“Back up. Don’t shoot.”
“Damn it, Nick. I told you to watch the back of the cabin.”
“Nothing going on back there.” And Nick had far too much at stake to be hanging around outside. “I’ll cover. Let’s search the house.”
With each step, Nick’s alarm rose. His sons weren’t in this house, but they had been. David’s Dallas Cowboys hat that had been signed by the whole team was on the kitchen table. Their two school bags were slung over the arm of a kitchen chair.
And everywhere he looked, the sights made him recoil in horror. Shreds of duct tape that Hawkins must have used to bind his sons. A rope. Boarded windows. A broken lamp. Empty beer cans everywhere. And blood splattered on the front door. His stomach pitched.
“This is were he held them while he did no telling what to them.” His voice broke with his resolve and he buried his head in his shaking hands. “Right here, not a good two hours from the house, and I couldn’t find them.”
Zach put a hand on his shoulder. “Haven’t found them yet. We’re not through, not by a long shot.”
But Jake Hawkins or whoever had his twin sons had fled the area, not in the hunter’s car but likely in some other vehicle he’d stolen. For some reason Nick couldn’t fathom, the man must have given up on getting the ransom. If that were the case, there would be no reason for him to let the boys go free so that they could identify him.
He’d refused to think that the boys could be dead, but now the possibility hardened to cement in his gut. They might have found them in time if he’d let Zach call the shots from the beginning.
But he hadn’t. He’d held out for the ransom attempt. He’d only wanted to protect them, but he might have destroyed them the same way he’d done his mother. He could have saved her if he hadn’t waited until it was too late.
Becky was right to want the divorce. He didn’t measure up. Cheering crowds, raving sports announcers and a huge bank account couldn’t change that.
He walked over and picked up the cap David had been so proud of.
“Don’t touch anything else,” Zach said. “We need to preserve the evidence. There should be enough fingerprints in this room alone to put Jake Hawkins away.”
“Then you’re convinced Jake Hawkins is the kidnapper?”
“I’d stake my claim to my part of the ranch on it.”
That was as sure as a man could get.
“He could be on his way to Mexico now,” Nick conceded. But if he’d killed or even hurt David and Derrick, Nick would find him or spend the rest of his life trying.
“Let’s get out of here, Zach. I need to give Becky the news.”
* * *
THE RAIN WAS FALLING in sheets, and Becky’s clothes were drenched, her skin numb from the wind and falling temperatures. “David! Derrick?”
Why wouldn’t they come? She’d been calling them for hours and, now she was lost in this pitch-dark forest. A low-hanging limb from a tree smacked her in the face when she tried to pass. Blood trickled down her cheek and across her lips. The metallic taste of it burned her tongue.
“David! Derrick? Answer me. I know you’re out there.”
A bird swooped down on her in the darkness, and its talons tangled in her hair. She fought it off, then tripped and fell on her face on the soggy ground.
A giant tarantula crawled across her hand. She screamed and knocked it away.
“Are you looking for us, Mom? We’re right here.”
She jumped to her feet and ran to them. When she reached them they were gone.
* * *
BECKY WOKE UP SHAKING. It took several seconds to realize that she was still in her car on the edge of the woods near Jake Hawkins’s wrecked car. She rubbed her eyes and tried to clear the troubling remains of the nightmare from her mind.
She glanced at her watch. Eleven-fifty. She must have fallen asleep while waiting on the deputy who was supposed to drive her into Huntsville. The few minutes she was supposed to wait for a ride into Huntsville had lasted for two hours.
If anything, there were more cars here now than when she’d drifted off. But the action was no longer centered on Jake Hawkins’s wrecked car. In fact, there was no one around it. The activity was in an area of bright lights shining through the trees off to her left.
She lowered her window. The rain had stopped. The wind had died down, as well. She opened the door, got out and started walking toward the lights and din of voices.
Someone grabbed her by the arm. She turned to find the young deputy she and Nick had talked to earlier.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Ridgely, but you can’t go back there. Crime scene. Secured area. You know how it is.”
