Colorado Abduction (4 page)

Sam Logan hadn’t been the love of Carolyn’s life. He’d been two years ahead of her in high school, and they went out on exactly three dates before he told her that she wasn’t “sophisticated” enough for him. In his dictionary, “sophisticated” meant having sex, which wasn’t something she wanted to try at age sixteen.

Several years later, after she’d graduated from college, she and Logan hooked up again. Their relationship had been far more complicated the second time around.

“Well?” Burke glared at her as if she were a suspect. “Are you going to tell us about your survivalist boyfriend?”

“I need coffee for this.”

She pivoted and went down the hall toward the kitchen where the family’s housekeeper, Polly Sanchez, was taking a batch of her famous raisin rolls out of the oven. The heat from her baking steamed up the north-facing windows. A mouthwatering aroma filled the huge kitchen.

“Can I help?” Carolyn asked.

“Good heavens, no. I’m in a hurry, and I don’t have time to clean up after you.” With an expert flourish, Polly spread gooey icing on top of the rolls. “Soon as I’m done here, I’m heading home to catch a couple of winks before morning.”

As Carolyn watched the icing melt into rich swirls she realized that she hadn’t eaten for over ten hours, not since noon when she had sushi from the new Japanese fusion restaurant down the street from her Denver office. Lunchtime seemed like decades ago.

She rested her hand on Polly’s round shoulder. “Thanks for coming over to help out.”

Beneath her curly gray hair, Polly’s forehead crinkled with worry wrinkles. “You know I’d do anything for your family.”

For the past twelve years, Polly had worked at the ranch as housekeeper and chief cook. Her husband, Juan, had been a full-time ranch hand—and an expert at repairing machinery—until three years ago when he was stricken with MS. Now, his hands were too weak and unsure to hold a wrench. As soon as she’d learned of his illness, Carolyn authorized payment for a full pension and upped Juan’s medical coverage to pay for treatment. She’d offered to do the same for Polly so she could stay home with Juan, but the buxom little woman insisted that she needed to keep busy.

During the spring calving and fall roundup when they had a full crew, Polly had two employees working under her. At this time of year, her schedule was less demanding.

“You need me here,” Polly said in a brisk tone. “Tomorrow morning, Juan and I will move over here to the ranch house, and we’ll stay until Nicole comes home.”

“That’s really not necessary,” Carolyn said.

“Honey, you’ve got a houseful of FBI agents and bodyguards. And you can’t hardly boil water without setting the house afire. How did you plan to feed all these hungry men?”

“I can call for pizza.”

“Pizza for breakfast?” Polly clucked her tongue on the roof of her mouth. “Y’all sit right here at the kitchen table. I’ll bring your coffee and raisin rolls.”

Taking the seat opposite Burke, Carolyn knew that the time had come to answer his question. “Okay, here’s what happened between me and Sam Logan.”

“Logan?” Polly set mugs of coffee on the table. “He’s turned into a regular nutcase. He runs that Sons of Freedom bunch over at the Circle M. It’s not all Sons. There are families. The women all wear housedresses and tie their hair back. Same with the kids.”

Burke turned toward her. “Is it a religious group?”

“Lord, no.” Polly bustled back to the counter. “Logan doesn’t have a religious bone in his body. Does he, Carolyn?”

“Not when we were going out.” She remembered Sam Logan as a tall, lean guy with a blond ponytail and a charming smile—handsome enough to cruise by on his looks. She wasn’t surprised that he’d gathered followers.

“His group,” Polly said, “wants to go back to the pioneer days. They’re against big business, government interference, taxation without representation and all that.”

Burke shrugged. “Doesn’t sound so bad to me.”

His comment surprised Carolyn. What kind of fed was opposed to government interference? She’d thought FBI agents couldn’t wait to bust down doors and take everybody into custody.

Polly placed a plate full of raisin rolls on the table. “People around here call them SOF for Sons of Freedom. Or Silly Old Fools. If the only thing they wanted was to go back to the good old days, I wouldn’t have a problem with them. Live and let live, I always say.”

“But you have a problem,” Burke said. “What is it?”

