had big plans for tonight, he thought with a smile. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to wait until this weekend to ask her.
“Maggie?” He started to step deeper into his house when he saw the overturned bookcase. Books were strewn across the floor. The lamp that had been next to it lay on the floor, the globe shattered. “Maggie?” Goose bumps rippled over his skin as the hair on the back of his neck quilled. “Maggie!”
He rushed toward the kitchen even though the lawman in him told him not to. This looked like a crime scene and if it was... She wasn’t in the kitchen or the dining room. He headed for the stairs at a run, all the time telling himself he might be destroying important evidence.
Taking the stairs three at a time, he reached the landing. “Maggie!” No answer. The silence of the house had an ominous feel to it. “Maggie!”
She wasn’t in any of the bedrooms or the bathrooms. She wasn’t there, and yet all the way he’d been praying that, yes, there’d been an accident, but she was all right. They could buy another lamp. He could clean up the mess. Everything was fine.
But in his heart he’d known the moment he saw the overturned bookcase and the broken lamp. There’d been a struggle—and Maggie had lost.
Trying not to panic, he stopped on the landing and called her cell phone. As he waited for it to ring, he told himself there was an explanation, one completely different from the scenario playing in his head right then.
The sound of a phone ringing drew him back down the stairs and into the living room again. He stepped closer to the fallen bookcase, his pulse in overdrive. There, poking out from under one of the books, was her phone. He bent down and instinctively reached for it, but stopped himself. The screen was smeared with blood.
Half-blind with fear, he stepped back and keyed in 9-1-1. “I need Mark over at my house right away,” he said to the dispatcher. His undersheriff, Mark Ramirez, had a cool head in emergencies and right now he needed that. He hung up, desperately wanting to put out a BOLO on Maggie right away. Just as he wanted to call in the experts from the Division of Criminal Investigation out of Billings. All his instincts told him that he had to find Maggie and fast.
But even as a law-enforcement officer, he couldn’t call in the cavalry until he knew for certain that she was even missing. He also had to stop thinking like Maggie’s boyfriend. He needed to be the lawman he was.
From where he stood, he could see drops of blood on the wood floor. They were still wet. He looked at his watch. Whatever had happened here hadn’t happened very long ago.
Telling himself not to jump to conclusions, he called the hospital. It was possible there had been an altercation and the other person involved had taken Maggie to the emergency room. It took everything in him to remain calm and wait for the phone to be answered.
“Hello, yes, this is Sheriff Cahill. I need to know if Maggie Thompson was admitted to the emergency room. Yes, I’ll wait,” he said even though he wanted to beg her to hurry. He knew that if his instincts were right, every minute counted.
“I’m sorry, Sheriff. We have no record of her being in the ER. No one here has seen her.” The hospital was small. Gilt Edge had only a couple of doctors. “Her family doctor is here doing rounds. He said he hasn’t seen her, either.”
“Thank you.” He quickly dialed Just Hair, the salon that Maggie owned. Daisy, the only other stylist, hadn’t seen or heard from her. Neither had her best friend, Belle. He was just disconnecting when he heard a vehicle pull in.
All his fears rushed back. His first instinct was right—just as he’d known in his gut. He hurried to the front door rather than the back and stopped, the lawman in him kicking in again. The lock didn’t appear to have been jimmied. He hadn’t checked the back door, hadn’t taken the time to do anything but search the house for Maggie.
Using his shirtsleeve, he carefully opened the front door. The last thing he wanted to do was destroy any fingerprints that might have gotten left behind. The action felt foolish. Whoever had taken her had used the back door, the one he was sure he’d left unlocked.
Not that he didn’t already know who had done this. He knew who had Maggie. That was why he was so terrified.
“Come in this way,” he called to Mark as the undersheriff got out of his patrol SUV.
The moment Mark saw his face, his eyes widened in alarm. “What’s wrong?”
“There appears to have been a struggle. Maggie’s missing.” His voice broke. He waved Mark in and pointed toward the scene near the back door. “She was moving in today. Her car door is still open. Her purse is on the table by the door. She must have been surprised by someone.”
Mark pulled out his phone and began shooting photos of the room as he moved cautiously toward the fallen bookcase. “I saw Maggie’s car by the back door. You’re sure no one stopped by, maybe took her to the emergency room for stitches? Maybe she called to a neighbor?”
“She hasn’t been admitted to the hospital. I called while I was waiting for you. Nor has her doctor seen her.”
His undersheriff nodded as he knelt down to get a closer shot at something on the floor. Even from where Flint was standing, he could see that Mark was shooting the blood splattered on the floor and on the spilled books. Too much blood and yet not enough to indicate that she was mortally wounded. He tried to find hope in that.
“Maggie’s friends and associate?” Mark asked calmly.
“No one has seen her.” Flint was surprised how calm he sounded. His heart pounded so hard he could barely hear himself think. He felt as if he was shaking all over. He knew better than to jump to conclusions, but all his instincts told him Maggie had been taken. It made no sense and yet...
“I know who has her,” Flint said. “Maggie left me a message earlier. She ran into my ex. She thought that Celeste overheard her on the phone telling me she was moving in with me. I don’t have to tell you that Celeste has done everything possible to keep us apart. If she is as determined as I think she is...”
The undersheriff nodded. “I can see why you would suspect Celeste, but let’s wait until we have all the facts, okay?”
At least Mark hadn’t said, “Try not to panic.” The words would have been wasted on him. He was panicking and with good reason. The scene in his living room showed a struggle. Maggie had been injured. Her cell phone smeared with blood indicated that she had possibly tried to call for help.
“I’m going to run over to the neighbors and see if they saw anything,” Flint said. His closest neighbor, Alma Ellison, lived kitty-corner from him down the street. She was smiling as she came to the door. He quickly asked her if she’d seen Maggie.
“I saw her when she arrived at your house. Is something wrong?”
“Did Maggie seem all right?”
“Yes. She waved and I waved back.”
“Did you see anyone else?”
Alma thought for a moment. “You know how little traffic we get out here. I did notice a brown van go by. It was driving so slow, I knew the driver must be lost. And there was one of those large dark SUVs. I can’t say if either of them stopped at your house since I got busy after that. Is Maggie all right?”
“I
