The Colton Ransom (5 page)

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

P
olice 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, he thought as he came in. He knew he was going to have to tread very cautiously—for reasons that wouldn’t be apparent to anyone else but him and one other person.

Walking into the nursery, Drucker didn’t stop 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 big-city 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 at Trevor.

“For your daughter’s sake, I sure hope so.” But his very tone said that he sincerely doubted that he
was
wrong.

It was at that moment, while the chief was predicting Jethro Colton’s far-from-stellar reaction to the situation, that Trevor suddenly realized the truth of his feelings.

He wasn’t resentful of the burden Avery represented or indifferent to her existence. The thought of possibly permanently losing Avery made him come to grips with the fact that he actually
loved
the little girl. What he’d been struggling with these past two weeks was not that he didn’t want her but that he realized this tiny little human being was going to wind up changing the whole world as he knew it.

But now, if the chief’s prediction
was
right, Avery might never get that chance to change his whole world. Never get the chance to grow up, to experience her first kiss, her first love. Never be any of the things that she was meant to be.

Not unless
he
found a way to rescue her.

“You’re wrong,” Gabby repeated with feeling, catching Trevor’s eye. “My father won’t withhold the ransom money.”

Right then, they heard the sound of cars—a large number of cars—approaching the house.

The chief went to the window and looked out. “Looks like we’re about to find out which one of us is right about your daddy, little lady,” he said to Gabby. “You two keep on taking pictures of anything that looks out of order—and
don’t touch the body,
” he emphasized, instructing the two officers to continue with their work. “That’s for the medical examiner to do.”

With that, he left the room, moving at a slightly faster pace than he normally assumed. Watching the man brought the term
slow but steady
to mind.

Drucker got down to the bottom of the stairs just as the front door opened and the various members of the Colton family, as well as their staff, began to fill up the vast foyer.

Seeing the police chief among them created confusion, and a cacophony of voices mingled together, each asking questions.

It was Mathilda Perkins, the head housekeeper, who had been the first to notice Drucker. Mathilda had been running the main house as well as the staff for as long as anyone could remember, and her sharp eyes took possession of any room she entered.

She missed nothing.

“What are you doing here, Chief?” she asked, suspicion entering her voice. “Thought you might have been at the rodeo. Riders were in top form—” She stopped abruptly at the sight of the chief’s grim expression. “Is something wrong?” The last vestiges of cheerfulness had left her voice, and she sounded far more somber—and somewhat apprehensive as she waited for a response to her question.

“’Fraid so,” the chief began.

Jethro Colton pushed his way to the front of the crowd. “Well, out with it, man,” he ordered gruffly. “Don’t play out the suspense, trying to make yourself look like some sort of metropolitan supersleuth. You’re a small-town, plodding tin star. Now, what the hell is going on?” he demanded coldly. “Some of us are tired and not interested in cheap drama.”

It was Trevor, rather than the chief, who answered Jethro’s insensitive question. During his law-enforcement career, both in Cheyenne and on the ranch, he had never learned how to deftly soften a blow or say something other than just shooting straight from the hip. He followed his instincts now.

“It’s Faye, Mr. Colton.”

Jethro’s eyes squinted, all but boring into his security head’s very countenance. “Faye? What about her?” He looked around. “Where is she, anyway? I told her she could ride in my car to and from the rodeo, but right in the middle, she starts to worry about ‘her babies,’” he jeered, the term referring to both his granddaughter and to Trevor’s daughter. “Next thing I know, she’s taking off. So she did come back,” he concluded, appearing somewhat disgruntled. He wasn’t a man who took being disregarded lightly.

“Yes, sir, she did come back,” Trevor replied, so much emotion warring within him that he sounded all but paralyzed inside a monotone prison as he answered, “She’s been murdered.”

“She’s been what?” Jethro shouted angrily, as if someone on his staff had acted independently, indifferent to his edicts. His voice grew in volume as he demanded, “What the hell are you talking about?”

At the same time Mathilda shrieked, “Oh, my God, no!” Her knees apparently buckled and she fell to the floor, sobbing and rocking to and fro.

Cries of horror and disbelief echoed throughout the foyer as the rest of the people who had just come in tried to assimilate the information that one of their own had been killed.

A flood of questions all but bounced off the very walls as well as the people within them.

“Who did it?”

“Why would anyone kill Faye?”

“Are you sure?”

“Dead? Really dead?”

“Oh, God. Are we all in danger?”

Others, severely numbed by the news, said nothing, only listened, waiting either to be convinced or given details. Or, better yet, for someone to tell them they were dreaming.

No one could believe that she was really dead. They had just seen her early this morning, talking and as full of life as ever.

“Why would someone kill her?” Catherine, one of Gabby’s two older sisters, asked, her voice shaky as she asked the question.