“Is there new evidence?”
“Yes, ma’am. One of the deputies had gone to take a—well, you know because there aren’t any bathrooms around.”
“I understand.” She could use some decent facilities herself. “What did he find?”
“Two bodies.”
“Two bodies.” She swayed, and the ground started rising to meet her face.
The deputy steadied her. “It was those hunters who were missing. It was their bodies that were found. I’m sorry. I should have said that first. No excuse, but it’s been a night.”
She still wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “Did you say that someone killed Hermann Grazier?”
“Yes, ma’am. Killed him and his brother-in-law. Shot one of them in the back of the head, the other in the front. Real nasty.”
“Jake Hawkins must have killed them.”
“I’m not at liberty to divulge any information. If I did, it would just be supposition.”
But who else would it be? Surely he hadn’t killed them for a phone. Only someone who’d gone totally mad would commit such an act.
The totally mad person who had her sons. The depths of her soul started to shake. She needed to get out of here.
“Would you tell Deputy Steve Jordon that I’m feeling much better now and that I’m going to drive myself back to Whistler’s Inn in Huntsville? And if either my brother Deputy Zach Collingsworth or my husband Nick Ridgely shows up, you can give them that same information.”
“I’ll do it.”
She’d call Nick when she got back to Huntsville, but not until then. He’d only insist she wait for him to drive her. She was fully capable of doing that herself now that she’d had some sleep and a new shock to steel her mind.
The deputy stayed at her side. “Do you know how to get back to the main road?”
“Probably not. Can you point me in the right direction?”
“Do you have a compass in your car?”
“There’s one with the GPS system.”
“Then keep turning to the west. I think it’s about four turns before you reach Highway 190. That will take you right into Huntsville.”
“Thanks.” She hurried back to her car. Two people were dead. Nothing about this could be good. She turned the key in the ignition. “O, Holy Night” was playing on the radio. The clock said ten past midnight.
It was Christmas Eve.
* * *
THE FIRST THING Nick noticed when he and Zach returned to the spot where he’d left Becky was the action taking place in the nearby woods. The second was that Becky’s car was missing. “I thought Steve Jordon was going to drive Becky back to the hotel in his squad car and leave her car for me.”
“He was, but he may still be here. Judging from the lights and the crowd and that new strip of bright orange tape going up in the trees, I’d say they’ve uncovered some new evidence.”
Which meant that Becky had probably given up on her ride and driven back alone. He pulled out his cell phone and was punching in her number when a young deputy stuck his head in the window Zach had just lowered.
“Mrs. Ridgely left about ten minutes ago, maybe less. She said to be sure and tell you that she got some sleep first and that she was wide awake. Said she was driving into Huntsville.”
“Thanks,” Nick said. “Did she seem all right?”
“Seemed as coherent as any of us, not that that’s saying much.”
Zach turned toward the site of the lights and action. “What’s going on in the woods?”
“We found those two hunters who went missing—Hermann Grazier and Bruce Cotton. Well, to be more specific, we found their bodies.”
They listened to the gory details. Zach interrupted with questions several times. Nick’s mind had jumped ahead to terrifying conclusions. Number one was that Jake Hawkins was capable of murder.
“Never seen a man more eager to get back to prison.” Zach stepped out of the car and tossed Nick his keys. “Why don’t you take my truck and go join Becky? I have a feeling she needs your company and that you need hers.”
Nick nodded. “What about you? You need some sleep.”
“I’ll get some, but I want to take a look at exactly what they found. Steve or one of the other deputies will give me a lift into town when we’re done. I’ll get my keys from you over breakfast in the morning.”
“That’ll work.”
Nick drove away from the scene, glad the rain was over, and thinking of his sons.
Memories of the night the boys were born sprang to life as if it had been yesterday. He’d been overcome with emotion the first time he’d held them in his arms—David in the right one, Derrick in the left.