She reached behind her back to untie the strings of the gingham apron she wore over her jeans and cotton shirt. “Their back-to-nature ideas don’t extend to alcohol. A
couple of the SOF boys drove into Riverdale, drunk as skunks, and raised hell. A local teenager got hurt. The sheriff could tell you more.”

Carolyn bit into her raisin roll and let the gooey sweetness melt in her mouth.

“How do they support themselves?”

“Lord knows where they get their money. But they seem to have plenty. Nate Miller didn’t rent out his land for cheap, that’s for dang sure.”

Carolyn glanced over at Burke who seemed totally focused on devouring his raisin roll. His dark eyes took on a glaze of contentment. His jaw relaxed as he chewed. The other FBI agent was likewise transported.

“These are great,” Burke said. “Ma’am, you’ve got to come back tomorrow.”

Polly pinched his cheek.
Actually pinched Burke’s cheek!
Carolyn couldn’t believe that Special Agent I’m-In-Charge would stand for such familiarity. Then she remembered his kiss on her forehead. Underneath the tough exterior, he was kind of a marshmallow.

“I’ll be back in time to throw together some breakfast.” Polly turned to Carolyn. “The guest bedrooms are made up with fresh sheets and towels. Call me if you need anything else tonight. G’night, y’all.”

She headed out of the kitchen toward the front door.

“Nice woman,” Burke said. “Must have been good for you to have Polly around while you were growing up. She’s real motherly.”

“I have a mother,” Carolyn said quickly. “Her name is Andrea. She and my father divorced when I was seven.”

“Does she live around here?”

Thinking of her stylish mother choosing to stay in rural Colorado amused Carolyn. “Not hardly. She runs an art
gallery in Manhattan where she lives with her second husband and my twelve-year-old half sister.”

“Big change in lifestyle.”

“Yeah, she traded in her cowgirl boots for designer stilettos.”

Carolyn regretted that she hadn’t spent more time with her mom when she was growing up. Andrea had wanted to take her and Dylan with her when she left, but they both chose the ranch. It was their home, their heritage. “I should call Mom and tell her what’s going on.”

“Tomorrow is soon enough,” Burke said.

He was probably right. There was nothing her mother could do from New York, and Carolyn had more pressing concerns for tonight. “I need to get on the phone with my financial officers. And my bankers. I’ve got to start putting together the money for the kidnappers. Maybe I should—”

“Later,” Burke said. “First, I want to know more about Sam Logan.”

“Like what?” The sugar rush from Polly’s raisin rolls had energized her. The inside of her head churned with dozens of things she needed to handle ASAP. “There’s not much to tell.”

“When you broke up with him were there hard feelings?”

“Some,” she admitted. “It was a long time ago, right after grad school. I’d come back to the ranch and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my pretty new MBA.”

For lack of any other plan, she’d started dating Logan, who was a great guy to party with—handsome, charming and sexy. When their relationship started to get serious, she was uncomfortable. Her father, who had been ailing, sided with Logan, telling Carolyn it was high time she settled down.

But she’d just returned from school in New York where she had a chance to watch her career-focused mother. The corporate lifestyle appealed to Carolyn, and she figured she
had the rest of her life to make babies. Now, almost ten years later, she wondered if she’d waited too long.

“Logan wasn’t the right guy for me.” She exhaled a sigh. “And I wasn’t the barefoot-and-pregnant type of woman he was looking for.”

“Do you think he holds a grudge?”

Taken aback, she grasped what he was suggesting. “If you think Logan kidnapped Nicole to get back at me, you’re wrong. His ego is too big to realize that I was dumping him as much as he was dumping me.”

“He could be nursing bad feelings toward you.”

True, her former boyfriend had a petty streak. “He wouldn’t sabotage the ranch. Our cattle-raising process is natural and organic. We’re not his enemy.”

“Are you sure about that?” Burke raised an eyebrow. “Carlisle Ranch is an international corporation. Big business. That’s what he hates.”

Burke’s logic made a certain amount of sense. The success of her family’s business might be a slap in the face to a loser like Sam Logan.

I
T WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT
when Burke and his men completed their interrogations of the employees of Carlisle Ranch. Once these cowboys got talking, they were as gossipy as a bunch of hens with ruffled feathers.

Burke still didn’t have much to go on. Only a basic assumption: the kidnapping had been unpremeditated and was related to the recent vandalism at the ranch.

