There was no lingering, no prolonging what was already over.

  She would be ready for whatever the day needed from her the second Ezra said it was time to go.

  There were also no regrets, she found, as she looked herself in the mirror while applying a light coat of makeup with sunscreen to her face.

  She’d made a choice and didn’t feel sorry about it.

  Was it going to be harder to tell him goodbye when the time came for him to go?

  Probably.

  But it wasn’t like it would have been a piece of cake to see him depart, even if she hadn’t slept with him.

  Was she going to ache to the bone for a bit after he left?

  Obviously.

  But she’d rather have been alive in a moment than let her libido lie dormant forever. The thought made a sad kind of sense to her, and with one last look in the mirror, she became only the mother who desperately wanted more than anything for her daughters to be returned safely to her care, and went to face the rest of her life.

  * * *

  Ezra had learned at sixteen how to compartmentalize. More importantly, he’d perfected the talent of putting anything that made him feel emotionally vulnerable into one particular area. That part of him received and never opened enough to allow anything to escape.

  That Thursday morning’s dawn came with a major malfunction there, though. It was rejecting Theresa Fitzgerald. Wouldn’t let him pack her away, emotionally speaking.

  And, of course, it happened on a day when he didn’t have the time or resources to deal with it. He couldn’t head to the gym, take a long run or climb a mountain. He couldn’t go to target practice or make a surprise visit to the nearest boot camp in his area to join the recruits in their training.

  Those resources, and others like them, had helped seal away his emotions every single time.

  Without them, he did the only thing left to him—carried on with baggage in tow. And he’d make damned certain that his growing feelings didn’t slow him down or get in the way of successfully completing his mission.

  While Theresa was in the shower, he went for breakfast, ordered it to go, ate his on the way back to the room and waited long enough for her to get out of the bathroom before he reentered the room. No listening to her shower or entertaining thoughts about being in there with her.

  What was done was done.

  She’d made clear the night before that what was between them was just for that evening.

  By touching her back, he’d agreed to that stipulation.

  Wanted it, even.

  And so it was.

  He went in only far enough to set her foam take-out container on the edge of the dresser. “Eat up while it’s hot,” he said, and without more than a glance in her direction, seeing that she was all put together, green pants and shirt again, hair in that perennially messy bun, he shut himself behind the bathroom door.

  A cold shower and quick shave later, he gathered his things, left them in the bags on the counter as he’d done the day before—on the other side of the sink from her bags of things—and headed out to find her standing, purse on her shoulder, in the middle of the room.

  Looking lost?

  “Ready?” His tone was a little softer than normal. He’d work on it.

  “Thanks for breakfast,” she said as she left him to follow her. Her response was short and to the point. No words, just meeting him at the door and opening it before he could.

  And so it went for most of the morning. They tended to the business at hand. Neither of them spoke of what they’d done in the darkness.

  If she thought about it at all, it didn’t show. No covert looks, chance glances or accidental touches.

  As soon as he was on the road, he didn’t notice as much. Keeping his mind on the job was second nature to him, and he settled into his skin gladly.

  Traveling the other side of the U on their map that morning, they had all-new scenery to canvass as they passed. He noted more prickly pear than he’d seen the day before, but there were fewer of some of the other plants natural to the Colorado mountains.

  Still, he took note, with a check mark in the positive instead of the negative column. Could be a sign they were finally on the right track.

  “I widened my search while you were in the shower this morning,” he told Theresa as the miles sped past and they drew closer to their first destination. Silence was fine, but he had to know that she was really okay—and up for whatever might lie ahead.

  Partially because she was putting her own life at risk, as well as his and the kids’, if she couldn’t hold her own.

  Or if she wasn’t willing to follow orders.

  He had no God complex, but the truth was, on any job, there could only be one boss. On that particular job, that particular day, the boss was him.

  She wasn’t jumping into the conversation. So he eventually told her, “I included old homesteads in the parameters. Maybe they happened upon an abandoned one in the mountains someplace, set up shop, and no one came along to question their right to be there.”

  The idea had occurred to him when they’d first gone to bed the night before. He’d had to keep his mind firmly on the case to keep it off her snuggled up against him.

  “That would explain why they show up in no property searches,” she said, her voice even. Her brow furrowed, more in consideration than displeasure, he figured from the brief glance he took, and he felt better.

  She was with him. Holding up.

  “For all we know, they could have raised Mark there,” she added. And his gut clenched a little.

  Was the reference merely because they were seeking her deceased husband’s parents? Or did she have Mark on her mind? Were there deep regrets for what she’d done with Ezra, given Ezra, the night before?

  He didn’t blame her.

  He was mostly all right with having been a probable substitute. He totally understood. Searched for a way to tell her that it was okay.

  He didn’t find one.

  And didn’t see that it mattered where Eric and Jennifer had raised their son. What mattered was finding where they were planning to raise their granddaughters.

