“She and Dad are here to help,” West said. “Dad will be working the desk, aiding Dispatch, should something unexpected arise. He knows the job as well as I do. He did it for twenty-five years. Mom’s the moral support.”
His mother extended an arm, finger pointed, and swept it in front of her, indicating the mass of busy officials. “I keep them in line.”
Tina dragged her attention from the woman she’d often pretended was her mother and fixed it on West. “What do you mean by unexpected? Like what?”
The corner of West’s mouth curled up. “We don’t know. That’s what makes it unexpected.” He moved into Tina’s personal space and planted a kiss on her head. “We’ve got this, and you don’t need to worry. We’re taking a trained team to scout the area and confirm Carl’s presence. Once we’ve got that, we’ll move in silently and follow Blake’s lead on hostage extraction. Carl will never know we’re there until Lily’s safely away and we all move in.”
Tina considered the possibility. A horde of men, trained or not, marching up to and entering a cabin with only one man and a baby inside. How could Carl not know they were there? The cabins along the lake were all old, weathered and creaky. Fairly dilapidated as well, if memory served. Those buildings were good for camping and shelter, but not exactly the kind of place a bunch of federal agents could descend upon silently. Then there was Lily. To think she wouldn’t wail at the sight of a strange man in SWAT gear, or whatever they would be wearing, was naive at best. Though, dumb seemed more fitting.
“We’ve got this,” West repeated. He pressed the pad of his thumb to the space between her brows and smoothed the deep frown that had gathered there.
“You keep saying that, but it doesn’t make it true.” She glanced at West’s mom, suddenly self-conscious at the way he freely touched her in public. Did everyone know what had happened between them? If they didn’t before, they must now. Heat rose into her cheeks, and she forced her thoughts back to what mattered most. Lily. “What if this is all a ruse? He could have set the whole thing up just to lead you into danger. He could have the cabin booby-trapped. What if he’s really staying at the owner’s home, holding him hostage? He might have forced him to make that suspiciously helpful and conveniently timed call to Cole.”
West hung his head and peeked up at her through thick dark lashes, a look of humor and humility on his face. “You know, your lack of faith in us is a little insulting.”
His mom rubbed his back and grinned. “You can take it. Chin up. I’m going to go check on your father.” She winked in Tina’s direction and was gone.
Tina stepped back, out of West’s reach. “It’s not that I don’t think you can do what you say you can do. It’s that this isn’t the first time you thought you had him, and the last time you followed a lead on Carl, you were shot. Then Tucker was nearly killed. And that was just today.”
“I’m going to be fine.”
She shook her head. “It’s more than that. I don’t know if I can handle another crushing blow. Every time I think I’ll get Lily back—” she pressed her hands against the aching void in her chest “—something goes very wrong, and that hope is torn away.”
West’s expression turned sober. He moved in closer and dragged her back to him. “C’mere.” He lowered his cheek until it lined with hers. His breath washed over her ear. “No one else is getting hurt. Not Lily. Not me. Maybe Carl.” She felt his cheek pull into a smile against hers.
West was clearly in his element, on some kind of adrenaline high, like athletes before a big game. His broad palms found the deep curves of her waist. “My deputies are already patrolling. Deputy Neely is positioned on the main road closest to the cabin. The others have eyes on every route in and out, including anything passable by four-wheeler. If Carl’s there, he won’t get away.” West pressed a kiss against her temple and straightened with a crooked smile. “Cole’s out there with a drone for aerial surveillance. If all that hasn’t put your mind at ease, let me show you something that will.”
He pulled her in the direction of his parents. “Dad’s staying right here until it’s over.” They stopped at the desk where Dispatch fielded calls. “He’ll be able to hear our chatter, process all the information and make decisions as needed in the event my comms go out or I have to go radio silent.”
His dad saluted as they approached. “It’s nice to see you again, Tina. It hasn’t been the same around here without you.”
