Thea being not just in his arms but in his bed. But that was an old water, old bridge situation.
“Where’s Sonya?” Raleigh repeated. “And what happened to you?” He had other questions, but those were enough of a start, since finding Sonya was his priority right now.
“Sonya,” Thea repeated in a mutter. She lifted her hand—not easily because it was practically limp—and she touched her fingers to her head. “Sonya.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Sonya. She’s pregnant, and I’m worried about her.” Worried was an understatement. “What happened to her? What happened to you?”
Thea blinked some more, looked up at him, and the concern was obvious in her deep green eyes. “A man. I think he took her.”
That got Raleigh’s attention, and he fired glances around them, trying to see if he could spot her. But there was still no sign of Sonya.
“The man had a gun,” Thea added, and she groaned, trying to get to her feet. She failed and dropped right back down on the porch. She also reached for her own gun, but her shoulder holster was empty. Since she was wearing her badge, Raleigh doubted she’d come here without her gun.
“What man?” Raleigh demanded. “And where did he take her?”
Thea groaned again and shook her head. “I don’t know, but he said he was doing this because of Warren.”
Raleigh hadn’t actually needed that last bit of info to raise the alarm inside him. With the signs of struggle and those stun gun marks on Thea’s neck, he decided it wasn’t a good idea for them to be out in the open like this. Sonya’s place was an old farmhouse with a barn and a storage shed, but the woods were only a short walk away. It would give an attacker plenty of places to hide.
If the man was indeed hiding, that is. If someone had actually taken Sonya, he could be long gone by now.
“We need to get inside.” Raleigh hooked his arm around Thea’s waist, pulling her to her feet. She wobbled, landing against him. Specifically against his chest. He shoved aside the next dose of memories that came with that close contact.
“You have to go after the man,” Thea said. Her voice was as shaky as the rest of her. “You have to get Sonya.”
“I will.”
His deputy would be here in ten minutes or so, and Raleigh would start searching as soon as he had someone to watch Thea. She wasn’t in any shape to defend herself if her attacker returned. At the moment though, he was much more concerned about Sonya. After all, Thea was alive and okay, for the most part anyway, but Sonya could be in the hands of a kidnapper.
Or a killer.
But that didn’t make sense. Who would want to hurt her, and what did any of this have to do with Warren? Unless...
A very unsettling thought came to mind.
“Did this happen because Sonya’s a surrogate?” Raleigh asked. He helped Thea into a chair at the kitchen table and then went back to the window to see if he could spot any sign of the woman or the person who’d taken her.
“I don’t know. Maybe...” Thea’s voice trailed off, and that’s when Raleigh noticed that Thea’s attention had landed on the painted message on the wall. She shuddered, but she didn’t turn away. “I don’t suppose you put that there?” But she shook her head, waving off her question. “No. You and Sonya were friends.”
Raleigh wasn’t sure how Thea knew that, but then he wasn’t sure of a lot of things right now. “Start talking. I want to know everything that happened.” Though it was hard to stand there and listen to anything Thea had to say when his instincts were screaming for him to go after Sonya.
Thea didn’t jump right into that explanation; instead, she got to her feet. “We can talk while we look for her. Do you have a backup gun you can lend me?”
Raleigh frowned. Thea didn’t look at all steady on her feet, which meant her aim would probably suck, too. Still, she was a cop.
Warren’s star deputy, in fact.
Warren had not only trained her and given Thea her start in law enforcement, his father had made it clear that he loved Thea like a daughter. That was convenient, since Thea loved him like a father.
Raleigh wasn’t sure how Thea had managed to overlook the fact that Warren was a lying, cheating snake, and he really didn’t care. Heck, at the moment he didn’t care if Thea was having trouble standing. She had the right idea about looking for Sonya as they talked, so Raleigh gave her his backup gun from his boot holster.
“I got here about a half hour ago,” Thea said, glancing at the clock on the microwave. While she held on to the kitchen counter, she made her way to the back door. “Sonya didn’t answer my call this morning, so I came over to check on her.” She paused. “I’ve been checking on her a lot lately.”
“I didn’t know Sonya and you were that close,” Raleigh commented. Sonya had only moved to Durango Ridge about ten years ago, so it was possible she’d known Thea before then. Or maybe they’d recently become friends. But after one look in Thea’s eyes, he knew that wasn’t the case.
Raleigh groaned. “This has to do with Sonya being a surrogate.”
Thea nodded and managed to get the back door open. “I haven’t given up on finding Hannah Neal’s killer.”
Neither had Raleigh. And he especially wasn’t forgetting her now, because that message on Sonya’s wall was identical to the one found at Hannah’s apartment a year ago. Hannah had been murdered only a couple of hours after she’d given birth. That same person who’d killed Hannah had almost certainly been the one who had taken the newborn.
“Sonya didn’t know Hannah,” Thea continued, “but they were both surrogates, and they used the same doctor for the in vitro procedures that got them pregnant.”
Raleigh’s gut twisted. Because he’d known that. And he had dismissed it as being something unimportant. Of course, he sure wasn’t dismissing it now.
Still, it didn’t make sense. Why would someone go after two surrogates to get back at Warren? Especially since Sonya had no personal connection to Warren.
Or did she?
Raleigh didn’t have the answer to that, either, but he soon would.
Thea stepped out onto the back porch, and like Raleigh, she looked around. She also caught on to the porch railing to keep herself from falling. Raleigh nearly had her sit down on the step, but babysitting Thea wasn’t his job. His job was to find Sonya.
“Tell me about this man who took Sonya,” Raleigh demanded. “Was he here when you arrived?”
Thea nodded and followed him into the yard. Not easily, but she made it while still wobbling and using every last inch of the porch railing. “I saw him. He wore a ski mask and was holding her at gunpoint. He was about six-one and about two hundred pounds.”
That tightened his stomach even more. Sonya was barely five-three and had a petite build. She wouldn’t have stood a chance against a guy that size. Especially
