Colorado Abduction

Polly pinched his cheek. Actually pinched Burke’s cheek! Carolyn couldn’t believe that Special Agent I’m-In-Charge would stand for such familiarity. Then she remembered his kiss on her forehead. Underneath the tough exterior, he was kind of a marshmallow.

“I’ll be back in time to throw together some breakfast.” Polly turned to Carolyn. “The guest bedrooms are made up with fresh sheets and towels. Call me if you need anything else tonight. G’night, y’all.”

She headed out of the kitchen toward the front door.

“Nice woman,” Burke said. “Must have been good for you to have Polly around while you were growing up. She’s real motherly.”

“I have a mother,” Carolyn said quickly. “Her name is Andrea. She and my father divorced when I was seven.”

“Does she live around here?”

Thinking of her stylish mother choosing to stay in rural Colorado amused Carolyn. “Not hardly. She runs an art gallery in Manhattan where she lives with her second husband and my twelve-year-old half sister.”

“Big change in lifestyle.”

“Yeah, she traded in her cowgirl boots for designer stilettos.”

Carolyn regretted that she hadn’t spent more time with her mom when she was growing up. Andrea had wanted to take her and Dylan with her when she left, but they both chose the ranch. It was their home, their heritage. “I should call Mom and tell her what’s going on.”

“Tomorrow is soon enough,” Burke said.

He was probably right. There was nothing her mother could do from New York, and Carolyn had more pressing concerns for tonight. “I need to get on the phone with my financial officers. And my bankers. I’ve got to start putting together the money for the kidnappers. Maybe I should—”

“Later,” Burke said. “First, I want to know more about Sam Logan.”

“Like what?” The sugar rush from Polly’s raisin rolls had energized her. The inside of her head churned with dozens of things she needed to handle ASAP. “There’s not much to tell.”

“When you broke up with him were there hard feelings?”

“Some,” she admitted. “It was a long time ago, right after grad school. I’d come back to the ranch and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my pretty new MBA.”

For lack of any other plan, she’d started dating Logan, who was a great guy to party with—handsome, charming and sexy. When their relationship started to get serious, she was uncomfortable. Her father, who had been ailing, sided with Logan, telling Carolyn it was high time she settled down.

But she’d just returned from school in New York where she had a chance to watch her career-focused mother. The corporate lifestyle appealed to Carolyn, and she figured she had the rest of her life to make babies. Now, almost ten years later, she wondered if she’d waited too long.

“Logan wasn’t the right guy for me.” She exhaled a sigh. “And I wasn’t the barefoot-and-pregnant type of woman he was looking for.”

“Do you think he holds a grudge?”

Taken aback, she grasped what he was suggesting. “If you think Logan kidnapped Nicole to get back at me, you’re wrong. His ego is too big to realize that I was dumping him as much as he was dumping me.”

“He could be nursing bad feelings toward you.”

True, her former boyfriend had a petty streak. “He wouldn’t sabotage the ranch. Our cattle-raising process is natural and organic. We’re not his enemy.”

“Are you sure about that?” Burke raised an eyebrow. “Carlisle Ranch is an international corporation. Big business. That’s what he hates.”

Burke’s logic made a certain amount of sense. The success of her family’s business might be a slap in the face to a loser like Sam Logan.

IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT when Burke and his men completed their interrogations of the employees of Carlisle Ranch. Once these cowboys got talking, they were as gossipy as a bunch of hens with ruffled feathers.

Burke still didn’t have much to go on. Only a basic assumption: the kidnapping had been unpremeditated and was related to the recent vandalism at the ranch.

On a wide-screen computer in the dining room, Agent Corelli had pinpointed those acts of sabotage on a map of the area. Most of them bunched along the border between the Carlisles and a neighboring ranch.

Corelli, whose black suit still looked crisp, pointed to the red dots. “That pattern can’t be a coincidence. Who lives on that ranch?”

“A young widow and her four-year-old child.” Not likely suspects for a brutal kidnapping. “It’s not a working ranch. Less than a hundred acres.”

“Who’s next to her?”

“National Forest,” Burke said. “There are a couple of oil rigs in that area but nobody lives there.”

Logan’s compound was across the road and further to the east. Burke considered the survivalists his most likely suspects. They were the only ranch who had refused to talk to Dylan’s posse when they had made their search.

Burke needed to get inside the SOF compound. His gut told him Logan had something to hide.

He stepped away from the table and stretched, trying to ease the tension that knotted the muscles in his neck and shoulders. “We need continuous monitoring tonight. In case the kidnappers call again,” he said. “We’ll sleep in shifts. You three go first. Silverman, I’ll see you at three-thirty to relieve me.”

Stretching again, he watched his men troop out of the command central/dining room. Upstairs, Polly had prepared two guest rooms for them with two beds in each. Twin-sized beds were always too short for Burke, but it would have felt good to lie flat, even with his feet dangling off the end of the bed.

In the living room that adjoined the dining room, he’d spotted a big, beige, corduroy easy chair with a matching ottoman. He hauled the chair around to face the battery of equipment on the table and settled in.

The house was quiet but not peaceful. The anxiety of waiting—not knowing what had happened to a loved one—permeated the old walls. The creaking of floorboards reminded him of the crackle of a long fuse, burning slowly toward an explosion. More trouble was coming; he could feel it.

Years ago, when he had started in law enforcement as a street cop in Chicago, he’d learned to trust his gut feelings. Subsequent training with the FBI gave him the tools to analyze.

Eyes half-closed, he did a risk assessment. Two violent crimes—arson and kidnapping—had occurred within two days. If he assumed that the same perpetrators were responsible for both, it was unlikely there would be another attack tonight. Typically, there was a lull after kidnappers made their ransom demands.

He heard a rustling from the hallway and turned his head with his eyelids still drooping. Carolyn entered the dining room, cell phone in hand. When she saw him, she stared for a moment as if deciding whether to wake him. Wispy strands of black hair had come undone from her ponytail. Though she fidgeted, she still looked capable. And damned attractive.

Her hidden vulnerability appealed to him. Behind her facade, he caught glimpses of a touching innocence that made him want to gather her into his arms and promise her the world. Which still didn’t excuse him for kissing her forehead. He wasn’t usually so unprofessional, but he didn’t regret that kiss. Her skin tasted spicy—warm and soft.

“What do you need?” he asked.

She started. “I thought you were asleep.”

“Just resting.”

“I have a question.”

“Shoot.”

She placed her cell phone down on the table and approached him. “What if I can’t put together the ransom by the deadline?”

He’d prefer that she not pay ransom at all. “Problems?”

“We don’t have a million dollars in liquid assets, so the ransom requires a loan against our collateral, which, in turn, requires a ton of paperwork. Also, my financial adviser tells me that the local banks, even in Delta, can’t pull that much cash from their reserves. We’ll have to use a Denver bank and fly the money over here.”