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Chase knelt, too. So they were face-to-face. And even though he tossed some glares at her, he continued to keep watch around them.
Always the lawman.
A good lawman, too. For all the good it’d done. It hadn’t been good enough to help Deanne or their daughter today.
“Why didn’t you have someone call me and tell me you’d had the baby?” he snapped.
Yet another long story, and she was already dealing with too much to bring those memories this close to the surface. “Bailey...that’s what I named her...was a preemie, and at first she had trouble breathing on her own. She had to spend most of the time since her birth in a neonatal unit. It was touch-and-go there for a while, but she’s fine now.”
At least April prayed she was.
And the possibility that she wasn’t fine brought on the tears again. Sweet heaven, she was so tired of crying. So tired of being terrified. So tired of not having her precious baby in her arms.
“That doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me.” Chase’s tone didn’t soften despite the tears, but he finally cursed and slid his hand over her back. For a very brief moment. Probably in an attempt to comfort her.
Too bad it didn’t work.
April figured she could use some serious comforting right now, but comfort wasn’t going to help her find the baby.
“I didn’t tell you at first because I didn’t want to risk anyone following you to the hospital,” she said. “Because I delivered so early, we didn’t have nearly enough security in place for you to come running to me.”
It was the truth. But it wouldn’t be a truth that Chase wanted to hear. Soon, he’d press her for a better explanation.
But that had to wait.
“The gunman and I left our cars by the Appaloosa Creek Bridge,” April told him. So that’s the direction she headed. “Maybe there’s something inside his car that’ll help me find Bailey.”
“Not me. Us. You’re not looking for Bailey alone.”
He hesitated when saying their daughter’s name, the way someone would hesitate when pronouncing a foreign word. Maybe because he was just getting accustomed to the idea of fatherhood.
An idea that he’d struggled with for months.
Now, here it was, slugging him in the face. Crushing him, too. Because it was certainly crushing her.
“Maybe the baby is in the kidnapper’s car?” Chase suggested.
“No. Believe me, I checked. I even looked in the trunk when he opened it to take out an extra gun and some ammo.” There’d been absolutely no sign of the baby.
Chase walked in step beside her. “What about Deanne—was she faking being afraid so she could lure me here? Or was the gunman actually threatening to kill her then?
“Deanne’s fear was real. And warranted. The thug said the only way I could get Bailey back was for you to come, and that if I didn’t agree, he’d kill Deanne. I thought we’d be able to overpower him or something. I also didn’t think he’d want you dead. Not right off the bat like that anyway.”
She’d been wrong about a lot of things. Definitely a stupid plan.
“The thug made me put on these clothes,” she said, motioning at the all-black garb. “Deanne, too. I’m not sure why exactly, but I think he wanted to make you believe you were surrounded by hired guns.”
And the thug knew that Deanne and April couldn’t just shoot him. Because he was the only one who knew the baby’s location.
Still glaring, Chase cursed. Not general profanity, either. Like the glare, it was aimed specifically at her. But this time, the glare didn’t last as long as the others. That’s because Chase stopped and, without warning, latched on to her and hauled her behind a tree.
Had he heard something? Because she certainly hadn’t. Of course, with her heartbeat thumping in her ears, it was hard to hear much of anything.
The moments crawled by, but Chase still didn’t budge. “Why did that goon want to find Quentin?” he whispered. Obviously, he intended to use this waiting time to fill in some of the blanks. But in this case, she had just as many blanks as Chase did.
April had to shake her head. “My guess is Tony Crossman wants to settle up things with Quentin and me.”
Which wasn’t much of a guess at all because Quentin and she were responsible for putting the king of thugs, Tony Crossman, behind bars. Their testimony, along with the testimony of Crossman’s CPA, had put the CPA, Quentin and April into WITSEC, too.
However, even behind bars Crossman still had plenty of money and resources, and he’d apparently used both to come after her and take the baby. There was only one thing that could have gotten her to cooperate with one of Crossman’s thugs.
And that was Bailey.
“I haven’t seen my brother the entire six months I’ve been in WITSEC,” she added when Chase got them moving again.
Something Chase probably already knew because that’d been the plan all along. It would make it hard for Crossman’s henchmen to find Quentin and her if they were in different places leading separate lives.
Chase mumbled more profanity. “Someone probably hacked into WITSEC files to find Bailey and you. We thought we had a breach not long ago, but it turned out to be a false alarm.”
April had heard about that possible breach, and it’d involved yet someone else connected to Crossman. A criminal named Marcos Culver, who’d been running one of Crossman’s side businesses of money laundering. But that man had never been a threat to her. And besides, Culver was dead now.
“I need to find out who could have hacked into WITSEC,” Chase continued, “and try to link that person back to Crossman. Or anyone else who might be involved.”
Even though he didn’t spell it out, April knew what he meant. Chase believed her brother could be involved in this.
And maybe Quentin was.
After all, April would have paid a huge ransom to get Bailey back. Chase would have as well once he’d learned what had happened, and the one thing her brother probably needed right now was cash since he’d blown through his trust fund that their grandparents had set up for both of them. Still, something like this seemed extreme even for Quentin.
“Stop,” Chase said, and without warning he yanked her behind another tree.
Again, April hadn’t heard anything, but clearly he had because Chase lifted his head, listening. Finally, she heard the footsteps. Someone was coming up on them fast.
“Your brothers?” she whispered.
Chase shook his head.
April leaned out just a little and spotted the man skulking his way toward them. Definitely not a Crockett lawman. This guy was dressed all in black and was wearing a ski mask.
Another hired gun.
She instantly felt fear, and hope. This man could try to kill them, but he also might know something about Bailey.
Chase handed her his phone. “Text Jericho and give him the guy’s position,” he whispered. “Also tell Jericho we need him alive.”
