Missing in the Mountains Read online

  The long pause that followed was nearly cause for him to hang up. Instead, he rubbed his forehead, knowing sometimes frightened folks needed time to gather their thoughts.

  “Fortress,” he repeated, becoming alert at the sound of soft breaths through the line. His muscles tensed. “If this is an emergency, you need to call 911 and get yourself to safety. Call me after. Police first.”

  He waited.

  The quiet breathing continued.

  “I can contact your local authorities if you’re unable.” Sawyer pulled the phone away from his ear and checked the caller ID. “Can you tell me your...” Two little words graced the screen and nearly ripped a hole through his chest. Emma. Hart. Sawyer’s heart seized, and his lungs seemed to stop midexhale. “Emma?”

  Emma Hart had been the only woman Sawyer ever imagined a future with, and a set of monsters overseas had stolen that from him. He’d been forced to say goodbye to her for the sake of a simple eight-week mission. That mission should have brought him right up to his last day in the service. Instead, it had gotten him captured and tortured. His team had gotten worse.

  “You’re alive,” she said, a snare of accusation in her voice.

  “Yeah.” If she wanted to call it that. He’d fought six long months to get away from his captors and back to the secluded US military base. Another two months before he was debriefed and returned stateside. More weeks before the long-overdue discharge.

  “Yet, you never called,” she said.

  Emma’s message had been the last one left on his cell phone before the service was disconnected. The cell contract had ended while he was overseas, trapped for months past the contract’s renewal date. He’d planned to get a new phone after the mission, after he’d returned stateside and been discharged. He’d even told himself Emma’s number would be the first one he’d call. It was one of many plans his captivity had ruined.

  “No,” he answered finally, sadly.

  He hadn’t returned her call for multiple reasons. Part of him knew he wasn’t ready to do normal things again, like date, or pretend he didn’t wake up in cold sweats most nights. The rest of him doubted Emma was in the market for a 180-pound sack of misplaced anger, jangled nerves and general distrust. He couldn’t make her happy anymore. She’d sounded so darn happy on that voice mail. Unlike now, he realized.

  Instinct stiffened Sawyer’s spine. “What’s wrong?” Something in her voice set him on edge. She might’ve been mad at him, but there was something else there too.

  “Sara’s gone,” she said, her voice breaking on the second word.

  “Gone?” he repeated. His mind scrambled to make sense of the word. “How? When?”

  “Tonight,” she said. “He just came in here and took her.”

  Sawyer was already on his feet, gathering his things, shoving a fresh magazine into his sidearm. “Who?”

  “I don’t know. She told me to hide.”

  He slowed, pressing a folding knife and wallet into his pocket. “So, Sara’s alive? Just missing?”

  “I don’t know if she’s alive,” Emma snapped, “but she’s not just missing. She was choked, overpowered, hit and dragged away. There’s nothing just about it.”

  “Of course.” Sawyer shook his head hard, moving faster toward the exit. “I meant no disrespect. I’m only gathering facts.” He stooped to grab his go-bag and a duffel of supplies from the closet floor. “What did the police say?”

  “They’re looking into it.”

  Sawyer blew out a humorless half laugh. So, the police were chasing their tails and waiting for Sara to appear on their laps. “I’m glad you called. I can keep you safe.” He swung his laptop bag over one shoulder on his way out the door.

  “You always talked about your plans to open Fortress Security with Wyatt,” Emma said. “I figured he’d answer the call. I hoped he’d remember me and be willing to help. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You did the right thing,” he assured her.

  “I know the last thing you probably want to do is see me—” her voice was strangled and tight “—but I’m scared, and I need help.”

  “I’m already on the way,” Sawyer said, tossing his bags into his pickup, then climbing behind the wheel. “Are you home?”

  “Yeah.”

  He gunned the engine to life and jammed the shifter into Drive. “I’m heading your way from the office. I won’t be an hour.”

  “Okay.”

