“Then you’re a glutton for punishment, or crazy.”
He smiled. “Only when it comes to war and women, sweetheart. Now why don’t you take a deep breath? We need to talk, but first, if I don’t let your father know you’re okay, he’ll have my hide next time I see him.”
She nodded. “Please tell him I’m sorry.”
“Tell him yourself,” he suggested, taking off his jacket and draping it over her shoulders. “I know he’ll be relieved to hear your voice.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. Not now.”
“Fair enough,” he said, pulling his phone from his pocket.
When Sid Hartfield answered on the first ring, Cole reported, “I’ve found her, safe but shaken. She wants you to know she’s sorry for worrying you. I’ll call you back once I know more.”
True to his cop nature, the older man tried to grill him, but in the end Cole convinced him that this wasn’t the time. Then he switched his phone to silent mode, so he and Lisa wouldn’t be disturbed.
They’d nearly made it to his rental before she caught his arm. “No, not here. My SUV.” She shook her head. “There’s something there you need to see, that’s all. Something that’ll make this easier to explain.”
“I figured out about the card they sent,” he said, as they walked to the bright red Chevy.
For just a moment she stopped, her breathing hard, the rest of her frozen solid.
He waited until she had recovered enough to climb behind the wheel beside him to continue. “You’re not thinking of driving, are you?” he asked. “Not in your condition.” She shook her head again, so he went on. “I haven’t figured out exactly what was in the card,” he said, “but I’m guessing they’ve demanded a meeting of some sort. You’re supposed to bring a ransom, right? And absolutely no cops of any stripe, or else.”
Reaching into her bag, she pulled out the card and passed it to him. “She doesn’t—doesn’t want my money. She wants my life for his.”
He scanned the handwritten note, bile roiling in his stomach. “Got an offer from a foreign broker, likes his little boys as sweet and cute as this one. Meet me alone before it goes down and you’ve got my word he’ll be delivered to your sister back in Thornton safe and untouched. Unless you go to the cops.”
No wonder Lisa had freaked out and vanished without a word. A note like this was every parent’s darkest nightmare.
Rather than focusing on the threat, he steered her toward the details. “Is this right? You have a sister?”
Lisa nodded. “Shelley teaches school in our hometown, Thornton, outside of Fort Worth.”
So his earlier suspicions had been correct. “Evie” knew a whole hell of a lot about Lisa, including where she’d been raised and that she had a sister. Which meant that from the start, there’d been nothing random about the carjacking and Tyler’s abduction.
The note went on to detail a time to meet—tonight at twelve thirty—but not a place, before ending with an order to check the cake box.
“Something was in the cake?” he asked.
“Under it, actually. A prepaid cell phone in a plastic bag.”
“So Evie wasn’t bluffing about having a local accomplice.” Cole couldn’t imagine the woman risking a return to Coopersville herself, but he could easily imagine her paying off some local lowlife.
“She has someone watching me. I’m sure of it,” said Lisa. “Waiting to see my next move. That must be who printed out the— Wait, I know I have it in here somewhere.” She dug frantically inside her purse. “There was a picture...”
“I’ve got it right here,” Cole said, removing the photo from his shirt pocket. “You must’ve dropped it at the rental place before I got there. I found it in the lot.”
She snatched it from him, then sighed as she touched the image of her son’s face. “Thank God. If I’d lost this—”
“You haven’t. And I’ve found you, so maybe somebody’s looking out for you after all. Someone who doesn’t want you walking into a trap that’s sure to get you killed.” Because as unlikely as it seemed, somewhere along the way, this sweet, beautiful woman had made a deadly enemy. But how? And who?
Lisa shook her head, her eyes narrowing as she warned him, “Don’t think you’re going to stop me, Cole. Because that woman—she will do this. You don’t know her,” she went on, tears streaming down her face. “She’ll sell him to some monster just the way she said, and she’ll laugh while my baby—”
“Who is she, Lisa? Because it’s crystal clear that ‘Evie LeStrange’ knows you. And it’s just as clear that you’ve been lying about it from the start.”
