Trial by Fire (8 page)

“I’d murder a cuppa. Tea, I mean.” When Brandon and Ryan just stared at him blankly, Lachlan shook his head. “Has anyone seen my mobile?”

“You left it on the kitchen table. Somebody plugged it in.”

He left it…. Good God. His mum would be out of her mind.

Lachlan grabbed his phone, then clapped Mr. Brandon on the shoulder before walking out to the sun porch to make some calls. He had two messages from his oldies and three from Dez. He listened to the voice mails. His mom was verging on hysterical on her second call, but he would have to call her back after he called his security man.

“Holmes,” Dez said when he answered.

“Dez. Lachlan. Where are you?”

“On the ground at DFW. Lucky for you I was in London when I got your call. I can be there in—two hours? Two and a half? I just need to pick up the vehicle.”

“Hurry. These Yanks… they got no idea. None.” They were good people, sure, but they weren’t used to this. His people were more accustomed to kidnapping threats. Hell, he hadn’t told Holden, but Addie had been snatched off the street in Brisbane once. It had been twenty-seven hours before they found her, but they’d found her. Dez had been the newbie on the team back then, wet behind the ears and jockeying coffee.

Now Dez was the big boss and on retainer.

“Are the authorities already there? National, I mean.”

Lachlan nodded before remembering Dez was on the phone. “FBI, I think they said. It’s like a show on the idiot box, I swear.”

“I have a contact in LA. I’ll have them give me someone from the Dallas office.”

“There’s a… a Ryan Jacques here. One of the son’s friends.”

“You tell that lousy prick to get fucked and go home. This isn’t his job, and I won’t have him mucking things up.” Dez sounded utterly furious.

“Oh, fuck, no. Have you seen this gorilla? You tell him when you get here.” Shit, shirt-fronting could be bad.

Still, he paid Dez to deal, and deal he would. He didn’t need this nonsense. There was a little baby girl who needed to be found.

Lachlan watched Holden through the windows until man and horse were nothing but a dot on the horizon. They all had their ways of coping.

“Get your ass here, Dez. This is my niece. The only thing we have left of Ades. You understand?”

“I got it, Boss. My condolences again, eh? Sucks.”

“Thanks.” He knew Dez well enough to hear the rage, the sorrow. That would fuel the man’s drive to do this job. “I need to phone Mum, then. If I have updated information I’ll pass it on.”

“Don’t bother.”

“What?”

“They left my service a message not an hour ago. They’re on a private jet to Sydney, then they’ll be to LA, then to you.”

“Fuck a doodle doo.” That was going to be a giant clusterfuck. The more Aussies who showed up, the more likely Holden’s people were to start accusing them of doing it all. “I’ll get them a room.”

“Good deal. See you in a couple.”

And that was that. Dez wasn’t the king of lingering good-byes.

No sense calling his oldies, then. Lachlan half wished he could whistle up a horse himself and do something useful. He’d just wait for the damned ransom call. That was when he could do the most good.

He headed into the kitchen, where there had to be at least a dozen women toodling around. Ryan was standing there, eyes wide, lips pursed.

“What’s all this, then?” Lachlan asked, chasing off the urge to laugh his ass off. That was just stress.

“Well, some of them are neighbors. Some of them are friends. Some of them are wives. Some of them are the care committee from First Baptist. They’re taking turns with Calgary AME Zion.”

“Church ladies? God help me, can any of them make a ruddy cup of tea!”

“Can y’all ladies make Mr. McCoughey here a glass of tea, please?”

“Sweet or unsweet, honey?”

Lachlan blinked. “I just like lemon, no milk or sugar.”

“Unsweet it is.” A tiny little sheila with a belly the size of the full moon handed him a glass of watered-down iced tea, which was a crime against nature.

Lachlan smiled, hoping it didn’t look like he was baring his teeth. “I’m about to add to your stress,” he told Ryan. “My mum and dad are on a plane to LAX.”

“Of course they are. It’s their grandbaby, why wouldn’t they be?”

“Because I was trying not to let them come until we found her.” Lachlan sighed. “My head of security is in Dallas now and on his way. He’s an expert in corporate terrorism and negotiation.”

“Who is it?”

“Desmond Holmes.” He waited to see if the grr was one-sided.

