Leia tapped her index finger. “He can see the woods. He can see a lake. The building has a cellar but it isn’t a house.” She fell silent, her forehead furrowed in concentration before she turned her head to face Otto. “There are two men there that know you. You can’t go in. They want revenge for something.”
Otto blinked slowly. “Mitch was kidnapped so someone can get revenge on me?” he asked disbelievingly.
“No.” Leia shook her head in frustration. “They don’t know you’re associated with Mitchel. It’s just another layer of the story that came to me. You need to stay here or you could go back to prison.”
“How many people do you see, Leia?” Colby asked, scrolling on his phone.
“Just two.”
Colby nodded and tapped something on his phone before staring at it. “There’s an old bed and breakfast that sits right on the lake by Rifle. It’s being used as a vacation rental. That’s the only property in the area you picked that could have a view of the lake.”
Leia closed her eyes and drew in a slow breath. “That looks right. Are there any pictures through the windows of the lake?”
Colby went back to scrolling and then stopped and stared again. Leia broke into a smile. “That’s it, Dad.”
She leaned back in her chair and exhaled deeply.
“You’re okay?” Colby asked quietly.
Without opening her eyes, Leia reached for her dad’s hand and squeezed it. “Yep. I could use a nap, though.”
“I’ll drop you at our hotel on the way,” Colby suggested, rising to his feet.
“That’s okay,” Leia said through a yawn. “I’ll just lie down on the couch if Jackson doesn’t mind.”
“Of course not,” Jackson said quickly, also rising. “Let me grab you a blanket.”
Colby didn’t argue, just led his daughter over to the couch and let her settle in. “You’ll lock the door?”
Leia snickered and snuggled under the blanket Jackson spread over her. “We’ll be fine, Dad. After all, Otto is going to keep an eye on us, right, Otto?”
“Oh, um,” Otto looked around and registered the argument waiting if he insisted on going with us before giving in. “Of course, I am.”
“Excellent,” Colby said jovially, slipping the strap of his bag over his shoulder. “Let’s hit the road.”
“Don’t we need a plan of attack?” I asked hesitantly.
“This is the sort of rescue that will go more smoothly if we do a little recon before we kick in the door,” Colby said smoothly and Clark, Clint, and Colt all nodded in agreement. “Once we have paws on the ground, we’ll know exactly what to do.”
“It’s going to be fine,” Leia said sleepily, rubbing her face in the soft blanket. “You’re going to get your family back.”
It wasn’t until much later that it occurred to me she hadn’t said I’d get my Omega back, she said I’d get myfamilyback. That couldn’t mean what I thought it meant.
Could it?
Chapter Thirty-Three
Mitchel
When I woke again, everything hurtagainbut on the plus side, instead of being blindfolded and tied up on the floor of a damp cellar, I could see fine and was tied to a chair. That’s progress, right?
On the not-as-positive side, I also knew that either the entirekidnapped for ransomstory was one hundred percent bullshit or it hadn’t taken long for Steve and his goon friend to find a buyer. Unfortunately, I knew she didn’t want any information that I had. Everything the woman sitting across from me at the table wanted to know had already been aired publicly in the trial that put her husband away for the foreseeable future.
“Gee, Mom,” I simpered. “If you wanted me home for the holidays all you had to do was call.”
Instead of responding to my sarcasm, my mother stared at me, stone faced.
“So, obviously the proof-of-life for ransom crap was all fake,” I observed. “Why am I here?”
