell silent and backed off.

       Chapter 4

      Police chief Hank Drucker made the fifteen-mile trip from the town of Dead—located approximately forty miles northwest of Cheyenne—to the ranch in record time.

      He had moved quickly because the call had come from the Colton ranch—no one ever ignored the Coltons—and because there’d been a kidnapping. An infant was currently missing.

      Drucker liked kids, even though he and his wife, Harriet, had never had any of their own. Whatever other failings and flaws he might have had, Drucker believed that children—especially babies—should be protected at all cost.

      The chief, a big man whose out-of-shape body was a clear testimonial that his prime had long since past, looked as if he were born on the job. After thirty-two years on the Dead Police Department—working his way from the ground up, he might as well have been. Being a policeman was all he’d ever known, all he’d ever been. The life suited him.

      This was going to be messy,