  He listened keenly to a few more rattling breaths.

  “Sawyer?”

  The quaver in her voice was a punch through his gut. “Yeah.”

  “You should have called.”

  * * *

  EMMA’S WORDS HAUNTED him as he made the trip to her family ranch at a record pace, nearly doubling the posted speed limits whenever possible. The desolate country roads were poorly lit but easily navigated. At times, long stretches between darkened fields made visibility clear for miles, and Sawyer took full advantage. The hillier, curvier portions got a good cussing.

  He hit the gravel under the carved Hart Ranch sign with a deep crunch and grind. Stones pinged and bounced against the undercarriage of his pickup, flying out in a cloud of dust behind him.

  A small silhouette paced the porch. Long hair drifting in the wind around her face, exactly like the ghost from his past that she was. She went still when he started his walk across the lawn.

  Sawyer pulled the cowboy hat off his head and pressed it to his aching chest. “Emma.” His lungs seemed to fill fully for the first time since answering her call.

  She gave a small nod, running the pads of both thumbs beneath red puffy eyes and brushing shaky palms over flushed cheeks. “Hello, Sawyer.”

  He took a step closer, and she wrapped her arms around a new, curvier figure. Sawyer tried not to stare, but the change looked damn good on her. So did the spark of ferocity in her eyes. He didn’t know what had sparked the fire, but whatever it was, the change suited her. And it would help her get through the tough days ahead. Unfortunately, civilian abductions weren’t known for their happy endings.

  She appraised him as he climbed the steps. Her smart blue eyes scrutinized the visible scars along his neck and forearms, pausing briefly at the angry, puckered skin above his left eye. Then swiftly moving on to the lines of black ink circling his biceps beneath one shirtsleeve. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Of course.”

  Behind her, the small sound of a crying baby drifted through the open door.

  Emma’s chin ticked up. She turned immediately. “Come in. I’ve been through all of Sara’s things, and I have something I want you to look at.”

  Sawyer followed. His heart clenched as the baby’s cries grew more fervent. “Sara had a baby?” He tried to imagine it and failed. The willowy blonde had more interest in horses than men when he’d briefly known her.

  “No.” Emma grabbed the flashing baby monitor and shut it off as she passed through the dimly lit family room. “You can have a seat. I’ll only be a minute.”

  “Are you babysitting?” he asked, ignoring her order and following her down the hall toward the bedrooms, unwilling to let her out of his sight and drawn by a strange tether to the infant’s cry. “Was the baby here when Sara was taken?”

  Emma opened her bedroom door and strode inside. A crib stood against the wall across from her bed. “No,” she said, “and yes.”

  Sawyer paused at the end of the crib, puzzling over her unnecessary coyness. “You aren’t babysitting?” he asked dumbly, watching as she raised the kicking blue bundle into her arms and slid a pacifier into the baby’s mouth with practiced skill.

  “No,” she whispered, rocking the infant gently into sedation. “This is Henry.” She turned a pride-filled smile in Sawyer’s direction. “I named him after my father.”

  Sawyer’s gut rolled against his spine.
His jaw locked, and his fingers curled into fists at his sides. This was what had changed her. The carefree woman he’d known had been made into her own kind of soldier in his absence. Emma was a mother. “He’s yours,” Sawyer said, repeating the fact, trying to make it real for him. The words were bittersweet on his tongue. Any joy he might’ve felt for her was tainted selfishly with feelings of loss for himself. With regret. And thoughts of things that might have been. “You have a son.”

  “I do,” she answered as Henry worked the pacifier in his tiny mouth. “And so do you.”

  * * *

  EMMA HELD HER tongue as she waited for a response. She could practically see the wheels turning in Sawyer’s head, adding up time, weeks, months. She ground her teeth against the need for an explanation. She hadn’t been with anyone else since Sawyer. He’d barely left the States before she knew she was pregnant. If Henry’s perfect olive skin and pale blue eyes weren’t enough proof, then maybe Sawyer should look in a mirror.

