Again, there was no answer, but he saw more of those tracks in the mud. Not one set but two. Hell. Addie was following the kidnapper.
Judson picked up the pace, running now while keeping an eye out for more tracks and listening for, well, any damn thing.
Every bit of this pasture and the thick woods beyond it were familiar ground to him. Addie and he had spent a good chunk of their childhoods here, since she’d been in foster care as well. Those days, Mellie and Frank Carsten had run the place and had run it well, but after they’d died, Addie had stepped up to continue their legacy. And Judson knew Addie would do anything to protect the kids in her care.
Anything.
That’s why he had to get to her.
Because she would absolutely confront a kidnapper if it meant getting the babies back. A confrontation that could get her hurt or killed.
He kept moving, even faster now. Kept following the tracks that led into the woods. There were old ranch trails threading through the trees and thick underbrush, and Judson headed toward the trail that was closest to the pasture. Again, he knew it well since it had become a favorite make-out spot for Addie and him when they were teenagers.
“Addie?” he tried again after he reached the trail.
This time, he got a response.
“Here,” a voice said.
Relief flooded through him, robbing him of some breath, but it also got him moving in the direction of her voice. She was alive. That answered a whole bunch of his prayers, but Judson figured this ordeal wasn’t over.
And it wasn’t.
He soon saw that when he bolted through a cluster of trees and spotted Addie. She was standing on the trail, her gaze volleying in each direction. She stopped glancing around long enough for her gaze to land on him.
Judson saw the tears in her eyes, some on her cheeks, too, and there was a sense of sickening dread coming off her.
“I have to find them,” she muttered, her voice a tangle of nerves and raw fear.
“We will,” he said, though at the moment Judson had no idea how they were going to do that.
Addie looked so distraught. So broken. He wanted to pull her into his arms, to try to comfort her, but the best comfort he could give her was to figure out what had happened to the babies.
“Give me any details you have,” he insisted, moving up the trail so he could look for more tracks. He saw some footprints but no signs that a vehicle had recently been here.
Addie moved, too, heading off the trail, her attention pinned to the ground. “I was, uh, getting the mail. Etta Jean was in the laundry room with the monitor while the twins were sleeping,” she started but then stopped. “God, Judson. Rowena’s out of jail.”
That got his attention, not in a good way, either, and he whirled back around to face Addie. He didn’t have to ask who she meant—Rowena Matthews was Addie’s mother.
Except she wasn’t.
When Addie was six, the truth had come out: that Rowena had stolen Addie when she’d been only a few weeks old. And Rowena had killed Addie’s bio mom during the abduction.
“How the hell is Rowena out of jail when she’s serving a life sentence?” Judson asked. “Did she escape?”
Addie shook her head. “No. She was released. I don’t know the details, but someone from the parole board sent me a text.I got that about a half hour before I realized the twins were missing.”
Damn it. That was tight timing. Of course, Rowena could have gotten out days ago and managed to set all of this up. Still, the woman had been in prison for twenty-eight years, and Judson would have thought her first move wouldn’t have been to abduct another child.
But it was something he had to consider.
His phone dinged with a text, and he saw his boss’s name on the screen. Sheriff Grace Granger. “The Amber Alert has been issued,” he relayed to Addie after reading the message. “And Grace and the other deputies are on their way.”
That didn’t put any relief in Addie’s eyes, probably because she understood it was going to take time to get a proper search organized. Time when the kidnapper could be whisking the babies away so they would never be found. That’s why Addie and he needed to keep on looking, because every second counted.
While he kept moving, he also listened for any unusual sounds, along with firing off a text to Grace.Rowena Matthews is out of jail. We need an APB on her.
Grace might not immediately recognize the woman’s name the way Judson had, but it wouldn’t take his boss long to figure it out. And Grace wouldn’t have any trouble getting an all-points bulletin or maybe even an arrest warrant for someone with Rowena’s criminal history.