On a wide-screen computer in the dining room, Agent Corelli had pinpointed those acts of sabotage on a map of the area. Most of them bunched along the border between the Carlisles and a neighboring ranch.

Corelli, whose black suit still looked crisp, pointed to the
red dots. “That pattern can’t be a coincidence. Who lives on that ranch?”

“A young widow and her four-year-old child.” Not likely suspects for a brutal kidnapping. “It’s not a working ranch. Less than a hundred acres.”

“Who’s next to her?”

“National Forest,” Burke said. “There are a couple of oil rigs in that area but nobody lives there.”

Logan’s compound was across the road and further to the east. Burke considered the survivalists his most likely suspects. They were the only ranch who had refused to talk to Dylan’s posse when they had made their search.

Burke needed to get inside the SOF compound. His gut told him Logan had something to hide.

He stepped away from the table and stretched, trying to ease the tension that knotted the muscles in his neck and shoulders. “We need continuous monitoring tonight. In case the kidnappers call again,” he said. “We’ll sleep in shifts. You three go first. Silverman, I’ll see you at three-thirty to relieve me.”

Stretching again, he watched his men troop out of the command central/dining room. Upstairs, Polly had prepared two guest rooms for them with two beds in each. Twin-sized beds were always too short for Burke, but it would have felt good to lie flat, even with his feet dangling off the end of the bed.

In the living room that adjoined the dining room, he’d spotted a big, beige, corduroy easy chair with a matching ottoman. He hauled the chair around to face the battery of equipment on the table and settled in.

The house was quiet but not peaceful. The anxiety of waiting—not knowing what had happened to a loved one—permeated the old walls. The creaking of floorboards
reminded him of the crackle of a long fuse, burning slowly toward an explosion. More trouble was coming; he could feel it.

Years ago, when he had started in law enforcement as a street cop in Chicago, he’d learned to trust his gut feelings. Subsequent training with the FBI gave him the tools to analyze.

Eyes half-closed, he did a risk assessment. Two violent crimes—arson and kidnapping—had occurred within two days. If he assumed that the same perpetrators were responsible for both, it was unlikely there would be another attack tonight. Typically, there was a lull after kidnappers made their ransom demands.

He heard a rustling from the hallway and turned his head with his eyelids still drooping. Carolyn entered the dining room, cell phone in hand. When she saw him, she stared for a moment as if deciding whether to wake him. Wispy strands of black hair had come undone from her ponytail. Though she fidgeted, she still looked capable.
And damned attractive
.

Her hidden vulnerability appealed to him. Behind her facade, he caught glimpses of a touching innocence that made him want to gather her into his arms and promise her the world. Which still didn’t excuse him for kissing her forehead. He wasn’t usually so unprofessional, but he didn’t regret that kiss. Her skin tasted spicy—warm and soft.

“What do you need?” he asked.

She started. “I thought you were asleep.”

“Just resting.”

“I have a question.”

“Shoot.”

She placed her cell phone down on the table and approached him. “What if I can’t put together the ransom by the deadline?”

He’d prefer that she not pay ransom at all. “Problems?”

“We don’t have a million dollars in liquid assets, so the ransom requires a loan against our collateral, which, in turn, requires a ton of paperwork. Also, my financial adviser tells me that the local banks, even in Delta, can’t pull that much cash from their reserves. We’ll have to use a Denver bank and fly the money over here.”

“I’m impressed that you found out that much tonight.”

“I get things done, Burke.”

She wasn’t bragging, just stating a fact. He had no doubt that Carolyn wouldn’t hesitate to wake up the entire Colorado banking community to get what she wanted.

“If you can’t get the money, explain it to the kidnapper. Ask for more time.”

“And if he refuses?”

“He won’t.”

She turned away from him and wandered around the table, checking out the equipment. When she came to the screen with the map and the red dots, she pointed. “What’s this?”

“A map.”

“I can tell it’s a map,” she said with some exasperation. “And not a very good one. If you want more detailed maps of the area, we’ve got plenty. Dylan uses them to keep track of the different fields, pastures and grazing rotation.”

He hauled himself out of the comfortable chair and went to stand beside her. The top of her head came up to his chin. In her boots, she was close to six feet. A tall woman. He liked that.