took one step inside and knew that at least two people were involved in her kidnapping.
And they hadn’t taken her without a struggle.
Staring at the broken lamp and an overturned dining room chair, Donovan clenched his teeth on the sudden angry curse that rose to his tongue. Bastards. He didn’t know Priscilla, didn’t know any more about her than her brother had told him, but he knew all he needed to know. She might be spoiled and headstrong, but she was still an innocent woman who’d done nothing wrong except inherit a ranch from a distant relative she’d never met. She had, no doubt, been terrified when she realized that she’d opened her door to an enemy, but the lady had put up a fight. And it was that gumption that just might save her life.
The clock was ticking, and every instinct Donovan had urged him to hurry. Forty-eight hours would pass in the blink of an eye, and he was wasting precious time. But he knew from past cases that success depended on doing his homework. If he was going to find Priscilla Wyatt, he had to first know how her kidnappers had gotten her out of the apartment without someone noticing.
Walking over to the window that overlooked the street below, he frowned. The neighborhood that Priscilla lived in was in an older section of London that was a mix of well-known restaurants, popular pubs and shops at street level, with old-fashioned flats above. Considering that, Donovan doubted that the streets emptied before midnight. Which meant, he thought grimly, that Priscilla’s kidnappers hadn’t walked out of her flat with her like they were going out to dinner. So how the hell had they managed to get her out of her flat without anyone seeing them?
He turned to study the living room again, and only just then noticed what looked like a line of fine powder on the floor. Puzzled, he squatted down to examine it and realized that the powder was actually shattered glass from the lamp. And the reason it was in a neat line was because when the lamp broke, it had, apparently, shattered at the edge of a rug. A rug which was, he thought in growing fury, no longer there.
They’d rolled her up in a damn rug and carried her out like a dead body. He didn’t care how gutsy she was; she must have been scared out of her mind.
Livid, he promised himself he was going to make the bastards pay for this. But first he had to find them.
His lean face carved in stern lines, he exited the apartment and made sure he locked the dead bolt. Then he went to work.
The neighborhood was quaint and full of atmosphere. The kind of place women loved, Donovan acknowledged…and a bitch to search. With the restaurants and pubs open late, people came and went at all hours of the day and night. God knew how many of them lived in the area or witnessed Priscilla’s kidnapping without even knowing it.
Muttering a curse, he headed for the pub across the street. The bar had wide, paned windows that overlooked the street and Priscilla’s flat. Surely a waitress or bartender or one of the regulars must have seen something.
But when he went inside, he was met with nothing but one negative response after another. Frustrated, he moved to the restaurant next door, then the bookstore on the corner and every other business up and down both sides of the street for three blocks. And the answer was always the same. No one had seen two men or anyone else moving a rug.
Walking out of the pizzeria two doors down from Priscilla’s flat, he swore softly as he realized that darkness had fallen while he was canvassing the street and he still didn’t have any leads to go on. And time was running out for Priscilla Wyatt.
It wasn’t often that he was at his wit’s end, and it infuriated him. He was better than this! His competitors claimed he had the nose of a bloodhound. So who the hell had taken Priscilla Wyatt?
Scowling, he stared down the street and watched the crowded sidewalks begin to empty as friends met friends for drinks or dinner and disappeared inside. The twilight was deeper now, the darkness nearly complete, and he realized that this was just about the time Priscilla must have been kidnapped. No wonder no one had noticed her kidnapping. The only streetlights were on the distant corners, and the people who were on the street were hurrying to get where they were going, not paying attention to anything but their own business.
Caught up in his musings, it was several long moments before he noticed the woman coming toward him, walking her dog. He started to look past her, only to glance at her sharply. Had she come by at the same time yesterday? People generally walked their dogs at the same time every day, didn’t they? Could she have seen Priscilla’s kidnappers in the dark and not even realized it? If she walked by without anyone else seeing her, the police wouldn’t have questioned her because they had no idea she existed. Even now, twenty-four hours later, the woman probably didn’t know that a kidnapping had taken place.
Striding toward her, he eyed her dog warily. A Doberman. Great, he thought irritably. He was usually good with dogs, but Dobermans could be damn protective. The last one he’d tangled with had taken a bite out of his hide. He wasn’t going there again.
“Nice dog,” he told the woman as he drew closer. “Does he bite?”
“When I tell him to,” she shot back. Stopping in her tracks, she tightened her grip on the leash. Just that easily, the dog was on guard. His golden brown eyes focused unblinkingly on Donovan, he growled low in his throat, daring him to take so much as one more step toward him and his mistress.
“Look, I’m not a threat to you,” he told the woman. “I just need to ask you some questions. A woman was kidnapped here last night, and her family has hired me to find her.”
“I didn’t hear anything about a kidnapping,” she replied, eyeing him suspiciously.
“The police didn’t learn about it until late last night, and it didn’t make the news until this morning,” he explained.
Studying him, she frowned. “I was running late this morning,” she finally admitted. “I haven’t heard the news all day.”
“Did you, by any chance, happen to walk this way last night?”
She didn’t commit one way or the other. Instead, she just lifted a brow and said, “And if I did?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” he assured her. “I just need to know if you saw two men moving a rug out of the flat across the street.”
She didn’t say a word, but even in the darkness, he saw surprise flicker in her eyes. “So you did see something,” he said in satisfaction. “How many men were there? Two? Three? Did you get a look at them? What were they driving?” When she hesitated, he knew she didn’t want to get involved. It was too late for that. “There was a woman rolled up in that rug,” he said. “If the circumstances had been different, it could have been you. Are you really going to stand there and say nothing?”
For a moment, he thought she actually wasn’t going to answer him. Then tears misted her eyes. “I didn’t realize,” she whispered, horrified. “It just looked like a rolled up rug—”
“She’s still alive,” he told her quietly. “But only for forty-eight hours.”
“There were two men, both just a little taller than me. I didn’t get a good look at their faces, but they were both very thin, almost gaunt.”
“And their hair?”
“One was bald. And the other had a military cut. I think it was blonde.”
Donovan frowned. Military? That was a
