Kidnapping in Kendall County (6 page)

“Nowhere near it,” Sawyer answered.

Austin groaned. “What went wrong now?”

“You did. Just heard something that you’re not gonna like. Trevor Yancy sent a boatload of proof about your unauthorized investigation to the deputy director.”

Oh, hell. “I’ll be there ASAP to clear things up.”

“I think it’ll take more than talking to do that,” Sawyer added. “Because the boss wants your badge
now.
”

Chapter Seven

Rosalie stared at the sterile white ceiling of the safe house. Again. She’d been doing a lot of that since Austin and she had arrived about eight hours earlier. Hard to sleep in a strange bed with so many things unsettled both in her mind and with her botched investigation.

Now she had to deal with the danger.

And the fear that she wasn’t any closer to finding Sadie than she had been nearly a year ago when someone had kidnapped her.

It was morning now, the sun creating slivers of light through the blinds, but she didn’t get up. She didn’t have enough energy to force herself to move. Plus, she didn’t hear Austin stirring, something that she would have been able to do in the small two-bedroom house.

The place was literally in the middle of a pasture, miles from town. No traffic, no other sounds, so that earlier she’d had no trouble hearing Austin make multiple calls and pace over the bare hardwood floors.

He was just as troubled as she was.

Maybe more, if that were possible. Because from what she’d heard, he hadn’t managed to keep his badge. Still, he’d brought her to the safe house and had kept her in his unofficial protective custody.

For now, anyway.

He was probably eager to give that particular duty to someone else so he could continue with the investigation and soothe things over with his boss. Losing his badge would cut him to the core.

That got her moving from the bed. She had to make arrangements for her own security and work out how to continue the investigation while still staying safe. She’d gotten so close before those monsters had destroyed the evidence and killed Janice, and she needed to find another way to get close again.

Maybe Vickie Cravens was the key.

Austin had already made a call about the woman. One of many calls he’d made on the drive to the safe house, and since he was no longer officially an FBI agent, he hadn’t been able to request an FBI background check on her.

Still, Sawyer had run one, and he’d gotten Vickie’s phone number and address for Austin, but she hadn’t answered when Austin had tried to contact her. Austin had left her a message to call him, that he could help her. Rosalie had memorized the number and would try to call Vickie herself as soon as she was someplace safe.

If a safe place existed, that is.

Since she didn’t want to go to her family’s ranch and bring the danger there, she had to bite the bullet and call her brother Seth. Yes, he’d likely chew her out again for her undercover attempt, but it was better than the alternative of begging Austin to let her tag along with him.

Not that Austin would let her, anyway.

In his eyes, she was the worst kind of trouble and could interfere with his own investigation.

Heck, he probably even blamed her for losing his badge. After all, if she hadn’t gone to that baby farm and essentially blown his cover, he might have been able to find the evidence to stop this operation in its tracks. She seriously doubted his boss would have fired him if he’d managed to unravel one of the highest-profile cases in the state.

Rosalie used the small adjoining bathroom to wash up, and she changed into jeans and a gray sweater that she found in the closet. Obviously, things left by the FBI since there were a variety of sizes and clothing items, and it made her wonder how many other women had stayed here while trying to outrun danger.

She, on the other hand, wouldn’t try to outrun it if it meant finding Sadie.

Rosalie kept her footsteps light so that she wouldn’t wake up Austin but then really wasn’t surprised to find him already at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and reading something on his laptop.

He looked about as rested as Rosalie felt—which wasn’t very rested at all. His hair was mussed and too long to be regulation length. There probably hadn’t been many opportunities for a haircut while he’d been undercover. Like her, he’d changed his clothes and was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt that hugged his chest in all the right places.

She mentally groaned.

No way should she have noticed something like that. And that was yet another good reason to put some distance between them.

“What’s wrong?” Austin asked.

Obviously, he’d seen something alarming in her expression. Rosalie was glad he wasn’t a mind reader because there was no way she wanted him to know that momentary lapse she’d just had about him.

“Any news?” she asked, helping herself to some coffee while also avoiding his question.

He nodded. “All bad. Want to hear it, anyway?”

