progress.
“Did the men bring you here to the ranch?” he asked.
“No. I drove in the truck they told me to use.” She huffed, glanced at the phone she had clutched in her left hand. “They gave me the baby, said to bring her to you and take a picture of you holding her. I’m supposed to leave the baby with you and then get back so I can give them the picture.”
Say what? That still didn’t make a lick of sense.
“Where are these men?” Sawyer went on full alert, his gaze firing all around the grounds. And it was a lot of ground to cover. What didn’t help was there were guests coming and going, and there were vehicles parked everywhere.
“I don’t know.” Cassidy’s eyes were wild, a different kind of storm brewing there, and every muscle in her body was rock hard.
Sawyer got right in her face. “The sooner you answer me, the sooner I can help. Where are these men, and where are you supposed to meet them?”
“I don’t know,” she repeated. “They said they’d call me in thirty minutes and tell me where to drop off the photo. It’s already past the time.” Her voice broke, and a hoarse sob tore from her throat.
Okay. He could add sheer terror to her panic. That wasn’t helping his own reactions, and while Sawyer wanted to know if this child was his, he needed to figure out if any danger was imminent.
“So, you don’t know who the men are?” Not sure he believed that, but he pressed for details. He figured the devil was in those. “How’d you meet them?”
“I didn’t meet them. They kidnapped me two days ago and have been holding me blindfolded.”
All right. So, there had been a crime, and he believed her—about that anyway. It was hard to fake that kind of body language, the broken breath and the sob.
But he immediately rethought that.
This was Cassidy, and she’d lied to him before. In fact, it was the reason their very brief affair had ended. And it was that reminder that caused his stomach to start churning.
“Does this have anything to do with your brother?” he asked. Except Sawyer didn’t just ask. He demanded it.
She swallowed hard. Nodded. “Yes.” It was one of the first direct answers she’d given him since her arrival, and it wasn’t a good time for it.
“Bennie’s behind this,” Sawyer grumbled, and he would have cursed some more, but he didn’t want to do that in front of the baby.
Bennie, her low-life, scheming younger brother. There were about a hundred more labels he could have slapped on the idiot, but the bottom line was that Bennie was really bad news. Always one step ahead of the law and the crooks that he dealt with. And big sis, Cassidy, was always there to bail him out.
But if the baby was Sawyer’s, then why the heck was Bennie involved?
He didn’t have an answer to that, either. Yet.
Cassidy’s phone rang, the sound shooting through his thoughts. He didn’t have to tell her to answer it. Bobbling the baby in her arms, Cassidy fumbled to press the answer button. Sawyer hadn’t really planned on it, but he took the child so Cassidy wouldn’t drop her, and he waited. The first thing he saw was the blocked caller ID on the screen.
Not a good sign.
Even though his entire focus should have been on the call, he glanced down at the baby again. Soon, very soon, he’d have to know the truth about her paternity. For now, he pressed the speaker button on Cassidy’s phone so he could hear what the caller was saying.
“You got the picture?” the man on the phone growled.
“I’m getting it,” Cassidy assured him. “What about my brother? Where is he? How is he?”
“You’ll get to see him as soon as you bring us back that picture.”
Sawyer huffed. “Genius, she wants proof that her brother’s still alive,” he spelled out to the person on the other end of the line. He didn’t bother to take the sarcasm out of his voice, either. “Now, here’s the part where you provide that proof, or this conversation ends.”
Silence. For a long time.
Grabbing on to his jacket sleeve, Cassidy frantically shook her head. Probably because she wanted him to stay quiet.
Sawyer ignored that.
In the next couple of minutes, he was going to have to ignore a lot of head-shaking and just about anything that she was saying. Because there was no way he was going to let her leave to face these kidnappers alone—no matter how much proof of life they provided.
There was some mumbling and cussing on the other end of the line. “Here he is,” the man snapped, and the phone dinged, indicating there was a message.
Cassidy hit the button, and a moment later the video loaded. There was Bennie, all right. His hands were tied with a rope to what appeared to be wooden beams on a ceiling. He was stretched out like a moth in a science experiment.
“Oh, God.” Cassidy pressed her fingers to her mouth, but she didn’t manage to silence the gasp. “You’ve hurt him.”
Sawyer had to agree with her on that point. His face was bloody and bruised, as if he’d taken a good beating. His hair was matted, maybe with more blood, and even though he was moving and mumbling, he looked like a man on the verge of losing consciousness.
Or dying.
“Why are they doing this to you?” Sawyer asked Bennie.
But just like that, the video ended. “That’s all the proof you’ll get. Now, it’s your turn. Get that photo here,” the caller demanded. “You got thirty minutes, or we finish him off.”
“Why?” Sawyer repeated. He needed to keep them talking. Needed to find out their location and anything else he could learn about them. He spotted his cousin, Sheriff Grayson Ryland, in the doorway of the barn, and Sawyer motioned for him to come over.
But Grayson had barely made it a step when there was a flash of light. Since his body was on full alert, it took Sawyer a second to realize that it had come from the camera.
Cassidy had snapped his picture.
With the baby.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, and Cassidy took off running.
Chapter Two
Cassidy didn’t look back, but she could hear Sawyer cursing at her and shouting for her to stop. A moment later, she heard more than just his voice.
She heard footsteps. Someone running. And she had no doubt that it was Sawyer coming after her.
Her heart was past the racing stage now. Breath, too. And her hands were shaking so hard that she was surprised and relieved when she managed to open the truck door. She jumped in and immediately threw the gear into Reverse. She had to get out of
