Did someone think that the couple had...?

  “They love the girls,” she said emphatically. “They won’t physically hurt them.” Not knowingly. And you’d have to do it knowingly for it to have happened to both of them so quickly.

  “They could also have been told to get down on the floor,” Ezra said. “Could have been covered up by a dark tarp. Theresa has said these people are planners. They’re unstable in their beliefs, but smart. Look at the way they pulled off the kidnapping. They’d obviously been watching the home. Had done their research on the security system...”

  Which they could only have done if they’d been inside. On her phone instantly, she called the home, asked for the charge nurse on duty and had her get someone to start watching security cameras over the past week to see if Eric and Jennifer Fitzgerald had been inside. She texted a picture of the pair while she was still on the phone.

  And when she was done, she glanced at Ezra. Saw the caring, and also the approval, on his face and knew that, whatever it took, she would get the job done.

  Just as she knew he would.

  They were a team.

  For the moment only, she reminded herself.

  But in that moment, there was no future.

  There was only finding her girls.

  * * *

  What did you say to a woman whose children were missing and she’d just been told that they weren’t in the vehicle they’d been reportedly seen in an hour or so before?

  Way out of his league, Ezra didn’t say anything for a bit. He drove like a bat out of hell, to get her to Benson with the hope that by the time they arrived, the Fitzgeralds would be in custody.

  And he worked on a plan B as well. The plan where they got the older couple but the girls weren’t with them.

  Theresa had been scrolling on her phone since Dom had hung up. Knowing that keeping her brain occupied was the single most important thing she could do to fight off a feeling of powerlessness that led to loss of hope and panic, he didn’t ask if she was okay.

  How could she be?

  He didn’t tell her things would be all right. That the girls were fine. He had no way of knowing either.

  “Oh my God!” Her exclamation sent shock sensations from his chest to his gut.

  “What?” Had she received a ransom note? A text? An email?

  “I’ve been researching bunker buildings,” she said. “Just in case...you know... I mean, their goal is to get the girls to safety, and we know they have a bunker somewhere, or did...”

  “What, Theresa?” he asked, in a sergeant-expecting-an-answer tone. Not mean, but firm enough to stop the stream of useless information. There was only so much emotional tension a guy could take.

  “There’s this guy. He builds bunkers for people. There are a few of them, actually, right here on the internet, but this one, for a pretty hefty sum, he’ll build a bunker for you...” She glanced over at him, as if to see whether he was still with her or thought her misguided for her research.

  He couldn’t help but nod with encouragement before turning his attention right back to the road. Driving twenty over the speed limit wouldn’t do well if he lost control of the vehicle.

  “His address is Benson, Colorado,” she said softly.

  She’d found his backup plan.

  He glanced at her again. He couldn’t help it. She was smiling.

  It was a teary smile, but there.

  And he smiled back.

  They made a good team.

  Chapter 11

  Not long after the smile that had to be forgotten, Theresa’s phone rang. Millie, her second-in-command at the home, let her know that the Fitzgeralds had been at the home on Saturday. They’d signed in as Frank and Janie Frederick, to see Alice.

  Her entire body froze. With stark cold horror. Somehow managing to thank Millie, she dropped her phone in her lap, as though it burned her skin, and saw it sitting there, on the black material of her skirt...

  She’d had a meeting with state health people this morning, hoping to win a grant to provide electronics for the residents who could use them. Had donned the black skirt and jacket so she’d be taken seriously...

  “Tell me what’s going on.” Once again, Ezra’s voice pulled her back into focus. Which sent her right back to despair.

  “The Fitzgeralds were at the home on Saturday. They signed in to visit your aunt. That’s how they got on the ward. They’re diabolical planners, Ezra. I knew it. I knew it,” she said, and continued right on, “They knew about the Colton barbecue, knew I was going to be there. Probably watched you come pick me up, followed us there and saw their chance. They’ve been watching me, us, all along. They knew when they were waiting when we got home Saturday that we were with you. That’s why they were there. They were sizing you up. Sizing us up. I knew it. I should have...”

  “What?” His tone had softened. “What could you have done that you weren’t already doing?”

  “Run.”

  “Someplace where there was no one to help you when they found you? Because if they’re as good, and determined, as you say, they would have found you, you know.”

  “They’ve been preparing for the blast since Mark was ten. That’s more than twenty years. He said it was pretty much all they did, all they talked about. But it was so many years ago, and people come to their senses...”

  Or they didn’t. They just got in deeper and deeper until planning and protecting their own from what they perceived as very real dangers was all they knew. And something they did at any cost.

  “They’re prepared for a blast, Theresa.” Ezra’s tone strengthened. A sergeant talking to his men, maybe? “They aren’t prepared to be hunted by the best this state has to offer. They aren’t prepared for me.”

  There was no bravado in what he said.

  Just stone-hard truth.