Now Rosalie groaned for real, and since she figured she might need to sit for this, she sank down at the table across from him.

“Sonny’s already out of jail,” he started. “And Yancy doesn’t want charges pressed against Sonny. Of course, Gage can still charge him with reckless endangerment, but since Sonny doesn’t have a record, I doubt he’ll get any jail time.”

Rosalie shook her head. “Why wouldn’t Yancy want charges pressed against Sonny? Sonny pulled a gun on him.”

“Who knows? Maybe because he wants Sonny out of there. That way, if something else goes wrong, Yancy can say that Sonny did it.” Austin paused. “And maybe it’d be the truth. Just because he was shot, it doesn’t mean I trust Sonny. In fact, that wound could have been self-inflicted so we would trust him. He could have done it so he could figure out how much we learned about the baby farms.”

Hearing that aloud sent a chill through her, but she’d had the same reaction to Yancy. It sickened her to think a monster like that might have been the one to take Sadie.

“Still no answer from Vickie Cravens,” Austin went on, obviously continuing with that bad news. “Sawyer had a local cop go to her place to do a welfare check, but she wasn’t home. There’s also no sign of the person who tried to follow us last night or the guards who escaped from the second baby farm.”

Maybe because they were all long gone. Both a relief and a scary thought. If they had fled, then they wouldn’t be around to try to kill Austin and her. But if they were gone, so was any info they could have given her about who was behind the operation.

“I guess the CSI didn’t find anything at the two baby farm sites?” she asked.

“Nothing. They’ll keep looking, of course.”

Yes, but she was betting the guards had destroyed anything that could prove helpful. “This isn’t just a cottage industry,” she said, thinking out loud. “The person doing this has money and is well-organized.”

“Maybe well-hidden, too.” Austin cursed, shoved his hand through his hair and stood. Pacing, again. “I figure this is a pyramid operation. One top dog with lots of sites. Each site operates independently of the others, so if one goes down, it doesn’t take the others down with it.”

Rosalie swallowed hard. “Then it might be impossible to find the person who took the babies.”

“Hard, yes. Impossible, no. I’m not giving up on finding my nephew.”

“Even though it cost you your badge?” she asked.

A muscle flickered in his jaw. “I won’t stop, no matter what the cost.” He sat in the chair next to her and stared straight into her eyes. “But you’ll have to. You can’t put yourself in the line of fire like this.”

Rosalie considered just lying. Telling him what he wanted to hear, that she’d go home and wait for someone else to find her baby. But she was tired of waiting. She’d been the good girl too long, listening to various lawmen who had told her to let them do their jobs.

Well, they hadn’t done their jobs.

They hadn’t found Sadie.

“I can’t stop,” she told him. “But it’s not your problem.”

“To hell it’s not. I can’t let you go out there and get yourself killed.”

“It’s not your responsibly to keep me safe.”

The flat look he gave her said differently.

Oh, no. They weren’t about to go there with this conversation.

“You don’t owe me because of Eli,” she insisted.

“That wasn’t what you said at the baby farm,” he reminded her.

“I was desperate, and I blackmailed you, but now I’m letting you off the hook. Besides, you’ve got enough on your plate.” She paused. “How much work will it take you just to get your badge back?”

Austin turned, ready to bolt out of the chair, and she saw the pain this was causing him.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” she added. “Eli always said you were married to the badge.”

“Yeah.” And a moment later, Austin repeated it. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted to be was an FBI agent. But my sister is blood. So is her son. I have to get Nathan back home before Christmas.”

Rosalie nodded, swallowed the lump in her throat because that was her wish, too, for her own baby. “When was Nathan kidnapped?”

“Right after he was born nearly four months ago. My sister had a C-section, and she had some problems with blood loss right afterward. She nearly died, so no one got around to taking pictures of the baby. He was stolen just a few hours later. Someone had tampered with the security cameras and jammed the tracking chip used in the hospital bracelets.”

Oh, God. His story brought her own painful memories to the surface. Not that they were ever far from her mind.

