At that moment all he was contemplating were the images he was scrolling through on the screen as they downloaded through his brother’s equipment. He wasn’t getting the actual footage, but still shots from them. Some program Dom had access to that put the video in still frames.

  And...there it was.

  “It’s the truck!” Theresa called out, and then lowered her voice to say, “Can you make it bigger? See if the girls are there?”

  He tried, but neither of them could see the back seat of the truck from the view they had. They couldn’t even make out occupants of the front seat.

  But it was something. He made note of the photo designation—camera location and time. And continued scrolling.

  Theresa sat still as could be, her gaze glued on the screen. She didn’t chat. Didn’t ask the questions that had to be racing through her mind. He didn’t have any answers to them.

  And then...he felt the muscles of her butt clench against his thigh. There it was again. The same distinctive blue truck. Ezra took one look at the camera’s location—and the time the Fitzgeralds had been there.

  “I gotta go,” he said then, practically pushing Theresa off his lap as he stood up. Except that he didn’t have to push. She was right there with him. Grabbing her purse.

  “Where are we going?”

  He didn’t take ride-alongs. In the desert, on the battlefield, no one ever wanted to ride along.

  “I’ll be in touch soon,” he told her. “I just have to go check something out.”

  “No way, Colton,” she said, sounding as fierce as his mother ever had. And having raised twelve kids, seven of whom were boys, Isa had a lot of practice at putting her foot down. “I won’t be left behind.”

  He had a lot of practice at standing his ground, too. And didn’t budge. He had no idea where his hunch would lead him. How dangerous it could be if he got lucky and there was a showdown with the Fitzgeralds to get the girls home in time for dinner.

  Or how disappointing if it didn’t pan out. He also didn’t have time to fight her.

  Unable to look at her, he grabbed his keys and headed for the door.

  “Please, Ezra. They’re my children. All I have. I can’t just sit here...”

  He paused, but didn’t turn around. That last line...hit him where it counted. He’d had the same thought not half an hour before, and Claire and Neve weren’t even remotely his.

  With a glance back over his shoulder, he motioned for her to come with him and continued his determined stride out to the Jeep.

  He was racing against time and couldn’t afford to lose the race.

  Most particularly not with the twins’ mother sitting in the vehicle beside him.

  * * *

  She didn’t know where they going. Didn’t ask. Didn’t even question her unwavering faith in putting her life in the hands of a man she’d known only a week.

  Or stop to consider that perhaps she’d be of better service to the trained police force working to find her daughters. Ezra called Chief Lawson once they were on the road. Let him know that he’d had to get Theresa out of there for a few minutes. Told him to call if they needed her for anything.

  And then it was just the two of them.

  She didn’t make the mistake of asking a second question. The first one had nearly gotten her sidelined.

  “I’m not a magician.” Ezra’s comment was so odd, she stared at him. Trying to figure out what had prompted the words so she could reassure him. Got nowhere.

  “I know.”

  “This could be a wild-goose chase.”

  And she got it. He was afraid he was setting her up for disappointment.

  “If I was in on the details, I’d be more apt to realize that, and not build up unreasonable expectations,” she told him. But in truth, she was just glad to be doing something to try to help save her babies rather than sitting around, letting worrisome scenarios take over her brain.

  And doing it with him. Ezra made her feel more alive, more capable, than she could ever remember feeling. Even before Mark got sick.

  “The area between the one camera and the second... I know it. There’s a road that heads across state, away from any towns, and that road is not far from that second camera...”

  “You think that’s where they’re headed.”

  His shrug drew her attention to his massive shoulders, to his strength, and yet she sensed a vulnerability about him. He wasn’t sure.

  How could he be?

  She drew a deep breath.

  “I know a shortcut to that road. Dom and Oliver and I used to drag race out there. There’s a gas station about an hour from where we saw that last camera image.”

  It had been time-stamped half an hour before they’d been in the Jeep.

  “Do we have time to make it before they do?”

  “Probably not.”

  “But we’re going to try.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  For the moment, it was enough.

  * * *

  They didn’t make it. Ezra was actually hopeful—an occurrence that wasn’t normal for him—as he pulled into the vacant lot at the little country station, that they’d arrived in time. Most people driving the long road into nowhere knew that the little family-owned place was the last stop until past the state line. Most stopped.

  Pulling the Jeep around back, so that there was no chance either the girls or the Fitzgeralds would see it and recognize it, he suggested that he and Theresa head in to talk to the guy behind the counter. A younger guy Ezra didn’t think he’d seen before. If the blue truck pulled onto the lot, he could be out the back door and in the Jeep to head them off before they knew they’d been made.

  “Sorry, man, you just missed them,” the guy said as Ezra described the truck. He’d explained that he was trying to catch up with in-laws. He hadn’t said whose. “They was here maybe twenty minutes ago.”

  “You’re sure it was the same truck?” he asked, certain that there weren’t two of them in the state in the condition Eric Fitzgerald kept his vehicle. “They had our daughters with them. You wouldn’t be able to miss them...”

