At the very least, it all merited a call to the police. Her thoughts turned to Brayden. Not to any of the other two dozen or more officers in the Red Ridge PD. No, she had to turn this grisly discovery into a reason to call the very cop who had been on her mind anyway.
Before she did anything else, she needed to explain to Rhys that everything was okay. Reaching a hand behind her, she prepared to draw him to her side. Except when she felt for him, he wasn’t there. She got to her feet, whirling around in a panicky circle. Her eyes widened as they confirmed her worst fears. There was no sign of her son anywhere.
“Rhys?” Her voice sounded high-pitched, seeming to echo back at her within the circle of trees, confirming that she was alone.
But that couldn’t be the case. Rhys had been at her side mere minutes earlier. He couldn’t have gone far. Taking a few steadying breaths, she told herself it must be another game. He was hiding from her.
“Here I come. Ready or not...”
There were no answering squeals this time. Just that continuing, unnerving quiet. Esmée swallowed the hard lump in her throat and started to look around, her eyes searching desperately for his brightly colored T-shirt.
Just as the feelings of panic were becoming overwhelming, leaves crunched behind her and a twig snapped. She prepared to release an exclamation of joy, but the hairs on the back of her neck prickled, cutting her feeling of relief short. The footfalls were too heavy, the breathing too hard. She knew before she turned that the person right behind her wasn’t Rhys.
Sure enough, when she swung around, she found herself face-to-face with a man. Not just any man. With his shaved head and broken nose, this guy was huge. And he was holding a gun—a gun that was leveled directly at her.
Esmée’s nerves were already on high alert. She wasn’t going to wait around to see if negotiation was an option. Fear and anxiety gave her an extra burst of speed. As she darted to her left, seeking the cover of the denser trees, the man fired. It could have been her imagination, but she felt the bullet part the air close to her head before it hit a tree.
She heard a grunt and a curse before he came crashing after her. Her heart was doing its best to break free of her chest as she raced over the uneven ground, leaping over tree roots and pushing aside branches. She had no idea who this man was, or why he was shooting at her, but she had to get away from him. Most important of all, she had to find Rhys.
The guy was big and heavy, and Esmée used her smaller size to her advantage. He might be the one with the gun, but she was faster and more agile. Not daring to take a look over her shoulder, she ducked low and swerved in and out of the trees, hoping he wouldn’t be able to get a shot at a moving target.
She heard the crash of wood breaking and the sound of a large body falling. The curses became louder and angrier. Risking a look behind her, she saw her pursuer had stumbled over a tree root. He was clutching his ankle as he struggled to get up.
She couldn’t assume he was incapacitated. He still had a gun...and her baby was still missing. Slowing her pace just enough to pull her cell phone from the pocket of her jeans, Esmée breathed a sigh of relief to see she had a full signal. With fingers that were almost steady, she called 911.
* * *
Brayden pulled into the parking lot of the Pour House. Like its owner, the bar was at its best during the hours of darkness. Daylight wasn’t kind to the uneven porch and wooden boards that were in dire need of a coat of varnish. The wagon wheels decorating the upper floor were almost rusted away and the advertising posters plastered one on top of the other along the front facade were faded and unreadable.
Occasionally, travelers passing through would stumble across the Pour House and comment on its authentic charm. Rusty, fired up with dreams of fame and fortune, was forever predicting a new dawn. So far, it had never happened and he continued to scrape out a living from his regular customers.
It looked like Brayden had overestimated Rusty’s ability to get himself out of bed by noon. The bar was definitely closed and the drapes in Rusty’s apartment were drawn tight across the grimy windows. He knew from experience nothing short of a brass band marching through his room would wake his father, who slept like the dead. He was weighing his options when an SAR call came through.
“It was hard to catch the details because the caller was keeping her voice low,” Frank Lanelli explained. “Said she was hiding from a shooter.”
“A hunter?”
“Not the way she told it. The guy fired at her and she took off through the trees.”
Not a regular search-and-rescue case. “Location?”
“The way she described it, she’s in the trees on the ridge below Eagle’s Nest.”
Brayden went into organizational mode, listening to Frank at the same time that his mind processed the details and formulated a plan. He backed out of the parking lot, his route already plotted.
“The missing person is her two-year-old son, Rhys da Costa. Approximate height, three feet, weight about thirty pounds. Dark curly hair and dark brown eyes. Wearing a brightly colored T-shirt with a dinosaur pattern, blue jeans, white sneakers.”
Da Costa? Brayden tried to ignore the extra beat his heart had developed. He concentrated on pushing the personal feelings aside and keeping it professional. Even so, he spared a thought for the agony Esmée must have been feeling as she gave Frank that description. Her eye for detail shone through.
His own training kicked in. So many hazards to take into account. Put a two-year-old in any unknown outdoor situation and there would be danger. In this case there was a cliff top, a complex cave system and...a shooter? Frank had said Esmée was hiding from a gunman as she made the call. That meant she was also in danger. A guy whose first instinct when he encountered a woman on her own in the woods was to fire at her didn’t sound like a rational, law-abiding citizen.
“We could be looking at a hostage situation here,” he said, explaining his thinking to Frank. “Mom, kid or possibly both.” That was, if he hadn’t killed them by the time Brayden got there. It was an image he didn’t want inside his head.
“You want me to mobilize a team of K-9 officers?” Frank asked.
Brayden weighed it up. He didn’t know what he was dealing with. This wasn’t like a guy with a gun who was confined within a building. It wasn’t even the same as closing down a few streets to limit the movements of a rogue gunman. Both those scenarios were familiar procedures to the PD. But the area Frank had described was covered in dense woodland. Although the main cave system was lower down, there was another, more dangerous cave close to the place from where Esmée had called. The unknown shooter had a choice of hiding places. If he did grab Esmée or Rhys and the police turned up in numbers, things could get messy.
Brayden and Echo knew that terrain. They could cover the ground fast and do it stealthily. On the other hand, once he got out there and did an initial assessment, he might find he needed backup. Esmée had told Frank she had seen one gunman. That didn’t mean he was alone. If there were others...
“Put them on standby. Esmée da Costa is staying at the Red Ridge Bed-and-Breakfast.” He didn’t enlighten Frank about how he knew so much about Rhys’s mother. “I’m guessing she started her hike from there. I can get to her faster if I approach from the opposite direction. Have a team of six officers assemble at the Eagle’s Nest rest stop. My vehicle will already be there. Tell them to wait by my car until they hear from me.”
No matter how fast he drove, Esmée and Rhys were still up on that ridge in a dangerous situation. If she was hiding, he couldn’t risk calling her and alerting the shooter to her location. “Send Esmée a text message. Tell her to keep her cell on silent. Give her my number and tell her I’m on my way.”
He ended the call,