The Colton Ransom. Marie Ferrarella

to confer with either Trevor or Gabby. Instead, he went directly to Faye’s body. The chief crouched down as best he could, given that his knees were acting up and his expanding girth showed them no mercy.

      “Damn shame,” he muttered under his breath, shaking his head. He’d known the fifty-year-old governess for over two decades.

      With a barely suppressed groan, he got back up to his feet. “Looks like she must’ve surprised whoever it was in the act and tried to stop them from making off with the baby—and got killed for her trouble,” he concluded grimly. “My guess is that we’re dealing with one or more hotheaded kidnappers—always a bad combination.”

      Turning away for a second, the chief barked out a few orders to the two officers he’d brought with him, Karen Locke and Pierce DeLuca, and they began to secure the crime scene—as they had come to understand the term. Neither one looked as if he or she were capable of an independent thought.

      Drucker, meanwhile, decided that now was the time to ask a few preliminary questions. “You hear anything?” he asked Trevor.

      Trevor shook his head, silently cursing himself for allowing this to have happened on his watch. Aside from the victim being his daughter, this was his territory. He was responsible for everything that came or went at Dead River. Responsible for everything on it as well. There were no excuses for dropping the ball the way that he had.

      “I was in my office before I came up here. Before that, I took a turn around the property. And no, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary,” Trevor answered, anticipating the chief’s next question.

      Drucker laughed shortly, although there was no humor in the sound. “I keep forgetting you were a bigcity cop once upon a time.” There was a trace of mocking in the chief’s voice. His tone was definitely not warm and friendly. “Place seems pretty empty,” he noted. “Where is everybody? At the rodeo?” he asked and answered his own question.

      “Yes,” Gabby answered in a shaky voice. “I thought Faye was supposed to be there, too.” At least, that was what the woman had told her. Her son, Dylan, was working with some of the animals at the rodeo, and predominantly, she had gone to see him in action. It was no secret that Faye was very proud of her son.

      Gabby was still struggling to come to grips with what had happened. Finding Faye the way she had and the staggering weight of her guilt at accidentally having placed Avery in harm’s way were almost too much for her to bear.

      In the fifteen minutes that they had waited for Drucker to arrive, she had dashed to her room to reassure herself that Cheyenne was still there and still all right. Unwilling to leave the infant alone for a moment after all this had happened, she’d picked up her niece and brought her back to the scene of Avery’s abduction. She took painstaking care to keep Cheyenne from even so much as glancing in the direction of the gruesomely murdered governess.

      “Heard the rodeo was pretty good this year. Why didn’t you go, Ms. Colton?” Drucker asked mildly, as if he were just shooting the breeze with her.

      Gabby knew the chief well enough to know that he was not as entirely laid-back as he attempted to appear. He was taking in and measuring her every word. It made her feel like a suspect.

      The absurdity of that was beyond any words she had at her disposal.

      “I don’t much like rodeos,” she told the chief as calmly as possible.

      Drucker met her comment with a careless shrug, then glanced over toward Trevor. “Guess they’re not for everyone. How about you, Garth?” he asked abruptly, craning his neck to look at the ranch’s head of security. “Why didn’t you go to the rodeo? Or don’t you like them, either?”

      They were making small talk—he didn’t care how much Drucker thought he could use this useless line of questioning to lead them to the truth; it wasn’t anywhere near fast enough.

      “Don’t think much about them one way or another,” he said, answering the chief’s previous question. “I was here—at the ranch—because I had a brand-new kid on my hands and I had to take care of her.”

      Drucker listened quietly, and when Trevor paused, the chief asked rhetorically, “And she was the one who was kidnapped, right?”

      “Right,” Trevor ground out between clenched teeth. It was hard suppressing the desire to say a few choice words to the smaller man. He didn’t need the chief rubbing his nose in the fact that his daughter had been abducted under his watch.

      “Doesn’t seem like you had much luck taking care of her, does it?” The rhetorical question had the corners of Drucker’s mouth curving. “Anybody have it in for you, Garth? Some employee you fired or an unhappy maid you might have paid a little too much or too little attention to?” Drucker pressed.

      Gabby spoke up, interrupting the chief’s questions. “The kidnappers didn’t know they were taking his daughter.”

      Interest heightened in the chief’s dark-circled eyes. “Oh? And why’s that?”

      This was the hard part. It took everything she had not to just break down, or melt down, or whatever the current correct term for this sick feeling she presently had going on in the pit of her stomach.

      “Because I put Avery down for a nap in Cheyenne’s crib.”

      Drucker turned to look at her, a spark of fresh interest in the man’s tired eyes. “And why would you do something like that?” he asked.

      Another wave of frustration and helplessness washed over Gabby. If only she hadn’t done this, if only she’d put the baby in the crib Faye had found for her, Avery would still be safe, and Faye wouldn’t have had to sacrifice her life trying to save the infant.

      If only…

      She was making herself crazy. Just answer the question, Gabby silently ordered.

      “I thought I was doing something nice for her. I would have never dreamed I was putting her in any sort of danger. If I’d had the slightest inkling, then I wouldn’t have—”

      “Of course you wouldn’t,” the chief acknowledged kindly, politely cutting her off. “Nobody ever expects these kinds of things to happen to them. Just like those kidnappers didn’t expect to take the wrong baby,” he emphasized. “Hell of a surprise for them when they realize they did.”

      The panic Gabby was trying so hard to bank down began to flare up again, threatening to consume her.

      “Do you think they will realize it?” With each word she uttered, she talked faster, as if she were trying to outrun the idea, the suggestion that the kidnappers would suddenly be struck by the difference in the two infants, which was minimal at best. “The babies do look alike and they’re the same age—maybe the kidnappers won’t even notice.”

      There was an expression of pity on Drucker’s face, as if he couldn’t see how she could believe the charade would continue indefinitely. There was a very real fly in the ointment. “They’ll notice when your daddy refuses to pay the ransom, saying his grandbaby is all nice and snug at Dead River.”

      The horror of the scenario he’d just tossed out so cavalierly appalled Gabby.

      “My father won’t refuse to pay to get Avery back,” she insisted. The idea was too terrible for her to entertain even for a moment.

      The look of pity briefly intensified in the chief’s gray eyes. “We talking about the same Jethro Colton?” he asked with a barely suppressed smirk. “’Cause the one I know would have trouble parting with money to rescue his own kin. There’s no way he’d do it to bring back someone else’s,” Drucker stated flatly.

      Gabby raised her chin, something within her temporarily galvanizing. She refused to accept what Drucker was saying. That would make her father a monster. “You’re wrong.”

      The chief shook his head, as if he thought she was being delusional, but for now he kept that to himself. Instead, he looked