“Thank God for small favors. He’s a giant dick, but at least he isn’t a worthless piece of crap. Excuse my language, ladies.”

The women all tittered.

“I’m serious. Every broke-dick cowboy on earth has trooped through here and mucked up anything we might have been able to use for evidentiary purposes.”

“Like Holden’s not going to find him and kill him.” That was from the tiniest wizened old lady in history.

“Yes, Miz Sue, I know.”

“They think I’m joking, but I’ll give him my gun to do it.”

“Yes, Miz….” Ryan’s head whipped around as the door opened, three huge men appearing at the kitchen door with eight gigantic fecking bloodhounds. “Oh no. No. Berger, Junior, Trace, y’all. No.”

“We was in Louisiana. We came fast as we could.”

“Y’all can’t bring those dogs in here,” one of the ladies snapped. “Ryan, you get them something of Chloe’s.”

Lachlan leaned against the counter, fairly sure that at some point, he would figure out what the living fuck was going on in the world. Possibly he’d wake up back at home.

Instead, someone pushed him a plate with something covered in cheese on it. He stared down at it, noting how… yellow the cheese was. If it was actually cheese and not that plastic velveteen crap.

“What is this?” he asked Ryan. “I thought it was breakfast time.”

“Hashbrown casserole. Eat it. It’s good.”

“Huh. Better than the tea, I hope.”

“Oh for everloving fuck.” Ryan caught one of the ladies’ attention. “Brenda, hot water in a mug and one of Addie’s tea bags. Barger, I swear to God and all the apostles, if you bring one dog inside with you, I will shoot you. Lucy, go get something of Chloe’s out of her dirty clothes hamper.”

Look at Ryan barking orders. That was more than a bit sexy.

No wonder Dez hated him.

HOLDEN
made his way straight back off the property and down the farm to market road. The house was up to the front, the barns to the east. The hands lived in the row of houses due west, the bullfighters and the junior campers were lodging just north of that. All the cowboys were in the big campground up on the hill.

That meant the motherfucker came from the south and blew in with the storm.

He didn’t believe for a second this was rodeo people.

Not for a fucking second.

These people were his folks, his kith and kin.

No. This was something else, but they knew where the baby slept, where the room was, so they knew the land, and that meant they knew where his house was, where Landon stayed, and he was gonna start there.

He rode about five minutes before five cowboys joined up to ride with him, spread out and watching. By the time he hit the fence line to his own acreage, there were twenty of them, including the deputies and the world’s top-ranked barrel racer.

“We’re gonna get you, you motherfucker. We’ll get you and make you pay.” Holden bit the words out, desperate for anything, any clue. “I need someone to check the horse trailers, someone to Landon’s barns. Someone else to start with mine. There’s a shitload of outbuildings.”

“Yessir.” Two of his best hands peeled off, making their way toward Holden’s piece of land. Brandy and Gareth wheeled up toward the trailers. He rode around the house, looking for broken windows, anything. Dammit.

Nothing. Okay, so if it wasn’t rodeo or ranch hands, then he had to be methodical. Maybe he needed to start with the dayworkers. People who came to the ranch to do plumbing or something. They would have to come in on the main roads, but there’d been a hundred trucks coming and going in the last day.

Christ, it had been damn near twenty hours. On a truck… they could be anywhere. Fucking anywhere. They could have her on a plane and… anywhere.

Australia.

Holden stopped, jerking hard enough that Pepper danced underneath him. He slid to the ground, his balance gone.

No.

No way. He’d seen Lachlan work. The man was a cowboy, and the cowboy code was law, no matter what.

Right?

The man would just as soon punch him in the teeth and take Chloe right then and there. Now, that wasn’t to say someone on Lachlan’s end wouldn’t take her for ransom. He’d have to see who knew what. Wait, Lachlan’s people had all the money, all the land. Right.

So, he’d talk to Ryan.

In the meantime, he’d clear as much of the ranch as he could. He needed to be busy.

He needed to find that baby.

“I swear, Bubba. I swear, I’ll find her. Please, just help me. Guide me to her. I know you’ve got your hand on her. Please.” He dropped to his knees, his chest burning, squeezing and denying him air. “Please, Jesus. Lead me to her. Please. You got the good brother, Addie. Don’t let some stranger hurt our baby girl.”

