The Colton Ransom

by Marie Ferrarella

  Gabby supposed that in the absolute sense, she’d be of more use to Trevor than coming here, because the more people actively looking for his daughter, the better the chances were of finding the three-month-old. But for the sake of her conscience, she’d told Trevor that she wanted to swing by the hospital for a few minutes to see for herself how her father was doing.

  She got no argument from Trevor, who still maintained that he really didn’t need her help, despite the fact that he seemed to welcome it—or, more accurately, he wasn’t rejecting her help with nearly as much verve as he had been.

  Victories, Gabby thought as the hospital elevator stopped on her father’s floor and she got out, came in all sorts of various shapes and sizes.

  Because of the late hour, the hospital corridors were eerily empty. There was less of a staff on duty after nine in the evening. The lights had been dimmed in order to enable the patients along that floor to fall asleep more easily.

  Her father’s room was amid the suites reserved for the most affluent of patients, the ones who preferred their rooms to resemble hotel suites with all the amenities that went along with that sort of a high price tag.

  Wealth, Gabby thought, has its privileges. Although it couldn’t buy you health at any price, it could most certainly buy you comfort. Not that comfort meant all that much to her father in his present state.

  Opening the door to her father’s suite, Gabby silently slipped in. She knew it was Catherine’s turn to take the shift, and since her sister wasn’t in the room, Gabby assumed that she had probably gone to get herself some coffee.

  Just as well, Gabby thought. She wanted to have her father to herself for the few minutes that she had to spare before going back to the ranch.

  Gabby crossed to her father’s bedside. He looked, for all the world, as if he were just in a deep sleep—except for the tubes and monitors that formed a semicircle around him, keeping track of his vital signs and his breathing and making certain that his fluid needs were met.

  Very gently, Gabby took his hand in hers and laced her fingers with his. It still felt like such a powerful hand, but perhaps, on closer look, it was just a tad less so.

  Gabby sighed.

  “Still playing possum, I see. Not that I can blame you, considering how many bad feelings you touched off, saying you wouldn’t ransom Trevor’s daughter. That’s not how you’re supposed to respond to a situation like that, Dad,” she reminded him reprovingly. “Trevor’s one of your people. You’re supposed to help your people, or didn’t anyone ever teach you that?” she asked.

  “No, I guess not,” she decided a moment later. “But then, things like that shouldn’t have to be taught—you should just instinctively know them.” She pressed her lips together as she looked at the ashen-faced man in the hospital bed. There was a time when she’d thought of him as being such an indestructible giant. She’d been certain back then that nothing could ever harm him. But now she knew better.

  And he wasn’t her hero anymore, the way he had been when she was a child.

  “I love you, Dad. There are times—like now—when I don’t much like you, but I do love you. I always will, you know. All the same, I sure wish you hadn’t behaved so shamefully about ransoming Trevor’s baby. Avery was kidnapped because they thought she was your granddaughter, so, you see, you do have sort of a responsibility to do what you can to bring her back.”

  Gabby squared her shoulders, wondering if she were crazy, or at the very least, wasting her breath talking to a comatose person as if he could hear every word. But saying it made her feel better, not deceitful.

  “I just want you to know that if we do get a ransom note, I intend to use my trust-fund money. I know you have the final say in this, but right now, you can’t say anything, so I’m going ahead as if you’d given your permission. Being ornery, knowing what I’m about to do will probably make you come out of your coma, but I figure either way, I win. And if this does make you come out of your coma and you still veto giving any money to bring that baby home, I’ll find another way to raise the money. Coltons always live up to their responsibilities—you taught me that. And bringing Avery home safely is my responsibility.”

  Gabby stood over her father for another long moment, a jumble of words crowding her head, myriad emotions crowding her heart. But there wasn’t enough time to say and act on everything she was feeling right now.

  “I know you, old man,” she whispered in his ear so that no one could overhear her just in case her sister suddenly returned. Her throat felt thick with tears she couldn’t take the time to shed right how. Tears that filled her soul. “You’re too cantankerous to die. You’ll be back. I know you’ll be back. Just don’t make us wait too long.”

  Gabby pressed a kiss to her father’s forehead. She thought she felt him stir just the slightest bit, but when she drew back to look, he appeared to be just as he had been when she’d walked in.

  Just my imagination, she told herself. Wishful thinking.

  The door to the suite opened just then and Catherine walked in, a half-consumed container of coffee in her hand. Obviously not expecting anyone to be in the room, her sister looked surprised to see her.

  “Gabby, what are you doing here?” she asked. Her eyes widened in the next moment. “Did they find Avery?”

  Gabby shook her head. “Not yet. I just wanted to stop by and see how Dad was doing.”

  It wasn’t as if the hospital was a quick hop, skip and a jump away from the house. It took a while to get here. Catherine shook her head. “I promised to call if there was any change,” she reminded Gabby.

  “I know, I know,” Gabby said, in no mood to be on the receiving end of even the slightest lecture. “I guess I just wanted to see the old man myself.”