  She listened while Ezra called Dom, reporting Millie’s news, and wanted to lay her head down against Ezra’s chest, feel the rumble of his voice, and rest. When the thought struck, she sat straight up instead. And spent the next half hour perusing the internet on her phone, searching for anything to do with conspiracy theories about nuclear blasts, preparations for them, where to buy supplies. She read articles. Clicked on links to various outlets. Read a short piece about guns and ammunition—bunker living required stockpiling illegal types of both—and forced herself to see the Fitzgeralds, to try, as Ezra was doing, to predict what they might do next in an effort to get that one step ahead of them that they had to reach in order to save the girls.

  If, peripherally, she was getting a glimpse into the life her sweet babies might be forced to live if they weren’t successful, she pushed the impressions away. Just as she prayed that they’d be strong, cling to each other and continue to be smart as Claire had been in leaving her book, she knew they needed the same from her.

  She had to stay lucid and capable, no matter what it took. She’d learned the hard way that there’d always be time to grieve. Her job was to prevent the need.

  She’d get her girls back. And she’d do it without falling for a sergeant who’d be leaving. One who’d dedicated his life to danger and fighting enemies. She’d prevent reasons to grieve. Protecting her daughters from any more cause to fear.

  They were six. Life was supposed to be about unicorns and rainbows. Horses and happiness.

  She jumped as Ezra’s phone pealing interrupted the concentrated silence in the Jeep. Every muscle and her fingers clenched, she waited to hear that the Fitzgeralds had been caught and her daughters were safe.

  Stared at Ezra as he pushed the button on the steering wheel and said, “Yeah.”

  “Nothing.” Dom’s tone was equally stoic. “Not another sign of the truck, of the couple or the girls. More than fifty law enforcement personnel from various jurisdictions, and they manage to get by all of them.”

  “How does that happen?” she cried out, uncaring for the moment that she was supposed to be strong and focused. Unable to hold back her terror. “Where are they? How do they just disappear?”

  But the answer came to her even as she asked it.

  They went underground, that was how.

  They were informed, prepared.

  She’d known in her gut that they were making a plan. They’d had everything in place, down to every last detail, like using the magnet to fool the alarm system.

  “We suspect that there’s a network,” Dominic said. “From what intel we’ve gathered, there is a whole group of these people, like a cult, spread all over the country. They meet on social networks, mostly on the dark web. We’re on there and listening, but so far, there’s been no chatter regarding grandparents with young girls. Or any special movement today...”

  Dark web. Intel. Chatter. It was like she’d woken up that morning a normal woman and had somehow face-planted in the middle of a TV show.

  “We’ve checked property records from all over the state, and neither Eric nor Jennifer Fitzgerald comes up. Either they’re renting, squatting, living on inherited property without legal deed change, or they’ve been living under an assumed identity for a hell of a lot of years. The address on both of their driver’s licenses is to a rented mailbox in a postal center they used to own. Same for credit cards and cell phones. Phones are turned off, but we’ve got someone monitoring in case they come back on, even for a few seconds. We’ll know as soon as it happens.”

  And she’d let these people drive off with her little girls? Even once? Nauseated, Theresa turned the Jeep’s vent straight at her face.

  Law enforcement had been alerted in all surrounding states. Dom let them know, as if that was cause to feel grateful. The pronouncement, the authorities’ apparent belief that there was cause to make the call, scared her further. The Fitzgeralds were Coloradoans. Had always, as far as she knew, been in the state. The idea that they’d take her daughters farther than state lines...

  Maybe it shouldn’t surprise her. After Mark’s diagnosis, she definitely knew that the worst did happen. But...

  Dom said he’d stay in touch. Ezra told his brother they’d still head into Benson. Ezra wanted to do his own reconnaissance, and Dom agreed that he was the man for that job, like none other, and reminded Ezra to call him if he found anything. They hung up without saying goodbye.

  She hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to the twins.

  The last thing she’d said to them...she couldn’t remember. Probably some reminder to keep a hand on Charlie’s collar...and not to leave the memory ward for any reason.

  Oh, God, did they think she’d be mad at them for disobeying?

  Neve was better at discerning the difference between disobeying and situations being beyond their control. Hopefully she was reassuring serious little Claire.

  “This is a setback, not a failure.” Ezra sounded like a teacher in front of a class.

  Looking over at him still in his painting clothes, she saw the way his jaw clenched and wondered if he had as many doubts as she did.

  “You talking to yourself or to me?” she asked, hanging on to reason by a thread.

  “Just stating fact. You don’t stop until you fail. We haven’t failed. Not by a long shot.”

  “You stop trying to do something the first time you fail?” The question had nothing to do with anything that mattered, but came out anyway. She wanted to know his answer.

  “In battle, when you’ve failed to achieve your mission, you fall back,” he said. “Doesn’t mean you give up on the war, only the battle. It’s not time for us to fall back.”

  It wasn’t time to fall back. It was time to continue moving forward. He’d just given her hope.

  Again.

  “You’re a good man, Ezra Colton.” Emotion filled the words. The tone shocked her, revealing something she would not, could not, own.

  If he heard it, received it, he didn’t say.

  And she didn’t ask.

  Or apologize.

