Page 7 of Tracking Down the Lawman's Son

“Yes, please make the bottle,” Bree instructed, and she was about to head to the nursery when Luca touched her.

She jolted when his fingers brushed over hers, but then she realized he wasn’t actually touching her. He was taking the monitor, and he had his attention pinned to it and not her.

Her nerves returned in full force. “Is something wrong?”

Luca shook his head, but the gesture didn’t seem very convincing. “Look,” he said, pointing to the screen. She saw a bird zoom past one of the nursery windows.

“A blue jay,” she muttered and was about to dismiss it. Then, a few seconds later, a bird flew past again.

No. Not “a” bird. It appeared to be the same bird, flying at the exact speed and angle. This wasn’t live feed but rather a recorded loop.

Bree bolted toward the nursery. Luca was right behind her, and he actually passed her before she reached the nursery door. He threw it open, and together they rushed into the room.

And her heart stopped. Just stopped.

Because the crib was empty.

Chapter Three

Everything inside Luca froze. At first, his mind couldn’t register what he was seeing, and then the reality slammed into him.

The baby was gone.

“Where is he?” Bree asked, the panic rising in her voice. “Where’s Gabriel?” She ran to the crib, and since there were no toys, pillows or blankets, it was easy to see it was empty. Still, Bree felt around the sheet as if she expected him to be there.

The cop in Luca kicked in, and he took hold of Bree to pull her back. If someone had taken Gabriel, then he needed to try to preserve any evidence.

If someone had taken Gabriel.

Those words knifed into him, robbing him of his breath and nearly sending him to his knees. But none of those reactions were going to help this situation, and he tried to focus on fixing this. On finding his precious son.

“What happened?” Coral asked as she ran into the room. She gasped and put her fingers to her mouth when she saw the empty crib.

“Where’s Gabriel?” Bree demanded. “Why isn’t he here?”

Coral frantically shook her head. “He has to be here. You put him in the crib and left for your meeting.”

Luca fired glances around the room, taking it all in, but other than the missing baby, he didn’t see anything out of place. There were no signs of a break-in, and the windows were all closed.

While Coral and Bree ran to search the closet, Luca looked at the baby monitor again. On the screen, Gabriel was exactly where he was supposed to be, and the sickening realization hithim. This was a loop, a repeated recording of when Gabriel had actually been sleeping in the crib.

And that meant someone had hacked the monitor.

“We need to search the rest of the house and the grounds,” Luca insisted, taking out his phone to call the dispatcher. “This is Deputy Vanetti. I need backup.” He rattled off Bree’s address. The next part wasn’t nearly as easy to say. “Issue an Amber Alert.”

He heard the sound, not footsteps, but a heart-crushing moan, and he knew it had come from Bree. She wasn’t crying, not yet anyway, but that would no doubt soon happen.

“Search the other bedrooms,” he told her and then shifted to Coral. “You look through the rest of the house. Check to see if any windows are open.” Since it wasn’t a huge place, that wouldn’t take much time.

The grounds though were another matter.

This wasn’t a small city lot by any means. The house that had once belonged to Bree’s grandparents was situated on about a dozen acres with a barn and pastures for horses. He would need backup to cover the entire area, and every minute counted right now. Especially since there were two country roads within a quarter of a mile of the place.

“Coral, were the doors all locked?” Luca called out as he headed toward the kitchen so he could access the back porch.

Coral hurried into the kitchen with him, but she was clearly still in shock, and it took her several seconds to answer. “I think so. I don’t know,” she amended with a sob. “Where is he? Did someone take him?”

Someone clearly had, but Luca didn’t voice that. Wasn’t sure he could. He definitely didn’t want to think of his son in the hands of someone who might hurt him.

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