She forced a smile through quivering lips. “Thank you.” West’s dad had apparently kept all her family’s dirty little secrets. As the former sheriff, he knew the Ellets well. Part of her had always wondered if he’d filled West in on just how damaged his girlfriend really was. Based on West’s confession today, his father had never told. He’d hauled her dad home more times than she could count, drunk, angry or both, and he’d warned him never to lay a hand on her. The former sheriff had promised to rain hell on him if he ever saw a mark on Tina. The sad memory evoked a strange smile. West really was like his father, and both men were ones she wanted in hers and Lily’s lives.
He patted the arm of the chair at his side. “I set you up a chair right here. This way if you hear anything you don’t understand, I can translate.”
“Thank you,” she said, as much for the chair as for the hundred times he’d given her teenage heart hope for a better future. Tina folded her arms, but couldn’t bring herself to sit. A stubborn bubble of optimism filled her chest. Logic told her not to get too excited. Remember, she warned herself, you keep getting punched down. And finding her footing again had been harder after every new hit.
West pressed a button on the spread of radio equipment before them. White noise and distant voices piped through the speaker. “If you sit here and listen, you’ll know everything that’s going on. You won’t have to wait for us to come back to know what we found. It’ll be like you’re right there with us. Only here. Safe.”
West and his dad traded pointed looks.
She didn’t ask. Listening from a safe distance seemed a solid compromise to stealing a cruiser and trying to follow them unnoticed. If Lily was out there, Tina wanted to be there to comfort her frightened little heart. She could only hope that if things went exactly as West described, he would return for her and bring her immediately to see her daughter. Until then, the waiting would be unbearable. There were too many unknowns. Too many variables and what-ifs. More than that, there was too much at risk.
West wiggled the empty chair.
“Thanks.” She forced her wooden legs to bend and fell onto the seat at his father’s side.
Blake’s head popped up from the huddle around a broad metal desk. “Sheriff.”
West gave her a confident smile and went to join his brother.
“I’ve got eyes on the cabin.” Cole’s voice rang loud and clear through the speaker in front of her.
The room stilled. Conversations and movement instantly halted. They’d been waiting for this moment.
West was back at her side, pressing a button on the radio. “Do you see any movement down there?”
“Negative. It’s too dark and ground cover is heavy.”
“What about a vehicle?” West asked, casting his attention toward his father. “Do you see the red pickup truck?”
Silence beat in her ears. A chill of suspense beaded her skin into gooseflesh and stood the fine hairs along her arms and across the back of her neck at attention.
The crowd seemed to hold its breath in collective anticipation.
“Affirmative,” Cole finally announced. “I have eyes on a late-model Ford pickup. License plate unreadable.”
The mass of frozen officials burst into action.
“Good job, brother,” West said, pushing and releasing the button once more. “Stand down for backup.” A broad smile split his face as he leaned in to kiss Tina’s lips. “I know you’re still mad at me for not telli
ng you I knew about your past.”
She stiffened in his grasp. Half embarrassed to hear the words spoken in a crowded room.
He planted another quick kiss. “I won’t let you down like that again, and I’m about to make you forget I screwed up at all.” He pinned her with a sexy, heated kiss before turning away without a goodbye.
He stretched one arm overhead, circling his wrist. “Roll out.”
Tina watched breathlessly as the room emptied and the darkened lot beyond the windows was illuminated in headlights.
West’s mom moved to the door, watching as her boys and their teams drove away. Her eyelids slipped shut for several moments before reopening with a look of pride that Tina had seen on her countless times before. When the last set of taillights had gone, she turned for the desk. “Now, we wait. Can I get you a distraction from the break room, sweetie? Some cold water or hot tea?”
“No, thank you.” Tina pressed unsteady hands against her middle, attempting to crush the nerves and keep the last food she’d eaten in place.
