Martinelli’s phone rang, cutting through the warehouse silence. He glanced at the screen, frowning.
“Detective Martinelli,” he answered, his voice tense.
“Who’s doing this—” Rowan started.
“Hammer.” Saxon gestured to Martinelli with his head.
Something wasn’t right. Martinelli was looking at him, eyes dark, jaw tight.
Rowan stood up.
“Agent Kim, I’m putting you on speaker,” Martinelli said grimly. “Please repeat what you just said.”
A woman’s voice filled the room, crisp and professional with an undercurrent of urgency. “This is FBI Agent Quinn Morley. I’m at the county fairgrounds. We have a kidnapping situation.”
Rowan met eyes with Saxon. No, no?—
“Two victims, a woman and a child, taken from the rodeo grounds approximately thirty minutes ago. Witnesses report a white van, professional operation.”
“Description of the victims?” Martinelli said.
“Woman, late twenties, dark hair, about five foot four. Child, male, approximately ten years old. They were taken from the competitor staging area.”
Sierra and Huck.
And he was thirty minutes away.
“Rowan!” Martinelli’s voice.
But he and Saxon had already started to sprint.
Stay calm.
Mostly because Huck was scared, looking to her to fix this, his eyes wide with terror in the dim van.
Her too, but along with it—rage. Her ten-year-old son sat with his competition chaps torn at the knee, his cowboy hat missing. A purple bruise bloomed across his left cheek.
Someone had hit her son. So yeah, not so much fear as white-hot rage.
Sierra could see through the hood—a man the size of a tank, which she dubbed him, sat in the back of the van with them. Dark pants, dark shirt. Armed. Like they might be criminals or something.
“I’m right here, Huck.” She didn’t sound like herself, really. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Except, why would it? Because she’d hurt herself kicking at her captors, and Tank had grabbed her foot and twisted it—she wasn’t sure it was broken, but her ligaments burned. So yeah, the lie tasted bitter on her tongue.
Still, it had to be okay. Because she refused to consider anything else.
“Where are you taking us?”
Tank looked over at her. “You’ll find out soon enough, lady.”
The zip ties around her wrists had cut off circulation twenty minutes ago, but she kept flexing her fingers anyway. Oh, if she only thought like Rowan, then she could assess threats, look for weapons, find escape routes. Figure out what they wanted so she could give it to them and get Huck out safely.
But no, all she could think was…Please, God, save us.
She guessed it might be over a half hour since they’d grabbed them from the barn. Three left turns, two rights, one cattle guard, approximately southwest based on the sun’s position filtering through the van’s grimy windows. Tank kept checking his phone, the device dwarfed in his massive hands. The nervous younger one—Twitchy, she decided, based on his constant fidgeting—was sweating despite the October cold seeping through the van’s metal walls.
Twitchy’s toothpick paused mid-chew. “Maybe she should shut up.”