April couldn’t do that fast enough. She certainly didn’t want the sheriff eliminating this hired gun before they got a chance to talk to him.
Jericho didn’t respond to the text, but April soon realized why. She saw him, and he wasn’t that far behind the guy in the ski mask.
Her heart went to her knees.
April nearly shouted out for Jericho not to shoot the man, something that would have almost certainly put Jericho in danger because it would have alerted the gunman. But Chase glanced down at her, shook his head.
“If Jericho had wanted this guy dead, he already would be,” Chase mouthed.
It took her a moment to fight through the panic going on in her head, and April realized he was right. The man obviously didn’t know that Jericho was tracking him, and she was well aware that the sheriff had a deadly aim.
Chase eased her even farther behind the tree so that her face and body were pressed right against the rough bark. Chase pressed, too. His chest against her back. Touching her. Of course, he hadn’t meant for this to be an intimate situation, but it always seemed to be just that when she was within a hundred feet of Chase.
Her mind tried to shut out the memories. But her body remembered every second she’d spent in Chase’s arms.
In his bed, too.
She could no longer see the gunman or Jericho, but April could still hear the footsteps. The guy wasn’t moving that fast, but he was definitely headed right for them.
Did he know Chase and she were there?
Or like them was he simply trying to make his way to the car?
April hadn’t seen a second gunman in the car that’d been left by the bridge, but it was possible he came in another vehicle. Not exactly a comforting thought.
Because Chase was pressed against her, April felt his muscles tense even more than they already were. He was getting ready for something.
But what exactly?
She soon got an answer to that, too. Chase lunged out from cover, tackling the gunman, and he slammed the guy to the ground.
The gunman cursed, and he tried to bring up his weapon, no doubt to shoot Chase. But Chase didn’t give him a chance to do that. He knocked the gun from the thug’s hand.
That wasn’t the end of the fight, though.
The guy punched Chase. Hard enough to have knocked the breath out of him, but Chase managed to deliver a punch of his own.
And just like that, the guy stopped fighting.
It took her a couple of seconds to spot Jericho. He was moving in and had a Glock aimed right at the gunman’s head. April prayed the man wouldn’t give Jericho a reason to pull the trigger.
“Where’s the baby?” Chase demanded, pointing his gun at the man, too.
Jericho didn’t make a sound, but April knew he had to be confused about his brother’s question. Then, Jericho’s gaze dropped to her stomach for a split second, and that seemed to tell him all he needed to know. The baby had been born.
And had been taken.
Later, Jericho would have as many questions as Chase and the rest of the Crocketts would. For now, though, this ski-masked man might tell her what she needed to know.
“Where is she?” April repeated.
He didn’t answer. Chase yanked off the guy’s mask, and like their other attacker, he wasn’t someone she recognized.
Chase got right in his face with the gun. “I won’t kill you, but I’ll make you wish you were dead if you don’t tell me where the baby is.”
When the man still stayed silent, Chase bashed his gun against the side of the guy’s head. “Tell me!” Chase demanded.
The man didn’t open his mouth, not until Chase drew back the gun again to hit him. “I don’t know where she is. Somewhere with the nanny.”
So her baby wasn’t alone in these woods. That was something at least. Well, it was if this snake was telling the truth.
“A nanny you hired?” Chase asked her.
“No.” Which meant it was someone working for the same person as these hired thugs.
“And where’s the nanny?” April pressed, moving even closer to the gunman.
“Don’t know. I don’t!” he shouted when Chase made a move to hit him again. “She was in a separate car with the kid. A black four-door, and she was supposed to follow us here.”
Chase glanced at his brother. That was all it took, just a glance. “I’ll tell Jax to look for the car,” Jericho volunteered.
With that search started, Chase turned back to the man. “Who’s us? Who else is here?”
The man tipped his head to the dead guy. “Just Hank and me.”
April wished she had a lie detector to know if he was telling the truth about there being no other gunmen, but even if he wasn’t, that wouldn’t stop her. “I’m going to look for the nanny’s car,” she said to no one in particular.
But Chase clearly thought she’d been talking to him because he stopped her. “Hold on a second and I’ll go with you.”
Chase turned his attention back to the man and he put his gun in the guy’s face. “One more question, and trust me, a wrong answer will cause you a lot of pain. Who hired you to do this?”
The guy’s eyes widened, filling with fear. “I don’t know. I swear, that’s the truth. I just had orders to find anything that would lead to Quentin Landis. And to get that info by any means necessary. That includes killing you.”
“Tony Crossman hired him,” Jericho spat out. “Unless somebody else is gunning for you and your idiot brother.” He slid a glare at April.
“I can’t speak for Quentin, but I think only Crossman and you hate me,” she settled for saying.
However, she wasn’t sure at all that it was the truth.
Chase glanced at her, too, but his attention quickly shifted back to the gunman on the ground. He stared at him, his gun still poised to do some damage, but after several long moments, Chase stepped back.
“Arrest him,” Chase said to his brother. “Maybe he’ll remember some things in interrogation.”
Jericho didn’t waste any time hauling the man to his feet, and he took out some plastic cuffs from his pocket to restrain him.
“Go ahead,” Jericho said as he checked the guy for other weapons. “Look for the nanny. I’ll take care of this piece of dirt and get someone out here for the woman’s body and the dead guy.”
The word body gave April another slam of grief. And guilt. But there wasn’t anything she could do for Deanne right now. Though she could do something to find her baby.
April turned and started in the direction of the Appaloosa Creek Bridge. She’d made it only a few steps when Chase’s phone rang. He caught up with her, glancing down at the phone screen before he answered it.
“It’s Jax,” Chase relayed to her, and he put the call on speaker while they kept running.
