He brought his pickup truck to a stop on the side of the road and began cataloging what was in front of him while considering what could have triggered his unease. Emma Hayes’s SUV was parked by the side of the road but there was no Emma in sight. That was concerning. Initially he’d thought she might be working with patients on the ground and she was hidden from view by her car, but now that he could take a closer look, it was obvious that wasn’t the case. In fact, he didn’t see anybody at all.

  “Dispatch, this is Webb. I’m on-scene at the single car crash. No sign of EMT-26 or the driver of the other vehicle. I’m going to look around.”

  “Copy,” the dispatcher replied. “I’ve been waiting to hear back from EMT-26. Update as soon as possible.”

  Cole had just completed a fifteen-hour shift as a paramedic with the Cedar Lodge Fire Department. He’d been scheduled to work twelve hours, but a multi-vehicle crash with major injuries on the highway west of town this morning meant he was working for as long as emergency services needed him.

  He’d heard Emma’s initial transmission regarding the single vehicle accident. With resources already stretched thin and no report of the immediate need for emergency medical response or police assistance, her call dropped to a lower priority. Not an ideal situation, but an emergency system could only do what they could do.

  When his shift finally concluded, he’d let dispatch know he would check on Emma. This was his usual route around the eastern edge of the lake and over to the ranch where he lived with his grandfather, his cousin and her husband. Emma, he knew, would have been on her way to the tiny Meadowlark branch of the public library where she worked a half day on Mondays.

  “Emma, I’m here at the accident scene,” he said into the handheld emergency radio all the first responders carried even when off shift. Cedar Lodge was a beautiful town, but it was also fairly remote. People needed to look out for each other as much as possible.

  He’d already reached Emma’s car and as he glanced inside he heard a sound to his left, seeming to come from the side of the road. It sounded like a radio transmission. He looked over and spotted an emergency radio on the ground. The transmission he’d heard was his own voice. That had to be Emma’s radio.

  His initial concern shifted to a chill racing up his spine. Something was very wrong. He quickly turned his attention back to the inside of Emma’s car, searching for signs of foul play. There was no visible blood, but her purse and phone were on the front seat. His pulse quickened as his heart kicked into overdrive. Emma would not have intentionally, willfully, left all these items behind.

  He checked the other vehicle. Looked like minor damage at first, but enough of a dent on the front left fender to make the car not drivable. No skid marks on the road, which indicated the driver hadn’t hit the brakes in an attempt to regain control of the car. Was this an intentional collision?

  If there was some kind of criminal activity going on, why hadn’t the driver of the crashed car taken Emma’s vehicle to leave the scene? Was the driver aware that Emma worked for emergency services and that most of the cops in town would recognize her SUV? Anyone who took it would be quickly apprehended.

  Cole keyed his radio and requested that dispatch roll a law enforcement unit to the crash site.

  A familiar voice popped onto the radio almost immediately. “Dispatch, show Volker en route to Webb’s location.” It was Officer Kris Volker, a friend of Cole’s since their school days and an excellent cop.

  Cole took a breath and focused his thoughts. He glanced at the dirt and grass beside the crashed car and also beside Emma’s SUV, looking for an extra set of tire tracks. If assailants had grabbed Emma for some reason and left their own car as well as Emma’s SUV behind, wouldn’t that imply that they had accomplices with another vehicle for the getaway?

  But why would somebody grab Emma?

  They’d worked a few shifts per month together for two years. She’d started as a volunteer with the fire department when she was twenty. At the time Cole had thought of her as a kid. Not only was she eight years younger than Cole, but she’d lived a quiet, predictable life in Cedar Lodge while Cole had been in combat and had spent time in places around the world far different from northern Montana.

  But then he couldn’t say he knew her life story. Of course they talked when they worked together, but they kept things professional. He knew she hoped to be a full-time librarian someday, but she could only get a part-time gig doing that for now. She’d told him she had to wait for someone with more seniority than her to quit or retire before she could get a full-time librarian job. Not exactly the kind of job that Cole could personally imagine sacrificing a lot of time waiting for an opportunity, but he had to admire Emma’s determination.

  A shadowy thought flickered across his mind. Maybe Emma had some other interest he knew nothing about and that interest had drawn her into a dangerous situation. Plenty of people had some aspect of their life they liked to keep hidden. Cole had seen evidence of that many times. Why should he be surprised if Emma turned out to be no different?

