style="font-size:15px;"> “You bet. Thanks, Deke.” He ended the call to focus on the task at hand.
“Flint has every man out there looking,” Taylor said on her way to the new quarter horse stables that had been built recently to replace the one that’d been burned to the ground.
“The police are helping, too.” From the way she said the last sentence, it was clear she was putting her faith in her brother. Smart woman.
“He’ll be found.”
She had always been nearly as tough as her brother, but as she stopped and turned to him to offer a tremulous smile, she looked fragile and lost all of a sudden. Like she needed him.
His heart flipped over in his chest and he couldn’t help getting lost in her cornflower gaze for a moment. She had the clearest blue eyes of any woman he had even known.
He missed them as soon as she turned from him again.
A few horses raised their heads and gave their greeting nicker when she stepped into the barn, clearly recognizing Taylor. Others snorted a warning at Akeem. It had been a while since he’d been out here. Flint brought in new stock all the time. Since the ranch had grown by leaps and bounds, Akeem no longer knew all of the animals.
The smell of hay and feed immediately enveloped them in comfort, but this once he couldn’t fully melt into it, and judging by the tight set of Taylor’s shoulders, neither could she. Nothing would make her relax until her son was safely back in her arms again.
But she did seem to draw strength from the animals and strode forward with new purpose in her steps, her boots clicking on the stone floor. “Christopher?”
He personally searched every stall. Came up with nothing. “This is going to sound…Have you checked with Christopher’s father?” He couldn’t bring himself to say the guy’s name or even call him her ex.
“First thing.” She opened the cabinet doors in the tack room. “And the police went over there, too, to talk to him.”
Good. That saved Akeem from having to do it. The thought brought mixed feelings of relief and disappointment.
Her cell phone rang on the way to the new business offices. She picked up the call on the second ring. The way her face went white within the first second, Akeem knew they had trouble.
“Yes,” she said.
He stepped closer and put his ear on the other side of the phone, but heard little.
“Is he okay?” The hand that held the phone trembled. “Please don’t hurt him. I’ll do anything.” She listened. “I don’t have money. You don’t understand.”
He could hear shouting then, but not the individual words, caught some reference to Diamondback.
He reached for the phone, but her eyes begged him not to. Slowly, against his better judgment, he let his hand drop.
“Yes.” Taylor’s voice was a whisper. Tears welled in her eyes, spilled off her dark blond lashes as the phone went dead.
He drew her into his arms because she didn’t look as though she was going to make it much longer standing upright. He knew what she was going to say before she ever opened her mouth, and hot, hard anger rolled through him, aimed at the nameless bastards who would do this to her and would inflict pain and trauma on Christopher.
“They’re holding him for ransom,” she said.
TAYLOR FELT LIKE SHE WAS underwater, her motions slow, her lungs tight. She felt disoriented. Everything seemed surreal.
Somebody had her baby. Christopher was four years old, proclaiming himself to be a big boy at every turn, but he would be her baby forever. He was the one good thing that had come out of her disastrous marriage. Her love for him was the only thing she was sure of at this point in her life.
And somebody had taken him.
Her tears were not for herself, but for him, for how scared he must be, how he must be wondering where she was and when she would come. Taylor thought, too late now, of asking to talk to her son. The display had shown an unregistered number, not one she could call back.
For the first few moments, she felt only gut-searing pain and despair, then slowly she became aware of the strong, masculine arms around her, the offered comfort that she was too shaken to take. Akeem. A long time ago—
She pulled away, unable to think of anything but Christopher.
She was falling apart, wanted nothing more than to curl up in a corner and cry until she was dry of tears, to scream her anger and her fear. But Christopher needed her to keep it together, and she would. She drew a deep, shuddering breath. Don’t think what if; don’t think what could go wrong.
She brushed the wetness from her cheeks. “Okay,” she said out loud to break the spell of despair that was drowning her. “I can do this. We’ll get Christopher back.”
“At least we know what happened,” Akeem offered.
And he was right. She could put to rest some of the most disturbing thoughts that had been driving her crazy all morning. Christopher hadn’t fallen into the river or one of the creeks, he hadn’t somehow gotten out to the far pastures and been trampled, he hadn’t been bitten by a diamondback rattler or a copperhead.
He was with people who would take care of him because he was their key to the money.
Money she didn’t have. Two million dollars.
Not that they cared. Her brother had more than enough, and everyone always assumed she had free use of that. Her ex-husband for one. She cut off that train of thought. She didn’t have time to waste on Gary. She regretted that she had to call him in the first place, had to listen to him yell his blame at her. He didn’t care about either her or their son, but he would use this as an excuse—
Please, God, don’t let him get involved.
Forget Gary. At least he wasn’t around to muck everything up. A small mercy. She had to focus on how to get Christopher back.
She had never asked Flint for money. It was a point of pride with her. She had asked him for a job when she had finally left Gary, but the accountant position was a job she was qualified for, one she got fair and square. And she was careful to only earn what the previous employee in that position had gotten.
Flint didn’t understand her need to make it on her own. Flint hadn’t spent five years with Gary Lafferty.
“My divorce was finalized yesterday,” she said to no one in particular.
She’d had one perfect day of happiness.
A strange light came into Akeem’s dark eyes, but he said nothing.
Flint and he had been best friends since their college days, along with Jackson Champion and Viktor Romanov—the Aggie Four, a tight-knit brotherhood that stood back to back against the world and had achieved a lot more than just financial success. But Viktor was now dead. There was something more there than Flint