A dozen quiet voices flooded the speaker, chattering to one another in some sort of code made of slang and foreign acronyms. West’s dad tapped his fingers against the table and whistled, completely at ease.
A miserable thought presented itself then, coiling regret through Tina’s heart. She hadn’t said goodbye to West. If anything happened to him, if she lost him again, he’d never know how much he meant to her, or that she wasn’t mad like he thought.
She understood why he did what he did to her father. If she thought it would have made a difference, she’d have testified, too, but no one asked. Maybe that was also part of West’s doing. Either way, her dad had always breezed through his arrests. A night in jail here. A week there. Inevitably released due to overcrowding or some other nonsense. Then again, he’d always been a drunken menace, never a violent offender. That had surely made the difference this time, and West had done the right thing. She also wished she’d told him that he wasn’t responsible for her mother’s disappearance. Tina should’ve made him understand that instead of pulling away to stew about her own burned pride. It had been her mother’s choice, and hers alone, to leave without so much as a phone call or forwarding address, and truth be told, her mother had left Tina a long time ago.
Her phone buzzed against her leg, and she flipped it over with haste. If it was West, then she’d respond with the words she wished she’d have said sooner. I love you.
Surprisingly, the text was from an unknown number. She swiped her thumb across the screen to read the note. Maybe West used another phone during an operation like this one.
The message was mixed media. A picture of Lily in her winter coat, strapped in a car seat, plus a line of text.
Side lot. Now. Or it’s the last time you’ll see your baby. Come alone. Tell no one.
She gasped, turning quickly to West’s dad.
He raised his bushy brows. “Everything okay?”
She returned her eyes to the little screen. The time on the dashboard clock behind Lily read 10:10. The same time her phone had in the corner. The picture was taken now. In a car. Not at a cabin.
Now or never, Tina.
She stretched to her feet. “Fine,” she answered West’s dad belatedly.
He puckered his brow. “You sure?”
She nodded too quickly, feeling suddenly unsteady and flushed. “Yeah. I’m just going to—I changed my mind about the water.” She bumbled away from the seat.
He narrowed sharp, knowing eyes. Twenty-five years as the sheriff had apparently given him an intuition about liars that Tina had failed to achieve. After all, if she’d seen Carl for who he was, none of this would be happening.
She pointed at the speaker, where voices continued to spout cop lingo and military jargon alongside map coordinates for a cabin that they would soon find empty. At least West was safe, barring any booby traps. “I’ll be back before they get started.” She turned for the hallway to the break room and rear exit. “I’ll hurry.”
She jogged away, looking repeatedly over her shoulder in case Mr. Garrett followed her.
“Whoa.” West’s mother sidestepped a near collision as she exited the break room with two steaming mugs. “Everything okay? You look ill.”
“Yes. Bathroom.”
“Oh.” The woman frowned. “I was just bringing you tea. Do you want me to go with you?”
Tina shook her head. Tears welled and stung in her eyes. “No, thank you.”
Mrs. Garrett offered a sad smile. “Let me go set these down, and I’ll be right there to check on you.”
“’Kay.” Tina ducked into the bathroom under Mrs. Garrett’s loving watch. She listened as the woman’s footsteps faded in the distance. Then she quickly texted West. It was her last chance to help bring Lily home. Carl would surely take her phone the minute he saw her.
West—He came for me. He has Lily & I’m going.
She hurried from the bathroom to the rear exit. A big blue pickup waited in the gravel at the building’s side, out of the parking lot cameras’ range. Tina hit the record button on her video app and leaned the phone against the wall on top of a five-drawer filing cabinet in the hallway. She pointed the camera at the door’s rectangular window.
This was it.
No more time to waste. West’s mother would soon discover she wasn’t in the bathroom. Carl would drive away with her baby.
She shoved the back door open with resolute determination and hustled into the darkness, hoping the angle on her phone was right, praying that West would find the video of the truck as they pulled away and follow it wherever it would take her. It was the only hope she had left.