  “Twins,” the man cut him off, nodding. “Yep. They bought ’em each an ice cream sandwich,” he said, as though that solved all the world’s problems.

  “And they were headed toward the state line?” He pointed into no-man’s-land, refusing to let dread, or fear for Theresa and her girls, sink in. Slow his thinking processes or inhibit problem-solving skills.

  “Noooo.” Frowning, the young man shook his head as he drew out the word. “They headed back the way they’d come.”

  “They were going back to town?” Theresa asked.

  The guy shrugged. “Maybe. Unless they took that turnoff that leads to McClintock and Benson and them other small towns up that way. One of them girls had to pee is why they came down here, I think. No places to stop on that other road.”

  Which made it not likely to be on police radar. Or have surveillance cameras.

  A good choice of travel for someone wanting to stay off the grid.

  “Thank you.” Ezra dropped a twenty on the counter and, taking Theresa’s hand in his, hurried from the store.

  * * *

  “The girls don’t like ice cream sandwiches.” They’d been in the car a minute—just long enough for Ezra to report in to his brother Dominic, the FBI agent, that they were headed on a road to small towns upstate.

  “Mark liked them,” she continued. Made sense, then, that Jennifer would think to buy for her grandchildren the same treat she’d bought for their father. “He bought a box of them once, had the girls try them. They ate the ice cream and gave him the chocolate-cake part. After that it was tradition. He never seemed to mind eating the sandwich without the filling.”

  “You miss him.” The quiet response came from the muscled, powerful man at her side. Filled with an understanding, a gentleness, that while in direct contrast to the look of the man, and to his job, still felt...right.

  She thought about his statement. About the past year on her own. “I do,” she said. There would always be a part of her that would be tied to the gentle man she’d known and married. “And yet if he were here now... I feel horrible for saying it, but I’m not even sure we’d work anymore. I’ve changed.”

  The thought slipped out, sounding blasphemous. It was also the truth. And if she hoped to get her daughters back safely, she had to make no mistakes.

  Lying to herself, or anyone else, was definitely a mistake.

  The ringing of his phone prevented any response he might have made. She cared little about their conversation when Ezra answered his phone with a push of a button on the steering wheel and said, “Yeah, Dom, what’s going on?”

  “I got myself officially on the case—kidnapping being within FBI jurisdiction—and should only be reporting to family or their designated spokesperson.” The voice came over the Jeep’s audio system.

  Ezra looked at Theresa. “That choice is yours to make,” he said, and then added, “You need to know I won’t stop looking. I’ll just stop talking to my brother.”

  “No.” Dominic’s voice came firmly over the line. “You don’t stop talking to me. You tell me everything you know when you know it. I just stop giving you official updates on what I know.”

  “You aren’t giving them to him. You’re giving them to me.” Theresa spoke up. “And, for the record, Ezra Colton is my official spokesperson.” Her entire being warmed at the pronouncement. It was nothing. Getting around red tape was all.

  But felt like so much more.

  He glanced her way, a brow raised, as though asking her to be sure.

  She nodded.

  “There you have it, bro. Now, what do you know, for God’s sake?”

  “Authorities have been notified in every burg along the road you mentioned, cars have been dispatched, but so far, nothing.”

  “I’m heading that way anyway.”

  “I expected as much. I’ll keep you posted. And... Theresa, I’m sorry about your girls. They were a hoot on Saturday. We’ll get them back.”

  Her eyes filled with tears, and, chin trembling, she nodded but couldn’t get words out.

  Ezra, with a quick glance her way, said, “Later,” and clicked off the call.

  “I can’t believe you all are doing this for me,” she said when she could, feeling awkward, yet as though she was where she was meant to be in that moment. “I’m just a woman your mom knows because of her senile aunt. And you... You’ve only got a couple of weeks left on your vacation.” She blurted the words more as a reminder to herself than because she thought he needed to hear them.

  “All true, but you left out the part where you and your kids have snagged my attention in a way no woman with children ever has, and you took pity on a restless military sergeant being emotionally blackmailed by his family to spend time in a town he bolted from years ago. For good reason.”

  His gaze never left the road. She wasn’t even sure he was fully cognizant of what he was saying. The tone of voice was a bit...distracted.

  “Seriously, Ezra, thank you,” she said and pulled out her own phone, making a couple of calls to arrange for a health-care manager to take over for her, starting immediately, at the Sunshine Senior Home until further notice. The first woman she contacted from the pool of traveling health-care workers, a woman who’d filled in for Theresa during the week Mark died, accepted on the spot and said she’d be in Blue Larkspur by nightfall. She also agreed to look after Charlie.

  Hanging up, Theresa stared out the windshield, reminding herself that Claire and Neve needed her to stay focused.

  They’d be counting on her to find them before dark.

  “We have to find them before dark,” she announced.