  Cole’s own father was not the man he’d pretended to be. He looked clean cut and fooled lots of people while he was actually a criminal lacking ethics or a conscience. His father’s deception, revealed after his parents were married, might not have literally killed Cole’s mom, but he was certain the stress of it had contributed to her poor health. She died when Cole was still in high school.

  Enough.

  Emma’s personal life was not his business. Didn’t matter if she was living some kind of secret life. Right now he needed to figure out what kind of trouble she was in and help her out of it.

  Growing up on a ranch on the edge of the forest with his grandpa, Cole had obtained wilderness and survival skills long before he went into the military. Tracking was something he could do. If Emma was not taken from the scene by a vehicle, but by attackers who were on foot for some reason, then he had a pretty good chance of finding her.

  Cole spotted trampled wild grass on the opposite side of the road a few yards away and took off in that direction. He had no idea what kind of situation he would be walking into and he had no weapon other than the short blade on the multi-use tool he carried on his belt. But he would find a way to improvise if he had to, because he couldn’t just stand there and wait for Kris Volker to arrive in his squad car. He needed to see what kind of danger Emma was in right now.

  Moving as quickly and quietly as possible while staying alert to his surroundings, Cole walked through the grass and up the hill into the forest. At least the path was unmistakable, with the grass just recently bruised. He guessed that he was following Emma plus one other person, possibly two. They were obviously heading up the hill and back toward town.

  As an emergency responder he knew the streets and alleys and dirt roads of town and much of the countryside very well. He knew there was a small farm at the bottom of the hill on the other side. When he crested the hill he saw Emma walking with a man on each side of her. One guy with a long ponytail held her arm and kept yanking her forward as she stumbled. The other guy, a bald man, was yelling into a phone, but it wasn’t clear what he was saying. Each man was carrying a gun in his free hand. They seemed to be headed for a dilapidated storage shed at the edge of the woods.

  Cole didn’t want to think about why they were headed there. To kill Emma and conceal her body? To hide themselves for a while because they knew someone was obviously going to be checking out the crashed car and Emma’s SUV beside the road? The possibilities popping into his head were terrible, and he could not let any of them happen. Armed suspects with a hostage in a building was not a situation anyone wanted to deal with.

  The small farm at the base of the hill looked quiet. If Cole could get someone to come outside, maybe that would redirect the thugs away from any of the outbuildings and back into the forest. Then Cole would have a better chance of keeping Emma from harm.

  Skirting the edge of the woods and grateful the bad guys weren’t bothering to look behind them, Cole picked up a rock and threw it at a farmhouse window. Glass shattered. Dogs inside the house started barking. As Cole had hoped, the attackers immediately changed direction and dragged Emma back into the cover of the woods.

  Cole’s phone buzzed. It was his cop friend, Kris Volker. “I’m on-scene, where are you?”

  Cole gave a quick description of where he was, the direction he was going and what he’d seen.

  “On my way,” Volker said before disconnecting.

  Cole couldn’t let up in his chase. Volker was fast in an emergency, but in this instance he might not be fast enough. Fortunately, the assailants still weren’t bothering to look behind them. They appeared to be on a panicked run to get deeper into the forest. Cole would use that to his advantage. He followed them into the shadowy woods and moved up closer on them.

  Emma kept stumbling and the thugs were getting impatient. The one who had hold of her jerked hard on her arm and Cole was afraid the man would lose his cool and shoot her. When Emma finally tripped and fell, Cole grabbed the opportunity to jump on the back of the man with the ponytail who’d been hanging on to her. Yanking on the startled gunman’s arm, he wrested the weapon away from him.

  On the forest floor where she’d fallen, Emma turned to Cole, an expression of shock on her face.

  Ponytail man scrambled into position to take a swing at Cole, but then the criminal saw Cole pointing his own gun at him and he froze.

  The bald guy had already vanished into the forest. Cole hated to see the thug get away, but Cole wasn’t a cop. He was a medic. And there was no missing the fact that Emma was having trouble breathing. He could hear her wheezing. She hadn’t even said anything yet. Probably because she couldn’t catch her breath. Cole knew she had asthma and he was concerned for her.

