a million glittering stars.
She fought it, fought the hands that were suddenly on her throat. Lucy! She tried to cry, but she had no air for the words, no air at all.
She twisted, kneeing her attacker in the thigh.
Something flashed in the air near her head.
A gun?
She had only a moment to realize it, and then the world exploded, all the stars fading until there was nothing but endless night and the sound of her daughter’s cries.
* * *
“Go after the car!” Boone shouted as he jumped from Jackson’s car. “I’ll check to see if there are any injuries.”
Too late.
Those were the words that were running through his head over and over again.
Too late. Just as he’d been the day he’d arrived home from Iraq, ready to confront Lana about her prescription-drug problem, willing to work on their marriage so that they could make a good life for their child.
Too late.
He heard Jackson’s tires screech, knew he’d taken off, following the car they’d seen speeding away. Dark-colored. A Honda, maybe. Jackson knew more about cars than he did, and he’d know the model and make.
Good information for the police, but none of it would matter if the woman and her daughter were hurt. Or worse.
He ran to the station wagon, ignoring the flames that were lapping out from beneath the hood. The back door was open, and he glanced in. No car seat. No child. No woman.
He checked the third-row bucket seat, then peered into the front. A purse lay on the passenger seat, and he snagged it, backing away from the burning vehicle. He doubted it would explode, but getting himself blown up wasn’t going to help the woman, her kid or him.
He broke every rule his boss, Chance Miller, had written in the fifty-page HEART team handbook and opened the purse, pulling out the ID and calling Jackson with information on the woman. Scout Cramer. Twenty-seven. Five foot two inches. One hundred pounds. Organ donor. Blond hair. Blue eyes.
Victim.
He hated that word.
In a perfect world, there would be no victims. No losses. No hurting people praying desperately that their loved ones would return home.
Too bad it wasn’t a perfect world.
He stepped away from the station wagon as a police cruiser pulled off the road. An officer ran to the back of the cruiser and dragged a fire extinguisher from the trunk.
Seconds later, the fire was out, the cold air filled with the harsh scent of chemicals and burning wires. Smoke and steam wafted from the hood of the car, but the night had gone quiet, the rustling leaves of nearby trees the only sound.
The officer approached, offering a hand and a quick nod. “Officer Jet Lamar. River Valley Police Department. Did you see what happened here?”
“I got here after the crash. I did see the woman and child who were in the car. They left the Walmart about fifteen minutes ago.” And he didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time discussing it. Scout and her daughter had disappeared. The more time that passed before they were found, the less likely it was that they ever would be.
Something else he had learned the hard way.
Every second counted when it came to tracking someone down.
“So, we’ve got two people missing?”
“Yes,” Boone ground out. “And if we don’t start looking, they may be missing for good.”
“Other cars are responding. We have patrol cars heading in from the east. I just need to confirm that we’re looking for a new-model Honda Accord. Dark blue.”
Jackson must have provided that information, and Boone wasn’t going to argue with it. He knew his friend well enough to know that he’d have to have been 100 percent sure before offering information. “That’s right. It was pulling away as my friend and I arrived.”
“I don’t suppose you want to explain what you and your friend were doing on this road?” Officer Lamar looked up from a notepad he was scribbling in. The guy looked to be a few years older than Boone. Maybe closing in on forty. Haggard face. Dark eyes. Obviously suspicious.
“I followed the woman from Walmart. She looked like she might be in trouble.”
“So, you just stepped in and ran to the rescue? Didn’t think about calling the police?”
“I didn’t want to call in the police over an assumption.”
“Assumptions are just as often on target as they are off it. Next time,” he said calmly, “call.”
Boone didn’t bother responding, just waited while Officer Lamar jotted a few notes, his gaze settling on the purse Boone still held.
“That belong to the victim?”
“Yes.” Boone handed it over, shifting impatiently. “They could be across state lines by now.”
“Not likely. We’re about a hundred miles from the Penn state border. I’m going to take a look around. How about you wait in the cruiser?”
It wasn’t a suggestion, but Boone didn’t take orders from anyone but his boss or the team leader. He followed Lamar to the still-smoking station wagon, paced around the vehicle while Lamar looked in the front seat, turned on a flashlight and searched the ground near the car.
He didn’t speak, but Boone could clearly see footprints in the moist earth near the car. Two sets. A woman’s sneaker and a man’s boot. “Looks like she survived the initial impact,” Lamar murmured. He called something in on his radio, but Boone was focused on the prints—the deep imprint of the man’s feet. The more shallow print of the woman’s. There had to be more, and he was anxious to find them. For evidence, and for certainty that Scout and her child really were in the car that had driven away.
If not, they were somewhere else.
Somewhere closer.
He scanned the edge of the copse of trees that butted against the road. If he’d been scared for his life, he’d have run there, looked for a place to hide.
Protocol dictated that Boone back off, let the local P.D. do their job. It was what Chance would want him to do. It was what Boone probably would have done if he’d witnessed only the accident or even the kidnapping.
But Boone had spoken to Scout Cramer. He’d seen the fear in her eyes. He’d looked into her daughter’s face and been reminded of what he’d lost. What he could only pray that he would one day get back.
He couldn’t back off. Not yet.
A sound drifted through the quiet night. Soft. Like the mew of a kitten. Boone cocked his head to the side.
“Did
