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“Is she with you?” he demanded again.
“I dropped her at the ranch about a half-hour ago.”
“You left her alone?”
“She said Joel was there. I even saw someone in one of the barns.”
He hadn’t checked in the barns, but he had a bad feeling he wouldn’t find her there, either.
His gut told him Robert had made his move.
“Joel is at the movies with the kids and Kendra is not here. Get the cops and an ambulance out here, I’m going to keep looking.”
He made one quick stop in his room for the gun Joel had given him, then began his search. The barns and main house yielded no results. On his way back from the house, a part of him was relieved not to have found her injured—or worse—and another part of him agonized over the thought that the guy could’ve taken her anywhere.
A slight disturbance in the dirt by the front porch of the guest house caught his attention. His frantic gaze swept along the ground, searching. About ten yards away, it appeared something—someone?—had been dragged for a distance.
He gulped back fear. His knees nearly buckled when he saw two distinctly different prints a few yards later. She’d been on her feet again. She’d fought the bastard, but was still walking.
Waiting for the cops was no longer an option. He scratched a large arrow in the dirt and wrote This Way.
At the edge of the woods, he found more evidence he was on the right track. It made sense. The guy wouldn’t have risked trying to enter the property in a vehicle. He’d probably been hiding out, watching, waiting for the perfect opportunity.
God, he never should’ve left her on those courthouse steps. He should’ve been a man and dealt with his emotions instead of running from them. Barring that, the least he could’ve done was brought her home and kept her safe.
With every broken branch and disturbance of leaves his admiration for Kendra’s courage grew in direct proportion to his fear. He had to find her, had to keep her from being hurt because he should’ve protected her from her bastard of a brother.
His fingers tightened on the pistol grip and growing guilt ate at him with each step.
****
Kendra went down on her knees again as Robert shoved her forward with one gloved hand. The other held his gun.
“Damn it, keep moving,” he growled.
She clawed the dirt with one hand, and reached for a tree limb to help pull herself up with the other. When the branch broke under her weight, she reached for another. It broke, too, and she hoped it would be enough. For now, it would have to be, otherwise Robert would realize what she was doing.
Would Colton see the signs? The chair? Her necklace? The ring?
What if he didn’t come home?
She forced that thought away immediately. She had to believe he’d be there to find the clues, otherwise the panic that hovered on the edge of her determination would take over.
Robert chuckled behind her. “I knew I’d get my chance,” he sneered. “The idiot cops and your stupid shado
ws can’t help you now. They never had a clue I was here all along.”
His rumpled, dirty clothes, unkempt hair and ragged beard suggested he’d been camping out for a week or so already. He reeked of desperation, too.
Kendra reached for another slim branch as she labored up the mountainside. Her calves burned and she stumbled without trying to. It felt like they’d walked forever, but her watch said it’d only been thirty-three minutes. During which time, her half-brother cursed her nonstop for dragging him to this God-forsaken wasteland.
She shivered despite the still-warm afternoon air and had to agree with him. The undisturbed, pristine beauty of the towering Rocky Mountains now seemed isolated and menacing. The possibility that she might not make it out of their shadowed desolation threatened to steal what little oxygen she managed to drag into her tight lungs.
“Over to your right,” Robert instructed suddenly.
She started to move over until she realized there was an abrupt drop only six feet away. A quick spin back to Robert left her blinded by the rays of the setting sun. She shielded her eyes with her hand, only to have her panic double when she saw he’d aimed his gun at her chest.
“Robert—”