  Ponytail guy, now without his gun, put his hands up. Then he slowly backed away. “See you later, Emma Burke,” he said before disappearing into the dark forest.

  “Cole.” Emma sounded breathless when she said his name.

  Mindful to keep an eye on their surroundings in case the criminals snuck back, Cole radioed Volker with the specifics on where they were and the current situation.

  “Almost there,” Volker replied.

  Having done all he could, Cole squatted down beside Emma. “Take a minute to rest and try to catch your breath.” Without even thinking about it he was already counting her respirations, which were too fast. He reached for her wrist to take her pulse and she burst into tears, moving her hand so that she was gripping him so tightly his hand went numb.

  “I thought they were going to kill me,” she said, gasping and crying as she tried to speak.

  Against his better judgment, violating his own rule to keep things completely professional with all of his coworkers, Cole moved closer and wrapped his arms around her until she was clinging to him, her tears soaking his shirt. He could feel her heart racing as she was pressed against him. The paramedic side of him couldn’t help confirming that it was beating way too fast. But the compassionate human side of him felt the stirrings of a protective tenderness that wasn’t exactly part of his job description. Though normally a decisive man, for a second he wasn’t certain what to do about that.

  Finally, she released her grip on him and drew back. She was breathing a little easier but still wheezing. Tear tracks ran through the dust on her face.

  “What happened?” Cole asked. “Who were those men? Where were they taking you? And why?”

  She closed her eyes for a long moment, apparently steadying herself. And when she opened them again, she focused her gaze on his shoulder instead of his face before saying, “I don’t know who they were or what they wanted.”

  She was lying. And he wanted to know why. In fact, there was a lot about Emma Hayes he wanted to know right now. He couldn’t help being curious about the woman he’d thought he knew after working with her for two years. Whatever the situation was that she’d gotten herself into, he felt responsible for her safety. Maybe she’d made some bad decision somewhere along the line. Lots of people did. His own mother had made a bad decision in choosing his father. That hadn’t made her a bad person.

  Officer Kris Volker pushed his way through the pine trees and stepped up with his gun drawn and his gaze shifting as he surveyed the scene.

  “I’m a little concerned they’ll try to jump us as we make our way out of here,” Cole said.

  “I’ve got four more cops just a little bit behind me,” Volker said.

  Of course. Cops and medics oftentimes used cell phones because anyone could listen in on a radio transmission. Just because Cole hadn’t heard Volker call for backup didn’t mean he hadn’t done it.

  When the other officers arrived to make sure everybody got out of the forest without any further trouble, Cole helped Emma to her feet. “I’m assuming your asthma inhaler is in your purse back in your car rather than in your pocket.”

  She nodded.

  “Are there any officers still at the crash scene who could bring Emma’s asthma inhaler?” Cole asked.

  Volker shook his head. “I brought them all with me. I thought the perps might still be lurking nearby and we could catch them and bring them in.” He glanced around. “Doesn’t look like it.”

  Breaking another one of his rules regarding coworker professionalism, because apparently this was the day for it, Cole swept Emma up in his arms intending to carry her back to her car. It would be faster than having an officer go fetch her inhaler.

  “Are you all right with my doing this?” he asked. “I don’t think a hike would be good for you right now.”

  Wide-eyed, Emma nodded, her cheeks red with exertion or embarrassment, Cole wasn’t sure which. “Yes, I’m okay with it. Thank you.”

  Relieved that she was alive and safe for now, Cole started walking back toward the road with Volker and the other cops accompanying them.

  Emma Burke, the thug had called her.

  It was Emma’s choice how she lived her life, and maybe there were some details she kept hidden. Didn’t matter what Cole thought about that. His immediate concern was for the safety of a coworker who was capable, diligent and kind. He worked as a first responder because he cared about the safety of the people in his town. He had some added skills thanks to his military service that could keep Emma safe until the cops got the bad guys. Cole would stay by her side as much as possible until this dangerous situation was stabilized.

  Whatever her real name, whatever her true story, Cole had no doubt Emma was in serious danger. Whoever wanted her kidnapped no doubt still wanted her kidnapped. They would try again.

  Copyright © 2024 by Virginia Niten

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  ISBN-13: 9780369756077

  Undercover Escape

  Copyright © 2024 by Valerie Whisenand

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