Missing in the Mountains Read online

  Emma stopped at the kitchen’s edge, Henry on one hip. She’d dressed in nice-fitting blue jeans and a long-sleeved thermal shirt that hugged all her new curves in the nicest of ways. Her straight brown hair hung over her shoulders and feathered across her forehead.

  Sawyer longed to run his fingers through the strands and pull her against him. He wanted to comfort her. To make promises for Sara’s safety that he couldn’t keep. He’d promised to find her, but if he didn’t do that fast... His mind wandered to images of his fallen team.

  “You didn’t sleep,” Emma said, fastening Henry into a high chair.

  “Rarely do.” He lifted a pan full of eggs from the stove and flicked the burner off, forcing his thoughts back to the present. “Hungry?”

  “I don’t know.” She went to the counter to make a bottle for Henry. A moment later she took the seat beside the high chair and poised the bottle to Henry’s lips. “I feel like none of this is real. Like I’m waiting to wake up from a nightmare.”

  Sawyer cleared his throat. “You should try to put a little something in your stomach.”

  Henry sucked greedily on the bottle, peering at Sawyer with big blue eyes. His denim overalls had little horses embroidered on the knees, and his tiny brown socks were printed to look like cowboy boots.

  Sawyer’s hands itched to hold him, but he divided the eggs onto two plates instead, then poured twin cups of coffee for Emma and himself. The idea of holding something as precious as Henry frightened him, and Sawyer was rarely afraid. He took a seat beside Emma at the table and wrapped calloused palms around the small white mug. His hands had done awful things in the name of freedom. His hands were meant for hard labor, for holding rifles and following orders.

  Emma took a slice of plain toast from the pile he’d plated and set between them, and bit into the corner. “What did you think of Sara’s notebook? It was hidden so it must be important, right?”

  “Maybe.” Sawyer dug a fork into his breakfast. “Sara works at a bank, right?”

  “Credit union,” Emma said. “She’s an account specialist, and she had that notebook with her all day before she was taken. I found it hidden in a basket of dirty clothes. She must’ve put it there when she realized that man was coming for her.”

  Sawyer cleaned his plate and grabbed a second slice of toast. “I want to visit her office today. I wasted a ton of time overlooking the obvious. I was looking at the numbers like a soldier. Trying to solve them like a cipher. First, I assumed they were a code. When that didn’t work, I imagined them as dates and times or map coordinates, addresses, you name it.” He gave a humorless chuckle. “Eventually I remembered Sara works at the credit union. Those numbers are probably a list of accounts. She’s just jammed them all together, probably to disguise them.”

  Emma finished her toast and took away the empty baby bottle. “What are you going to do at the credit union?”

  “I want to find out if she was working on any special projects. If any accounts or customers might’ve been giving her trouble, and if she seemed like herself the last few times she was in. I’d also really like to get a look at her desk. See if she kept any more notebooks like that one.” He tipped his head toward the book on the table.

  Emma unbuckled Henry from the high chair. “The police will probably be asking the same things today. The staff will be leery and guarded after that. Everyone loves Sara, and they don’t know you. I doubt anyone will be candid with a stranger given what’s happened.” She turned Henry against her chest and patted his back. “I’ll go. They know me. I’ll ask to see her desk and try to collect anything that might be of interest. Then we can go through it here in privacy. If we find anything that leads to more specific questions, we can go back after lunch and ask.”

  Sawyer frowned. “I think you’d better let me be the face of this for you. As it is, whoever took Sara doesn’t seem interested in you, and I’d rather you not get involved. Her abductor didn’t even search the house while he was here. His mission was pointed. Not at you, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  Emma chewed her lip, cheeks flushed with distress. “I’m Sara’s only sister and I live with her. How long do you really think it will take before he comes for me? For Henry? If she doesn’t give up whatever it is that he wants from her?”

