“I said no!” he rapped out sharply, and the one who had been reaching for the door handle again yanked her hand back. She screwed up her face and let out a wail.
“Hey, you got no call to carry on like that,” Bunny said. “I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, but you can’t play with the door handle. I got no intention of letting you fall out of here.”
This only made her scream louder. The other one, the one with the pacifier in her mouth, spit it out and started yelling in accompaniment.
Bunny picked up the pacifier and shoved it into the mouth of the one beside the door. She only spit it out again, and he swore under his breath. He grabbed the bottle that one of them had brought along, saw that it still had some juice in it and tried to give it to the one that was crying hardest. She didn’t want it, batted it away.
It wasn’t all that far to Tinsley, the biggest town hereabouts, but he had an idea it was going to seem like a long, long ride.
“WHY?” SAID GARTH, pacing the length of the porch. “Why did he take them?”
“Because his mother won’t give him money unless she can see her grandchild,” Lacey said. She pressed her hands to her damp cheeks and tried to think past the pain in her head.
“Grandchild? He took both.”
Lacey dropped her hands into her lap and bluntly returned his stare. She didn’t think she needed to state the obvious: that both girls were Delilah’s grandchildren.
“I guess I can’t believe he took Ashley, too,” Garth amended.
“Well, he did.” Lacey couldn’t even imagine the shock and surprise Bunny must have felt when he saw two babies looking as alike as two peas in a pod.
“We’d better call the sheriff.” This from Cody.
“No, no, don’t do that. Bunny won’t hurt those babies,” Lacey countered distractedly.
“How do you know?” asked Kim.
She shrugged, at a loss to explain Bunny. “He’s not the average slimeball,” was the best she could think of to say in reassurance, but she could tell by the unsettled looks on the others’ faces that it wasn’t enough.
“What else but a slimeball would you call a man who kidnaps children?” Garth glared at her.
“If anybody’s an authority on Buncombe E. Shaw, it’s me. He doesn’t think of it as kidnapping. He only wants his mom to see them so she’ll give him some money.” Bunny’s annoying phone call of a few weeks back was still fresh in her mind.
“I never dreamed the babies wouldn’t be safe on your own back porch,” Kim said, a fresh supply of tears coursing down her face.
“I didn’t, either,” Cody said. “Lacey lets them play in their playpen out here.”
“I always had the baby monitor. I always could hear them,” Lacey said.
Garth turned to Cody and Kim. “Did you hear anything? Anything at all?” he asked.
Kim and Cody exchanged a guilty glance. “The baby monitor is upstairs. We were in the den, and we got to talking, and we didn’t think to keep it close by,” Kim said.
“The dogs barked a few times, but I figured they’d spotted a rabbit or something,” added Cody.
“How could you pay attention to the babies if you and Kim were fighting?” Garth snarled angrily.
“It was a disagreement, that’s all.” Cody looked crestfallen.
“We were only discussing what we’re going to do,” Kim offered. She sniffled into a hanky.
“I could hear both of you before I even came up the porch steps. I leave my child in your care, and she’s not even as important to you as moving to Wichita Falls.” Garth’s accusations punched the air like a karate chop.
Cody’s eyes sparked fire. “Wait a minute, don’t talk to Kim like that. You’d better—”
Kim started sobbing out loud, and Lacey stood up, unable to stand this family wrangle for one more minute. Plus it wasn’t helping one bit. She’d better pull herself together and give them some direction.
She walked deliberately between Garth and Cody and forced her brain to function. “I have to make a phone call,” she announced.
Three pairs of eyes focused on her.
“Who to?” Cody asked.
Lacey made herself focus, made her voice take on an authoritative edge. “I’m going to call Bunny’s mom. To let her know he’s on the way and to tell her we’re coming to get the babies back.” Bunny would abandon the babies at his mother’s as soon as Delilah gave him money. She was sure of that.
They all followed Lacey into the house. She went into the den and picked up the phone. “You can all listen if you want,” she said.
After punching out Delilah’s phone number from memory, she waited impatiently as it rang. She was already piecing together what she would say to Bunny’s mother, something along the lines of, “Your son is an idiot, but would you please have him call me as soon as he gets there with the babies?”
But the phone rang and rang, and then an answering machine picked up.
“This is Delilah, and I can’t take your call right now. I’ll call you as soon as I get back from the cruise if you’ll leave your name and number. Bye.” Her former mother-in-law sounded deceptively sweet.
“She’s not there,” Lacey said as she hung up. “She’s gone on a cruise.”
“A cruise!” chorused the others.
“No telling for how long.”
“Will he take them to her place, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Let me think.” Think, Lacey, think! she told herself. She went to the window and looked out. Past the barn, she saw the end of the Winnebago. If Bunny had seen that, he probably would have taken it. Which only served to remind her that Bunny wasn’t big on forethought. He probably hadn’t planned to take the babies the way he did. He no doubt had shown up with some thought of cajoling Lacey into taking Michele to see his mother. Or something like that. Who knew, with Bunny?
“If you thought you saw his truck, let’s chase after him,” said Garth.