* * *
CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER, Jill thought as she watched Captain Cole Sawyer climb into the SUV with Lisa. For people who supposedly didn’t know each other, they seemed to be going to great lengths to sneak around.
After seeing Lisa pull over, get out of her rental and drop to her knees sobbing, she had pulled over herself and watched from a safe distance. She understood the impulse to cry alone that must have overtaken her. Even in those first horrible days after the beating and miscarriage, she’d done everything in her power not to cry in front of anyone, because she’d long since learned that every emotional display was held as evidence that a woman wasn’t up to the standard. That she wasn’t strong enough to do what needed to be done.
And then Cole Sawyer had driven up, and she’d realized that, emotional breakdown aside, Lisa had come here to meet a man who might very well be a coconspirator in a robbery scheme that had backfired and ended up getting Trace hurt. And now they were taking off together, leaving Sawyer’s rental behind.
Jill knew she should call this in, but the thought was followed by another rush of anger. Who the hell was Hank Stewart to advise her on how to run a marriage and kick her off a case she had every right to be part of? And the idea of handing this over to the FBI and letting them swoop in and hog the glory was even less appealing.
Forget that garbage—she had a personal stake in figuring out what these two were really up to. And since she was on her personal time now, she was free to find out—even if she had to follow them to hell itself.
* * *
“I NEVER LIED,” Lisa assured Cole, her hands knotting around the wheel. “Not even by omission.”
“Then what do you know now that you didn’t then?” he asked. “Because I’d bet my last dollar you’ve figured out who she is.”
“I think I might have.” Unwilling to waste any more time than her full-scale meltdown had already cost her, she started the engine. “But it’s not necessarily anything you’ll believe. I’m not quite sure I believe it myself.”
“So try me,” he said. As she put the SUV in gear and pulled out, he added, “I didn’t think you were going to drive.”
“I lied,” she admitted.
“Mind telling me exactly where we’re going?”
“Yes, I do mind.” She flicked him a nervous glance. “Because I know exactly what you’re going to do the minute I give you the location she texted to me. You’ll ruin everything by calling the authorities, or my dad, which would amount to the same thing.”
As they pulled out onto the empty road, he shook his head. “Lisa, there’s not a car or a house in sight. Evie can’t have spies everywhere, and the FBI’s much better equipped to—”
“No, Cole. This is my son, not yours, not the FBI’s, and I’m not taking any chances.” Her skin tightened, the fine hairs rising along her arms and behind her neck. “Especially not with a woman who can come back from the dead.”
Did he think she’d lost her mind now? Would he try to overpower her? Dial 9-1-1 and get the authorities to come stop her, drawing attention with their wailing sirens and flashing lights? Once they figured out what else she’d done today, she thought guiltily, they might even throw her in jail, where she would have no say at all in how her son’s case was handled.
Instead he said, “I’m listening,” his voice surprisingly calm. As if he heard su
ch crazy claims a dozen times a day.
She nodded and released the breath she had been holding. “I’ll tell you the whole story, Cole, but only on one condition.”
“Name it.”
“When I’m finished, if you want out you can ask me to drop you someplace where you can catch a ride home, but you have to give me your word as a Ranger that you won’t try to stop me.”
He shook his head, avoiding her glance. “I’m not a Ranger anymore.”
“I’ve spent enough time around the military to know one thing. I can leave my job, give up being a hygienist tomorrow and never look back, but you’ll never really quit being a Ranger. You’ll carry it inside you whether you spend the rest of your life as a U.S. Marshal or a dogcatcher.”
His gaze hooked hers, his gray eyes dangerous and his strong mouth sullen. “You don’t know me, Lisa Meador. You don’t know what I’ve done, why I’ve moved on.”