  Sawyer locked his jaw. The abductor would be smart to use Sara’s family as leverage if she gave him any trouble. Sawyer’s captors had tried the same thing. Eliminating his men one by one, using their allegiances to one another to find the weakest link. But there had been no weak link, and they had died. One by one. “All the more reason for you to stay out of sight.”

  “But if Sara was keeping a secret book of account numbers,” Emma said, “then someone at the credit union might know something about her kidnapping, and I don’t want to draw any attention that will keep me from getting a look at her desk. You—” she lifted a narrow finger at him “—draw attention.”

  Sawyer sucked his teeth. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard it. His six-foot-two-inch frame had been thickened, hardened and cultivated during his time in the service. The added scars and tattoos only served to enhance his dangerous appearance. Slowly, he relaxed against the seat back. He didn’t like it, but she had a point, and while he would have preferred to go in and throw some weight around, Emma’s idea wasn’t a bad one.

  * * *

  EMMA CLIMBED ONTO the curb across the street from the credit union, Henry on one hip, his empty diaper bag on her shoulder. “I won’t be long,” she told Sawyer, who made no pretense of agreeing with her decision to go in alone.

  She shut the door and hurried along the crosswalk before the light changed. Traffic was tight on the normally quiet streets of downtown Knox Ridge. The sidewalks teemed with people enjoying a beautiful Saturday morning. The weekly farmers market was set up a few blocks away, and barricades closed the street to traffic at the next intersection, making parking a nightmare. They’d gotten lucky finding a space in view of the credit union, but it was just another thing Sawyer had complained about. He’d wanted to be closer. Preferably right in front of the door. As if Emma was somehow in danger on a busy sidewalk at ten in the morning.

  An exiting customer saw Emma coming and held the door.

  “Thank you,” she said, slipping inside.

  The credit union’s interior was quiet. A line of people stood between rows of velvet ropes, awaiting their turn with a teller. The air smelled vaguely of aged paper and new carpet. And despite the fact it was barely October, instrumental holiday music drifted softly overhead.

  Emma scanned the room for a familiar face that wasn’t already with a customer.

  Kate, the assistant manager, came swiftly into view. Her eyes widened when she caught sight of Emma, and she cut through the space in a flash. “Oh my goodness. How are you?” she asked. “The police were here this morning. They told me what happened. I can’t believe it.”

  Emma swallowed a painful lump in her throat. She hadn’t expected to get emotional at the mere mention of what happened. She’d had a hold on herself at home, but out in the world, knowing other people knew made Sara’s abduction seem impossibly more real. “What did the police say?” Emma asked. “Do they have a suspect? Or a clue?” If so, no one had bothered to call Emma with the information.

  “No. They were asking a lot of questions. None I could answer. I just saw Sara a few days ago and she was fine. She looked tired, maybe distracted, but not enough that I even thought to ask her about it. I mean, we’re all tired, right?”

  Emma certainly was. She took a breath and prepared her practiced line to get into Sara’s desk. “Did the police go through her things? Would you mind if I did? I think she has the spare house key,” Emma lied, “and now I’m paranoid someone will come walking in at night while I’m sleeping.”

  Kate paled. “Oh no. Of course. This way.” She walked Emma to a row of cubicles along th
e far wall and waved an arm toward Sara’s desk. “There it is. Take a look. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  Emma gave Kate her most pitiful face as she lowered onto her sister’s chair. “Sara did seem tired. I’d assumed it was work-related stress. She probably had a lot on her plate or an extra difficult account.”

  Kate puzzled. “We’re all overworked, but she never mentioned a difficult account. She had about a metric ton of questions a few weeks back on how our banking system works, but I had no clue. I directed her to Mr. Harrison.” She pointed to an open office door across the room. A bearded, middle-aged guy was on the phone and already watching them from his desk, brow furrowed.

  “Do you want to talk to him?” Kate asked. “He can tell you more about whatever Sara was doing.” Her bottom lip poked out. “You must be trying to get your mind around her last few days.”

  “They weren’t her last days,” Emma snapped, surprising herself with the force of her words.

  Kate started. “I didn’t mean that,” she said. “Not like that.”