  “Mine?” His gaze jumped continually between her face and Henry’s.

  “Yes.” She moved past him toward the hallway. “I need to sit down. You probably should too.”

  She led Sawyer back into the living room, giving a wide berth to the freshly bleached floorboards where Sara’s blood had been spilled. She took a seat on the chair farthest from the couch where the monster had pinned her sister. It took effort to force the still-raw images from her mind.

  Sawyer squatted on the floor in front of her chair, jeans pulled tight against his strong thighs, big hands dangling between his knees as he balanced, a look of shock and confusion etched on his brow. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Emma pursed her lips, culling the desire to scream. “I tried.” She made each word stand on its own, tempted to recite all the one-sided arguments she’d practiced to perfection in the shower all these months since his “eight week” mission ended.

  “I got a message from you,” he said. “Did you know you were pregnant when you left the voice mail?”

  The accusation in his tone ignited a fire in her belly. “That was why I called. I’d just confirmed with my doctor, and I was happy,” she snapped.

  “Then why didn’t you tell me? Why would you keep something like this from me? I’m a father, Emma. A father and I had no idea.”

  “You could have returned my call,” she said.

  “You could’ve told me in the voice mail.”

  “I didn’t want to tell you something this important in a voice mail. I wanted to tell you in person, and you were supposed to be home in two more weeks, and I spent every one of those last fourteen days deciding how I’d deliver the surprise. Maybe with some cutesy sign or a little custom-made onesie.” She shook her head. “I can see it was stupid of me now, but I was thrilled to be having your baby, and you had your phone number changed.”

  “I didn’t have my number changed.” Sawyer ground the words through clenched teeth.

  “Disconnected then,” she conceded, “without the courtesy of letting me know first. You made it clear you didn’t want to hear from me again, and you didn’t want to call me either, or you would have.”

  “That isn’t what happened.”

  Emma squinted her eyes, wishing she could scream and yell and lose control, but she refused to frighten Henry or give Sawyer the satisfaction of seeing her so rattled. Instead, she said, “I called your number every month after my prenatal appointment, and I listened to the notification that your number had been disconnected. I forced myself to remember you were done with me, even if my heart wasn’t done with you, and you have no idea what that was like for me.”

  His frustrated expression fell slowly into a grimace. “I wasn’t home when you left that voice mail. I didn’t even get it until last month.”

  “Then you should have called last month.”

  “How could I have known this?” he asked, extending a hand toward the baby in her arms. “It’s been more than a year since we’ve spoken. I assumed you’d moved on.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “I did. I’m fine. We’re fine,” she said, casting a gaze at her son. “I had to get my act together, with or without you, and I had to find peace for Henry’s sake. So I stopped calling you, and I let us go.”

  He fixed a heated gaze on her, his face wrought with emotion. Hurt, frustration, regret. “What would’ve happened if Sara hadn’t been taken today?” he asked. “I would’ve just gone on with my life having no idea I was a father?”

  Emma glared back, wind sucked from her chest. She wanted to shove him hard and knock him onto his backside, but there wasn’t time for that. “We can fight about this later. Right now I need to figure out what happened to Sara,” she said. “I found a notebook full of numbers hidden in her room. Will you look at it for me and see if it makes any sense to you?”

  “How old is he?” Sawyer asked, unmoved by her change of subject. His gaze was locked on Henry. “When was he born? What did he weigh?”

  Emma steadied her nerves and wet her lips. Those were fair enough questions. “His name is Henry Sawyer Hart. He’s four months old, born June 8 at 8:17 a.m. He weighed eight pounds, eleven ounces. He was twenty-one inches long.”

  “You gave him my name.”

  “Middle name. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

  Sawyer pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and dug them in.

  “Why didn’t you call?” she asked again, needing to know once and for all what had happened between their last passionate night of love declarations and the dead silence that began afterward and never ended.