Behind her, her phone began to ring.
Chapter Eighteen
The truck was in motion before Tina could fasten her seat belt, tossing dirt and spinning recklessly into the road beside the sheriff’s department. Tina scooted closer to the car seat on the bench between her and Carl. Her heart ached to burst at the sight of her beautiful sleeping princess. “Be careful,” she scolded. “You have an infant in this truck. You have to protect her.” She would never let anyone hurt Lily again.
“She’s f-fine.”
Tina traced the five-point harness with her hands in the dark. It seemed to be correctly buckled, and the seat was secured to the bench.
Cones of light flashed over them as they headed through the center of town, making Lily’s sweet face briefly visible in the darkness. An overwhelming sense of joy and relief flooded through Tina with each peek, enough to make her weep if she wasn’t so terrified. Carl was right. Lily looked wonderful. Unharmed, clean and content. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for taking good care of her.” She stroked her sleeping baby’s cheeks and hands, desperate to unhook the safety belt and bring her into her arms. Lily’s tiny fist curled instinctively around Tina’s finger. “I missed you, too,” Tina cooed.
Carl took the next right on two wheels, blowing through a stop sign as if it didn’t exist. “I c-can’t believe you ca-came,” he said with unbridled awe. “I mean, I kn-kn-knew you would, but I was still afraid I—I might be wr-wrong. You know?”
As if he’d left her a choice. Taking a picture of her baby and threatening to never let her see her again. How could she not have come to him?
Tina measured her breaths and watched in fear as Carl drove maniacally through the night. Then again, he didn’t need to worry about getting pulled over. He’d led the entire sheriff’s department to the other side of town. “Carl? Please slow down.”
“I know how to dr-drive,” he snapped.
“Okay.” She quickly agreed. “But you’re scaring me. I haven’t seen either of you in a while, and I want us to be safe.”
“Oh.” Carl eased his foot slightly off the gas. “Sorry.”
“Thank you.” The Thank You for Visiting Shadow Point
sign came and went, disappearing behind them in a flash. Tina tallied the turns as they left town, mentally cataloging the convoluted route as long as she could, but she was officially lost. “Where are we going?”
“Home.”
She bit her tongue against the obvious. There didn’t seem to be any homes where they were going. Just darkness. Forest. And the endless curving road. Soon, a Leaving Cade County sign came and went, as well. Her stomach soured. How far had they gone? Where would they go? “I should stop and get some things,” she said. “I didn’t have time to pack.”
He slowed at a crossroads and turned his face to hers. His expression was shrouded in shadows, much like his intent. “D-don’t worry about th-th-that. I’m taking care of you now. Once you get comfortable here, you—you can take care of m-me, too. We’re a family now.” He reached over Lily’s car seat for Tina’s cheek, and she jumped.
Her opposite shoulder hit the door. She was out of room in the cab.
Carl replaced his hand on the steering wheel. Rejection colored his cheeks. He twisted his grip on the wheel until his knuckles were bone white. “This isn’t h-how I wanted us to start our l-l-life together. I had plans. Better ones. Smoother ones, but—but I think you can still be happy if y-y-you give it a try.” He checked his rearview mirror before turning onto an unlit section of a winding mountain road.
They rocked and bumped along a dark gravel lane beside a field of wildflowers for several minutes. Tina recognized the trail as a driveway when a small bungalow came into view, almost completely hidden among the trees.
“Surprise,” he said, shifting the truck into Park beside a four-wheeler.
Tina gripped Lily’s car seat instinctively. “What is this place?”
The porch light was on and an aged swing hung from the rafters. Nothing and no one else was visible between Tina and the horizon. Just fields and trees and night.
“My old b-babysitter lived here. I spent a lot of time with her when my m-m-mother was gone or had her boyfriends over. If they didn’t like me, I—I came here.” He opened the driver’s-side door.
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