“If we’ve any luck at all, they’ll have stopped for shelter,” one of the other men said.
Rafe fished a slice of the bread and some of the cheese Hannah had sent from his saddlebags. The canvas had helped some, but the men—and everything they carried—were soaked through. He dropped the soggy bread onto the ground and opted to eat what was left of the cheese and ham.
“Wish I had a lady to send me off with more than stale crackers,” one of the younger men said as he cast a wistful look toward Rafe’s meal.
Rafe didn’t wish to part with a bite of it, but they could hardly have anyone in their number keel over from hunger.
“Bet they aren’t stale anymore,” an older man joked as Rafe handed over a few slices of ham.
“Eat up and let’s get moving,” Hawk said. He stepped out from under the canvas and stretched. “Best to get on their trail before they get too far away.”
That was optimistic, Rafe thought. After all, they’d lost the tracks Jackson had spotted just after the sun went down the evening before. Who knew if they were headed in the right direction.
They packed up camp and started out again, riding single file straight up a mountain. The rain continued.
At noon, Hawk came to a stop. He leaned forward over his horse as he turned around to face the others. “This is useless. Let’s head back to town. I’ll send word to Denver and let them know the rain made our search impossible. And we’ll pray these men don’t make themselves known around here again.”
The men murmured their assent. Rafe frowned at the thought of leaving such dangerous outlaws loose in the mountains, but Hawk was right. There was nothing else to do.
At least he could return to a dry home. And Hannah.
Envisioning her smile when he opened the door lifted the cloud of disappointment at failing in their mission. The time dragged as they returned to the road that led down out of the pass and toward Perseverance. The rain and mud slowed their descent to a crawl, and it was late afternoon when they finally arrived in town.
Rafe’s mind was entirely on a bath, supper, and seeing Hannah. He almost didn’t notice the crowd in the sheriff’s office when Will opened the door to greet them with a somber expression.
“What happened?” Hawk asked as he handed the reins of his horse to one of the other men.
Will’s eyes immediately shot to Rafe.
Rafe went cold. His fingers dug into the reins in his hand, and suddenly he couldn’t feel the dampness in his clothing. “What happened?” he repeated Hawk’s question, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.
“It’s Mrs. Garland,” Will said in a quiet voice. “She was abducted.”
Rafe stared at him. “What do you mean,abducted?” The harshness in his voice made Will look even sadder.
Hawk placed a hand on his arm, almost as if he was afraid Rafe would attack the other man for giving the bad news. “Start at the beginning.”
One of Hannah’s friends stepped forward—Jackson’s wife. She filled in the details as Will spoke, her husband at her side.
“I didn’t know what to do, so I ran all the way back here and found Mr. Morrell.” Her voice cracked, and she turned into Jackson’s arms. He held her close as Rafe’s attention went to Will.
“What did you do to find her?”
“Everything we could,” he said as he looked at Rafe with a sorrowful expression. “We found evidence someone had a horse about half a mile out of town, tied up to an evergreen. But that was all. The rain washed away any tracks.”
Rafe turned to Hawk, ready for him to round up the entire town to search. Hawk looked back at him with as much sympathy as Will had.
Rafe closed his eyes, feeling as if he might be sick. Every bite of the food he’d eaten rebelled against him now. But there was no time for that, not when she might be anywhere—with anyone.
The awful thoughts running through his mind made him angry, which steeled his stomach. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her, not when he promised she would be safe. Not when he couldn’t imagine his own life without her.
“What did he look like?” he asked Mrs. Jackson.
“I didn’t get a good look at him through the rain,” she said. “It all happened so fast. But he looked a lot like a man we knew back in New York.” She glanced at the other girls who were standing nearby. Mrs. Stanton clapped a hand over her mouth.
A fire licked up Rafe’s insides. It couldn’t be . . .
Mrs. Stanton stepped forward, her blonde curls fuzzy from the rain. She looked as exhausted as all of them. “Jack Donahue,” she said. A couple of the other girls gasped.
