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“Zach?” Dana stared at him, frozen.
Indecision crossed his face, then he set his jaw. “It’s...not what he thinks.”
The deputy slashed the air with the side of his hand. “He’s lying. Your buddy here has a rap sheet a mile long—for possession, for dealing...even attempted murder. If someone is coming after him, then your son and that little girl are in the hands of another drug dealer or some addict crazy enough to track him clear out here.”
* * * *
VIVIAN FOLLOWED THE ambulance to the hospital to stay with Ben. Her mind numb, her heart racing, Dana paced as two deputies, the sheriff, and some sort of investigator milled around the house, looking for evidence, taking blood samples from a number of sites.
She wanted to race out the door and search for Alex, but where would she go? Which direction? Was he still in the area? Still in Colorado? Was he still alive?
She’d tried to hold back her tears for Molly’s sake, tried to be brave. Now she was strung so tight that she felt as if she could break at any moment. Her hand trembling, she held back the kitchen window curtain and peered out into the darkness for the thousandth time, imagining that every flicker in the shadows was someone bringing Alex and Katie home.
Some of the men had fanned out into the yard with flashlights an hour earlier, and now all she could see were beams of light swinging wide through the darkness.
One deputy had hustled Zach out the door and taken him back to town as soon as they all arrived. Had he—or his enemies—anything to do with this?
“Do you think Alex is all right?” Molly whispered. Her arms wrapped tightly around her waist and her face white as snow, she hadn’t stirred from her kitchen chair. “If I’d only come downstairs, maybe I could have done something. Stopped that guy, or helped Alex and Katie, or...” Her voice trailed away.
Dana pulled a chair next to hers and sat down, then embraced her...even as she ached to be holding Alex, and Katie as well. “There’s nothing you could have done. Nothing. No child is a match for a man, much less one who has a gun. Understand? You did the right thing to stay where you were. Just think how you saved Ben, right? If you hadn’t stopped that bleeding before Grandma came, he might have died.”
Molly sniffled. “I close my eyes and all I see is blood, and I hear Katie screaming...and Alex yelling.”
Me, too, honey. With every heartbeat. “I know, sweetheart.”
“A-and I don’t understand about Zach. How could he be like that? He loves Katie so much, and is so nice to the puppy. How could he be so bad?”
“We don’t know the truth,” Dana said slowly, choosing her words with care. Yet the deputy had seemed so certain.
Whatever the truth, one fact remained. Alex was missing, and if Zach Forrester hadn’t come to town, none of this would have happened. For that, she could never forgive him.
The phone rang.
Molly gave a startled cry. “Maybe they found Alex!” She raced for the phone and listened, the sudden joy on her face fading. She held the receiver out to Dana. “It’s Grandma.”
“We’re at the community hospital,” Vivian said as soon as Dana picked up the phone. “They were afraid to risk transferring him, so they took Ben into surgery right away. He’s still in recovery and so far he’s stable.” Vivian’s voice was weary, anxious. “No one will tell me anything, and I’ve called the sheriff’s office three times. Have you heard anything?”
“Nothing.” The sick feeling in the pit of Dana’s stomach grew. “Nothing at all.”
“And Zach?”
“No word, but Carl sure seemed certain of his facts.”
Vivian fell silent.
Dana knew she was thinking back over the years to when she’d railed endlessly about his background, his family, and his dim future for months after Zach had disappeared.
The entire topic became such an obsession that Dana had ultimately changed plans and decided on a college farther away than she’d planned. She steeled herself against her mother’s inevitable diatribe.
“Maybe...” Vivian hesitated. “There’s more to this than we know.”
Astonished, Dana paced to the windows and back again before finding her voice. “What do you mean?”
A heavy sigh came through the receiver. “Just that sometimes we look for all the wrong things. Hold on—” After a moment, she came back on the line. “The nurses say I can go in to see Ben now. I’ll call you again in a few minutes.”
“What is it, Mom? Is Ben okay?” Molly’s voice trembled.
“He’s in recovery now. Grandma will call after she sees him.”