He was certain his life had changed forever at that point. He was a father, a husband, a second-year player in the NFL. Finally he’d be able to bury the past and lose the insecurities and guilt that drove him.
He’d been wrong, of course. If anything the secret life of Nick Ridgely pushed him even harder to prove himself after he’d become a father.
Now he might lose his career and his marriage. And if that weren’t terror enough, his sons were with a sociopath who’d already killed today. And that was the best scenario.
He beat a fist against the steering wheel as he pulled onto the rain-slick road. His day of reckoning had come.
* * *
HOURS OF POURING RAIN had left the old rock and dirt roadbed formidable and the shoulders a slimy sledge. Becky crept along, afraid to drive faster than a crawl. She’d made one turn. Now her eyes were peeled for the next crossroad.
She hadn’t realized earlier how narrow the roads were or how isolated they felt. Nick had been driving then, and she’d been consumed with the prospect of seeing Jake Hawkins’s car and determining for certain if the shoes inside belonged to her sons. That seemed days ago.
So did Nick’s shocking confession of a past she’d never even suspected. Even now, she struggled to fuse the Nick she knew with that frightened little boy who’d been forced to deal with issues far beyond his years.
The Nick she knew was driven, cocky, sexy. She’d fallen so hard for him when they met that she’d have married him that very night. Nick had been the sane one, insisting that they take it slow.
Not that they had in the lovemaking department. They’d been dynamite together—until football season started the following fall.
Even then he’d been driven to be the best player on the team. She’d accepted his ambition without question, considered it a good thing. She’d been far too in love with the star of the Longhorns to ever find fault with him.
But never once in all the years they’d been together had she seen the haunting pain in his eyes that had been there today when he’d told her about his mother’s death. Had he hidden his vulnerability that well all those years or had she just been too blind to see what was in his soul?
She’d been quick to blame Nick for their lack of emotional attachment, but now it seemed that she’d been as guilty as he was of not seeing beyond the superficial. She’d never bothered to look beyond the facade of the man he appeared to be to see the person deep inside.
Now it all came down to the fact that neither of them had ever really known the other.
He wanted to change. Maybe she needed to do some soul searching and some changing, as well…when this was over. When their sons were safe.
Her car went into a skid as she rounded a sharp curve that sent her straining against her seat belt and the beams from her headlights jutting across a patch of dark woods. She tensed but managed to keep the vehicle from leaving the road.
Going even more slowly now, she caught a glimpse of movement on the edge of the illumination from her headlights. Her heart slammed against her chest as the earlier nightmare flashed across her consciousness.
She braked slowly and stared into the pitch blackness of the moonless night. She was overreacting. The movement had most likely been a deer or several of them. She’d hit a huge buck once driving back to the ranch after a function in Houston.
A heavy fog had drastically reduced visibility, and by the time she’d spotted the animal, it had been too late to stop. Just as she reached it, it had darted across the road. Her car had been totaled. Luckily she and her mother, who was dozing in the passenger seat, only suffered a few bruises.
Becky lowered the window. The night seemed eerily silent at first, and then she became aware of the cacophony of sounds made by the wind in the trees and myriad nocturnal creatures that flew through the branches and scurried through the grass.
Her finger was on the button to raise the window when she saw movement again. Not a deer but a person. She was almost sure of it—unless her mind was playing cruel tricks on her. After the past few days, that was entirely possible.
She got out of the car, rounded the back of it and stepped from the road into slush. “David! Derrick!”
The feeling of déjà vu was incredibly strong and frighteningly ghostly. It was the earlier nightmare all over again, only she was fully awake. She shivered as she took a few steps toward the thick growth of trees just feet from the road.
“David. Derrick. It’s Mom.”
A gust of wind slapped her in the face and jolted her from the harrowing state of hypnotic absurdity she’d fallen into. The constant stress was driving her over the edge. Her sons were with a kidnapper, not wandering the forest like spooked fawns.
She turned to walk back to the car, then stopped. Someone was here. She could hear whistling.