  Emma stared, biting her lip and collecting her calm. “Sorry. I’m on edge. You understand.” She flicked her gaze to Mr. Harrison, a normally kind man who looked suddenly agitated inside his office. “I don’t think I’m ready to talk to anyone else.” It might’ve been her restless night, her emotional state or sheer paranoia, but the branch manager seemed to have fixed his angry eyes on her, despite the line of patrons moving between them. If Mr. Harrison had anything to do with what had happened to Sara, then Emma wasn’t in a hurry to run in there and ask about it. Better to let the police or Sawyer do that.

  She lowered her eyes to the tidy piles on Sara’s desk. “Did the police go through her things?”

  “They looked,” Kate said, “but they didn’t take anything. They were more interested in how she’d been acting lately or if anyone had come to see her here that potentially upset her. Angry ex-boyfriends, things like that.”

  Right, Emma thought, because the police didn’t have the notebook. She’d only located it last night while waiting for Sawyer to arrive. The police didn’t have a reason to wonder if someone at her work was involved when they’d visited. Maybe Emma didn’t either. Maybe the notebook was something else completely, and Emma was reaching for threads, for some way to feel more useful, when in truth there was nothing to do but wait.

  She’d get the notebook to the detective in charge as soon as possible. Let him take it from here.

  A door slammed and Emma gasped. She and Kate swung in the direction of the sound.

  Mr. Harrison’s door was closed.

  “Kate?” A teller waved from across the room.

  Kate frowned. “Sorry. I’ll only be a minute,” she told Emma.

  “I’ll be fine.” A minute was all Emma needed. She swiveled on her sister’s chair and stared at the desk. “Drawers first,” she told Henry. Then she opened his empty diaper bag on the floor and began dropping everything with Sara’s handwriting into the bag. She took memory sticks from the middle desk drawer and the appointment book from the desktop. Anything remotely personal could be a clue, and maybe she’d see something in Sara’s notes that the police hadn’t. Then she might be able to give them a lead, in addition to the notebook, that would help identify Sara’s abductor. Emma shuddered at the memory of the man’s awful growling voice. Who did you tell? Her gaze jumped to Mr. Harrison’s closed office door. Could he know who took her sister?

  She blinked through another threat of tears.

  A framed photo of Sara, Emma and their parents sat on the corner of her sister’s desk. Their mom had been gone just over five years. Their dad had been gone much longer, but the holes their parents had left behind were permanent. Emma tucked the frame into her purse, unwilling to stow her parents’ image with the hodgepodge of who-knew-what from Sara’s desk.

  Across the room Kate started back in her direction.

  Emma kicked the bottom drawers shut on either side of her, then heaved the bulging diaper bag back onto her shoulder. She gave the middle drawer a shove with her free hand.

  “Did you find your key?” Kate asked, coming to a stop at the cubicle’s opening.

  “No.” Emma tipped her head and stroked Henry’s fuzzy brown hair. “I guess it’s lost.”

  “Have you checked her car?” Kate offered. “If she’s anything like me, it’s probably in a cup holder. I find everything from hair ties to business cards in there.”

  “Good idea.” Emma pushed Sara’s chair in when she rose, then made a show of fussing over Henry on her way out, hoping to keep Kate’s eyes on her adorable baby boy instead of her suddenly crammed diaper bag.

  She hurried back onto the sidewalk with a feeling of victory and rush of relief. The local marching band played their high school fight song a few blocks away, adding an excellent backdrop to her enthusiasm. They were probably entertaining at the farmer’s market to raise money again, but it certainly felt personal. Emma smiled a little wider.

  She arranged the too-heavy diaper bag in the crook of her arm, having nearly dislocated her shoulder with the number of note pads and notebooks she’d confiscated. “I’m going to call this a success,” she told Henry, dropping a kiss onto his tiny forehead.

  Heavy fingers clamped hard around her elbow. “Don’t say a word, or your baby’s going to take a mighty fall.” A man’s low voice growled in her ear. He moved into her periphery, pulling her against his side and keeping pace there.