  “We’re going to do our best,” Ezra said, and she heard what was in his silence, too. They might not succeed by then. Or ever.

  The man wasn’t going to lie to her.

  But he reached out a hand over the console, and when she took it, she believed they’d get through whatever lay ahead.

  And that Claire and Neve would, too.

  Chapter 10

  He couldn’t give her false hope. Unstable people were also unpredictable—even to themselves. But Ezra believed that they wouldn’t hurt the twins intentionally.

  He had to believe it.

  Never in his life had a battle meant so much to him. It had never been personal before. As he drove, keeping focus on his surroundings, the ditches, the trees, the road ahead and behind, looking for any signs of vehicles having pulled off the road recently, he kept his less understandable thoughts at bay, sending them to storage for a time when he could get them into order, label them and put them away.

  And...there. He slowed.

  “What’s going on?” Theresa’s question carried alarm.

  He wasn’t used to being questioned when he was working. He gave the orders.

  Turning around, he drove back a few yards, got out of the Jeep, studied the fresh tire tracks in a pile of dirt and jumped behind the wheel again.

  “A truck just turned right here,” he said, heading down a one-lane side road. The vehicle’s GPS system caught up quickly, showing him that the road was long, continuing on as far as he could see on the map. A likely road into open territory where one could dig a hole and hide forever.

  She didn’t say any more after that, just sat next to him, a second pair of eyes watching the landscape.

  And he was glad she was there.

  * * *

  Once she knew more of what to look for, fresh dirt showing new tire tracks, for one, Theresa couldn’t take her gaze off the sides of the road, the nearby ditches, as they drove. It wasn’t like she actually expected the twins to be sitting there waiting to be picked up, but if they’d stopped, had a chance to leave any other telltale sign...

  Claire had left her book outside the home on purpose.

  She was a resourceful little girl. And Neve, once clued in, got things done. It wasn’t that Claire was any more intelligent than her sister; she was just a lot more focused.

  Kind of like Ezra.

  The man’s ability to concentrate on the moment at hand was a bit intimidating.

  And wonderful, comforting and reassuring to have around. Ezra’s attention to detail calmed her panic. Helped her focus and do her part.

  As she actively worked to find her girls, just by looking for a minute clue like a clod of dirt that didn’t fit, she grew in strength.

  The ability to hang on.

  And to think clearly. To use her knowledge of the Fitzgeralds to try to figure out their next move. Without attaching immediate panic to the answers that came to her.

  The idea wasn’t to imagine what the girls were going through, but to stop the Fitzgeralds before they reached their endgame.

  And then Dominic called again.

  “Yeah,” Ezra said after a quick push on the steering wheel. She listened intently. She didn’t take her gaze off the land passing by them.

  “Pick up.”

  As Ezra reached for his phone, she shot out a hand. Stopping him. Grabbed his phone. Had he not been driving, there was no way she’d have succeeded. “No,” she said to both men at once. “Whatever you have to say, I need to hear.”

  “The Fitzgeralds’ truck has been spotted twice in Benson.”

  Oh, dear God. They were on the wrong road. Looking for signs of the twins in a place they’d never been...

  Her thoughts were interrupted as Ezra did a far-too-rapid-for-safety one-eighty, managed it with expert skill and had them racing at twice the speed limit back in the direction they’d come as Dom relayed specific coordinates of the blue truck. One on the outskirts of town. “The other was twenty minutes ago,” he said, “at an intersection two miles west of Main. Can’t make out any occupants, but authorities are all over the area now.”

  Heart pounding, she almost cried out with glee. Their capture and her daughters’ rescue were imminent!

  “If you’re in the area...”

  “We aren’t,” Ezra nearly barked. “But we will be within the hour.” In very succinct words, he told Dominic about their detour. “Good news is I was traveling slow enough to survey roadside. Backtrack will be quick.”

  As she listened to her vehicle mate relay what she already knew, it occurred to her that there was nothing in what Dominic Colton had said that would prompt him to tell Ezra to pick up. As in, prevent Theresa from hearing what he had to say.

  There was no logical reason for the request.

  “Keep me posted,” Dominic said, as though ending the call.

  “Wait!”

  Ezra glanced her way, raised his brow, and she said, “What else is there? Why did you want Ezra to pick up?”

  She imagined the brothers exchanging a glance in the silence that fell. And then Dominic said, “One of the cameras got a good shot of the interior of the truck,” he said, his tone not good. And while for an instant she wanted to cover her ears, the instant passed as quickly as it came.

  “And?”

  “We were able to identify Eric and Jennifer Fitzgerald in the front seat, but the back seat was empty. I’m sorry, Theresa.”

  He was sorry. Meant something to be sorry for. Bad for her. For her girls.

  “They could have dropped them somewhere in town,” Ezra quickly asserted. His hand found hers again. Held on, though her fingers didn’t clutch his back as they had before. She was too numb to move.

  “That’s the theory we’re going with.”

  As opposed to?