Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
EllaJayne was gone. The car seat in the back of the battered king-cab pickup was empty, the door hanging open. Even flat-as-a-pancake Oggie, her toy doggie, had vanished. AJ had been right there, fixing the loose hose while his daughter slept in her safest-for-its-price-tag car seat. He’d been standing right there. He hadn’t heard a damned thing. He should have a loyal dog so no one could sneak up and— Call the cops, his mind snapped.
He pulled out his phone as he scanned the dusty lot stretching behind a stuccoed cement-block building. Empty, except for a purple SUV. He ran, his well-worn boots kicking up whirls of bleached-out grit. No EllaJayne in or behind the small SUV. How could he have forgotten she was Houdini in a diaper? No sign of her in the dirt-and-gravel parking lot baking in the Arizona high-noon sun. The emergency operator picked up as he raced back to his grimy truck for one more check in every nook, cranny and crevice.
“What’s your emergency?” the operator asked.
“My daughter’s gone.” He ran for the short alley that ran along the building and onto the main street. “Shit,” he said.
“Excuse me, sir?”
He kept moving. “Get the police out here. She might have gone onto the road.”
“I’ll need your location, please.”
Her voice was too calm. He wanted to reach through the phone and tell her that his baby girl had disappeared. Instead, as he panted for breath against the heat and the pain in his hip, he said, “I’m in Angel Crossing. I only stopped for a minute to check the truck before I went to find Gene’s—” He stopped the rush of words. None of that mattered. “My daughter is sixteen months old. She has dark hair and eyes.”
“What’s she wearing, sir?”
“Purple shirt with sparkles.”
“A little more information, then the police will contact you. I’ll need your full name, place of—”
He hung up. He couldn’t run and talk. They should be sending police, the K-9 unit, not asking him stupid questions. He stared up and down the uneven, broken sidewalk that stretched in front of the bright-colored facades of empty buildings. Had someone driven in and stolen his daughter while he’d had his head under the hood? A wailing, escalating cry drifted to him. He squinted without his hat brim to shade his McCreary-gray eyes, hoping to catch a glimpse of his sturdy toddler daughter, with hair as dark as his own, its straight-as-a-preacher silkiness direct from her out-of-the-picture mama. He took off, ignoring the sharp bite of pain in his hip and back.
Was the crying closer? The familiar piercing sob was one he’d come to dread, his daughter letting him know he had no business calling himself her daddy.
“EllaJayne. Where are you, baby?” He kept moving as he yelled, not caring that his Kentucky twang had thickened. The cries stopped. He stopped. Where the hell was she? Dear Lord, he’d been so sure he was better than any foster parent or her mama could be. Now he’d lost his baby girl.
After searching another five minutes without hearing her voice again, AJ turned back the way he’d come, moving as fast as he could down the uneven concrete. Where the heck was she? He stepped into a hole where there should have been sidewalk and sharp pain shot down his leg. He hobbled two more steps until the sign for the police department and town hall sprang up like an oasis in the desert. He raced toward it and yanked open the door into a narrow lobby with plastic signs lining the walls. He scanned them looking for...on the right, a small sign in red declared: POLICE. He hurried to the door. Beyond it, a battered metal desk with neat in and out trays stood empty. He didn’t hear anything.
“I want to report a missing child.” He raised his voice, needing to talk with someone, right now, or he’d—
“What the hell’s going on?” asked a tall, blond, unexpectedly familiar man. “AJ? What are you doing here?”
“My daughter.” He pulled in as deep a breath as he could with his heart pounding enough to hurt his ribs. “Are you a cop now? I need a search party.”
“Not a cop. Mayor. So you’re the daddy.”
“Where is my daughter?” he asked slowly, with menace. He wasn’t playing here. No matter this was Danny Leigh, his old partner in crime. The big blond angel—fitting that he was mayor of a place called Angel Crossing—to AJ’s dark-haired and black-hatted devil.
“Pepper said she found the baby walking around by herself.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t mean to tell you your business, but—”
AJ had been right there under the hood while Baby Girl slept after hours of crying. He’d been right there. “I’m getting my daughter.” AJ turned from Danny, whom he’d last seen at a rodeo in Tulsa. Now it seemed neither of them was following the money on the back of a bull.
AJ listened for his daughter’s cries, but the blood roared so loudly in his ears he wouldn’t have been able to hear a jet take off.
“Let me get the chief,” Danny said, his hand on AJ’s arm. Tight. AJ hadn’t lost an ounce of muscle since “retiring.” He used it to throw off his friend. Danny let go but stayed beside AJ, saying, “I heard them talking about calling Child Services.”
Every one of AJ’s straining muscles tightened until his back sent a shooting pain down into his still-aching hip. Even if he’d been able to speak, he wouldn’t have known what to say to such crap, except a lot of four-letter words, which he tried not to use anymore because of EllaJayne. Everything he did now was to protect her. He’d quit riding bulls and wrangling for the rodeo.
No one was taking his daughter. He’d rescued her once. He’d do it again. AJ moved past Danny to the doorway beyond the desk. Finally, he heard voices and—“EllaJayne,” he shouted, except he felt like he’d been gut-punched and only had enough air for the shout to be a strained whisper.
Danny moved past him in the narrow hallway, through an open archway on the left and said, “She belongs to my buddy. He’s one hell of a bull rider.”
AJ followed him into the room with a fridge and microwave. There she was. Baby Girl in the arms of a woman wearing scrubs, her hair in a no-nonsense golden-brown ponytail. The disapproving line of the woman’s mouth couldn’t mar its soft pink charm. He held out his arms for his daughter. EllaJayne lifted her head from the woman’s shoulder, tear tracks silvery bright on her rounded cheeks where strands of her McCreary raven-black hair lay in a sticky mess. His heart hurt. His baby girl had been crying...again. He sucked at this father stuff.
“She was wandering around on her own. She could have ended up getting hit by a car or kidnapped,” said the woman’s voice, firm and soft at the same time.
“My daughter,” AJ said as he continued to hold out his now shaking hands. The woman glared at him.
“Absolutely not,” she said, clutching the girl tighter to her.
He dropped his arms. “I was fixing a hose. She was asleep.”
“You should have been paying more attention,” whispered the woman as she patted the little girl’s back, soothing her into laying down her head. “I found her wandering and brought her to the police. I could probably report