  Sawyer dropped his hands from his eyes. He stretched onto his feet and braced broad hands over narrow hips. Warning flared in his eyes. There was a debate going on in that head of his, but his lips were sealed tight.

  Maybe he didn’t have a reason. Maybe he didn’t want to admit their time together had been nothing more than a fling. Not real to him like it had been to her. It was easy to see he wasn’t the same guy she’d fallen in love with. The man before her was hard and distant. Not the man who’d swept her into his arms and twirled her until she was breathless with laughter.

  Maybe that guy had never been real.

  Emma’s throat tightened as the look on his face grew pained. “Never mind. You don’t owe me an explanation.” She lifted Sara’s notebook from the end table beside her and extended it to Sawyer. “Here. Let’s just move on. Maybe there’s something in there that will help the police figure out who took her and why. She’s been gone twenty-four hours already, and our odds of finding her diminish significantly after seventy-two.”

  Sawyer caught the narrow book in his fingertips and held her gaze. “My team and I were captured. They were killed.”

  Emma’s mouth fell open. “What?”

  “They died. I didn’t. I’ve only been home a few weeks. My cell service plan wasn’t renewed on time because I wasn’t home, so it was canceled. I didn’t change the number or disconnect the phone. I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I was trying to survive, and I don’t want to talk about what happened.”

  She worked her mouth shut. Her own harsh words crashed back to mind like a ton of bricks. She’d blamed him for not returning her calls without bothering to ask why he hadn’t. She’d assumed the worst, that he’d avoided her intentionally, played her for a fool, never realizing that him avoiding her was hardly the worst thing that could have happened. Her gaze snapped back to the scars. Thick, raised marks across his skin that weren’t there a year ago. On his neck and arms. What looked like the results of a serious burn above his left eye. “Sawyer.”

  He lifted a palm. “Don’t.”

  Emma cradled Henry tighter, comforting the one piece of Sawyer that would allow it. She’d heard stories, saw movies and read books about men who’d been through similar things, losing their teams, being held against their wills. There was a common thread to e
very man’s story. Their experiences had wrecked them.

  “I know what your sister is going through,” Sawyer said, “not the physical details, but emotionally. Mentally.” His serious blue eyes rose to meet her gaze. “I’ll help find her,” he said. “And I will keep you and Henry safe while I do.”

  Emma nodded. “Thank you.”

  He carried the notebook to the couch where Sara had fought with her attacker, and collapsed onto the cushions. He spread the notebook open across his palms, but his gaze continually moved to Emma’s before sliding back to Henry.

  “What?” Emma finally asked, her heart warming and softening toward the man she’d thought had tossed her away.

  His eyes flashed dark and protective, but he didn’t look away from his son. “You should’ve left that message.”

  Chapter Three

  Sawyer didn’t sleep. Emma had taken the barely manageable wreckage of his life and flipped it on its head. She might as well have flipped him on his head. He was a father.

  The words had circled endlessly in his mind as he pored over the contents of Sara’s notebook and made multiple trips down the hallway to check on Emma and Henry. His son.

  A son he hadn’t even known existed until a few hours ago. He might’ve never known about Henry at all if something horrible hadn’t happened to Sara, forcing Emma to reach out for help. And Henry could’ve grown up thinking his father was the kind of man who would run out on a woman and his son.

  It made him madder every time he thought about it.

  He’d nearly missed the most important part of his life because pride had stopped him from returning Emma’s call. And it sure wouldn’t have killed her to add the life-changing detail to her message.

  The glow of a pending sunrise hovered on the horizon when he finally put Sara’s notebook on the kitchen table and went to make coffee. Down the hall, he heard the stirring sounds of Emma and his baby. Sawyer set the coffee to brew, then opened the refrigerator. By the time Emma and Henry emerged from their shared room, Sawyer had a simple breakfast prepared for two. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “Restless hands.”