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 hit him. 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.

“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? A back 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 in there, 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.

“I’m on my way,” Slater insisted. “I’ll call Duncan, Joelle and Ruston and fill them in.”

That meant the four of them would also soon be on their way here, too. Well, maybe not Joelle since she was on maternity leave and had a baby of her own. Still, she would likely find a way to join the others. So would any available deputy. And Luca had to believe that would be enough help for them to find and recover Gabriel.

“Uh, how’s Bree?” Slater asked. “Never mind. She’s a wreck. I’ll be there soon,” he added before he ended the call.

Bree was indeed a wreck. She was strong and had survived going through hell and back, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t break. This was enough to break even the strongest person. That’s why he needed to help her focus on the things that could be done rather than letting the fear take over. Luca tried to do the same for himself.

“Look for any signs of footprints,” he instructed. “Especially beneath the windows.”

She did, pinning her gaze to the ground as they hurried along the side of the house, but there was nothing to indicate the kidnapper had been here.

“Stay right behind me as we go through the backyard,” he told her. Because there was a strong possibility of footprints being there.

“We’re going to the barn,” she muttered.

They were, and Luca knew it wouldn’t do any good to ask Bree to stay in the house while he did that. If their situations had been reversed, he sure as hell wouldn’t have stayed put and neither would she.

But it could be dangerous.

If they cornered a kidnapper, then Gabriel’s captor might do anything and everything to escape. Still, there was no other option, not even waiting for backup. Luca intended to do everything possible to find his son now, and then he’d have to deal with whatever they were about to face.

“Look for tracks,” he reminded her.

Luca did the same, but he didn’t take the direct route across the yard. He stayed on the perimeter, hurrying, while he made his way through the flower beds and shrubs and toward the barn. They reached the wide metal gate, and Luca slowed down to check for footprints.

And he saw something.

Of course, that something could be Bree’s own tracks since he knew she tended her two horses. Still, Luca skirted around them, climbing over the fence and approaching the barn from the side.

“Are the barn doors usually shut like this?” he asked Bree in a whisper.

“Yes. I open them if bad weather is coming.”

Since there was no such weather in the forecast, then this was the norm, but Luca hoped Gabriel’s abductor had ducked in and shut them. That way, his son would be nearby, and he’d be within seconds of finding him.

The horses whickered and lifted their heads, but they must have picked up Bree’s scent because they went back to grazing. Luca and Bree went past them and ran to the barn. There were no footprints on the side of it. None that Luca could see anyway, but there were also enough patches of grass that anyone could have used them like stepping stones.

When he reached the door, Luca lifted the latch to ease it open, and he winced at the creaking sound it made. No way to sneak it with that noise. Then again, the spears of sunlight would have alerted anyone inside, too.

They stepped in, and Luca paused so his eyes could adjust to the dim light and so he could listen for any sounds. Nothing.

Not at first anyway.

Then, he heard something or someone rustling. It came from the far corner of the barn where there were some stacks of hay bales. Bree must have heard it as well because her attention zoomed in that direction while she took hold of a muck fork rake that was propped against the wall. It wasn’t a gun, but it could be an effective weapon if it came down to it.

Luca was praying it didn’t.

Keeping his footsteps as light as possible, he made his way toward those bales. Not approaching them directly where Bree and he would be easy targets. Again, he kept them to the side of the barn so he could approach from the side.

Of course, there might not be a kidnapper. The sound could have come from a mouse or some other critter that had gotten inside. Still, Luca moved as if their lives depended on it.

Since they could.

Luca stopped when he heard another sound. More rustling. Followed by what could be a whimper. That got Bree and him moving even faster, and he had his gun aimed and ready when they reached the stack of hay bales. Bree moved to his side, the muck fork raised.

And then they both froze.

There, seated on the floor was a woman, and she had Gabriel cradled in her arms. Not a stranger. Far from it.

Because the woman was someone who’d been missing and presumed dead for nearly a year.

Bree’s mother.