At least she had a photo of Sadie, but her sweet baby had been taken much the same way. A very precise, organized crime since the tracking chip in Sadie’s bracelet had been jammed, as well, by placing several Wi-Fi scramblers throughout the hospital. If that hadn’t been done, the chip in the bracelet would have triggered the security alarm when the kidnapper stepped outside the hospital with her. As it was, it’d taken the kidnapper less than five minutes to get in and out.

It sickened her to think of how many times that same crime had been committed since the start of these baby farms.

“If you don’t know what your nephew looks like, then how will you know if you find him?” Rosalie asked.

Austin seemed to be in such deep thought that it took him a moment to answer her. “According to the nurse who assisted with the delivery, Nathan has a large strawberry-shaped birthmark on his left leg.”

That would help, but only if they got a close look at the baby.

“I’m guessing your sister already put this info out there, in case someone adopted a baby with a birthmark like that?” Rosalie pressed.

“Of course.” He stared at her. “And no one came forward. I think that probably means that the person who adopted him or bought him knew they were doing something illegal.”

Yes. She’d come to the same conclusion. “We don’t even know how many babies are missing. From everything I’ve learned about this operation, they kidnap illegals and homeless girls and force them into surrogacy. They kidnap pregnant women, too, and they steal babies.”

“And they murder the women,” Austin reminded her. His gaze came to hers again. “That’s why you have to back away from this. You can’t be a mother to Sadie if you’re dead.”

Rosalie cursed the blasted tears that watered her eyes. She’d cried an ocean of tears over this, and the crying jags only drained her. They didn’t help. And that’s why she tried to blink them back.

As she did most other times, she failed.

Austin cursed again, clearly not any happier about the tears than she was, and Rosalie figured it was a good time to go back into the bedroom and get control of herself. She didn’t make it far.

Still cursing, Austin reached out, snagged her by the shoulder and hauled her to him. He wasn’t gentle. Not at first, anyway. Rosalie could practically feel the frustration in the corded muscles of his arms. But then his grip around her relaxed.

“I’m sorry this happened to you.” His voice was gentle, too. Almost a whisper. And even though Rosalie figured that being in his arms was a very bad idea, she just didn’t have the strength to push him away.

Austin made a soft shh-ing sound and eased her deeper into his arms. Until she was pressed against him. Even with the tears and her heart shattering, she felt his body. Heard the quick rhythm of his breath.

Felt it, too.

When his chest rose against her breasts.

Just as when she had spotted him at the table with his bedroom hair and eye-catching jeans, the trickle of heat went through her. A bad kind of heat that she didn’t want to feel for him. But did, anyway.

Rosalie pulled in her breath, taking in his scent with it, and she got a feeling of a different sort. Her heart raced, slamming against him.

And he noticed, all right.

Heck, maybe she was giving off some kind of weird vibe because Austin pulled back, his gaze meeting hers. His left eyebrow lifted a fraction. Rosalie figured what he was silently asking—was she actually attracted to him?—but it was a question she had zero intentions of answering.

His grip melted off her, and Rosalie stepped back, but his gaze stayed on her mouth. She was well aware of this because her attention stayed on his eyes.

Bedroom eyes, too.

Oh, mercy.

She was in trouble here.

“You’ve been under a lot of stress,” Austin mumbled, as if that explained everything going on between them right now.

Yes, it was a nightmarish time for her, but Rosalie doubted stress could cause this warmth that she was feeling in just about every part of her body. Still, she nodded, accepting the out he’d just given her. She needed to take that
out
a little further though and get the heck out of there and away from Austin.

“You plan to call Seth now?” Austin asked.

Had he read her mind about that, too?

Of course, maybe it hadn’t taken any mind-reading powers. She didn’t exactly have a lot of options here.

Rosalie nodded and was about to ask if she could use his phone, but it buzzed before she could do that. Since they’d had only bad news all morning, she tried to brace herself for more but prayed for a better outcome.

“It’s Vickie,” Austin said, glancing at the screen, and he hit the button to put the call on speaker.

“Agent Duran?” the woman immediately said, but she didn’t wait for him to answer. “I need to talk to you
now.
Get here to my place as fast as you can. And hurry. They’re coming to kill us.”

Vickie hung up but not before Rosalie heard a sound on the other end of the line that sliced right through her.