  “Still looks the same,” Catherine assured her, settling into the chair that was facing the bed. “Mean,” she concluded, then added, “Notice that he doesn’t look any friendlier unconscious than he does when he’s wide-awake?”

  There was no arguing that. “I notice.”

  Gabby gathered herself together. She’d said what she’d come to say. That she loved him, no matter how he behaved, but that she was also planning to do what needed to be done, even if it was going against the last thing he’d said were his wishes. Brushing a kiss to the grizzled cheek, she stepped away from the bed and turned to her sister. “I’ll see you soon,” she told Catherine by way of a parting.

  Catherine nodded. “One way or another,” her sister murmured.

  That was, Gabby knew, Catherine’s way of dealing with the situation: thinking herself past it.

  “One way or another,” Gabby echoed, leaving.

  By the time the door to her father’s hospital suite closed behind her, Gabby was mentally already back with Trevor, fully entrenched in the ongoing search for Avery.

  Chapter 14

  Four days of intensive questioning and they were no further along in tracking down Faye’s killer or the person/persons responsible for kidnapping Avery than they’d been by the end of the first day. Trevor had secretly hoped that both the questions would have been resolved by the time they buried Faye. But the slain nanny’s funeral had come and gone and still the questions remained.

  Who had done this and why? And where was Avery?

  The situation was taking a definite toll on Trevor. Drained, frustrated and verging on desperate, he’d returned to the wing of the mansion he occupied. Because she was concerned about him, Gabby had insisted on coming with him to make sure he went home rather than going off somewhere half-cocked.

  He’d been silent on the ride back to the ranch, but she was getting used to that, even though she still didn’t like it.

  And then, as he unlocked his door and walked in, he broke his self-imposed silence by saying, “The first twenty-four hours after a kidnapping are crucial. After that, chances of finding the victim alive are drastically reduced with every passing hour. And we’ve passed a lot of hours.”

  He found that he had to st
ruggle not to punch his fist through a wall. The only thing stopping him was that he knew it wouldn’t help relieve his tension and, most likely, might wreak havoc on his knuckles.

  Gabby felt for him more than she could hope to express. She eased the door closed behind them. She really didn’t want to leave him alone just yet. Not with black thoughts as his only companions. “Trevor, you can’t give up hope.”

  “Don’t give me platitudes,” he snapped at her angrily. “I know what I know. I was a cop, dealing with all the ugliness the world can throw at you while you—you were living in fantasyland,” he jeered. “Nobody’s called demanding a ransom. That means one of two things. Either Avery was kidnapped by someone who wanted a kid of their own, or they realized they snatched the wrong kid and they’re not going to get a plug nickel for her.” His jaw had hardened, but she saw that there was untapped emotion in his eyes. She realized that he was afraid. Not for himself, but for the infant he’d initially rejected. He was being twice as hard on himself for that. “They killed someone in the process, so they’re not just gonna give her back. And we keep hitting dead ends. She’s gone,” he pronounced, his voice hollow and edgy.

  But Gabby shook her head. For the first time, he saw her eyes flash with anger. It seemed to change her countenance entirely. “No, I’m not going to accept that.”

  “Like it changes anything if you do or not,” he retorted. What she thought, what she said, didn’t change the situation even a fraction of an iota—no matter how much either one of them wished that it did.

  Gabby fired back the names of two famous abducted girls, both of whom had made headlines in their time. One had gone missing for months; the other had literally been missing for years in her time.

  “Everybody gave up on ever finding them, and they both turned up alive. The first one was rescued years after she was abducted on her way to school, the second one just under a year from the time she was snatched out of her own bed with her terrified younger sister actually looking on.”

  Gabby thought of another example to cite as she was talking. “And there was that boy who’d only managed to escape when he decided to save another little boy who’d been taken from his home the same way he had. That was years after he was taken.”

  Trevor had turned away from her, but she deliberately got into his face as she insisted, “Not all kidnapped victims turn up dead, Trevor.”

  Still, the statistics were against them. “A lot of them do.”

  “Avery won’t,” Gabby insisted firmly. “We’re going to find her—and we won’t give up until we do,” she told him with conviction.

  He laughed shortly, even though, inside, he wanted desperately to be convinced. “And just what makes you so sure?”

  She never wavered under his intense scrutiny. “I just am. I can feel it inside,” she said, her hand pressing on her abdomen. “It’s a gut feeling. Don’t cops rely on gut feelings a lot?” she said.

  She was simplifying things way too much, he couldn’t help thinking. Nothing was that black-and-white anymore. “They’ve got forensics now.”

  He was trying to get her to back off, she thought—and she wasn’t about to let him. “Gut feelings have been around a lot longer than forensics,” Gabby pointed out, stubbornly clinging to her argument and her insistence that he remain positive.

  Trevor dragged his hand through his hair, feeling so frustrated he couldn’t even contemplate his next move, couldn’t even put what he was feeling into words.

  Outside his window, the world had gone dark. As dark as any shred of hope he had initially been harboring at the outset.

  And yet there she was, wanting to rally him. He understood what she was trying to do and he appreciated it, even though he wasn’t receptive toward it. “You really believe what you’re saying?” he asked.