“It’s been at least half an hour since I thought I saw him. He’s got a big lead on us.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Garth replied. “Where does his mother live?”
“Over near Kettersburg.”
“That’s a good two hours away, but I know some shortcuts. Lacey, let’s go. Cody, you stay by the phone. We might need you later.” Garth started for the door.
Kim had dried her tears. “I’ll stay, too.” Lacey was heartened to see that Cody went to her and slid a supportive arm around her waist.
Lacey thought she heard Kim call “Good luck!” as the car drove away from the house, and she suspected that she and Garth were going to need it.
AS BUNNY’S TRUCK left the Wal-Mart, both kids were hunkered down in their new car seats. One of them, the one wearing the pink playsuit, had stuck her thumb in her mouth and seemed to be nodding off, and the other one, who was wearing a yellow outfit, was cooing and playing with an old piece of harness hardware that Bunny had forked over on the off chance that it would keep her from crying again.
“Looks like your sister has conked out,” he said conversationally, and the kid stared at him blankly. He wondered if she understood anything he said.
“We’ll zip over to my mom’s, and you’ll be happy there. She likes babies. She’s been wanting to see you.”
Well, that wasn’t strictly true, since he wasn’t sure he was talking to Michele.
“Is your name Michele?” he asked.
She just looked at him.
“And what’s the other one’s name?”
She looked at him some more. She was drooling. He didn’t think drooling was particularly attractive in a baby or anyone else for that matter.
“Okay, from now on, you’re Michele One. Your sister is Michele Two.” At least they had on different-colored playsuits so he could tell them apart.
Michele One just kept looking at him until he returned his attention to driving. Too bad this old bucket wouldn’t go any faster. Bunny was already getting tired of this little caper.
GARTH DROVE at breakneck speed while Lacey hunkered down in her seat and blinked back tears. She wished Garth would talk to her. She wished she could think of something to say that would make everything better.
But nothing would make this better.
They screeched to a stop at a crossroads, and Garth hooked a lurching right turn. “Taking this route should cut about fifteen minutes off our time.”
“Bunny knows all the roads,” she said despairingly. “He may have gone this way, too.”
“Why would his mother give him money if he shows up with the twins?”
Lacey ran through the whole story about Delilah’s insurance settlement and how she’d always been generous with the money so Bunny could avoid getting a real job.
“He’s her only child, and she dotes on him. Delilah was thrilled when I was pregnant. She said she’d wanted lots of kids but could only have one, so she was going to spoil my babies rotten. Then she was usually busy when we wanted to go see her.” Lacey managed a rueful little laugh.
Up ahead was a blue vehicle of some kind, and Lacey strained forward against her seat belt to study it more carefully. She made out that it was a truck. It was almost dark now, but she thought the truck might be Bunny’s. “You know, that’s a pickup truck up there. It could be—”
“Bunny?” Garth said, gunning the engine like a speed demon.
Lacey held on to the edge of her seat for dear life as the car accelerated. “Maybe,” she agreed.
The poor little sedan wasn’t made for the speed that Garth demanded of it. They rocketed past fence posts, past road signs and past one startled Irish setter pulling his owner along at the other end of his leash. The woman’s hat flew off in the gust of wind stirred up by the car.
As the distance decreased between their car and the truck ahead, Lacey took advantage of the opportunity to study Garth’s profile. He looked tired. Well, so was she. They had been through a lot today.
As they drew closer, Lacey craned her neck to see who was in the truck. She couldn’t tell from this distance, but it appeared to be a man.
“I’ll see if I can get him to pull over,” Garth said, and he flashed his headlights in the guy’s rearview mirror. If the other driver noticed, he didn’t let on. He kept his speed steady.
“All right, that does it. I’m going to pull even with him.”
They were on a narrow two-lane highway with an irrigation ditch on either side. “Be careful,” Lacey cautioned.
Garth didn’t answer. Instead he pulled out into the other lane and began to close the gap with the truck.
Lacey was prepared to roll down her window and lash Bunny with a piece of her mind. She had no idea what Garth might do if it actually was Bunny. She had no idea, for that matter, what Bunny would do if he looked over and saw them.
They came abreast of the truck, and the driver, startled, whipped his head around and blinked. “Is that him? Is that the—”
But it wasn’t Bunny. It was a white-haired senior citizen who, when he saw he was being scrutinized carefully by the two people in the Honda, lifted his hand and offered a neighborly wave.
“That’s not him,” Lacey said, her spirits taking a nosedive.
Garth passed the blue truck and pulled back into the proper lane. “Well, I was hoping,” was all he said.
“Yeah, me, too,” Lacey said, perilously near tears again. For the first time she wondered if she was wrong about Bunny. What if this really was a kidnapping? He would have known that Delilah had gone on a cruise, wouldn’t he? Well, maybe not. Bunny moved around a lot, and he’d been known to go for a month or more without calling his mother, much to Delilah’s displeasure.
“At least the air has cooled off,” Garth said after a glance over at her. “At least it’s not so hot.”
Lacey ran a hand up under her hair and held it off her neck for a minute. “Seems like this would be a good time to roll down the window for a while,” she said. “I believe I’d feel better if I had some fresh air to breathe.”