  But he and Theresa would be rescuing them.

  Returning them, safe and sound, to their mother’s arms, to their freshly painted little home with a dog named Charlie.

  And then he would be getting the hell out of Blue Larkspur before he made any major blunders.

  Like asking a grieving widow if he could sleep with her one more time for good luck before he set out.

  * * *

  They’d been in the Jeep a couple of hours, and Theresa was having a hard time keeping hope alive by the time Dominic’s call came in.

  She’d tried not to worry about that nose-dived blue truck, but she’d known from the second she heard about the accident that there was no good scenario for it.

  When Ezra pushed to answer his brother’s call and said, “Yeah,” she almost covered her ears. She didn’t want to know.

  But she had to know. She couldn’t help her children if she didn’t know...

  “Blood in the truck is no match,” the FBI agent said right off.

  “It’s not Claire’s or Neve’s?” she called out to him. No room for misunderstanding on that one.

  “Correct.”

  “Oh, thank God.” Tears spurted and she looked away, sorry to appear like a weak link to the two strong men helping her so diligently.

  Peripherally, she saw Ezra’s head turn a few quick times, but she didn’t so much as glance over. Didn’t dare allow herself the chance to connect with him at the moment.

  She’d had what she could have.

  Because even if Ezra was aware of the powerful feelings she had for him, even if he shared them, she’d never love him enough to be okay with his career. To the contrary, the more she fell in love, the more problematic his career would become.

  And by all accounts, Ezra Colton was a soldier. To not be okay with that was to not be okay with him.

  And even if she’d risk her own heart, there was no way she could put her daughters’ hearts out there again. Not with such a strong chance that they could lose Ezra, after having already lost their father.

  And, yes, she’d fallen for Ezra Colton. She was fairly certain she’d had no choice in the matter. It wasn’t one she’d have willingly made. But she wasn’t going to lie to herself about it, either.

  She’d learned the hard way, with Mark’s illness, that lying to oneself only hurt more in the end when you had to accept reality.

  Dom’s words flew in and out between her thoughts. The FBI had gotten no hits in the fingerprint database that matched the prints taken from the truck. And no DNA match off the blood, either, for the girls or their grandparents.

  The area search produced no evidence of a struggle or recent footprints—but it didn’t rule them out, either.

  Personnel had combed the banks of the river for several miles both ways from the crash site. No sign of a body, or even clothes, had turned up.

  “We did get one hit, though,” Dom said. Theresa swung her gaze straight to the car’s audio system, as though she could see the man on the screen that currently displayed his name. “Doesn’t help us much today, but officers have been canvassing the area between that first little gas station you visited outside Blue Larkspur and Benson, going door-to-door, which was a feat since places are so few and far between...”

  “Today, Dom.” Ezra’s tone carried definite tension.

  “Found a home security system. Got an older brown van, mint condition, heading from Benson, and later the blue truck heading toward Benson, coinciding perfectly with the time we catch it on the two cameras there from two days ago, and just a bit later, we get the brown van heading back toward Benson again.”

  “They switched vehicles someplace along the way.”

  “And if it really was them in the brown van, they headed back to Benson as we’d thought.”

  Maybe it wasn’t much to people like Dominic and Ezra Colton, who fought bad guys every day and knew that two-day-old news wasn’t going to help them find the girls that day. But to Theresa, who’d just had confirmation that it was likely that the Fitzgeralds really had been buying two cases of ice cream sandwiches, the news was a gift from heaven. You didn’t buy perishables by the case unless you were planning to spoil the intended recipients for a long time.

  To her, that ice cream symbolized hope that her daughters were being well cared for—to the extent that unstable conspiracy believers could administer good care.

  “Good to have a piece fall into place,” Ezra said, almost as though he’d read Theresa’s thoughts.

  “Doesn’t bring ’em home.” Dom clearly wasn’t into sugarcoating. Ezra hadn’t been, either, the two prior days they’d been on the road. If he was suddenly changing his tactics, thinking he needed to protect her...

  “Nope, it’s up to us to do that,” Ezra replied and clicked off before Dominic said another word.

  “I won’t be coddled,” she said, almost glad to have something to be angry with him about. “I prefer Dominic’s honesty to false hope.”

  His jaw tightened. He stared straight ahead, both hands on the steering wheel. White-knuckled. Were they about to have their first fight?

  Probably their only one?

  Shoulders visibly relaxing, he gave her a quick glance. “Point taken. I apologize.”

  Good. She sat, staring out, watching ahead, and on both sides of the road, too, as had become habit. Glad that she’d set him straight.

  So why, now that she’d made sure that Ezra wouldn’t give her any special treatment, did that fact sadden her?

  * * *

  He wasn’t trying to give her false hope. Ezra knew full well how damaging a fake sense of reality could be.

