Chapter 3
The babies disappeared that morning.
At least, that was what I had been told.
Three nursery cribs empty.
A back service door open.
Snow tracks leading toward the east field.
Marco immediately called it an abduction.
Victor produced a witness within twenty minutes.
A stable hand claimed he saw a young woman running toward the ranch road.
By noon, Emma Carter’s name was circulating through my men.
A diner waitress.
Poor.
No family connections.
Perfect.
Too perfect.
“How did you find them?” I asked.
Emma looked toward the open barn doors.
“I didn’t take them.”
“I know.”
She looked surprised.
I held up Claire’s note.
“Tell me anyway.”
She had been walking from the diner because her car had died two days earlier and she could not afford the repair. She cut across the northern edge of the ranch because it shortened the trip to a small employee cottage where a friend had offered her temporary work.
Then she heard crying.
Not one baby.
Three.
The sound came from an old supply sled parked behind a windbreak.
“They were covered,” she said. “But badly. Whoever put them there expected somebody to collect them soon.”
My hands tightened.
“Were they alone?”
“For maybe a minute.”
Then she saw a Whitmore security vehicle approaching.
Marco’s division.
She recognized the family crest because Claire had warned her about it.
So Emma took the babies.
Victor laughed.
“She stole them from our own men.”
Emma looked at him.
“No.”
That was the first time her voice sharpened.
“I hid them from yours.”
Silence.
She carried three infants across snow until she reached the barn.
Sophie and Lily cried.
Grace did not.
Grace kept clutching Claire’s pendant, which had been tucked beneath her blanket.
“How did the pendant get there?” I asked.
Emma shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Victor did.
I could see it.
I turned.
“You knew Grace had it.”
He said nothing.
That explained why he reached for my daughter before checking whether she was cold.
The babies were not moved randomly.
May you like
Someone had placed Claire’s warning with them.
And Victor knew enough to fear it before it ever opened.