  Ice slid through Emma’s veins. It was the voice. Who did you tell?

  She scanned the street for Sawyer, but the man’s head turned at the eruption of a bass drumline. His thick arms crossed over his chest as the marching band carried their tune to a crescendo.

  A moment later, the man tugged her around the building’s edge and into a small alley.

  “Don’t hurt him,” she pleaded.

  “Give the bag to me.” The man moved into her view; his face was covered in a black scarf from his chin to his nose. The dark hood of his jacket hung low over his forehead.

  “No.” Emma needed the things in that bag. The fact he wanted the bag was a sure sign that she finally had what she needed to find Sara. “Where’s my sister?”

  His hand moved from her elbow to the back of her neck, compressing and squeezing until shooting pain raced up the back of her head and she cried out for him to stop. “I wasn’t making a request.”

  He released her with a shove. “Hand over the bag, or I squeeze your baby’s head next.”

  Emma stumbled forward, twisting at the waist to put more distance between the lunatic and her son.

  Henry screamed.

  The man curled meaty fingers around the straps of Henry’s diaper bag and jerked hard enough to leave material burns along her forearm as it slid. Before he separated it from her completely, Emma clenched a fist around one strap. “No!” she screamed.

  “Stop!” Sawyer’s voice blasted through the white noise of the street beyond the alley. A heartbeat later his livid face came into view across the crowded road. “Stop!” His eyes were fierce, and his voice boomed with authority. “Help her!” he yelled, motioning to Emma in the alley.

  A few confused faces turned in her direction, gawking from the safety of the sidewalk just a few yards away.

  Emma tried to hold on, tried to stall her attacker ten more seconds, just long enough for Sawyer to reach her, but the man’s expression turned lethal. He reached a giant hand forward for her baby, eyes narrowed and darkening.

  “No!” Emma screamed. She jerked left, spinning Henry farther away as a massive fist crashed into her cheekbone with a deafening thud. Her head snapped back and her vision blurred. Emma’s knees buckled, and her back hit the brick wall of the credit union behind her. Air expelled from her lungs as she slid onto the filthy broken asphalt, Henry screaming in her arms.

  The bag flew from her use
less, flaccid fingers, and the man was in motion, beating a path down the alley, away from the crowd, away from Sawyer and away from Emma.

  Henry wailed into her ear, arching his back in distress as Sawyer skidded to a stop at her side.

  “Emma!”

  She felt her strength giving way. Her arms knew to hold on, but her thoughts slipped into nothing. “Sawyer,” she started, but the darkness rushed in to take her.

  Chapter Four

  Sawyer watched in horror as the man in black pulled back his fist and shot it forward at Emma and her baby. At Sawyer’s baby. Fury burned in his veins, propelling him faster, erasing the final distance between them as Emma’s body began to wobble and fall. She uttered Sawyer’s name as his feet reached the curb only a yard from her side. The desperate, heartbreaking sound was nearly enough to land him on his knees.

  Time seemed to stand still as her eyelids drooped shut, extinguishing the final glimmer of her awareness. Sawyer dove for them, catching Emma’s body in a hug as it went limp and pressing both her and Henry to his chest. “Call 911!” he demanded, turning to fix a pointed look on the gathered bystanders.

  Sawyer gritted his teeth as the assailant pushed through a throng of pedestrians at the alley’s opposite end and escaped his wrath, for now, with Emma’s bag.

  The soft whir of emergency sirens spun to life in the distance, barely audible over Henry’s cries.

  Sawyer focused on the lives he held in his arms. He repositioned them, allowing Emma’s arms to fall to her sides, and getting a more comforting hold on Henry. “Shh,” he whispered to his son. The seething anger he felt for Emma’s attacker would have to wait. “I’ve got you, and you’re going to be okay,” he vowed, kissing the child’s head on instinct, cuddling him tighter. And he would return the man’s assaulting punch at the first opportunity.