  “Yes, I really believe what I’m saying,” she answered with emphasis.

  Gabby meant no harm, he told himself. She was Pollyanna, trying to give him a sliver of hope. He nodded, accepting her words for what they were: desperate cries into the merciless wind. “I didn’t mean to bite off your head just now.”

  She waved away his apology, secretly stunned to hear another one from him. “That’s okay. I’m getting used to it. If you didn’t bite my head off just then, I would have figured you weren’t paying attention to what I was saying.” She put her hand on his shoulder, silently offering her comfort and support, wishing there was a way to infuse that into him. “We will find her, Trevor,” she told him quietly for what felt like the umpteenth time. “We will.”

  The words, coupled with the gentle contact, got to him. They found the chink in the battered armor he surrounded himself with and got through.

  Trevor took the hand she’d placed on his shoulder and rather than remove it, or toss it off the way she expected him to, he completely surprised her when he turned her hand palm side up and pressed a kiss into it.

  It wasn’t meant to be a sensual kiss. It was the kiss of a man who was grateful, a man who was struggling and doing his best not to cave in and crumple under the weight of things he feared were going to come to pass.

  “She’s so little,” he murmured helplessly.

  Gabby immediately gravitated toward the silver lining. “The good thing is that she’s too young to have any memory of this—once it’s behind her,” she emphasized.

  “If we find her,” Trevor qualified. He couldn’t remember ever feeling as helpless as he did right at this minute. And he didn’t do “helpless” well. It made him edgy and uptight. That wasn’t exactly a revelation, but to feel it was utterly disconcerting, to say the least.

  But he was feeling so much more than just disconcerted. This was literally a life-and-death scenario he was contemplating and doing so was almost too much for him.

  “When we find her, Trevor,” Gabby stressed, then, in case she was actually wearing him down, she repeated, “When we find her.”

  Trevor looked into her eyes for a very long moment. She wasn’t the airheaded little optimist anymore. Instead, he saw Gabby as a woman of strength, of determination. A woman who could keep her head on straight while everyone else was running around, losing theirs.

  “Your horses never do come into the stable, do they?” he said, referring to a comment he’d made in anger the day his daughter had been taken.

  “Only to refuel,” Gabby replied, offering him the brightest smile she could. And even as she did, she could feel herself being drawn to him, thinking of how hard his physique felt beneath her hand.

  Feeling a host of emotions that had nothing to do with the immediate situation.

  She shouldn’t be feeling this, Gabby silently upbraided herself. The man was dealing with the most horrible situation that could confront any parent. He had pressure coming at him from all sides. This was no time to think of him as anything but a distraught father facing a parent’s worst nightmare.

  And yet, when he’d kissed her hand like that, all sorts of feelings—urgent, insistent feelings—had instantly risen to the surface, making her react to him on a very basic, intense level.

  Making her hunger for a reenactment of that kiss they’d shared.

  Making her want that and more.

  So very much more.

  She knew she had to leave before the last thin bands of her restraint broke. Her lips were all but parched as she said, “I’d better go and let you get some rest.”

  “I’m not going to rest,” Trevor told her, then added, “You know that.”

  “But you should,” she insisted. “You’re not a machine—you’re still human.”

  It would have been better if he was a machine. Then he would be able to focus clearly, without being distracted. “I’m too tense,” he told her honestly.

  “Then find a way to release that,” she advised. “Or you’ll be a zombie by tomorrow morning and no good to anyone, least of all yourself or Avery.”

  “Avery,” he repeated. His voice, choked with emotion, said everything there was to b
e said about his feelings for his infant daughter. He wished he could think the way Gabby did. “How does someone tap into that endless optimism of yours?”

  Her smile was unreadable, but sweet nonetheless. “I wish I could say it’s transferable, that I could just touch your cheek or your hand, and you’d feel what I feel—but it doesn’t work that way,” she concluded sadly.

  He moved in closer then, and she saw the desperation in his eyes. Desperation and something more, something she discovered she couldn’t read, couldn’t identify. All she knew was that she wanted to comfort him, to make him shed that oppressive cloak of pessimism he had draped around his shoulders and his very soul.

  Without thinking it through, she reacted on a basic gut level.

  She kissed him.

  The gentle kiss was meant to comfort him, to rally him and make him able to entertain the slightest shred of hope. It was not intended to open any floodgates—but it did.

  For him.

  For her.

  And, like a stick of dynamite with a very short fuse, something went off within each of them, detonating simultaneously.

  Rather than a calming effect, the kiss, gentle in nature though it was, had the exact opposite effect.

  One kiss gave birth to another, and another.

  And another.

  Each one more powerful, more all-encompassing than the last.

  Latent, trapped passion was released within each of them with such a high flare, as if what was inside had been waiting all this time for the right set of circumstances, the right moment and the right catalyst to ignite it.

  Rather than pull back, embarrassed and murmuring apologies or excuses, Gabby was drawn to him as the heat of the moment gave way to a frenzy of desire and movement encased in passion.