Page 87 of Deadly Evidence
Anna stood on her front porch with her arms wrapped tightly around herself, feeling as rigid and cold as a metal post.
Hushed voices rose and fell from within the house.
Brady had gone out—to wherever he was conducting his surveillance, she supposed, though she didn’t know or care. All she could think about was Lacey—was she warm? Was she scared and crying for help?
Anxiety gnawed relentlessly at Anna’s stomach as she tried not to think of other, far more horrific possibilities.
More agents had arrived in the last hour. People she didn’t recognize—faces she couldn’t focus on. All of it was a dim blur of motion just beyond the emptiness of despair that surrounded her.Please Lord—please help us find her. Please keep Lacey safe.
Mia, who had canceled her Greyhound ticket for tomorrow and was bustling around the kitchen with Vicente, had tearfully approached her a few minutes ago with a steaming cup of coffee.
But Anna had waved it away, unable to even think of holding that hot, comforting cup when Lacey might be outside somewhere, crying, hurt, and frightened.
The alternative—that she might already be dead—was so overwhelming that it had skated into her thoughts only once.Lacey—where are you?
And that rising wind—Anna raised her eyes to the darkening sky and prayed as she never had before. If it rose to thirty miles an hour, the helicopter would be grounded.
Its back-and-forth sweeps of her ranch would cease, along with any chances of finding Lacey before daylight tomorrow.
Watching the American flag whipping from its pole out in the yard, Anna knew those chances were just about to end.
A blinding lightning bolt hit a willow just beyond the cabins and confirmed it.
Her fist at her mouth, Anna listened to thunder rumble and echo across the empty landscape.Please, Lord, let them find her.
A touch at her elbow broke into her ongoing litany of prayers. “Ma’am, the pilot has radioed. He’s encountering high winds and hail, so he has to go back to El Paso.”
She closed her eyes and clenched her jaw against the sound of the young agent’s voice. He was whisking away her hopes with just a few words. “He can’t leave. Not yet.Please.”
“He’ll return when the storm passes. Don’t worry—these storms don’t usually last long.”
Don’t worry?Anna fought the urge to smack him. What did he know about fear and worry and the wrenching grief of not knowing where her sweet, innocent little girl was—or even if she was still alive?
A sharp gust of wind blasted across the porch, bringing pellets of hail and stinging sheets of rain. Anna stood still, unwilling to move, until someone pushed her under the lee of the porch roof.
It was Vicente who took her hand in his gnarled fingers and held his other hand over his chest. “I know Lacey will be all right,” he said. “I feel ithere. God has her. Justbelieve.”
He stood with her as the lightning crashed and thunder shook the earth, and her tears mingled with the windblown rain.
By midnight the storm had passed, leaving the rare, fresh scent of rain-washed earth in its wake.
Vicente, mumbling about his arthritis, had limped into the house, and Anna had gone back out on her horse, searching.
At four o’clock in the morning, she came back to check for any news, then started out the door again.
When Brady walked out of the shadows with his hair slicked back and his wet clothes plastered to his skin, she blinked, momentarily at a loss.
“Stay inside,” he urged. “There’s no sense going out here—you must be freezing.”
Was she? Numb from fatigue and anxiety, she couldn’t tell, but after a moment’s hesitation, she allowed him to take her hand and lead her into the bright warmth of the kitchen.But only to hear if he has any news, and then I’ve got to leave.
Tom sat at her table with a coffee cup in one hand and a cell phone in the other. Vicente dozed at the far end of the table, while Mia and Dante sat shoulder to shoulder next to him, their eyes downcast.
Tom held up a forefinger, listened to his phone intently, then pressed a button to turn it off.
“Local sheriff’s office just took a call—traceable only to a pay phone a hundred miles from here.” His gaze skated to Anna, then to Brady. “We’ve got good news and bad.”
Time narrowed down to a single heartbeat.