“Go ahead,” Garth said, and so she did. The air was warm on her face and gritty.
Garth switched on the radio. She darted a quick glance at him, noticing how his big hands gripped the steering wheel, wondering how a mere glance could engender a prickling excitement in her, and at such a time, too.
“Anything wrong?” he asked.
She looked away from him out the window, hoping the blush moving up her cheeks wouldn’t give her away. “No, nothing,” she said. But was that strictly true? In a rush of emotion, she found herself being grateful for Garth’s steadfast courtesy and his lack of rancor; he could have turned right mean those few short weeks ago after he found out about Ashley.
She thought about that. It wasn’t that she hadn’t considered all the angles before, but right now there wasn’t any baby crying or demanding to be fed or clothes to be picked up off the floor and washed. Now the two of them, she and Garth, were alone, speeding along a deserted highway in the dark with stars peeping out overhead. A moon was rising on the horizon, a large full one.
They would find the babies. They would get them back. Anything else was unthinkable. But what then?
A lump settled in her throat. She couldn’t give up what she had so recently found—Ashley. Garth couldn’t give up what he had wanted for so long—which was also Ashley.
She turned her face toward Garth, unheedful of the tears that trickled down her cheek.
“Garth,” she whispered. “What in the world are we going to do?”
His expression changed, illuminated by the green lights of the dash. “We’re going to get those girls back from Bunny, don’t you worry about that.” He reached over and placed his hand on hers.
He had misunderstood.
“There’s no doubt that we’ll get them back. Bunny won’t want to keep them, and even if Delilah arrived home tomorrow or even tonight, she isn’t mean enough to keep my girls away from me. What I meant was, what happens when we find them? I mean, I can’t just take Ashley away from you.”
He jerked his hand away and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I’ll still need a nanny. You can stay on.”
She blotted her tears. “I’m Ashley’s mother, Garth. I can’t go on being only a nanny to her. She’s my baby.”
He was silent. After a time he heaved a sigh. “I’ve heard her call you Mama.”
“Well, calling me that is one thing. Knowing that I’m the woman who gave birth to her is quite another. Don’t think I don’t know that people in Mosquito are talking over this situation thoroughly. At church this morning I got all these curious glances from people I don’t even know, and after the service those women were all over me like a duck on a June bug.”
“Don’t forget that it’s a town where a mule was appointed mayor. That kind of tells you what kind of people live there, don’t you think?”
“I like the people in Mosquito. They’ve been real nice to me.”
“Be that as it may, you don’t have to let them get to you.”
“I hate gossip,” she said, moving toward her own corner.
“So do I.” He was silent for a long time, and Lacey started feeling even more depressed. He wouldn’t admit that changes were going to have to be made. He didn’t want to talk about giving Ashley up. He was acting as if everything could go on the way it was.
But it couldn’t.
She felt herself falling into what her mother used to call a blue funk.
“Hey, do we have any of those cheese crackers left?” Garth asked after a while.
She handed him a packet. “Want me to open it for you?”
“That would be helpful.”
She opened it and handed him the package. He offered her one.
“No, thanks,” she said. “My stomach isn’t feeling all that great at this point.”
“We didn’t have any dinner.”
“I don’t need it. Uh-oh, that looks like a detour sign up ahead.”
Garth cursed. “Th
e Prosperity Farms bridge is out again. It happens every time we have a sizable rain.”
“How long will the detour take?”
“Another half hour or more.”
Lacey settled back in her seat. The alternate route took them the long way into Kettersburg, but once they’d passed through the town, they saw a blinker ahead.
“That’s the old motel at the Navarro blinker up there. That means we’re not too far from Delilah’s house.”
It took them about twenty more minutes before they bounced down the rutted gravel road that led past an oil rig and ended at Delilah Shaw’s property. Bunny’s mother had bought the sprawling brick house and surrounding land shortly after her insurance-money windfall, and she lived there alone except for her old yard dog, a hound named Gadger.
There was no sight of a blue truck or any other vehicle when they drove up.
“It looks like Bunny’s not here,” Lacey said. She was out of the car before it came to a complete stop and ran to knock on the front door in case Delilah had happened to return home since she’d called. There was no answer. She even whistled for the dog a few times, but he didn’t appear.
“She must have taken Gadger to a friend’s or a kennel before she left.”
By the light of the headlights, Garth was examining the puddles in the driveway. “Someone has driven up here recently,” he said.
“How recently?”
“Could have been yesterday, but it was more likely today. Could have been this morning, or it could have been fifteen minutes ago.” He bent down for a closer look. “I’d wager that it was closer to fifteen minutes.”
“Maybe we just missed Bunny,” Lacey said, her stomach twisting into a new knot. “Maybe he was here.”
“He’s for sure not here now,” Garth said. He stalked back to the car and telescoped his long length back inside.
Lacey decided that it was worth leaving a note on the door in case either Delilah or Bunny showed up later. She hurried back to the car and rummaged in her purse for the pad of stick-on notes that she always kept there. The writing of the note was accomplished in the faint glow of the Honda’s overhead light.
Rancher's Double Dilemma Page 16