  Best just to leave it alone.

  There was no place for personal emotion in their brief acquaintance.

  He was just helping her find her daughters.

  And then he’d be gone.

  Like the girls’ princess lunch, she was experiencing a prince investigation.

  Nothing more.

  * * *

  Ezra thought about calling Dom back, letting his brother know that he was planning to visit the bunker maker—Tom Smith. Thought about the fact that the authorities, his triplet included, would demand that he let them know first, if they could.

  He dismissed the thoughts almost at once. Then had another one. Theresa had a say.

  As they neared Benson, he broke the silence that had fallen between them. “I have a plan.”

  Though he kept his gaze straight ahead—not wanting to deal with another jolt like their earlier shared smile had given him, or the tone in her voice when she’d proclaimed him a good man—he saw, peripherally, when she turned to look at him. “I’m not surprised, but I’m glad. What do you need me to do?”

  No questioning what the plan even was?

  Her trust in him hit him hard. Humbled him.

  The woman was putting her daughters’ lives in his hands. Was he up to the task?

  He wasn’t a good man. He was the guy who’d run out of town at the first possible opportunity. Run out on his family and their myriad problems and challenges.

  He most definitely wasn’t a good man. He was just good at what he did.

  Still...with Theresa, those two endearing urchins, he was out of his league.

  In the army he had lives at stake every time he went to work, but everyone understood, going in, that you couldn’t save them all. There were going to be casualties. Your job was to minimize them as much as possible.

  This wasn’t that.

  “Ezra? I’m not just going to stand back and wait.”

  “I know.” Knuckles clenched on the wheel, he took a breath and plunged in.

  “As soon as we get to town, we stop at a box store and get a couple of changes of clothes for each of us. Pants, button-up long-sleeved shirts, boots, in colors that match camo, but not actual camo pattern. Survival wear that also blends in. I’m going to buy a burner phone and call Tom Smith, tell him we’re a married couple interested in a bunker, but need to see more. I’ll tell him we’re in town specifically to meet with him. From there, the plan is fluid. Our goal is to get inside his place—if we get lucky, even see a bunker—and collect as much information as we can. Anything could be a clue that might lead us to Eric and Jennifer.”

  He meant to give her time to speak, to question, disagree, but started talking again, justifying, before she could get a word in. “Law enforcement can question him. But as soon as he tells them he’s never heard of Eric or Jennifer Fitzgerald, as soon as he looks at a picture of the couple and denies ever having seen them, and then asks them to leave his property, they’ll be done. There’s no known tie between him and them, and even if they could find one, that could take time, which we don’t have. And if they do find a connection, it would have to be more than just that they’ve been in contact at some point in order to be enough to compel a warrant to search his place...”

  The plan was solid. The best.

  He needed her buy-in.

  “I’m not going to lie to you about the danger. I don’t foresee any, but when you’re dealing with someone who builds bunkers for conspiracy theorists, you never know.”

  He would have insisted on going in alone, in spite of the fact that he believed the cover of a married couple would work in their favor, except that she’d refused to be left out of the search for her girls, and this part of the plan posed little danger. No matter what kind of business you were in, you wouldn’t get far if you went around hurting potential clients.

  He waited. And in the silence, found the flaw in his plan. Theresa was a nurturing, compassionate woman who spent her life taking care of others. She wasn’t a soldier prepared to don the gear and go into battle. He’d misjudged...

  “I’ll have to get a wedding ring. Something cheap that can pass for real. They’ll have a jewelry counter at the box store.”

  He glanced her way.

  She was looking him right in the eye. “To support the cover,” she said. “Guys always seem to look for wedding rings.”

  He glanced down. She wasn’t wearing one. “When did you take yours off?”

  “A month ago.”

  Before she’d met him.

  A sign that she was ready to move on with her life? That she’d be looking for more than a barbecue with a guy who was only visiting town for a few weeks?

  He’d told his brothers she was a grieving widow who wouldn’t be looking to him for anything other than a momentary acquaintanceship.

  He’d told himself the same thing.

  So how did he explain the looks?

  The smile?

  The tone of voice?

  He couldn’t have her seeing more in him than was there.

  And no way in hell could he abandon her, either. Not while her girls were missing.

  He might be a runner, but he didn’t leave jobs he’d taken on until they were complete.

  So...what?

  Did he let her know what was what...make sure she wasn’t falling for him...or imagining something that wasn’t there...tell her that she could only rely on him to find her girls and nothing more...before or after they posed as a married couple?

  “I need to get something out there.” She interrupted his thoughts, relieving him of the immediate need to make a decision that wasn’t feeling in any way pleasant.

  “What?” he asked, both hands on the wheel as the traffic picked up slightly on the way into Benson.

  “I just...don’t want to give you the wrong impression here. I could be speaking out of turn, and I hope I am, but...you asked me out, and here you are, risking your life for my girls, and...it kind of feels like we’ve had a personal moment or two, and now here I am, telling you I took off my wedding ring, something everyone knows is a sign someone is moving on and...”