“Dylan, it’s Tom Ryan. Listen, we just caught a break.”
Dylan’s pulse pounded. “What?”
“I’m at the Bureau now, and we received a fax from a women’s shelter in Mexican Hat. It looks like we’ve found Aspen Meadows.”
The blood roared through Dylan’s veins. Trembling with relief, he muttered a silent prayer of thanks and crossed himself. “Is she all right?”
“She’s alive. According to the sister I spoke with, she was brought in with injuries and has been healing there.”
Fear gripped him again. “What kind of injuries?”
“I’m not sure. We didn’t go into it. But I thought you might want to go to Mexican Hat and talk to her.”
“Thanks. I will.” In a brief moment of emotion, he’d confided in Tom that he had been involved with Aspen, that finding her was personal.
“I need to call Emma and tell her that we found her cousin.”
“I’m with Emma and Miguel right now,” Dylan said. “I’ll let her know, then I’m on my way to Mexican Hat.”
He disconnected the call, and turned to see Emma and his brother waiting with anticipation.
“They found Aspen?” Emma asked.
He nodded. “She’s at a women’s shelter in Mexican Hat.”
“Thank God.” Emma sagged in relief, although a second later, her nose wrinkled in confusion as she rocked Jack. “But if she’s alive, why hasn’t she called any of us? Why didn’t she come back for Jack? She loved this baby more than anything in the world.”
Dylan gritted his teeth. “I don’t know. Only Aspen can tell us that. I’m going to bring her home.”
“You want me to go with you?” Miguel asked.
Dylan shook his head and glanced at the baby. “No. Take a DNA swab from Jack and send it to the lab. And stick close to Jack and Emma. If Aspen is still in danger, her son might be, too.”
Miguel agreed and Dylan rushed to the door, then outside to his sedan, worry knotting his stomach. Had Aspen been injured so badly she couldn’t contact Emma? Had she been trying to protect her son by not returning?
He started the engine and raced away from Emma’s house on the outskirts of Kenner City, anxious for answers.
If Jack was his son, he wanted to know why in the hell she hadn’t trusted him with the truth. Not that he’d tried to contact her…
The little boy’s baby blue eyes flashed into his head, and he grimaced. Jack had to be his—he knew it in his gut.
But as that possibility sank in, guilt assailed him.
If he’d been with Aspen and the baby, he could have protected them.
“ACCORDING TO THE FBI AGENT who phoned, your name is Aspen Meadows,” Sister Margaret said.
Aspen clenched her hands together, weighing the name on her tongue. “Aspen…” Yes, that sounded right. Familiar.
Yet a sense of dread filled her as she waited for more information. “What else did he tell you?”
Sister Margaret stroked her arms to soothe her. “Just that your car was found crashed near the San Juan River, and that you’ve been missing for nine weeks. He’s sending an agent here to talk to you and take you back to your family.”
“Family?” Aspen jerked her head up, tears blurring her eyes. “I have family?”
Sister Margaret nodded with a smile. “I’m sure they’ve been worried sick about you. But don’t fret now, child. You’re finally going home.”
Aspen bit down on her lower lip, more questions assailing her. If she had family, why didn’t she remember them? And if she’d been running from an abusive boyfriend or husband, why hadn’t she turned to her family for help?
A half-dozen scenarios raced through her head, fear gripping her. Maybe her family hadn’t been loving at all. Maybe someone in that family had abused her.
Something about the scenario felt all too real…a distant memory plucking at her subconscious? Or had her contact with the women in the shelter stirred her imagination?
Since she’d arrived, she’d heard horror stories of wife and child beaters, fathers who’d sexually molested their daughters, of stalkers and possessive men who threatened and intimidated the very people they professed to care about, men who treated their women like property.
Had she left her family to protect them from the man after her?
Twice she’d seen a tall Ute man lurking outside, lingering near the fence surrounding the shelter. A Ute man who’d watched her and the other women with intense gray eyes that chilled her to the bone…
Was he the man who’d sneaked into her room and attacked her? Had she known him before?
And if he wanted her dead, would this FBI agent be able to protect her?
DYLAN’S EMOTIONS pinged between hopeful anticipation and trepidation over what he might find when he saw Aspen. He couldn’t imagine the woman he knew deserting her child or not contacting her cousin to assure her she was safe.
Which meant her injuries must have been serious.
That or she was too scared to call home. And if that was the case, what had changed her mind?
The landscape swept by him with its pieces of flatland mingled with red-and-gray rocks, some twisted into convoluted shapes that as children, he and Miguel had played a guessing game to name when their family had driven through Colorado and Utah on family vacations. His mother had stopped to photograph the children playing outside their Navajo Indian houses. They’d camped along the San Juan and Colorado Rivers, visited Goosenecks State Park with its view of the steep cliffs and terraces, parked along the overhang and watched rafters take the long boat trip to Lake Powell.
God, they’d had so much fun during those trips. Muley Point had offered another view south over the twisting entrenched canyon to the desert beyond, and Monument Valley and the Valley of the Gods had been other favorite stops.
Baby Jack’s face flashed into his mind and he wondered if he’d ever get to take his son camping along the ridges. If he’d be able to drive through the eerie formations of the Valley of the Gods and watch Jack’s reaction when he first saw the sixty-foot-wide sombrero-shape rock that had inspired Mexican Hat’s name.
He scrubbed his hand over the back of his neck—jeez, he was already thinking like Jack was his. Hoping he was…
If so, he had to find a way to make sure he stayed in the boy’s life. Nothing Aspen could say would deter him.
U.S. 163 led him straight into town, and he let his GPS guide him down a side road to the shelter, a nondescript adobe building surrounded by a ten-foot iron gate. Inside, a massive cross stood in
