Page 8 of Tracking Down the Lawman's Son

“What about keys?” Luca pressed, trying to tamp down his own building panic. He drew his gun but prayed he didn’t need it. “Who has keys to the place?”

Coral shook her head again, and their conversation must have gotten Bree’s attention because she, too, hurried into the kitchen. “Me and my family,” Bree said. “Coral, too, of course.”

Since her family members were all cops, they’d likely kept the keys secure. He’d need to make sure Coral had done the same. For now though, Luca checked the back door for himself. His gut clenched, and he cursed under his breath.

Because it was not only unlocked, it was slightly ajar.

“Did you leave this open?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” Coral said.

“Neither did I,” Bree insisted, “but I can’t swear it was locked either. I had my coffee out there this morning, and I got distracted by the phone call from Manny.”

Now, the tears came, flooding her eyes, and Luca wished he had time to comfort her, to try to reassure her that they would find their baby. But time was critical now so he used his elbow to open the door wider in the hopes he wouldn’t destroy any prints that might have been left there. Then, he hurried out onto the porch.

He understood why Bree would want to have her coffee out here. The October temps weren’t scorching hot as they could sometimes be in this part of Texas, and there was a picture-postcard view of the still green pastures, a pond and two grazing horses. But there was nothing picturesque about it for Luca at the moment. He took it in like a crime scene.

And he cursed again when he saw nothing out of the ordinary.

He needed clues. Evidence. He needed anything that would point him in the right direction to where his son had been taken. Then, he could catch up with the kidnapper and get Gabriel back.

“Don’t go in that part of the yard,” he instructed when Bree headed down the porch steps. “There might be footprints.”

Since it probably wasn’t a route a kidnapper would have used, Luca ran to the side of the porch and checked the yard below. As expected, there were no indications anyone had recently walked here so he vaulted over the railing, dropping down the three or so feet to the soft ground.

“Did you get any visitors this morning?” he asked while he searched that side of the house. Nothing visible there either, but there were shrubs so he had a close look around those.

“No,” Bree answered. Luca heard the sound of footsteps behind him and saw that she, too, had jumped over the porch railing. “I only got that phone call from Manny.”

Yes, that. Luca certainly hadn’t forgotten about it. Or about Bree’s, and possibly Manny’s, run-ins with a truck driver who might or might not have wanted them dead. It was probably all connected.

But how?

If those attempts had been some kind of threat to ward them off, then why hadn’t they gotten a lesser warning? Aback off or else. Maybe because their attackers and the kidnapper hadn’t wanted to alert them as to why this was happening. As a cop though, he had to believe this was connected to Brighton’s murder. It didn’t seem like a coincidence that all of this had started shortly after Bree had come across that video.

“Coral, did you see any vehicles near the house after Bree left?” he called out while he ran to the front porch so he could check it. Bree was right behind him.

“No,” the nanny was quick to say. “I swear, nothing happened, and I didn’t see or hear anything.”

He believed her, but she had obviously been in the laundry room, and it was on the other side of the house from the nursery. If the washer or dryer had been going while she was inthere, Coral might not have heard someone come in through the back door and take the baby.

There was a problem with that theory though.

A stranger would have had to search through the house for Gabriel. Of course, that search could have happened by peering through the windows, but Luca wasn’t seeing any signs of footprints to indicate that. There was also the question of where a kidnapper would have parked so that Coral wouldn’t have noticed.

Luca immediately shifted his attention to the barn.

“You think Gabriel’s in there?” Bree asked, obviously following Luca’s gaze.

“I can’t rule it out,” he settled for saying. “I want to check the other side of the house first,” he added and headed in that direction just as his phone rang.

Because his mind was narrowed in on Gabriel, his first thought was that this was the kidnapper with a ransom or some other demand. But it was Slater’s name on the screen.

“What the hell’s going on?” Slater immediately demanded. “There’s an Amber Alert?”

“Gabriel’s missing. I don’t know who, why or how,” he added while he combed the side of the house for any potential clues. “When Bree and I went inside her house, he was gone, and it’s possible he was taken as long as three hours ago.”

Bree made another of those ragged sobs, and Luca knew she was thinking the same thing as he was. If it’d been that long, if the kidnapper had taken Gabriel within minutes of Bree leaving the house, then their baby could be anywhere. Three hours was a lifetime when it came to something like this.

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