From his lips to God’s ear. He had to believe. The people in the know swore God protected the innocent.

Chloe was the only one of all of them who could be called that.

“
SHUT
it up! Between that fucking baby and the goddamn dogs around here there’s never a friggin’ second to think!” Christ on a crutch, Norman had a headache that wouldn’t quit, and that fucking thing just kept screaming.

“We have to feed it. There wasn’t but one bottle deal in here.” Kade looked at him from under his heavy bangs, shook his head. “One of us has to go into town and get baby food.”

“Because three of the ropers from the Sheffield Company buying baby food won’t look weird? We can’t.” No way. The damn thing could drink plain old milk like the rest of them.

They were holed up in a no-tell motel about twenty miles south of the ranch, right off the lake. Shiloh had gotten the room while him and Kade stayed in the truck with the baby. Now they were all getting a little cabin fever, being stuck there with the damned thing, which wasn’t like a pup or even a calf that could fend for itself.

“I’ll go to the truck stop over by Sulphur Springs as soon as Shiloh gets back from covering at the ranch, then. They don’t know me there,” Kade said. “They have that shit.”

“Call Shi. Tell him to stop for beer and burgers too. I got a vicious headache.”

“Good deal.” Kade got on the horn, and Norman rubbed the back of his neck.

Norman hadn’t thought this through when he’d done it. Hell, none of them had. They’d been bullshitting a few nights ago, talking on how it weren’t a bit fair that them Sheffields used honest working folks like them for set up and pull down instead of for roping like they ought.

Then Norman had heard that Australian feller talking about wanting the baby, and he’d thought maybe he could sell the brat back to the highest bidder.

Course, then they’d realized they’d all have to check in at the ranch before they called in a ransom demand so no one would suspect anything.

“I might come with you,” Norman said. “Shi has a million brothers and sisters. He ought to be taking care of this thing.”

The Sheffields had a zillion damn people on the fucking ranch anyway. They had no way to tell who all was where and when.

God, the damn thing wouldn’t stop screaming. “Pick it up, would you?”

“You pick it up. I don’t want to get my skin cells on it! I watch them cop shows!” Kade was starting to sound like a titty baby too.

Norman’s head was going to explode.

The sound of Shiloh’s old clunker truck came from outside just then, making them both sigh with relief.

The kid came in, loaded down like a damn pack mule. “Y’all! You can hear her all the way in the parking lot! And those dogs were all right at the door. I had to run them off. Are they from the ranch?”

Like it was nothing, Shiloh dropped the bags, picked up the baby, and started walking her around, bouncing her up and down.

A few more wails, one hiccup, and the kid shut right up. Bang. Oh, thank God.

“Dogs can’t follow trucks, you moron. You bring beer?”

Shiloh shook his head. “Lady at the truck stop wouldn’t go for it, man. I ain’t but nineteen. Guys, there’s all these cops, like everywhere. FBI and sheriff’s deputies and shit. They think we’ve gone done and killed her.”

“What?” Norman wasn’t no baby killer. “Why would they say that?”

“We ain’t called up with a ransom. ’Parently we’re late.” Shiloh looked over with huge scared eyes, his face all bruised up from where he’d fought them on the barn fire. Stupid shit, caring if a horse died when they were going to make millions.

Christ, had him and Kade ever been so young? Ever?

“Well, then, we need to call. Or y’all do. I’ll go to the ranch so one of us is there when they get the call.”

He swore, first thing he was gonna do with his part of the money was buy his own truck so they wasn’t always using Shiloh’s.

“How much do we ask for?” Kade asked.

“Huh. Well, we know they just valued the Sheffield ranch at what? Ten million? Something like that.” Norman pondered. “That Aussie feller has a lot more land, though.”

“More land?” Shiloh blinked over at him like a goat looking at a new fence. “Christ. Like the King Ranch?”

“Bigger,” Kade said. “I looked it up, and his public holdings are, like, four million acres. Four million acres, and only a hundred and fifty folks live on it. Add to that, them folks got some sort of corporation deal—patents and trade deals and all. I’m talking all this money just pouring and no one to spend it on. He’s like a gazillionaire.”

“Four…. Jesus.” Shiloh just stared.

Norman got it. That much land was impossible to ride fence on. A man had to use helicopters to herd cattle. That was no way to live.