“I do know you,” she said, the knowledge that she might well be driving toward her own death stripping away any need for pretense. “I know you’re the kind of man who walks toward and not away from danger when it’s for a good cause. The kind of man who steps up and takes responsibility where others would run screaming.” The kind of man I married once, she thought, before realizing that Cole Sawyer, unlike the steadfast and sweet-natured Devin, still had sharp edges. He wasn’t a man to be handled lightly. Or safely.
But he was a man to be taken at his word, if she could only wrest it from him.
“Promise,” she said, “or I’ll pull over and let you out right here.”
“It’s not that easy, Lisa. Whether I give you my word as a Ranger or a man, I don’t want to risk your life. Or Tyler’s. And trying to do this thing on your own—trust me, it’s a bad idea.”
She drove on, passing the turnoff to the Brazos River access road where they had met the fisherman in his truck. She’d blacked out there, she remembered, and yet he’d kept up the pursuit instead of abandoning the chase and turning back.
“I won’t be alone,” she said, her palms growing slick where she gripped the wheel. “Not if you come with me. I know you could help get Tyler and me through this.”
As the miles slipped past, fat white clouds glided across a broad canvas of ice blue. Cole didn’t answer for a long while but instead leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his powerful hands laced together.
“Oh, the hell with it,” he finally said.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, not understanding.
Cole shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. Because you have my promise, Lisa. You have my word as a man and as a Ranger that I’ll do everything I can to help you. Now tell me everything you know or guess or suspect, because I’ve damned well earned that much.”
* * *
“I GOT TO THINKING about eye color,” Lisa explained. “How Evie’s was so bright it looked fake, like the blue streaks in her hair. So I pictured her with different eyes, and then with different hair, too, since that’s so easy to alter.
“That’s when I thought of Sabra,” she continued. “Sabra Crowley, and something that happened back when I was nine.”
“Sabra Crowley,” he repeated, committing it to memory. “Sounds like a name for an older woman, not a child.”
“I’m not sure Sabra ever was a child, not really. She and her little sister, Ava, were my dad’s partner’s daughters—two foster kids he and his wife eventually adopted. Ava was shy, and maybe a little odd, but she seemed like a nice girl. But from as far back as I can remember, Sabra always made me nervous. She was my sister’s age, four years older, and she was seriously creepy. Worse yet, she liked to hurt things.”
Lisa shuddered, hugging herself, before she could continue. “She knocked baby birds from their nests and stepped on them just to hear them crunch. Once Ava and I spied on her and saw her burying a turtle alive in a shoe box. When I dug it up and let it go later, she held me down and burned me with a cigarette lighter she’d stolen from her dad, while Ava sat there frozen, staring, so terrified that she’d be next, she couldn’t say a word.”
“Sounds like a budding psychopath,” Cole guessed, putting it together with what he knew of Evie. “Did you tell your parents?”
“Never. I was scared to death what Sabra would do if I got her in trouble. All the neighborhood kids were. But my parents kept telling my sister and me we should be extra kind and understanding because of everything the girls had been through with their birth family. Dad never spelled out details, but I saw the looks he gave my mom, so—this will sound weird to you, considering—I felt sorry for them. Well, Ava, mostly, since she didn’t have any other friends.”
“That’s because you’re capable of empathy.” Cole’s heart ached for the kind, naive girl she’d been, a child who could all too easily fall victim to the troubled older girl.
Lisa smiled sadly. “Too much of it at times, I think. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have kept going over, even when Sabra tormented me, calling me Sweet Girl Baby, ’cause she’d heard my dad say it once.”
She sucked in a startled breath. “She called me that. Evie, I mean, right before she made me go inside the bank. I can’t believe I didn’t put it together sooner. It really was her. Evie’s Sabra, coming back somehow to hurt me in the worst way possible.”
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“It has to be her.”
