Page 84 of Deadly Evidence
Five-thirty.
With every passing minute Anna’s fear grew and her hands shook more—and every little sound made her heart skip a beat.
The sun had been setting at around seven-thirty these past few weeks. And when it did, the balmy seventy-degree daytime temps would plummet into the forties.
Lacey had left her sweatshirt behind.
If she was injured...or had been bitten by a rock rattler sunning itself...or was in shock and unable to call for help...
Tears burned beneath Anna’s eyelids as she reined her gelding up yet another ravine and prayed that this time, she would find Lacey safe and whole and eager to come home.
At the distant, faint crack of a rifle, she nearly jumped out of her skin.
Spinning her horse around, she spurred him into a dead run toward the sound and prayed even harder that Lacey had been found.
Her horse was lathered, its sides heaving, when she topped the last low rise and saw a pickup parked by a gully, a number of strangers, and a golden lab lying at their feet.But where was Lacey?
From her right came the sound of thundering hoofbeats. Seconds later, Brady rode up alongside her and reached out to squeeze her arm as they rode down the slope side by side.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured. “Listen to me. That dog has earned a number of commendations—he’s one of the best. If he can’t track her, they’ll radio for a helicopter.”
Alarmed, she gripped her reins tighter and swiveled in her saddle to face him. “But what if those drug runners have her...and they see all this happening and they panic, and...”
“We’ve got access to an EC-120B copter—it’s super quiet and if it’s flying high, they aren’t going to hear a thing. It has a FLIR system that will even pick up the body heat of a rabbit and show it as a white image on a screen. If she’s out here, the pilot will find her, Anna.”
“If?”
“Let’s see what these guys say. Don’t worry—we’ll have your daughter home and tucked in bed before this day is over.”
Anna dismounted, her knees nearly buckling, and she had to take a deep breath before she could leave her horse ground-tied and approach the agents talking by the truck.
When they all turned toward her, fear shot through her at their identical, grim expressions. No one spoke until Brady walked up beside her.
A woman with a silver badge at her hip offered her a gentle smile. “We were able to track your daughter and her horse until we got here,” she said. “After this point, the dog couldn’t pick up her scent.”
She motioned toward a stand of blooming yucca next to a rocky outcropping. “Her horse is over there...but there’s no sign that she walked anywhere else.”
“But there are tire tracks—from a four-wheeler,” one of the taller men said. “They look fairly fresh, though the ground is so hard that it’s difficult to set a time frame. We believe she was picked up here. There’s a good chance she could have been taken much farther than we thought.”
Anna glanced wildly between the sympathetic expressions of the woman and the three men standing before her. “Now what? Why aren’t you all searching? She’s got to be out here somewhere!”
“Anna.” Brady slid an arm around her shoulders. “We’ll find her. I promise.”
But a dark, cold night was fast approaching. Her heart was ripping into a thousand pieces. And his promises just weren’t good enough.
Back at the house, Brady settled down at the kitchen table with his cell phone while Anna briefly checked in on Jonah and Mia.
Impatient to get on with the search, she grabbed a jacket hanging from one of the hooks and put it on. Guilt lancedthrough her over this simple act.Lacey doesn’t have a jacket. Maybe she’s cold and shaking...
Setting her jaw, Anna jammed her hands deep into the pockets and started for the door. Her fingertips curved around something angular and hard at the bottom of one of the pockets. Pulling it out, she stared at the Dallas key ring she’d found out by the loading chutes after the cattle were stolen.
Some clue. How many thousands of these key rings existed?
The day they’d gone to Gil’s for hay, Brady had sauntered over to “admire” the pickup with dealer stickers in its windows.
He’d returned with information that the new vehicle had come from a lot in El Paso, not Dallas.
She hadn’t been able to think of any other locals with newer vehicles, much less one that hadn’t been sitting on the dusty little used car lot in Saguaro Springs. The junk drawer in her kitchen could probably yield a half-dozen key rings and other logo-imprinted items from places she’d never been.