  But damn.

  When his brother started spouting off facts, without any regard as to how hard his words would hit Theresa...

  He had to find the girls. Get them safely home.

  And get his ass out of Blue Larkspur. New assignment or not.

  He could spend a few days at the beach, drinking beer. Or take a side trip to Malaysia to shoot pool with Oliver.

  Maybe even let him win.

  “Ezra, stop!”

  He hit the brakes gently. And then again. They’d been traveling for nearly forty miles on the same dirt road without slowing. Locations number four and five were both accessed by it, with fifty miles in between them. If she...

  Theresa was out of the car before he’d even come to a complete stop. Thinking she was ill, he barely got the Jeep in Park before he rushed to join her.

  She was bent over, but she wasn’t heaving. Or peeing, either, which could have been another emergency necessitating a quick stop, he realized too late.

  She was pointing toward the rock face that covered much of the ground around them. “Are those tire tracks?” she asked.

  Following the point of her finger, he saw the black, almost grease-like markings on the mostly whitish rock, prepared to tell her kindly that she was seeing earth misplaced from a storm and cooked into the rock.

  And then he noticed the glint...off to the right, several yards away, embedded in the mountainside that mostly lined the road. A camera.

  “Get down,” he said. He lowered himself to the ground, scooping her toward him, to make sure she landed on him, not the rock.

  He rolled over immediately, keeping her under him, as he surveyed the area. It was all overkill, he was sure.

  They were on the edge of private property. Fence line had been clearly marked by posts and flags on both sides of the rock face, which had made installing fence on that one spot impossible. And needless.

  The flat ground she’d seen could be a gully or could lead back behind the rock face to something more. Entire towns could be erected back there, and from the road, it would look like nothing.

  He knew there wasn’t a settlement of some sort, though. His topographic map had told him so.

  But he couldn’t be sure there wasn’t another hermit who’d shoot them off his property.

  “Stay on your belly and get back to the Jeep.” He bit out the words as he slid her his knife. “Stay low and get around to the driver’s side and climb in the back. Get down on the floor.” He moved off her. “Go.”

  Ezra waited until he heard the far side door close, and then he moved forward, inch by inch, to get a better look at the marks she’d seen.

  Adrenaline kicked in when he got close enough to see that she’d been right.

  The markings were tire tracks.

  Recent ones.

  He was still ten miles from the map’s designation of the ideal location for the Fitzgeralds’ bunker, but his quest wasn’t science. Or exact.

  And he could once again be on private property owned by an inhabitant, or inhabitants, who only wanted to be left alone.

  He had no right to be there.

  And absolutely did not want to put Dom in a tough situation at his job.

  The visible track, a bit of mud mixed with tire tar, was on an angle. That told him the vehicle was headed away from them around the rock face, blocking his view from what might be beyond. And the tread was larger than a car’s. Not as large as a work truck’s. A van?

  The tread was solid. The kid at the store in town had noted the van’s tires being in good shape.

  Was he so desperate to help the woman he’d had sex with, so desperate to find two little girls who’d shown him how cool being around children could be, that he was going to turn a mark on a rock into a reason to break the law again?

  His life was about order.

  And absolutely upholding what was right and just.

  He would not be his father.

  Peering carefully at every inch of the rock face upon which he lay, smelling dirt and fresh air, listening for anything, Ezra questioned himself as he never had before.

  His number one rule of engagement? Don’t hesitate.

  Sliding forward, he tried to get a glimpse of where the vehicle might have gone, without compromising any potential landowner’s privacy. Twelve inches at a time. Then another foot.

  What was he doing?

  What kind of real evidence did he have?

  Had he been so desperate to help Theresa Fitzgerald, to fight her fight with her, that he’d been leading them on wild-goose chases all along?

  And why?

  Why did he think he could do any more to find those little kids than all of the law enforcement agencies in the state? Like he was better than the entire FBI, which was taxed with kidnapping cases all the time?

  He knew nothing about kidnappers.

  Or kids, either, for that matter.

  He knew about fighting terrorists and cartels in Afghanistan.

  Why in the hell was he lying on a rock face in the middle of nowhere?

  Because Theresa had intrigued him?

  Because he’d wanted to ask her out on a date, even though he knew that it could lead nowhere?

  With the new van he’d be paying for, he had to admit he was certainly on the most expensive outing he’d ever taken with a woman.

  Strange, though, that the same kind of camera as at the first homestead, set at about the same angle, had been protruding out of a cliff face.

  Maybe it was because those who lived off the grid were a kind of community of themselves, buying their supplies from those who were like them.

  Continuing to mountain climb the flat surface on his belly, bending one leg to push him along, and then the other, he just needed a glimpse of where the vehicle had been headed. If it had been headed anywhere.

  The driver could have just pulled off to take a leak. A nap. A photo.