“Maybe, but why would she do this, especially so many years later?” As irrational as psychopaths could be, there must have been some trigger, but Cole couldn’t imagine what Lisa could possibly have done at nine to provoke a hatred so extreme it could survive decades.
“It’s because I saw Mr. Crowley—a man I called Uncle Jerry. He was back behind their shed, yelling at Sabra that he wished he’d only taken Ava and left her where she was. He was beating Sabra with his belt. I still remember the way the leather cracked against her bare legs. They were covered in welts, and some of them were bleeding.”
“Son of a bitch.” Cole shook his head.
“The strangest thing was, she didn’t try to run or fight. She just stood there, sobbing like a baby. Her face was wet with tears and mucus. I couldn’t believe it.”
“What did you do?”
She shook her head. “I was so confused. The man I knew and trusted was completely out of control. I was terrified that he would spot me, that he would hurt me, too.”
“He didn’t see you?”
“No, but Sabra did, and she told me later that I couldn’t say anything, no matter what. That she could take anything that bald-headed bastard could dish out. Then she swore if anybody found out she was bawling, she would drag me out into the woods and—and beat my head in with a big rock and bury me where no one would ever find my body.”
“Oh, Lisa. So, what happened? What did you do?”
“I couldn’t tell my parents. Uncle Jerry was like part of the family. I talked to my sister, instead, and we decided together that Sabra was too dangerous to cross. And we both thought, too—I’m ashamed to admit this right now—that whatever Sabra had done to get Uncle Jerry so mad, she probably deserved that whipping. Mrs. Crowley’s sweet old cat had disappeared a few weeks earlier, and we all figured Sabra had something to do with it. So I just tried to pretend I never saw it.”
“You were a frightened little kid. You can’t blame yourself.”
“Sabra blamed me big-time after it got out. One day she got into some kind of shoving match in the hall with my sister, and I guess Shelley’d had enough of getting knocked down. She told Sabra she was a big phony who bawled like a baby when she got waled on at home. And just like that, Sabra knew I’d told. And everybody knew about her getting beaten. They laughed and tormented her about it for weeks.”
“Stupid junior high kids.” Cole shook his head, remembering the constant ebb and flow of cruelty. “So, did she come after you then?”
“She swore she would. She kept telling me, ‘I’ve never backed off from a threat. Not ever. I don’t
care how long it takes.’ I was throwing up and staying home from school, I was so terrified. And it got even worse after Mr. Crowley died.”
“What happened?”
“At first everybody thought it was some awful bug he’d picked up,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “But I kept thinking about what Sabra said about getting even, how she might do anything. So finally I did what I should have from the start and told my parents everything.”
Nodding, he said, “That must’ve taken a lot of courage.”
“It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.” She let out a long breath.
“So, how did your folks take it?”
“When I talked about Uncle Jerry beating Sabra, Mom gave me a big lecture about speaking ill of the dead, but my dad got really quiet. I guess there was already some question about how he really died, and Sabra’s behavior had raised a lot of red flags. The next thing I heard, the police searched her room. They found rat poison hidden there. Mrs. Crowley and Ava both had to be treated for it, too.”
“What a sick kid,” Cole said. “So I guess she was arrested?”
“Apparently she got wind the police were looking for her. That’s when she tried to run away.”
“Tried to?” Cole was already thinking two steps ahead, to the part where a grown psychopath would have been released from custody—freed to exact a brand of revenge she’d had years to plan. Maybe she had somehow learned that Lisa had pointed her father and his fellow officers in her direction, or maybe she still blamed her for her humiliation at school. Whatever it was, she’d decided to pay Lisa back with interest.
Lisa nodded, releasing a shaky breath. “She hitchhiked. They think she might’ve been trying to get back to where her birth family came from—somewhere in west Texas. When the police caught up with her, she—she ran into the road and— I heard later that a big truck hit her. She died instantly. They said she didn’t suffer.”
Cole did a double take. “Wait. You’re saying that she literally died? This person you believe has come after you?”
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